He never knew what to expect from her next. She performed each of her magic tricks with the immunity of a child, never seeming either ridiculous or theatrical, no matter which preposterous pose or fantastic situation she was conjuring. She could feel perfectly confident in saying to a drunk lying in the gutter, “Shame on you,” and then could suggest one Saturday night that they buy two bottles of Scotch (a luxury) and try to consume them both before they went to bed. She could cheat on an examination without batting an eyelash, and then launch a tirade against Russian diplomats who broke their word. She could turn her back to him one night with a frosty “Is that all you ever think of?” and then wake him at two in the morning with the sheet pulled over her head like a tent while she whispered seductively from its depths. She was totally mercurial, and it was her very unpredictability that made that first year together so completely alive.
If either of the two had any plans for the future, they were the plans of the very young, amorphous, fleeting. They had met when they were both freshmen and now, in their junior year, they were married. They talked continually of graduation as though it were some sort of mysterious rite that would pass them through an invisible barrier separating them from the real world of productive people. Once through that barrier, they would assume their rightful places in the order of things. But they had no notion as to where their rightful places were, or how they would go about occupying them. Their plans were spontaneous and ephemeral, providing excitement each time a new one was outlined. One week, they decided they would go to Paris as soon as they were graduated, and just bum around, drinking absinthe in the sidewalk cafés, and making love in garret rooms overlooking chimney pots. The next week, it was decided they would both go West for their master’s degrees, either to the University of Colorado in Denver, or U.C.L.A. in Los Angeles. But the week after that, Grace suggested that they go to the Scandinavian countries for the summer, taking jobs as English-speaking guides on the bus tours, which would enable them to save some money for their future education. Buddwing bettered her idea by suggesting that they live in Puerto Rico for a while, where the sand was white, the sun was hot, and the income was tax-free. No corner of the globe was safe from their imaginary visits, no occupation too bizarre, no dream too fantastic. A new batch of travel folders flooded into the apartment daily, and they picked over the world like explorers impatient to set sail. Their dreams all hinged upon “graduation,” that fabulous passport to the world of real adults. Once out of school, once free of the cloistered atmosphere of academics, they would come to grips with the world through discovering it — and would incidentally find themselves as well. They seemed unaware that at least some of their plans centered about a continuance of studies, an extension of the cloistered atmosphere that nourished them as surely as an incubator. “Graduation” would solve everything. “Graduation” would enable them to lay their future plans and choose their destinies. There was really no rush because they would have the whole summer to decide. In the meantime, they could live as they had done from the very beginning, in a curious world of make-believe that neither of them recognized as such.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
“I’m trying to remember if we have enough liquor.”
“Enough liquor for what?”
“Some of the kids are coming over later.”
“Oh,” he said. “Yeah?”
“Yes, about eleven o’clock.” She paused. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. I thought we’d be alone.”
“Well, it’s only nine-thirty.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“I’m sorry, but I invited them yesterday.”
“Okay.”
“I didn’t know I was going to meet you, you know.”
“I know that.”
“I really hadn’t planned on doing anything the early part of the night. In fact, I wanted to wash my hair and do some laundry, is all.”
“Well, I’m sorry if I spoiled your plans,” he said.
She rolled over beside him and propped her chin on one hand, her elbow bent, and looked directly down into his face and said, “Hey.”
“What?”
“Cut it out.”
“Okay.”
“Because you know you haven’t spoiled any of my plans.”
“Okay.”
“And we don’t need this kind of crap between us.”
“Okay.”
“Because it’s too good the way it is.”
“All right.”
“And anyway, I won’t have to wash my hair now because the rain took care of that.”
“But you do have to do your laundry.”
“Yes, but the machine is right in the basement. I don’t have to go out or anything.”
“Good. I want to go down to the basement with you and help you do your laundry.”
“What we could do, you know...”
“Yeah, what?”
“Well,” she said thoughtfully, “it only takes a minute to carry it downstairs and put it in the machine, you know.”
“Mmmm?”
“Yes, and we do have until eleven o’clock, or maybe a little after. One of the kids is in a show, you see, and they’re picking him up and then coming over. So let’s say eleven-fifteen, maybe eleven-thirty.”
“Yeah, so?”
“So we could bring the laundry down, and then come up here while it’s in the machine. It takes, oh, forty minutes, I guess. How does that sound to you?”
“I kind of wanted to watch your dirty clothes spinning around behind the glass.”
“Well, okay, if that’s what you want. But I thought since we’ve got until eleven-thirty, well, that gives us plenty of time.”
“For what?”
“Well, for whatever you want to do with it.”
“With it?”
“Yes, the time.” She paused. She pushed her hand through his hair roughly and said, “What are you, a wise guy?”
“Yes,” he said, grinning, “I’m a wise guy.”
“You want it all spelled out, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“All right, I’ll spell it out for you.”
“When?”
“Later. Come on, let’s get dressed.”
They were graduated on the fifteenth of June, 1950.
The commencement exercises were held on Ohio Field at the University Heights campus in the Bronx. Sitting beside Grace in his cap and gown, Buddwing heard the university registrar telling the gathered students and guests that this 118th graduating class was the largest in the history of the school, and he looked up at the glowering clouds on the horizon and wondered if it would rain. The university officials were used to soggy graduation exercises, since it had rained during four commencements in the past five years, but the promise of rain seemed like an ill omen to Buddwing.
9,158 degrees would be conferred today, the registrar was saying as Buddwing watched the clouds apprehensively. Fifty-five per cent of these degrees would go to veterans of World War II. How long had he waited for this promised day — through how many goddamn cacophonous nights in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with Japanese guns pounding, through how many dreary lectures in stuffy springtime classrooms, through how many eternities of crap courses and ten-minute quizzes and final examinations and papers due on Friday the twelfth? He hoped it would not rain. 5,866 bachelor’s would be conferred, 2,885 master’s, 196 doctor’s, and 209 certificates in specialized fields, he had visualized this ceremony as taking place in brilliant sunshine, Get these troops out of the hot sun, Colonel, his face and Grace’s touched by the glancing rays, the promise of the future. Now, with rain clouds threatening the sky, he listened while he was told that Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne would receive jointly an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree. He was suddenly glad that he and Grace were receiving separate degrees, and he waited impatiently for the actual ceremony to start, frightened lest it begin raining before this culminating act was consummated.