Early Decision (20 page)

Anne tried a different tack. “You know, I was really shocked when it turned out that Inez knew Cristina.”

“You think?” asked Sadie ruefully. But she laid on the sarcasm lightly. This spot was cruelly tender, Anne knew.

“Inez adores you.” Anne knew it to be true, so it seemed not wrong to say.

“Inez is paid to adore me,” Sadie replied.

“Hey. That's not the Inez I know. She doesn't work like that.”

The tears came anew. “And that's the other thing,” Sadie sobbed. “That was the one other thing.”

“What was?”

Sadie hunched forward over her lap, revealing that her chair was monogrammed:
SBM
hung over the weeping girl like a sign.

“You mean Inez?” asked Anne quietly.

Sadie nodded.

“She's really special to you.”

Sadie unhooked pieces of wet hair from behind her ears so they fell forward, hiding her face. “Just, the one person, you know?” she whispered. “Always, every day, except Sunday, every day she was there.”

It was then Anne realized that Sadie might have been bothered not at all by her father's adoption of Cristina's cause. That horse had left the barn a long time ago. It was this new affront that she couldn't stomach—that would stand in, of course, for the missing parents, as Inez had been standing in for them since Sadie was a baby.

“It's why I take Spanish instead of French,” Sadie added, to drive home her point. “Everyone else takes French. That's honors track. It cost me an AP.”

In some parts of the Midwest it was still the case in those days that French was considered the more sophisticated language and appropriate for more advanced students. This was not least because so many public school students already spoke Spanish, proving that it couldn't be either useful or challenging to acquire.

Time was passing and Sadie was only crying harder. Anne didn't know who, if anyone, was home; an unidentified housekeeper had answered the door, and no one could be heard through the halls. Anne had no idea where to go with Sadie, but she thought it time for a little bit of truth. Certainly Sadie was already most of the way there, and how much more damage could she do?

“Sadie, listen,” Anne started. “It's true that your father is a very powerful alumnus of Duke. He's earned that position. He has worked hard for the university, he has supported it with donations, and he is a widely admired lawyer whom Duke is proud to name as an alum. You know all of that.”

She sniffled. “Of course.”

“It's also true that Duke is going to want to accept you. And that's not wrong. It's not wrong for universities to want to admit the families of people who support them. These places don't get by on tuition alone. They don't. And even if they did, they don't get full tuition from half of the kids who go there, or more. Most qualified kids come from families that can't dream of that price tag. So the school has to raise the dough. What do you think the football team is for? Creating student athletes?” At this Sadie smiled. “It's critical that top colleges build communities of support from alumni, and Duke does that very well. And if you're going to be a good student and a good person there, which of course you are, then why shouldn't they admit you?”

Sadie nodded and permitted her face to be seen. Her skin was hived from crying. Big welts raised her eyes and cheeks. She seemed ten years younger than her wrap cashmere sweater and tight jeans suggested, like a little girl playing dress-up.

“So I'm absolutely going to get in, then,” she said.

Danger, thought Anne. But why not be honest? Sadie deserved it.

“Well, pretty much.”

“What if I, like, did drugs or something?”

This seemed a sincere question, but by the way it was asked, Anne knew Sadie had never tried a mood-altering substance in her life, save wine at the altar rail.

“Okay, yes, if you got arrested for drugs, they might reconsider,” Anne admitted, smiling. “Prison might be a tough one to overcome, even for you.”

But Sadie didn't brighten. “So,” she said. “So what?”

“So here's the thing. You have this opportunity open to you. It's fantastic. I spend my life working with kids who are terrified about getting into even one school as good as Duke. They're freaking out. You don't have to waste your energy feeling that way. You can focus on school, your volunteering, your friends, whatever you want, and know that you're going to be okay. And when you get to Duke, you can be grateful and make the absolute most of that opportunity you've been given. Take every class you want to take. Drop Spanish and start French. Hell, spend a year in Paris! Or maybe you'll find that all your volunteering has made you want to, I don't know, go into public interest law. Or become a social worker. Or a priest. I don't know. But you can get started on that road.”

