Early Decision (17 page)

He sobered. “And how do you find that? The keening?”

“Well, you listen for the sound of their voice. Sometimes, it only comes up in actual conversation. They're so guarded, especially in the first drafts. But something will slip through—an image, an idea, a memory, something that they talk about in a simpler, softer, lower tone.” Like I'm speaking now, she thought, but watching his big mouth chew, she figured there was no risk he'd notice. “It's when you feel their heart has shown up. That sounds silly, but it's true. That's the art of it, I guess. I have to help them to write about that thing, in that mode. And then it's easy. From there it's just Strunk and White.”

He nodded knowingly. She knew he had no idea.

“And how do you do that?” he asked lamely. “Help them write about the special thing?”

She'd never thought of it in exactly this way, but the answer appeared to her instantly: “You make them forget they're being watched.” In her mind she added, for the first time since they were born.

“Evaluated, you mean,” he said.

“No, I mean watched. They've internalized all the judgment. They supply it themselves.”

He made a high humming noise. “Sounds intimate. What you have to do.”

“It can be done at Starbucks,” she told him. “Or the kitchen table.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Can you give me an example?”

“Sure. I had one student, a few years ago, whose mother was fighting breast cancer.” The woman was not from Chicago, so this seemed safe to mention.

Gideon Blanchard gave a deep moan. Anne wondered if she shouldn't have specified “breast.”

“Right. Terrible,” she said. “But her college counselor had warned her, as usual, don't write about sick relatives. Like you don't write about community service or breaking the law. To which I would add dead pets, expensive vacations, the trials of caring for your horse, the teacher who screwed you over, cheating scandals, or your cousin who already goes there.”

“You can't write about community service?”

She ignored this. “So this poor girl, she wrote a miserable essay about concern for the environment. Her college counselor thought it was great. But she wasn't a scientist and she didn't belong to her school's green club. She didn't even recycle. The essay was nonspecific, and therefore naive. She didn't know the first thing about environmental awareness, but then, that's not what she was writing about. It was a whole essay about the end of the world coming and how she couldn't do a thing to stop it but feel sad. Do you see?”

“No.”

“She was writing about her feelings about her mom. But she didn't think she could say that. So her essay was terrible.”

“Mmm. So what did you do?”

“I told her to just say what was true.”

“Which was?”

“Her first sentence was, ‘I know I'm not supposed to write my college essay about my mother having cancer, but if you want to know anything about me, you must know about this thing that I'm living with every single day.' ”

He nodded slowly. “And?”

“And she got in.”

“And her mom?”

Anne frowned at him. The girl's mother had died, halfway through her daughter's freshman year.

It was too dark. You're so depressing, Anne, she thought to herself. Quickly she added, “Or another student, my very first year. She wrote about mushrooms. She used to go out in the woods every fall, by her house, and hunt for mushrooms. She included all of these crazy mushroom details, things I'd never heard before. Some of them glow in the dark. Some of them bleed when you cut them, did you know that? It was fabulous.”

“And?”

“She turned down Yale and went to Princeton.”

“Wow.” Gideon Blanchard finished his wine and set the glass down. He looked out at the rain. “I don't think there are mushrooms in the Gold Coast.”

“That's not really my point.”

“No, I know it's not,” he said. “I know.” She watched his thoughts shift away from Sadie; his mood brightened, and he turned back to her. “And what about you?”

“What?”

“What about you?” he repeated. The question had an unseemly pressure behind it, like fingers. “What's your passion? Is it this? Working on college applications? Is this the thing you've chosen for your life? Your one
wild
and
precious
life? That's from a poem by Mary Arnold.”

“Oliver.”

“What?”

“No, nothing.” She shook her head.

“Because I've been thinking.” He waited for her to meet his gaze. “You know that I'm a lawyer.”

They both smiled, she captive, at his joke.

“I do.”

“And I don't know if you've even thought about the law, but I think you should. Just the way you present, I . . . think it could be a splendid fit. Textual interpretation, attention to detail, questions of social justice. Have you considered it?”

“I was an English major,” she told him, meaning, “Of course I've considered law school.” It was the standard penance for wasting your late adolescence in novels.

“And?”

“Law school's expensive.”

“That's why you make lots of money after you graduate.”

“Hard to get into,” she blurted.

“Not for you, I hope!” he said.

She smiled at the table. “Fair point.”

“Because I see in you, if you don't mind me saying so, a young woman with a lot of intelligence and talent who is in need of a little direction.”

Well, how dare you, she thought. But instead she said, “Thank you.”

“Which is why I wanted to spend some time. To figure this out. I'm not sure if it means you should come try a paralegal post at the firm, or something else. But I thought maybe I might help you find that thing, that passion, that you're talking about with all these teenagers. I can open doors, Anne.”

She was amused for a moment to think that he'd somehow understood this idiosyncratic detail about her—and that what had seemed a setup for an embarrassing seduction was actually a pitch for an internship. It was the way to Anne's heart, absolutely. How did he know this?

Still Anne saw the hook was barbed. She could not be seen to be uninterested in her students, when his own child was among them.

“You're very kind,” she said, sounding completely insincere. “I really appreciate the offer to help. But I'm doing great. I like what I do.”

The disappointment was plain on his face.

“Anne, let me try this a different way, because I know you've got a full plate today and certainly I do.”

She nodded brightly.

He said, “Cristina, she's a very impressive girl.”

“Cristina?”

“She's a damn impressive kid. I'm all set to make some calls and change her life. But I've got a daughter applying, too, and, you know, the first thing these people are going to ask me is, ‘Gid,' they'll say, ‘Gid, how is that Sadie?' ”

“Of course.”

“And I want to be able to say, ‘She's terrific.' Even better, you know, I don't want to have to say it at all. Because her file will make that so clear. Am I making sense?”

