He eased the car delicately away from the curb and we moved off in silence. He’s a large man, Walter—square-edged, like a plinth, with a neck that is not so much a neck as an extra shoulder; he exudes a not unpleasant scent of worn leather boots and gasoline. From his checked shirt and baseball cap I gathered he wasn’t planning to attend the graduation ceremony. He doesn’t read books, which makes both of us more comfortable: as far as he’s concerned Laura is my sister and it’s a shame she’s dead, and that’s all.

I should have married someone like Walter. Good with his hands.

No: I shouldn’t have married anyone. That would have saved a lot of trouble.

Walter stopped the car in front of the high school. It’s postwar modern, fifty years old but still new to me: I can’t get used to the flatness, the blandness. It looks like a packing crate. Young people and their parents were rippling over the sidewalk and the lawn and in through the front doors, their clothes in every summer colour. Myra was waiting for us, yoo-hooing from the steps, in a white dress covered with huge red roses. Women with such big bums should not wear large floral prints. There’s something to be said for girdles, not that I’d wish them back. She’d had her hair done, all tight grey cooked-looking curls like an English barrister’s wig.

“You’re late,” she said to Walter.

“Nope, I’m not,” said Walter. “If I am, everyone else is early, is all. No reason she should have to sit around cooling her heels.” They’re in the habit of speaking of me in the third person, as if I’m a child or pet.

Walter handed my arm over into Myra’s custody and we went up the front steps together like a three-legged race. I felt what Myra’s hand must have felt: a brittle radius covered slackly with porridge and string. I should have brought my cane, but I couldn’t see carting it out onto the stage with me. Someone would be bound to trip over it.

Myra took me backstage and asked me if I’d like to use the Ladies’—she’s good about remembering that—then sat me down in the dressing room. “You just stay put now,” she said. Then she hurried off, bum lolloping, to make sure all was in order.

The lights around the dressing-room mirror were small round bulbs, as in theatres; they cast a flattering light, but I was not flattered: I looked sick, my skin leached of blood, like meat soaked in water. Was it fear, or true illness? Certainly I did not feel a hundred percent.

I found my comb, made a perfunctory stab at the top of my head. Myra keeps threatening to take me to “her girl,” at what she still refers to as the Beauty Parlour—The Hair Port is its official name, with Unisex as an added incentive—but I keep resisting. At least I can still call my hair my own, though it frizzes upwards as if I’ve been electrocuted. Beneath it there are glimpses of scalp, the greyish pink of mice feet. If I ever get caught in a high wind my hair will all blow off like dandelion fluff, leaving only a tiny pockmarked nubbin of bald head.

Myra had left me one of her special brownies, whipped up for the Alumni Tea—a slab of putty, covered in chocolate sludge—and a plastic screw-top jug of her very own battery-acid coffee. I could neither drink nor eat, but why did God make toilets? I left a few brown crumbs, for authenticity.

Then Myra bustled in and scooped me up and led me forth, and I was having my hand shaken by the principal, and told how good it was of me to have come; then I was passed on to the vice-principal, the president of the Alumni Association, the head of the English department—a woman in a trouser suit—the representative from the Junior Chamber of Commerce, and finally the local member of Parliament, loath as such are to miss a trick. I hadn’t seen so many polished teeth on display since Richard’s political days.

Myra accompanied me as far as my chair, then whispered, “I’ll be right in the wings.” The school orchestra struck up with squeaks and flats, and we sang “O Canada!,” the words to which I can never remember because they keep changing them. Nowadays they do some of it in French, which once would have been unheard of. We sat down, having affirmed our collective pride in something we can’t pronounce.

Then the school chaplain offered a prayer, lecturing God on the many unprecedented challenges that face today’s young people. God must have heard this sort of thing before, he’s probably as bored with it as the rest of us. The others gave voice in turn: end of the twentieth century, toss out the old, ring in the new, citizens of the future, to you from failing hands and so forth. I allowed my mind to drift; I knew enough to know that the only thing expected of me was that I not disgrace myself. I could have been back again beside the podium, or at some interminable dinner, sitting next to Richard, keeping my mouth shut. If asked, which was seldom, I used to say that my hobby was gardening. A half-truth at best, though tedious enough to pass muster.

Next it was time for the graduates to receive their diplomas. Up they trooped, solemn and radiant, in many sizes, all beautiful as only the young can be beautiful. Even the ugly ones were beautiful, even the surly ones, the fat ones, even the spotty ones. None of them understands this—how beautiful they are. But nevertheless they’re irritating, the young. Their posture is appalling as a rule, and judging from their songs they snivel and wallow, grin and bear it having gone the way of the foxtrot. They don’t understand their own luck.

They barely glanced at me. To them I must have seemed quaint, but I suppose it’s everyone’s fate to be reduced to quaintness by those younger than themselves. Unless there’s blood on the floor, of course. War, pestilence, murder, any kind of ordeal or violence, that’s what they respect. Blood means we were serious.

Next came the prizes—Computer Science, Physics, mumble, Business Skills, English Literature, something I didn’t catch. Then the Alumni Association man cleared his throat and gave out with a pious spiel about Winifred Griffen Prior, saint on earth. How everyone fibs when it’s a question of money! I suppose the old bitch pictured the whole thing when she made her bequest, stingy as it is. She knew my presence would be requested; she wanted me writhing in the town’s harsh gaze while her own munificence was lauded. Spend this in remembrance of me. I hated to give her the satisfaction, but I couldn’t shirk it without seeming frightened or guilty, or else indifferent. Worse: forgetful.

It was Laura’s turn next. The politician took it upon himself to do the honours: tact was called for here. Something was said about Laura’s local origins, her courage, her “dedication to a chosen goal,” whatever that might mean. Nothing about the manner of her death, which everyone in this town believes—despite the verdict at the inquest—was as close to suicide as damn is to swearing. And nothing at all about the book, which most of them surely thought would be best forgotten. Although it isn’t, not here: even after fifty years it retains its aura of brimstone and taboo. Hard to fathom, in my opinion: as carnality goes it’s old hat, the foul language nothing you can’t hear any day on the street corners, the sex as decorous as fan dancers—whimsical almost, like garter belts.

Then of course it was a different story. What people remember isn’t the book itself, so much as the furor: ministers in church denounced it as obscene, not only here; the public library was forced to remove it from the shelves, the one bookstore in town refused to stock it. There was word of censoring it. People snuck off to Stratford or London or Toronto even, and obtained their copies on the sly, as was the custom then with condoms. Back at home they drew the curtains and read, with disapproval, with relish, with avidity and glee—even the ones who’d never thought of opening a novel before. There’s nothing like a shovelful of dirt to encourage literacy.