“Uh, not a priest.”

“Okay. Or a doctor, or a teacher, or who knows what? But you'll have all of that available to you. So your job is not to sweat college; your job is to apply yourself to whatever it is that's going to make you feel the most useful. The most fulfilled. That's wonderful. And really important.”

Sadie's eyes were clearing. She sat back against her initials and straightened her sweater, picking it out over her slim torso. “Yeah, that makes sense,” she said.

“It does,” Anne agreed. “I really think it does. So don't waste your time crying. Spend it deciding what you want to do. Get there. Hit the ground running.”

“What about you?” Sadie asked. She had a new light in her face, and the welts were cooling. “Will you always do this? Work on college apps?”

“I don't know,” Anne said, not wanting to give away her dissatisfaction. How could she ask Sadie to accept her own lot if she didn't? “Point is, you're about to head into a whole new world. So that's the thing to focus on. What's coming up. Let the whole Cristina thing go.”

“And apply early to Duke.”

“Yes, I'd think so.”

“Well, no,” Sadie said.

Anne was shocked at her resolve.

“I'm going to apply regular admission. And I'm going to apply to other good places, too. Like Middlebury and Georgetown and Yale. Just to see if I can get in.”

For a moment Anne resented the girl forcing the world's hand; it would not hesitate to prove Sadie's point. She was a very privileged girl with a B-plus average and some dark marks where, as her mother put it, the teachers had “failed to enable” Sadie's success. Not to mention the issue with numbers. Her college counselor would know Duke was in the bag and slack off on every other school. What was the use?

“It's up to you,” answered Anne. Her only hope was the appeal to virtue. “I'll help you with your applications to wherever you want. But you might think about whether you want to take away spots from other students if you know you're going to go to Duke.”

“Maybe I don't know it,” Sadie said. “Maybe Gid and Marge will just have to wait and see.”

If it weren't for the disappointment Anne saw in the cards, she'd have embraced Sadie for this bit of sass. It would save her.

“Amen,” said Anne, and both girls smiled.

 

I
T WAS ON
a jewel of a fall day that Mr. Grant found Anne on her cell phone, just turning onto the long, crepuscular private drive leading to the Pfaffs' suburban manse. She'd been feeling optimistic. Hunter's essay was coming together, and she could see how his application would lead to a fairly good story about himself. It wouldn't be enough for Amherst, unless the tennis coach came through, but it would be enough for a few schools on his list, and he wasn't wild about Amherst anyway. Anne believed his parents could be brought around. He'd do fine. She felt that Hunter's promise was her promise. She was young and healthy and the sun on her hair felt as real as a human touch. Her phone rang, and of course it would be Martin—late lunchtime in L.A., he'd be in between appointments, having a smoke—so she spun the wheel onto the Pfaffs' gravel drive, slowed to a crawl, and from the tunnel of trees on their estate answered her line. It took more than a moment to realize that the man's voice wasn't truly Martin's.

“Anne, oh, good, I got you!” it said. Definitely not Martin: his enthusiasm gave him away. “Can you speak? Are we disturbing you? We only need a quick second. Just one question. Or two.”

Anne stopped the car halfway down the long drive, uncertain of cell reception within the estate itself—all those mature oaks—and put down the windows. The air was softer here. The oaks had coppered with the season, and the sugar maples fluoresced.

“Of course,” she replied. She let go the image of Martin in a sunbeam in L.A. She couldn't see him, couldn't imagine him at all.

“You've read Alexis's essay, is that right?” asked Mr. Grant.

“ ‘Churchill's Thumb'? I have, yes. It's terrific. I've sent her a reply by e-mail.”

“Yes, good—thank you—but I wonder if you've not had time to make a few corrections?”

