Chapter 47

Diana stepped up to the podium with a small stack of papers. She looked out over the crowd feeling very nervous. She licked her lips and glanced at the Principal of the school. She had cleared one speech with him, but had chosen to give a completely different one. She had a choice and had taken what she felt was the better one.

Looking out at the audience, she said, “Today we graduate high school. This ceremony is intended to mark the transition from teenager to young adult. Until this day, our parents have sheltered us so that we could grow. We have grown, and soon we will leave that shelter behind. Some of us will go off to college. Others will embark on careers. We will get married and raise children of our own.

“Today, we listened to our Principal praise us for what we have achieved. We have heard Mayor Doorman talk about becoming the future leaders of our community. They have given us words of inspiration, but their words alone are not enough to guide us through our lives. There are other words that you must hear and take to heart.

“Let me tell you the Facts of Life...” Diana said noticing that the Principal was getting up from his seat. She had been afraid that he would do that when she deviated from the speech she had cleared with him.

Irritated that she was deviating from the speech, the Principal wanted to escort Diana off the stage before she said something that would get the school into trouble. Diana held up a hand to stop him. Without looking to see the effect of her gesture, she faced the audience. There was the normal nervous titter on hearing what she was going to tell them.

“Life is not fair,” Diana said.

She stood at the podium and looked across the room. A few people laughed at the statement, but she stood there calmly waiting for the laughter to stop. She had tried to come up with a way to convey all that those words meant, but short trite phrases of explanation would not work.

The Principal stopped to listen to what she said next. He had no idea where she was going with this speech, but he had a feeling that she wasn’t going to step too far over the line.

Diana knew the laughter would stop with the next fact of life as she said, “No one is exempt from death.”

The Principal returned to his seat deciding to give her the benefit of the doubt. A number of people shifted nervously in their chairs. This was not the kind of speech that they were expecting from the class valedictorian. She glanced down at the sheet of paper and said, “Physics rules the universe, and biology rules life.”

“The universe does not care,” she said.

She looked around the room at the shocked faces staring back at her. Her audience definitely wasn’t expecting that one. By now, the room was totally silent.

After waiting for the tension to build, she said, “The only constant in life, is change.”

In a soft voice that carried across the quiet room, she said, “There is always a choice.”

“Wishing never makes it so,” she said while shaking her head. The urge to explain this fact had tempted her most. She wanted to shout, “You’ll have to work to achieve anything.” She resisted the temptation.

“A person can’t exceed their limits.”

The last one had left a number of puzzled faces in the audience. Diana ignored the frowns and read the next fact, “A person is responsible for their own happiness.”

“It is impossible to change the character of another,” she said.

She picked up her stack of papers and straightened them. Looking out at the audience, she said, “Those, my classmates, are the facts of life. Ignore them at your peril.”

As Diana stepped away from the podium to return to her seat, an old man rose from his chair and shouted, “For the love of God, listen to her.”

The audience slowly rose to their feet led by the oldest members first. Grandmothers and grandfathers clapped with energy. Teenagers, many of whom were more likely to listen to their grandparents than their parents, were surprised by their reactions to Diana’s speech. Diana walked across the stage and returned to her seat. It was time to hand out the diplomas.

Dan had listened to the speech with a frown. He felt that his sister was using the facts of life for her own aggrandizement. He leaned over to Tom and asked, “What do you think?”

“I don’t know,” Tom answered watching Diana closely.

“Where are we going?” Amanda’s father asked. He didn’t understand why they had gone to the graduation ceremony of the sister of the friend of the boy his daughter was dating. It had all started when he insisted that she spend the day with her family. She had countered that if they wanted her to spend the day with her, that they had to go with her.

“Parker’s Perfect Pizza,” Amanda answered.

Amanda’s father drove away from the high school shaking his head. The graduation ceremony had been a complete waste of time until that one girl gave her speech. He had actually found it interesting and hoped that his daughter learned something from it.

He looked in the mirror at Amanda and said, “I would be happier if you were dating that girl who gave the speech than that low life who brought you home. Now that little lady has some common sense unlike that dolt you took up with.”

Amanda said, “Tom is not a dolt.”

“The idiot brings my little girl home at eleven o’clock at night after I’ve been waiting for six hours for you,” her father growled.

“I called you,” Amanda said.

“His best friend works in a pizzeria. He probably makes minimum wage. That’s a real ambitious bunch you’re running around with,” her father said shaking his head.

Irritated at hearing Tom constantly trashed by Amanda’s father, Terry crossed her arms and said, “The girl who gave the speech is Diana Parker. Her brother is Dan Parker and he owns Parker’s Perfect Pizza. His best friend is Tom. Tom is the one who found an article on the facts of life. He gave the article to Dan. Dan gave it to his sister. She used that article for her speech. They are not a bunch of lowlifes.”

