Early Decision (15 page)

Was any space too small to represent the whole conflagration of the teenage soul? Hunter's work was so wonderfully, tragically consistent, it made Anne smile. He opened with his chronic ambivalence, designed to hide his commitment to things. The reporting of his hours of duty signaled the burden of keeping numeric tabs on his efforts and wasted valuable words in the process. He demonstrated the run-on ideas of a writer who doesn't have the discipline to plan what he'd like to say, and employed a terrible cliché that was even cheesier in the subversion. (You could crush a kid's spirit by revealing such tricks as trite; for a seventeen-year-old, they were novel to the point of revelation.) And there, buried at the center of the paragraph, a truly interesting idea that gestured to the writer's heart:
The ball is always coming back
. A line about possibility, responsibility, forgiveness, opportunity. Hunter loved to play tennis because it was the one place he was allowed to feel, for long minutes at a time (or up to four hours a day in season, if you prefer) that he might actually get things right.

Poor Hunter Pfaff. Why did this boy feel so trapped? Never mind; she'd take that one line and help him revise the paragraph to frame tennis as a space of dedication and promise. Anne set the page to the side.

SHORT ANSWER #1 (of 6)

A
LEXIS
G
RANT

One doesn't need to study Modigliani to know that the way the musician bends around a cello is an image of romance. Every day I have the good fortune to experience this myself, when I practice or perform on my cello. My love of music began with piano lessons when I was three; I can barely even play scales now, but I do remember loving the way the entire instrument would vibrate with the strings, and how powerful that made me feel when my fingers were still so little. Once I graduated to the cello, I adored the way the instrument not only resonates with the strings beneath my bow but also how the instrument becomes one with my arms and my knees, as though I'm the actual instrument. I have a terrible singing voice, but I like to imagine that this is what it feels like to be a songbird, or a humpback whale, calling out across entire oceans with my whole self. That I'm able to learn and express the compositions of some of the greatest musical masters with this remarkable instrument makes the pleasure expand beyond my own context, and makes me feel part of an orchestra of time.

So she ran a little bit long; but heavens, who would stop her? Anne might point out a few places to clip words; the poetry might be reined in a bit. Alexis might read it out loud to see where her voice flattened, noting a redundancy: words like “remarkable” or “instrument” a few too many times. A couple of clauses could vanish with no loss of meaning. Was “orchestra of time” exactly the right fantasy? It wasn't perfect, but Anne wouldn't change it: Alexis was in command of what she wanted to say and how she wanted to say it. Maybe, Anne thought fatuously, what I do isn't so much about editing as it is about aligning execution to intention. It's about waking kids up as writers.

Then she looked up, across the restaurant, and was returned to some humility. And don't forget, she chided herself, your kids are always just trying to get someplace else.

Gideon Blanchard was running late. A waiter had come over to tell her so. He'd offered her a glass of Prosecco, which she had declined, preferring instead to sip ice water with her folder of essays spread across the table. On her left, a wall of glass looked out over Michigan Avenue and the busy midday crowd one story below. Anne was pleased to be a part of it. She wasn't sure of Gideon Blanchard's expectations, but she was flattered. She'd been able to kiss Martin good-bye and head over here in a shift dress and heels. Large rain had begun to pelt the glass. Below her, commuters picked up their steps. Martin would be getting caught in it on his way to meet an old colleague. She wondered if it was a woman but couldn't summon enough energy to care.

Even now, in her late twenties, by which age her mother had been married for nearly a decade and had a child, Anne had not gathered in the lesser angels of her romantic desire. She was aware that she was generally attractive to men, but their interest had the disturbing habit of shading into her own, so that sometimes she wondered if she was attracted to a man because he was attracted to her. And the corollary she then feared: Was she actually just attracted to the version of herself that attracted the guy? In which case, why not just occupy that lovelier, more confident, happier self, and cut out the middleman?

