Marisha Pessl: Special Topics in Calamity Physics

The wind taunted the edges of my papers.

“The most incredible thing about goldfish, however, is their memory. Everyone pities them for only remembering their last three seconds, but in fact, to be so forcibly tied to the present — it’s a gift. They are free. No moping over missteps, slip-ups, faux pas or disturbing childhoods. No inner demons. Their closets are light filled and skeleton free. And what could be more exhilarating than seeing the world for the very first time, in all of its beauty, almost thirty thousand times a day? How glorious to know that your Golden Age wasn’t forty years ago when you still had all your hair, but only three seconds ago, and thus, very possibly it’s still going on, this very moment.” I counted three Mississippis in my head, though I might have rushed it, being nervous. “And this moment, too.” Another three seconds. “And this moment, too.” Another. “And this moment, too.”

Dad never talked about not moving people during a lecture. He never talked about the funny human need to impart something, any thing, to someone, build a tiny bridge to them and help them across, or what to do when the crowd twitched ceaselessly like a horse’s back. The endless sniffing, the clearing of throats, fathers’ eyes that skateboarded one side of a row to the other side of a row, doing a 180-ollie around the hot mom, sixth from the right — he never said a word. Standing around the rim of the football field the hemlocks stood tall, watching protectively. The wind tugged the sleeves of a hundred blouses. I wondered if that kid, far end, third row, red shirt (oddly gnawing his fist and frowning at me with James-Deanian intensity), if he knew I was an impostor, that I’d secretly cut out only the beautiful part of the truth and discarded the rest. Because, in reality, goldfish were having as rough a time with life as the rest of us; they expired all the time from the shock of new temperatures and the faintest shadow of a heron prompted them to hide under rocks. And yet, maybe it didn’t matter so much what I said or didn’t say, what I kissed on the cheek or what I gave the cold shoulder. (My god, Red Shirt, hands clamped over his mouth, biting his fingernails, he was now sitting so far forward, his head was nearly a flowerpot on the sill of Sal Mineo’s shoulder. I didn’t know who he was. I’d never seen him before.) Lectures and Theories, all Tomes of Nonfiction, maybe they deserved the same gentle treatment as works of art; maybe they were human creations trying to shoulder a few terrors and joys of the world, composed at a certain place, at a certain time, to be pondered, frowned at, liked, loathed, and then one went to the gift shop and bought the postcard, put it in a shoe box high on a shelf.

The end of my speech was a disaster, the disaster being that nothing happened. Obviously, I’d hoped — as all people do when they stand before an audience, show a bit of leg — for culmination, illumination, a flake of sky to loosen, crash down on everyone’s stiff hair like the big chip of plaster on which Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel had taken a stab at God’s index finger, when, in 1789, it unexpectedly freed itself from the ceiling, hitting Father Cantinolli on the head and sending a bevy of visiting nuns into eye-rolling seizures; when they came to, their prevailing line of defense for all actions, from the sacred to the seedy, was “because God told me to” (see Lo Spoke Del Dio Di Giorno , Funachese, 1983).

But if God existed, today, like most days, He chose to remain mum. There was only wind and faces, yawning sky. To applause that might as well have been laughter on a late, late show (it had the same sense of obligation), I returned to my chair. Havermeyer began to read the list of graduating names, and I didn’t pay much attention, until he came to the Bluebloods. I saw their Life Stories flash before my eyes.

“Milton Black.”

Milton lumbered up the stairs, his chin held at that deceitfully sweet angle, around 75 degrees. (He was a lethargic coming-of-age novel.)

“Nigel Creech.”

He smiled — that wristwatch catching light. (He was an unsentimental comedy in Five Acts, sequined with wit, lust and pain. The last scene tended to end on a sour note, but the playwright refused to revise.)

“Charles Loren.”

Charles hobbled up the stairs with his crutches. (He was a romance.)

“Congratulations, son.”

The sky had yellowed, performing one of its best magic tricks, overcast yet making people squint.

“Leulah Maloney.”

She skipped up the stairs. She’d cut off her hair, not as harshly as Hannah, but the result was just as unhappy; the blunt pieces banged against her jaw. (She was a twelve-line poem of repetition and rhyme.)

Raindrops the size and texture of wasps started to zing off the shoulder pads of Havermeyer’s navy blazer, also off some mother wearing a pink sun hat that sun-rose high over her head. Instantly, umbrellas blossomed — a garden of black, red, yellow, a few striped — and the Jelly Roll Jazz Band began to pack up their instruments, evacuating to the gym.

“Things aren’t looking good, are they?” Havermeyer noted with a sigh. “Better hurry things along.” He smiled. “Graduating in the rain. For those of you who think this is a bad omen, we do have some spots available in next year’s senior class, if you’d like to wait for an exit that looks a little more promising.” No one laughed and Havermeyer started to read the names quickly, jerking his head up and down: microphone, name, microphone; God was fast-forwarding him. It was difficult to hear what name he was on because the wind had found the microphone and sent ghostly, theme park “Woooooooos” out across the crowd. Havermeyer’s wife, Gloria, stepped up onto the stage and held an umbrella over his head.

“Jade Churchill Whitestone.”

She stood up, carrying her orange umbrella Statue-of-Liberty-style, and grabbed her diploma from Havermeyer as if doing him a favor, as if he were handing her his résumé. She stalked back to her seat. (She was a breathtaking book written in a bleak style. She often didn’t bother with “he said” or “she said” the reader could figure it out. And now and then a sentence made you gasp it was so beautiful.)

Soon it was Radley’s turn to go, and then my own. I’d forgotten my umbrella in Mr. Moats’ classroom and Radley was holding his over himself and a strip of rubberized commencement stage on his other side, so I was getting drenched. The rain was an oddly soothing temperature, just right, Goldilocks’ porridge. I stood up and Eva Brewster, with her small pink cat umbrella, muttered “Christ,” and shoved hers into my hands. I took it, but felt bad because the rain started to stick to her hair and bang against her forehead. I quickly shook Havermeyer’s cold pruned hand and returned to my seat, handing the umbrella back to her.

Havermeyer rushed his closing — something about luck — the crowd applauded and began to disband. There were the wet picnic mechanics of moving inside — do we have everything, where’d Kimmie go, what’s my hair doing, it’s seaweed, hell. Dads with pained faces wrenched toddlers out of chairs. Mothers in soggy white linen were unaware they admitted to the world their underwear.

I waited another minute, doing my About-To act. One doesn’t look suspiciously alone, without blood relation, if one appears industriously About To do something, and so I stood up, made a big deal of removing the mythical rock from my shoe and scratching the fictitious itch on my hand, another one on the back of my neck (they were like fleas), pretending I’d lost something somewhere — granted, for that I didn’t have to pretend. Soon I was alone with the chairs and the stage. I slipped down the stairs and began to make my way across the field.