I did not march in my doctoral graduation ceremony. I never wore the black robes and multi-colored satin hood of the Carolina Tech College of Human Sciences. By the end of my graduate school experience, I was too exhausted to muster that last ounce of enthusiasm. Some students who had survived similar ordeals looked at commencement exercises as a victory, to me it was just another duty, one that I could conveniently avoid. My parents were not particularly disappointed about my decision to skip the ceremony. Carole had recently finished medical school and our mother had made the journey to gloat at her graduation. Our father did not attend. Phillip Northcott was not much of a traveler and preferred to stay at home with his contracting business. Not a braggart by nature, he probably never seized the opportunity to inform people that his younger daughter was a medical doctor or his eldest was a Ph.D. If someone asked about his children, he would happily share the information, but he did not seek openings to interject our accomplishments.

I actually preferred to leave Carolina Tech as soon as my obligations were complete and my dissertation filed with the illustrious signatures of my committee members. I wanted to get out of town before any of those tyrants could change their minds. Gwen was expecting her new roommate for the coming academic year and my laboratory space had been overtaken by Clive Butler’s latest conquest. The universe flowed into the void I had left behind, filling the vacuum and making me realize my time in this place had ended. I no longer belonged at Carolina Tech. It was finally time to go.

The company that would employ me sent movers to take my few belongings to Connecticut where they were deposited into an apartment the company’s relocation department had found on my behalf. I only loaded a few personal items, a suitcase, my skates and little gray cat into my car. Talbert decided to accompany me on the trip, and I was grateful not to be making the long journey into the unknown by myself. After checking in at my new apartment complex, we would proceed to his parents’ house in the Boston suburbs where I would spend a couple of recuperative weeks before starting my new life as a professional consumer scientist.

Again, I preferred to spend scarce time off with a friend rather than returning to California. Although I had been home for Christmas, my father would have welcomed me for any occasion. I was not avoiding my father or even intentionally avoiding Howard Millbank. I did not actively seek an excuse to spend my post-graduation interval doing something other than visiting with him. Talbert had offered to drive me to Connecticut and provide a cheap holiday in Boston, someplace I had never been. At the time, hanging out with a friend, enjoying my last few weeks devoid of accountability, seemed more important that burdening myself with personal commitments. Of course, Howard was unhappy about my decision to go to Boston instead of Cambridge Hills and informed me in no uncertain terms of his displeasure. I returned carefully formulated reasoning that sounded rather hollow, even to me. This was a major transition, and I basically believed exploring an unfamiliar place with Talbert would be more therapeutic than returning to Northern California and another set of memories.

Talbert arrived early in the morning and found Gwen and me sipping strong cups of tea, the last we would share as roommates. Platinum curled up nervously in the back of her kitty carrier and glared at Talbert with large golden eyes as he wiggled a playful finger though the grid. Gwen’s new roommate had not moved in yet, but would be arriving over the weekend. My tiny cubbyhole contained nothing that signaled my presence; only the sparse furniture that came with the apartment awaited the new inhabitant’s arrival. Talbert refilled his coffee mug from the pot Gwen had prepared and remarked anxiously that we should get going.

Gwen and I hugged as tears formed in the corners of our eyes. Talbert insisted we limit our sad farewells. We would see each other again. He could no longer manage to hide his emotions if both of us descended into piteous sobs. Talbert was also losing my everyday companionship, as I was losing his and Gwen’s and everyone else’s who had been kind to me in graduate school. Imagining existence in a new community where I would be completely alone, performing duties for a company for which I would be paid enough money to live by myself and buy things made me feel nervous and insecure. I wanted to leave the university and did not waste a solitary moment weeping for Dr. Butler, but the way of life I had known for so many years would be no more once Talbert and I drove out of town. A familiar thing, even if it is not necessarily a good thing, can seem comfortable compared to the unknown.

“Well, you have a career waiting for you, Kate,” Gwen sniffled. “Don’t forget to write and call once in a while now that you are going to be rich.” My friend’s characteristic silly grin appeared on her reddened face and gleamed in her watery eyes.

“I will. I promise.”

Talbert took my arm and led me out of the tiny apartment Gwen and I shared for a year. The door closed and I walked to the car looking over my shoulder at Gwen waving from the living room window. I sat in the passenger seat still fixated on Gwen, both of us waving like teary-eyed beauty queens. I watched until I could not see her anymore, as Talbert turned the corner onto the main road out of the college town.

Whenever I imagined leaving school, I did not expect to do so with tears cutting rivulets down my hot flushed cheeks. I expected to cheer, spin noisemakers, and throw confetti out of my car windows. Instead, I stared straight ahead choking on unforeseen emotions. Talbert said nothing, but drove wordlessly as Platinum cried anguished feline sounds from the backseat. As soon as I recaptured my self-control, Talbert began to speak.

“Now that you have graduated, I’d better get out of school too. I’m starting to look like an old man in that department.”