All banal observations, she understood. Cupid and Psyche, Narcissus and himself, the Lacanian mirror, etc. But knowing that they were universal did not defang them. This was the bit about psychology and myth she did not get. As with fairy tales: even the smallest child understands that knowing the wolf is in the dark wood does not flush him from the trees. Nor does it mean you can go around. You can't. And age twenty-seven seemed calculated, for her, to be the moment of maximum awareness with minimal evolution: a time of excruciating self-examination, locked in the irons of the last of her adolescence.

She had the sense that her current confusion had ambition at its core. Anne was attracted to the power that some men possessed. So yes, she'd put on quite a nice getup for lunch with Gideon Blanchard. She didn't yet see that this was all a nifty way of avoiding feeling ambition herself, like distracting snarling dogs with a ball lobbed over a fence. So Martin could swagger while she swooned, and both were sufficiently occupied, neither really attending to the other.

Nor did it occur to her that men might suffer the same uncertainties. They seemed to know what they wanted, even if that was only more time to figure out what they wanted. Anne forced her feelings to counterpoint and let the guys play the tune. If her heart resonated, great. If not, she silenced it.

And she hoped that somehow, someday, everything would work out. It usually did, didn't it? Didn't it?

The anxious swell was threatening again. Like reaching for a sandbag, Anne turned to another essay.

COMMON APP SHORT ESSAY QUESTION BY SADIE M. BLANCHARD

Ding ding ding! Its my alarm going off. I roll over and hit the Off Button. It is only 5:30 AM. Every morning, my alarm goes off half an hour earlier than I need it to to make it to school by 7:45 with shower, breakfast, and everything else. Why? Because every morning, I get up alone and walk our family's dog. Tassel is little and doesn't need a ton of exercise, however, ever since she was a puppy, Tassel was my responsibility—and therefore I walk her every morning; no matter how dark or cold it is, or how tired I am from doing homework late the night before, I roll out of bed and put on my shoes. Walking the dog may not seem a challenging activity but it is something I do every single day, rain or shine. I love the way the city streets are quite so early; and how I can be alone with my thoughts even before the day begins. I love that first thing I have taken care of something other than myself. Other people may exercise or write in their journals or just read the paper but this is my quiet routine that I do not think it too much to call, a Discipline.

“You'll have to forgive me,” boomed Gideon Blanchard, darkening the page. “The rain came on and there were just no cabs to be had. Have you had a drink? Let us fix that. My goodness, Sadie M. Blanchard. I think I know that name.”

“Indeed,” said Anne quickly, instinctively covering the page, as though to protect the girl.

“Don't get up, don't, don't,” he said, patting down his suit. His lapels were wet. Rain was lashing now, and the dark outside made the restaurant glow. In the glass Anne saw him reflected, very tall and spindly, cast by several floods on a track overhead. He sat across from her and tucked in his tie. “Heavens, what a mess. What's my girl thinking?”

Anne was stumped. Blanchard cocked his head to one side and nodded down toward the page.

“Oh. Sadie!” she said, embarrassed. “Right. It's the short-answer question on the Common Application, about a significant activity in her life. She's writing about—well, about Tassel, actually.”

“Oh. So is that the right answer?”

“Not really.”

“Ah, dear.” He sighed dramatically. “Well, do break it to her gently. She loves that dog.”

“Of course.” Anne wondered at how gently broken Sadie had been. The poor girl was always protesting how good she was. Every run-on sentence was a headlong argument for how she was really quite a good girl indeed.

“Anne, if I may . . .” he said uselessly. He rolled his eyeballs at the page again. “How's she doing?”

Probably it seemed a matter of convenience to him, to have a seventy-five-dollar plate of pasta while he touched base regarding his daughter's college applications. Every year this work grew stranger.

“She's doing well,” Anne told him. “She's written her long essay about her volunteer work, of course, so we're sort of casting about for a subject for her shorter essay.” Gideon Blanchard nodded carefully, reached into his jacket pocket, and pulled out his BlackBerry. He began scrolling. “She's chosen to write about walking the dog every morning, which maybe doesn't make the best use of that space on the application to showcase her strengths. So we're going to talk about how to adjust that.”

