The Check at the Graduation Party

My neighbor Jeff lent me six folding tables and twenty chairs from his garage, and his wife Kim came over Saturday night and helped me tie red and white balloons to the tent poles and the table legs until our fingers hurt from the ribbon.

The food was the food. Pulled pork in two roasters. My mother’s baked beans. A sheet cake from Kroger with Abby’s name on it.

Three dozen buckeyes that Abby and I had rolled on Thursday night, both of us with peanut butter up to the wrists.

And on the gift table, between the card box and a stack of napkins, I set a small wooden frame.

Inside it was the deposit slip. The pink carbon copy from the credit union, faded nearly to white, dated the day Abby was born.

Twenty-five dollars. My mother’s handwriting from eighteen years ago, hurried because she wanted to get back upstairs to the baby.

I hadn’t told Abby about the frame either. I’d found the slip in an old wallet at the back of my dresser drawer in April, and I’d sat on the edge of my bed and held it for a while, and then I’d gone to the craft store and bought the frame.

People started arriving around two. Teachers from my school, Abby’s friends and their parents, the neighbors, my sister and her husband up from Lima, cousins, the lady from across the street who brings banana bread to everything.

By four there were about forty people under and around the tent.

Abby had kept her cap and gown on. I told her she’d be hot, and she said she didn’t care, she was only going to graduate high school once and she was going to wear the gown until somebody made her take it off.

It was red, her school color, and the cap kept slipping on her hair, and every few minutes I’d look up and see her laughing with somebody, and I would have to go stand in the kitchen for a minute.

Greg and Kristen came at about four. Tyler was with them, in a polo shirt his mother had clearly picked out, looking the way sixteen-year-old boys look at any party that isn’t theirs, which is like he’d rather be anywhere else on earth.

Greg had on a light blue button-down, sleeves rolled. He hugged Abby so hard her cap fell off.

Kristen was in a white blouse, her blonde hair cut short to her jaw, and she said hello to me very politely and did not take a plate.

I watched Tyler for a while. He went straight to the buckeyes, ate four, and then stood at the edge of the tent with his hands in his pockets.

Nobody there knew him. After a while, Abby walked over and gave him a fork and made him get in line for pork.

That was my girl. That was the whole reason for all of it.

Around five, the afternoon sun was still high and bright over the tent, and I went inside to get more ice.