The Pilot's Wife by Anita Shreve

Author:Anita Shreve [SHREVE, ANITA]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: FIC000000
ISBN: 9780316025676
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2007-07-30T16:00:00+00:00

RAIN FALLS IN HEAVY SHEETS OUTSIDE THE MAS-sive paned windows of the auditorium. The room is old and sloping, built in the 1920s and not yet renovated. The walls are wood paneled, etched here and there with declarations of love and students’ initials. Heavy maroon drapes that never seem to work exactly right hang to either side of the stage. Only the seats, mercilessly poked at and ripped open over the years with pens and pocket knives, have been replaced. Now the audience sits on seats removed from the Ely Falls Cinema when that building was demolished to make way for a bank.

The auditorium slowly fills with parents as the band struggles courageously with “Pomp and Circumstance.” Conducting in the pit just below the stage, Kathryn manages to coax from the twenty-three high school musicians a barely passable rendition of the graduation processional. Susan Ingalls, on the clarinet, is wildly off-key, and Spence Closson, on the bass drum, seems particularly nervous tonight, hesitating just a fraction on each measure.

Overtime, Kathryn thinks to herself. In any other job, this would be called overtime.

Fortunately, this is not graduation itself, just Awards Night. Kathryn has five seniors in the band, two of whom might win academic prizes. It’s one of the few advantages of a small school, she thinks. Awards Night is usually short.

With her baton still in her hand, she sits on a chair next to Jimmy DeMartino, tuba. She debates the merits of taking Susan Ingalls backstage and trying to tune her clarinet. The principal begins his address, which will be followed by talks from the vice-principal and the valedictorian of the senior class. Kathryn tries to pay attention, but her mind is more fixed on the grades she must do tonight when she gets home. The last several weeks of the school year are always harried and emotional. Every day for the past five days, she’s conducted band practice during lunch so that the seniors — all twenty-eight of them — can practice marching to “Pomp and Circumstance” for graduation. Not once this week has the song, even badly played, failed to produce tears. But by graduation night, Kathryn knows, all the tears will be used up, the wistful heartache of leaving school will be well played out, and the seniors will be thinking only of the all-night party ahead. Every year it is the same.

The speeches over, the principal begins to announce the awards. Kathryn looks at her watch. A half hour at the outside, she calculates. Then the band will play “Trumpet Voluntary,” everyone will go home, and she can start computing grades for her sophomore history class. Mattie has a math final tomorrow.

She hears applause, the hush of anticipation as a name is read, another round of applause, sometimes a whistle from the crowd. Seniors from the front row of the auditorium mount the stage and return with ribbon-tied scrolls in their hands, occasionally a trophy. Beside her, Jimmy DeMartino receives an award for outstanding academic achievement in physics.

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