She spun through her memory to think what she might have missed. Anne pushed her students when they needed it, but she didn't fiddle. A voice was a voice, and Alexis's essay was great. “Mmm, no, that's not the case, actually. I thought it fine just as it is.”

“Oh.” Anne heard Mr. Grant whispering, and voices in the background. “Listen, we had just a few questions, then. Could I put you on speakerphone?” The line opened up. “You've got Alexis and her mom here, too,” he added. “And Marlo's somewhere.” There was a soft round of “hi's.” “So we're looking, Anne, at page one, the first paragraph, here. Have you got the essay in front of you?”

“I don't. Just read me the sentence.”

“Okay. ‘I commented on the shape of their huge nation.' That's Alexis, talking about Africa and, you know, the map she brought in—”

“Yep, I remember.”

“Right. So: ‘ . . . the shape of their huge nation and how some of the boundaries are as straight as rulers while others are bumpy and jut out, and a counselor made a joke about Churchill's Thumb, which the kids smiled at' ”—here he paused—“so I knew it wasn't the first time they'd heard it.' ”

The line buzzed with speakerphone static. Anne imagined the Grants sitting in their family room, waiting for her to crack some code, to deliver them to a perfection they did not think achievable on their own.

“What's the question?” she prompted.

“Well, you hear it, don't you?” asked Mr. Grant. “The preposition? ‘Which the kids smiled
at
'? Clearly that should be, ‘at which the kids smiled,' right?”

Oh, man. Anne switched off her car's ignition.

“We're not at the end of a sentence, Mr. Grant, so I think it's fine,” she said.

“No, but it is a clause, and it does sound incorrect there, I think. We think.”

Alexis chirped up from the background. “Yeah, when he reads it like that, I just, like, cringe! I can't believe I almost sent that in!”

“In fact,” continued Mr. Grant, “there are places where she does just what you describe—the preposition actually ends the sentence! Like, here—bottom of the first page—‘I understand that governmental bodies require an understanding of their domain . . . so they know what is theirs to take and what is theirs to take care of.' Did you hear that? Of! Right smack at the end! Like it's got bells on it!”

It shouldn't have, Anne realized, but this made her angry. It got her back up. She might be casual in her manner, but she did not miss a thing in a sentence. Nothing. This was the bit of her work about which she was most sure, quite simply because she loved words most of all. She checked her watch. Already late. But this was worth handling correctly.

“All right. Here's my take,” she said.

“Yes?”

“In the first instance, it would be belabored to create the work-around ‘at which the kids smiled' right in the middle of the sentence. It would halt the flow of the essay very early on and immediately after a critical piece of information, Churchill's Thumb, is first introduced. You risk your reader noticing the baroque wording and glossing over our title phrase, which of course will no longer be a title because we don't have space for title formatting on the Common Application.”

“Okay, we see that,” said Mr. Grant, though not a millisecond of family consulting time had elapsed. “But what if Harvard thinks she doesn't know the rule? What if they think she made the mistake because she didn't know better?”

“It's a matter of style and not correctness,” Anne replied. “This is a not a misspelling or a misused word we're talking about. It's an issue of fluency. That's the level Alexis is now working at.”

She let the prepositions dangle for effect. And wondered if anyone caught the split compound verb.

“Yes, but how can we be sure they know that? I mean, in that second instance, at the end of a sentence?”

“In the second example, well, that's a line of poetry, frankly, that I wouldn't dare touch. Alexis has repeated her full phrasing—‘what is theirs to take and what is theirs to take care of,' which shows that this is a deliberate construction. Ending on the preposition in this case calls attention to her lovely reversal, which is at the heart of the essay's theme regarding the balance between boundaries as protective or as problematic. Alexis has taken the essay to a level above what college applications ask. She's actually entertaining her reader here. She's in full command. No good reader would wonder if she knows the basic rules of style.” She did not add,
If Harvard has a heart, she's in
.

There was a short pause. “Okay,” said Mr. Grant dubiously. “But I wonder if in some other essay she should, you know, include a work-around, just so they know she can do it.”