Early Decision (11 page)

“Mr. Blanchard, my name is Michelle DeLong, and I am the coordinator of the Excel program at the—”

Tipping the pitcher gracefully over Cristina's glass, he cut her off. “Miss Castello,” he said, “I thought it would be a good idea to have you come round to meet my daughter, Sadie, since you girls are in the same situation applying to college this year. Then you and I can go have a little chat so I can hear more about your aspirations.”

Michelle started anew. “We're just so incredibly grateful for your willingness to advocate on behalf of—”

“I understand you are a young lady of extraordinary potential,” he continued, addressing Cristina more firmly now.

“Indeed,” sputtered Michelle.

He wasn't wrong to relieve Cristina of the preamble; Michelle's gratitude was undermining in Cristina's presence. But also he wasn't kind. Anne wondered if this was a lesson of some sort. Gideon Blanchard, after all, was so admired.

Meanwhile Cristina's face brightened in successive directions; she was unsure where to place her loyalty.

“Thirty-four on the ACT!” exclaimed Sadie. “That's so awesome!”

Mr. Blanchard shot his daughter a dark look, but Cristina eased: she settled on Sadie as her safest confidante. Right again, thought Anne. Mr. Blanchard caught the sincere smile Cristina sent Sadie's way and gave an almost imperceptible nod.

“Thanks,” Cristina said shyly.

Visibly flustered, Michelle declined iced tea.

“I only took the SATs,” Sadie said. “I have to take them again in October. Sucks.”

Gideon Blanchard winced. Anne suspected it was the term and not the score. “Well, we all have different gifts, don't we?” he said, replacing the pitcher and settling into a high-backed wooden chair. He leaned forward, tightening their circle, as if to draw them out of the deep upholstery. With shaking hand, Cristina set her iced tea down on the floor beside her. Sadie shot out and fetched the glass back to the coaster on the table.

“No bother,” said Mr. Blanchard magnanimously. “So, Cristina, tell us a little something about your hopes for Duke University.”

Cristina looked around the room, clearly unprepared. Sadie was poised on the edge of her cushion. Mr. Blanchard had crossed one leg loosely over the other knee, as if to invite some informality, though only a fool would accept it, and Cristina knew this. Michelle was spreading into the wingback, red with frustration. She spun her small gold watch round and round her wrist,
chink-chink-chink,
like a timer for Cristina's answer, fretful in the quiet. With a scowl and a quick cock of her chin, Sadie silenced the fidgeting. She was her father's daughter.

Anne was reeling. She ticked off her wrong turns: agreeing to bring Michelle; prior to that, agreeing to bring Cristina; prior to that, agreeing to call Mr. Blanchard in the first place; maybe even agreeing to work with Sadie. God, how could she have caused this? And now that they were all here, what could she say to release them?

Cristina shrugged delicately. Her hands were folded tightly, but she maintained her calm expression. Her lips were pressed together. She seemed not frightened, but thoughtful; it was a neat trick, and frankly, it knocked Anne out. Where had she learned that, and so young?

“Maybe Cristina would be more comfortable interviewing after we've had a chance to chat a bit,” Anne said. “I love hearing her talk about the Blue Devils, but of course we want to give fair shrift to all the other fine institutions out there, right?”

Mr. Blanchard nodded expansively. “Indeed we do! Though not too much, right?” He paused for a laugh, which no one offered. “All right. Sadie, maybe you could start us off by telling us a little bit about why
you
want to go there.”

“Um, because you did,” she said.

He was stern. “I'm sure that's not all, Sadie Marie.” He waited with raised eyebrow.

“Right, Daddy,” she picked up. “Of course there are lots of kids who go to college and have no parents who were there before. And it's probably so fun for them to be the first, and to, you know, discover it for themselves!”

Cristina was grinning. You had to hand it to Sadie: she really tried. She'd wear her naïveté like a diamond brooch before she'd edge the other girl. Anne risked a smile in Michelle's direction, but Michelle refused it.

“It's a spectacular university,” Anne said, into the silence.

“I'm taking Spanish Four this year,” Sadie offered.

“That's great,” mumbled Michelle.

“Is it a difficult class?” asked Cristina politely.

“The teacher is supposed to be really sweet,” Sadie answered. “Oh, and you get to go to Barcelona over spring break!”

