Then the light caught it. The gown was open at the front. And underneath was sixty-four dollars of bright red from 2016.
The whispering started somewhere in the middle of the floor seats and it went outward like something spilled.
And then the giggles.
There’s a specific sound six hundred people make when they’ve decided together that something is funny, and it is one of the ugliest sounds I have ever been present for.
The woman two seats from me — Bonnie Krebs, who I have known since our kids were in kindergarten and who has been in my house — leaned to the woman on her right and said something behind her hand, and they both laughed.
I did not turn my head. I sat there with my hands in my lap and I let my son walk across that stage.
He shook Dr. Odom’s hand. He took the folder. And then he turned and faced the room, and he stood there for a beat longer than anybody stands there.
