The Name Tag at Our Class Reunion

What I asked of her

I did ask one thing of her. I’m not a saint.

“There were a hundred and forty name tags,” I said. “Lori Bauer worked that table all night. She thought it was her fault. She’s been apologizing to me for three hours.”

Heather closed her eyes. “I’ll call her tomorrow.”

“And Doug Kramer is walking around with a napkin in his wallet because he never got his diploma and he’s ashamed of it, and I think he saw that tag tonight and thought it was about him too.”

“I’ll call him.”

“That’s all,” I said. “You call them. You don’t have to call me.”

She nodded. She folded the deposit slip and put it in her clipboard, behind the attendance sheet, and pressed it flat with her hand.

“Tammy,” she said. “I’m sorry. For the name tag. And for the hallway. I don’t know if you remember the hallway.”

I hadn’t expected that. It went through me like a cold drink.

“I remember the hallway,” I said.

“I said, ‘What did she expect.'”

“I know what you said.”

“I’ve thought about it,” she said. “Not every day. But I’ve thought about it. And I’ve been thinking about it for three weeks straight.” She looked out at the field. “I expect the same thing for my girl that you expected for yours. I expect a good life.”

“Then you’ll be all right,” I said. “Both of you.”

Brooke

Headlights swung into the lot. It was Brooke in her little blue Equinox, the one with the bumper sticker from her school district and a booster seat in the back for her stepson.

She rolled down the window. “Mom? You okay?”

“I’m fine, honey.”

Heather slid off the tailgate and stood up in her bare feet on the gravel. She looked at Brooke for a long time through the windshield. Then she said, quietly, “She’s beautiful.”

“She is,” I said. “She was seven pounds even. She had a voice that could strip paint.”

Heather laughed for real that time. Then she picked up her shoes and her clipboard and walked to the driver’s side of her truck, and before she got in, she looked back at me and lifted the deposit slip a little, like a promise.

The last thing

I had my hand on Brooke’s door when I heard the cane on the gravel.

It was Mrs. Moss, with her nephew a few steps behind carrying her purse. She was out of breath and looked pleased about it.

“I was afraid I’d missed you,” she said. “Tammy. I want to ask you something.”

“Anything.”

She pointed at my blazer with one bent finger. “May I sign that?”

I looked down. The name tag was still there, a little crooked, the corner starting to curl. TAMMY HELLER. DID NOT GRADUATE.

“You want to sign my name tag?”

“I signed every one of your English papers for a year,” she said. “I’d like to sign the last one.”

Brooke had gotten out of the car by then. She stood next to me in the gravel. She didn’t know the whole story yet, not all of it, but she knew who Mrs. Moss was. She’d grown up on Mrs. Moss.

I peeled the name tag off and held it flat against the roof of the Equinox. Mrs. Moss’s nephew gave her a pen from his shirt pocket. She took her time. Her hand shook, and she was careful anyway, the way she was always careful.

Under DID NOT GRADUATE, in red ink, she wrote: A. Well done. E.M.

Then she capped the pen and handed it back to her nephew and patted my cheek one more time.

“Told you,” she said.