Cristina's face lengthened as she tried to work that out. “Barcelona . . .” she began.

But Sadie had crumpled. “I'm sorry,” she said. “That was probably really—oh my gosh. Anyway. It's like a way to enrich the language part of it. It's a special thing for that level class, but I probably won't go anyway because I always do community service over spring break. You know, I go to poor communities—” She broke off again, and now it seemed she might cry. Meanwhile Cristina sat placidly, listening, urging her on.

Anne wanted to whisk the two girls out the door and out into the street, where they could be teenagers and work this thing out.

Sadie worked to steady herself. She closed her clear blue eyes for a moment, then opened them again, right on Cristina, across the way. “You would probably kick butt in Spanish Four,” she said simply.

Michelle was one lip curl away from an open sneer. “You think?”

Mr. Blanchard frowned in her direction. “Seems Cristina—as we say—kicks butt in all her classes, doesn't it?”

Sadie was restored. “Must be fun to be such a great student,” she said. She was jubilant. Anne had the sense that she'd rehearsed this moment for years, waiting for the one soul she was specifically chosen to save. “Hey, maybe we can travel back and forth to Durham together!”

“I'd like that,” replied Cristina. “I've never been.”

Their rapport softened even Michelle's dark brow.

Just then Inez swept into the room, apron-clad, with a fresh pitcher of tea. Anne felt relief, like an intermission. Tassel scuffed along behind.

“Excuse me, Mr. Blanchard, Miss Sadie,” Inez called. “I have the more tea here, and if anything you want from the kitchen . . .”

The dog, seeing strangers, began to growl. Cristina pulled up sharply.

“Sade, get the dog down!” started Mr. Blanchard, swatting at it, but he had misunderstood Cristina's concern. From her vantage point, Anne saw as clearly as Sadie that Cristina's smile had grown even wider, and she was on her feet in a second, leaning toward Inez, who in that moment focused on the girl and nearly dropped the pitcher in her rush to embrace her.
“¡Dios mío, querida mía!”
Inez squealed.
“Ay, ay. No sabía que era tú!”

Mint sprigs swirled. The dog barked. Cristina backed out of the hug, remembering herself, and sat back down.
“Hola, Tía Inez,”
she said, letting them all in.

“She's your
aunt
?” asked Sadie.

“No,” replied Inez, beaming at her.

“Not really,” said Cristina. “She's just really close to my mom. Growing up . . . I didn't know . . .”

“No!” Inez said, shaking her head. “Oh, oh! Mr. Blanchard, he say to me, this girl she is so smart, and I think of my Cristina! But now I see you!
¡Dios mío!
”

“Oh my God,” said Sadie.

“Wow,” echoed Michelle.

Mr. Blanchard stood and took the tea from Inez's hands. Freed, they returned to Cristina; she patted the girl's shoulders, helpless with pleasure. “Well, how cool,” he said kindly. “You couldn't have a better reference than our dear Inez. Maybe that's our cue to go to my study and talk a bit more.”

“Yes, yes, you go!” said Inez, beaming around the room. “Tell him all the things!”

“Should we . . . ?” Anne started to rise.

“I'll have Inez bring the morning's papers, Inez, if you would, please,” answered Mr. Blanchard smoothly. “And Sadie will be happy to—”

But Sadie was on her feet, looking gray. She held the dog in her arms. Her dress suddenly appeared three sizes too big; her tiny waist was invisible inside its boxy hems. “I've got to do . . . a thing. A school thing,” she stuttered, and gave a quick wave as she left the room. They heard the sound of her feet pounding up the stairs.

Mr. Blanchard was guiding Cristina to the hall that led to his office. Anne recalled the photographs on the walls and hoped Cristina would be too distracted to notice them, but she was torn: Sadie was clearly distraught, and far more fragile than Cristina. Michelle had found the floor with her wide little pumps and appeared ready to go somewhere, though it was unclear where. She certainly would never dream of leaving the house without her charge.

Inez stood among them, wringing her hands. “I bring the papers,” she told them warmly. “Oh, these girls!”

“They are both wonderful,” said Anne. Her words sounded hollow. She had let both girls down, as she'd known in her gut she would. It was a horrible, horrible mistake, and now she was trapped in this living room, with one girl in the hot seat down the hall and another suffering upstairs. She wanted to hurl the glass pitcher across the room. Michelle stared at her.

