Living on Air

by Anna Shapiro

  From the other direction, Maude heard Weesie’s voice say her name and turned. There were Philip and Isaac, holding their diplomas and advancing on her. “This is great!” said Weesie, brandishing her diploma. Maude started to explain, in her painstaking way, how she’d contacted the diploma committee and so on and so forth. She was interrupted by the sarcastic, self-mockingly pompous Philip, who had washed his hair but still needed to toss his bangs off his glasses and jab the glasses up his nose. “By virtue of the powers vested in me as head of the diploma committee—”

  “Blow it out your heinie, Neuberger,” said a smirking bystander.

  Philip ignored him, with the happy smile with which he always gave or took insults. “By the powers vested in me as head of the all-important diploma committee”—he shoved one of the parchment rolls toward Maude—“we thought you should have this.”

  Weesie’s face was split by a wedge, her biggest to-the-back-teeth grin. “Open it,” she said.

  Maude unfurled the parchment. It was just like a Bay Farm diploma only, instead of being signed by the headmaster, there were the signatures of Isaac, Philip, Weesie, and the other committee members, and there was no gold certifying school seal. There were four little pictures, arrayed in a square, like Milt’s picture families. One showed Maude so realistically, it was like an old-fashioned portrait miniature.

  “You each did one,” she said, recognizing the styles. “But this . . .” she pointed to the beautifully rendered portrait, her finger wet from wiping her cheeks.

  “My mother helped,” said Weesie. “And Milton helped her.”

  “Oh, God,” said Maude, unable to pretend she wasn’t crying. What a sap, to cry like Miss America.

  She felt a field of heat at her back. A hand reached over her shoulder, pointing at the miniature, and a tenor voice said, “I prefer the one you sent me.”

  She whirled to face Danny but didn’t get to look, because he gripped her too tightly. She held out the diploma so it wouldn’t get crushed. But she was. For a while, she couldn’t speak.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Many and grateful thanks to:

  Huguette Martel, Mark Belair, Amy Rosenthal,

  Tom Mallon, Ellen Pall, Vicki Barker, Caryn James,

  Alice Truax, Tina Bennett, Alice Quinn,

  Katie Herman, and Matt Seaton.