Amanda looked over at Terry surprised by the anger in her voice.

Amanda said, “Tom has a perfect four-point-oh GPA. He’s got a summer internship here in town, and starts work on Monday.”

“He’s so smart that the professors are fighting over him,” Terry said.

“I don’t care if he can walk on water. He’s stringing the two of you along. Damn man has two girlfriends. That’s not right,” her father said. He sniffed and said, “You are two idiots for going along with him.”

Furious, Amanda said, “Terry is not Tom’s girlfriend. She’s my girlfriend.”

As soon as she had heard Amanda declare their relationship, Terry wanted to hide. She couldn’t believe that Amanda had actually said that to her father. She could imagine the fireworks that were about to explode inside the small sedan.

Her father almost drove off the road. Stopping the car, he turned around to look at his daughter. He asked, “So who is Tom?”

“He’s my boyfriend,” Amanda said.

“Let me get this straight. You’ve got a girlfriend and a boyfriend,” her father said shaking his head. He hoped his daughter wasn’t using ‘girlfriend’ the way he thought she was.

“Oh my God, my daughter is a lesbian,” her mother said holding a hand to her forehead. This was the great secret that her daughter was hiding from her.

Terry rolled her eyes and said, “She’s not a lesbian. Lesbians don’t have boyfriends. Tom is her boyfriend.”

“Thank God. That’s a relief,” her father said. He turned around and resumed driving to the pizzeria.

Terry looked at Amanda’s father and shook her head. She couldn’t believe how easily he denied what Amanda had told him. Amanda’s mother was another matter entirely. She turned to face Amanda and asked, “Do you have sex with Tom?”

“Yes, Mother,” Amanda answered.

Her father was almost relieved to hear that answer. He might not like Tom, but at least he was a male. His stomach tightened when her mother asked, “Do you have sex with Terry?”

“Yes, Mother,” Amanda answered after glancing over at Terry.

“Oh, shit,” her father swore. Tightening his hands on the steering wheel, he asked, “What in the hell are they teaching you at that school of yours?”

“Biology,” Amanda answered.

“Business,” Terry answered thinking that biology probably wasn’t the wisest answer to give in this particular context.

“That damned boy must have put you up to that,” her father said.

Losing patience with her father, Amanda replied, “Terry and I were together before I met him.”

Her father shook his head. Under his breath he said, “Maybe the wife was right. Maybe I should have let her date more when she was in high school. At least she would have learned that she was a woman and women are supposed to have sex with men.”

The rest of the drive was spent with each of them lost in their thoughts. Terry stared out the window of the car terrified that Amanda’s father was going to pull over to the side of the road and throw her out of the car. Amanda was worried about the fights that were sure to follow the earlier revelations about her sexuality. Her mother was trying to figure out what she had done wrong in raising her daughter. Her father was trying to figure out who to blame.

Taking the easy route out, Amanda’s father had decided that everything was Tom’s fault. He was not in a good mood when they finally reached the pizzeria and was more than happy to let Tom know it. Before he had a chance to find Tom, he spotted someone he knew. It was just his luck that he’d run into someone important at this party. There was nothing like making a scene in front of someone who could get you fired from your job. He said, “There’s Mr. Eldridge.”

“Who?” his wife asked.

“Mr. Eldridge. He’s one of the directors where I work,” Amanda’s father answered. John Eldridge had a reputation as a very good director. His directorate was always rated very highly in the company. He rewarded people who did good work in a very public way that earned him a high degree of loyalty.

Terry smiled when she realized who Amanda’s father was talking about. Nudging Amanda, she whispered, “That’s Tom’s father.”

Loud enough for her father to hear, Amanda announced, “That’s Tom’s father.”

“Shit!”

Diana sat down at the table with Tom and asked, “What did you think of my speech?”

Tom looked up from his slice of pizza not wanting to answer the question. After a painful silence, he answered, “I’m not sure.”

“What do you mean you’re not sure?” Diana asked puzzled by his lack of enthusiasm.

Tom frowned as he considered how to answer the question. Finally, he said, “So far you’ve been giving lip service to the facts of life. You use them like some kind of shield to explain why you are doing what you want to do. You claim to be following the advice in the pursuit of happiness, but I don’t see you actually following the advice. You think you are taking control of your life, but it seems to me that your life has been out of control, lately. If I view your speech from that perspective I would say that you are begging to be applauded for espousing something that you don’t really believe.”

Diana pursed her lips as she considered his reply. A week earlier his words would have hurt, but now she considered them as constructive criticism. A week earlier, he would have been right. Nodding her head, she said, “I can see where you could say that.”

“It was even worse than that. You didn’t quote the author,” Tom said looking at her.

Diana frowned and dug through her purse for her speech. Pulling it out, she read through it and said, “Yes I did. I said ‘Let me tell you the facts of life by... ‘“