“So you, you make her come talk Mr. Blanchard?” Inez asked her. Anne felt raised up by the housekeeper's pleasure; previously she had been just another soul in and out of Inez's kitchen, trailing a child. Now she was adored.

“I did,” Anne said.

“Oh, thank you, thank you, Miss Anne! You make the best decision. Cristina, she go to Duke. So with Sadie! Ah,
Dios,
wait I tell her mama . . .”

“Well, Cristina and Sadie both have a lot of choices to make this fall,” Anne said stupidly. Michelle frowned. “But both girls have a really great life ahead of them.” Just shut up, Anne thought. She was frantic.

“I go get papers. Mr. Blanchard, he talk! You, sit.”

Anne felt the heat of Michelle's hatred coming at her in waves. “You know what?” she said. “There's no need for me to sit here, is there?”

“Certainly not on my behalf,” replied Michelle.

“So you'll wait for Cristina, then?”

“I will.”

“I'll show myself out,” Anne told Inez. “Please tell Sadie I'll call her soon.”

“Yes, Miss Anne! Thank you!”

Inez swished out. Anne took a moment to return Michelle's glare. “Look, you asked me to help,” she said. “I happened to have met a trustee. That's all.”

“Of course,” Michelle replied. “And as long as it works out for Cristina, then this is all fine. But, Anne . . .” She lowered her voice and gestured toward the bottom of the staircase where Sadie had fled. “I don't know how you sleep at night. Really, I don't.”

“She'll be fine,” Anne told her.

“Of course she will,” Michelle said flatly. “She was always going to be. That's my point.”

Anne felt defeated, and she felt it was unfair. “I do what I can,” she said quietly.

Michelle sighed. She looked hopelessly shapeless in the chair, big daubs of blue suiting with uncomfortable bulges, and her plump ankles bare. Anne let herself be cruel. At least I can handle myself outside of the classroom, she thought. At least Gideon Blanchard listens to me. “I do the best I can,” she added aloud.

“Yes, I suppose you do,” replied Michelle.

 

A
PRIL
P
ENZE CHOSE
to mark the arrival of autumn with a new pair of shearling-lined clog boots that smelled like a wet dog and were as furry as they were tall. She clomped into the condo-board meeting, graciously hosted by the perfect Baldwins in 1B, with a wad of leaves affixed to one sole. Already seated beside Liesl Baldwin, Anne knew her early arrival and proximate placement to be an endorsement from the couple that would drive April mad.

To see April watching Stuart Baldwin—how she gawped at him, looking up and down his handsome suit, his full head of blond hair—was to understand her every ambition. Liesl was too confident and too kind to interfere. Stuart smiled broadly and wandered around offering coffee, a dog in a room full of cats. In the far corner, two actual dogs, yellow Labs, lay side by side, not bothering to open their eyes at the knocks on the door. They had never been surprised. Anne wondered if Apartment 1B had ever been surprised by anything, or if it all just turned out fabulously, all the time. Liesl, of course, was expecting. She sat cross-legged with a glow in her cheeks like lamplight through glass. Outside it was already dark at 7
P.M.

It was impossible, on a night like this, not to think of school—not to feel school in the air, almost hear again the class bell ringing and remember the frosty mornings of new socks and stiff notebooks. Anne wondered if that feeling would ever fade, or if everyone in the room—all of them older than she, some of them decades older—felt it, every September. But what else of school remained, beside that quickening nostalgia? She scanned the room. The Baldwins: he'd gone to Dartmouth, Anne knew, because he occasionally wore his green duds to the gym; she'd gone somewhere less august, but Anne couldn't remember where. The Wozniacks, the childless couple who shared Anne's landing: who had any clue? He sold real estate, she worked in marketing. Anne suspected somewhere local and large; Saturdays she heard college football games coming through the wall. Then there was Barbara, the condo-board president, an unmarried accountant with an unexplainable rock-star boyfriend who hammered up the three flights in cowboy boots long after Mitchell's last walk of the night: clearly she'd gone somewhere, but there was no trace. Nor for the rock star. Nor for the two bachelors from the other entry, though they had Big Ten airs about them, and certainly not for the kind old lady who kept to herself beneath them. And April Penze—well, Anne didn't care to think that she'd gone to college at all. She appeared not to have any ambition, scholarly or moral.