Talbert had not wanted to graduate and face the real world. Now he felt the pressure of others leaving and moving on. His friends would all be gone, leaving him the last of a class that had passed him by, crossing the threshold into independence while he fiddled around in a consumer science lab and tended bar. No one wants to be the last drunken fool at a party after everybody has gone home. Suddenly the fun is over and everyone else has found better things. My friend had spent seven long, but generally enjoyable, years as a doctoral student. I had only invested about four and a half.

Distracted from my own misery, I glanced at Talbert. “Will you be ready to finish next May?”

“Oh, sure, definitely.”

“I guess your advisor will be happy to get rid of you.”

“He would have been happy four years ago.”

“They never let anyone go after three years, unless there are special circumstances,” I chimed in, harkening back to my unfortunate misunderstanding with my own advisor.

Talbert smiled thinly and nodded. “I was one of those special circumstances.”

I could hardly believe his words. I would have turned cartwheels through my own butt to finish school and start earning a living, but Talbert purposely avoided the opportunity. The rumors about his self-sabotage were apparently true.

“I wasn’t ready then. I was too immature. I could not have handled the obligations of a career four years ago. I stayed where I belonged and did what was right for me. But now, at almost thirty years old, I’m starting feel foolish. I’ve never saved a penny or held a real job.” Talbert paused in his serious monologue. “It sure was fun, though!” With that he smirked and continued to speak. “If I had to do it all over again, I doubt I would hurry into adulthood. Next spring I’ll leave Carolina Tech, probably crying just as you are now, Kate. I know you aren’t upset about school specifically, but because of what doctoral graduation signifies. A Ph.D. is a terminal degree. That’s it. No more excuses, no more hiding in the hallowed halls. You can’t go any further without applying to medical or law school.” He stopped abruptly and glanced at me with mock sternness. “Don’t get any ideas!” A small smile passed over my lips. The thought had never crossed my mind.

“Your childhood -- your extended adolescence -- is over. Now you’re a grown-up, Kate, with all the rights and privileges. And all of the duties, obligations and burdens. That makes it scary, but it’s also exciting. I guess I should give it a try too. You will let me know what it’s like on the other side, won’t you?”

I agreed wearily. Talbert took my hand and squeezed it compassionately.

“You are going to be just fine.”

He and Gwen had spoken similar comforting words at Skate Martinsville, where I came in fourth.

To this day, I have not seen Gwen again. That last vision of her framed in the window of our student apartment remains engrained in my memory. My friend did not complete the next academic year. Her father suffered a heart attack and she returned home to Chester after withdrawing from her classes. Gwen’s father lived a couple more months, and she was at his side. She did not come back to Carolina Tech the next fall but stayed in England taking a job as a sales representative for a textile company. Although Gwen had the best intentions of finishing her masters degree either at night or by re-enrolling in university full-time, this never happened. Gwen began to date a friend of one of her brothers and married him the year after she left school.

We continued to remain in contact, mostly through electronic mail and an occasional telephone call for Christmas and birthdays. Initially, our written and spoken conversations occurred on a regular basis. I called Gwen at Carolina Tech almost every week. Both of us had many empty Friday nights on our hands. After Gwen moved back to England, our talks became less frequent. I did not become rich by working for Contessa Cosmetics, as she jested, and could not afford routine international telephone calls. Email became less and less frequent as Gwen’s romance consumed her free time. At first, Gwen wrote long messages detailing her wondrous love affair, but the messages became fewer and more sketchy as time passed. I am guilty of the same communication shortcomings in my letters to her. I wrote and called as often as possible, maintaining the space Gwen had occupied in my life when we were students. However, we both seemed to simultaneously realize that we would never be part of each other’s daily lives again. That chapter had closed for both of us. This did not mean that we did not care for each other or treasure our friendship, only that it belonged to the past and we had to live in the present. The memory of the year I spent living with Gwen is the happiest of my entire university saga. But life had separated us into unique individuals, each grappling with the circumstances our decisions had created around us.

Years later, I struggle to reconstruct Gwen’s cheerful face and teasing smile in my imagination, a task the frailty and mercifulness of human memory has made increasingly difficult. Instead, I am left with an imprint of her woeful expression during that moment of departure when we waved mournfully to each other, as though we knew we might not meet again. Overall, when I recall graduate school, most of it awakens warm pleasant remembrances. The trying and painful times have fallen away leaving only good friendships and the feeling of hopefulness a young person experiences when the future stretches limitlessly on the horizon.

My education complete, I faced the world as a new doctor of philosophy refilled with the enthusiasm that originally called me to my course of study. I would leave the world better than I found it. I would never mistreat those over whom I possessed authority. Able to afford more lessons, I would cultivate my love of ice skating. In spite of Clive Butler’s disinterest, I had triumphed. I stood poised on a symbolic precipice ready to dive into whatever awaited. Surely, I would not plummet into the abyss; by now, I knew how to fly.

Chapter 51 posted 5/3/02
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