“She's going to have a great application,” Anne said. She still didn't see what he was driving at. But she was alarmed at how tempted she was to become whatever it was he was looking for: adviser, colleague, conspirator.

“Is she? That's good. Because if I'm going to be sending in two applications, as it were, one for this other girl and one for my own daughter, I don't want there to be—how shall I put it?—an incline. A differential. A matter of comparison.”

Anne considered Cristina's transcript and scores next to Sadie's. “There's only so much I can change.”

“That's exactly my point,” he said, and leaned back. He smiled. “That's what I'm saying. And I think that, if you're able to make that change, then it will be a really good step for all of us.”

My God, Anne thought. Write your daughter's essays and you'll give me a job. Is that it?

“You want me to write them,” she said quietly.

“I didn't say that. Far from it.”

“Sometimes I have taken a strong hand, I guess,” she admitted. “But only in critical situations,” she added, “only with a phrase here or there, you know, a conclusion at eleven fifty-nine on the day of a deadline . . .”

“So, good,” said Gideon Blanchard, looking pleased. “Who doesn't like a strong hand? And we'll see to Cristina's needs, meanwhile, and Duke will have two excellent incoming freshmen to celebrate. It's such a pleasure to help, as of course you know.”

“Of course,” Anne said. She felt mugged. She touched her hands to her sides, pressed on her belly, as though something had gone missing from her pockets. Nothing, she told herself, I've promised him nothing.

“And we'll have to do this again,” he said, signaling for the waiter. “In the New Year, when all of this is behind us. To talk about you. I've got ideas for you, Anne. I think you have really great things awaiting you.”

“That's very kind,” she said.

“And next time, you'll eat something.”

“Ha.”

He continued to issue a stream of vague ideas as they gathered up their coats. “Maybe you're interested in educational issues at large?” he offered, holding open her raincoat. She rolled sleeve to sleeve and stepped away quickly. “Maybe you'd like to consider a job at city hall, the department of education. Have you given that any mind?”

As Anne followed him out of the restaurant, fielding his wild offers of jobs and leads, she considered that the problem with old boys' networks wasn't who you needed to know, it was that you needed to know what to ask for. She was searching for yet another new demurral when she was stopped short by the sight of Martin leaning alongside the elevators, an unlit cigarette on point in his fingers.

He smirked at her. “Torrential,” he said, referring to the rain. “Had to come inside.”

“Gideon Blanchard,” said Blanchard, extending a long arm. “Pleasure.”

“Oh, of course,” said Martin effortlessly. As though he recognized him. Though maybe he did, Anne thought. Who knew what these men knew about one another, even across fields, across cities? “Martin Waverly.”

The elevator opened. Both men reached to hold the doors, one on either side. Anne passed through. “Thanks,” she muttered.

She stood at the back and watched their shoulders—Martin was much broader—and how Mr. Blanchard squared and resquared himself a few times, as though unconsciously measuring. “Working with my daughter, lucky girl, whole process so wildly out of control . . .” he was saying, and Martin was replying in supplicant terms: “Indeed, absolutely, amazing, lucky girl.”

“Well, lucky
you,
” finished Blanchard as they stepped into the lobby. He unsnapped the tail of his valet's umbrella and grinned at Martin, then at Anne. To her he said, “Give it some thought. I'm not finished with this.” She understood he was referring to the problem of her career, and she felt the cryptic pronouns rile Martin, who drew closer. Blanchard lifted his chest and released his giant umbrella, a pin-striped peacock, and swept out onto the sidewalk.

Martin stopped her at the doors. “What the fuck was that?”

“I told you. He's a client. I'm working with his daughter.”

“The little retarded girl.” He popped open his umbrella and raised it over them both. They stepped out.

“Stop it,” Anne said, into the wind. She ducked closer under Martin's arm. “She's very sweet. And perfectly bright.”

“Yes. She just has—what was it? Dis-test-ia? Dis-homework-ia?”

“Discalculia.”

“Ah, right. Dis-it's-just-fucking-school-ia. So math is hard. This is not news. They don't give a Nobel in, you know, language arts.”

“You know, they sort of do,” answered Anne, thinking of Toni Morrison.

“No,” he said. “They don't.”

“Actually, Martin, it's math that they don't . . . Well. Anyway, it's a real thing, the inability to keep numbers straight.”

“Sure it is.”

“It is!”

“I can't believe you buy into that. Does lunch at Spiaggia come with it? Some vino? Awfully nice grub. Do they have one star now or two?”

“I don't buy into anything,” she said. “She's been to a learning specialist, she's been diagnosed, and that's all there is to it. My job isn't to assess her, it's to help her handle this along with everything else. Which doesn't matter anyway, because that guy you just met is chair of the board of trustees.”

He stopped and turned to her. On the sidewalk pedestrians broke right and left around them. “And they need you why?”

“Well, they don't. But they want Sadie to have some support. To be honest with you, I think I was just asked to write her essays for her.”

“You're kidding.”

“No.”

“Well then, do it! Save you a crap load of time. Go home, write them up, ask for your check, and be done with it. Sounds good to me.”

“No, Martin. I can't do that, and I won't.”

He shrugged wildly. “Why the hell not? Don't be so damn earnest, Anne. It's not attractive.”

“Because it's not right,” Anne said. She was too proud to add,
Because my work is real. And because it would break Sadie's heart.

“Oh, but it's right for her to have you holding her hand all freaking fall? And it's right for her to get out of every math test since the fourth grade?”

“I can only deal with my part, Martin, Jesus. I want to help her write her essays on her own, and I want them to be decent.”

“Which they wouldn't otherwise be.”

“Well, no. Not really.”

“Like I said. The little retarded girl.”