Then he came down the steps.
And he didn’t go left toward the photographer’s mark. He didn’t go back toward his row.
He came straight up the center aisle toward the third row while six hundred people whispered, in a red dress, holding a diploma folder, and he stopped in front of my seat.
He crouched down so we were level. I remember that. He crouched.
And he said, quietly, so only I heard it:
“This is for you. Both of them.”
Then he reached into the pocket of that dress — Willa had loved that it had pockets, she said so at the time, it was the first thing she said about it — and took out something small, flat, wrapped in a square of tissue paper.
He put it in my hand.
It was a name card.
They’re about the size of a business card. Every graduate fills one out and hands it to the announcer at the bottom of the steps so he reads it right.