She stopped talking. He was still reading his little screen.

The silence prompted him. “Okay, right . . .” he said, to no one. After a moment he looked up. “So sorry. Going to put this down. I think that's smart, what you say.”

“I'm glad.”

He was busy, of course he was. She understood. So why were they doing this? Why not just tell her what he wanted?

“You know, Anne,” he began, “I made some calls before we hired you, and you really have a terrific reputation. I've actually heard parents say you're responsible for their kids' careers.”

“That's very kind.” He'd never asked for references. She had no idea whom he knew. Probably everyone.

“And when Margaret said she was talking to you, you know, I thought, It's probably a good idea for Sadie, who's had to endure so much as a result of her dyscalculia. She really does freeze up in the face of qualitative assessment by now. But I hadn't really thought it through, the notion of an essay writer. Coach. An essay coach. But I see, if we can be honest here—and I hope we can be honest, Anne—how there could be a place for that. Just how rigged this whole process seems to be. And how we're all just part of the system, which is, let's face it, much larger than any individual applicant. There are wheels turning that no one child can be held responsible for, right or wrong, admit or deny.”

“Right,” Anne said provisionally. “That's true. But—”

“So I have to ask. I mean, these parents positively glow when they talk about you. But you really don't write the essays for them, is that what you're telling me?”

She opened her mouth to answer. He signaled for the waiter.

“I don't . . .” she started, unsure. He was gesturing to her menu, indicating she should choose.

“We'll need to order,” he told the waiter, an older man, who smiled widely at the two of them. Anne wondered what he imagined was happening there. “Bring everything at once, please, soon as you can, thank you,” said Gideon Blanchard. He waved the waiter to stay put, and finished: “So how do you get them in?”

Anne didn't know whether she should order or reply. “Well, I don't do that either. I just make sure they have good essays.”

It wasn't what Blanchard wanted to hear, so he ignored it. “What'll you have?” he asked Anne. He looked up to the waiter. “It's so hard to decide.” He made a show of frowning over the menu. “I'll have the duck.”

Anne really was having a hard time deciding. Pasta represented too much of a commitment. She wanted a salad, but feared fumbling the greens. She settled for soup.

“I'm paying, dear,” he said.

“Really not terribly hungry,” she replied.

He flicked at the air to send the waiter away. “So anyway,” he continued, “that's it? Just fix up the essay, and they get the fat packet?”

“Well, no, of course not,” she admitted. It wasn't clear if the word “dear” was meant to be affectionate or patronizing—maybe both—but it was like a stick to a beehive. Anne felt frantically unsettled. She heard herself elaborating: “There are grades and scores and recommendations and extracurriculars and everything else. But most of the time, it begins with the essay.”

“Because that's the hardest thing.”

“Because that's the only place where kids have a chance to reveal what matters to them. It is amazing how much changes when they figure out what they want. If they can make the jump from interest to discipline—that is, learn how the things that excite them manifest in the world, then they can see their way to the next step.”

His face was blank.

“I'm not making sense, I know,” she ventured.

“Try me again,” he said.

Anne's mind skittered across her years of students, looking to form an explanation. Gideon Blanchard kept his eyes on her and raised his top lip in a wide sneer so he could pick at something lodged between his incisors. It was aggressive and disgusting, but also a little bit freeing.

“Okay,” she began. “So, take a boy who, say, loves sharks.” She paused, but he kept digging at his teeth. She went on: “He goes scuba diving in St. Barths and decides all he wants to do is live in shark cages. So over the summer he goes and gets his diving certification, and now he can be trusted to take his tank off and put it back on in the water. Standard stuff. He writes his college essay about great whites, and for good measure he'll mention that everything is endangered, and he'll lean on the scuba certification as proof of his dedication. And then he won't understand why he doesn't get in anywhere. Worse, he won't understand why he ends up ten years later in a job he hates and he's browsing tropical hotel Web sites every spare moment he's got.”