Early Decision (33 page)

For a week Anne lay about in her apartment, flipping through books that had once ignited her—all women, she noted glumly—Isak Dinesen and Adrienne Rich and Shirley Hazzard. She did not know, in the end, which essay Hunter submitted late the night of the twenty-third. When she'd left his house at midnight, she'd convinced him only that there were two choices, his essay or his father's, and that she could not choose for him. So she tidied up his father's scribble on the page, explained why she thought the admissions committees still might cotton more to mustangs than to mediocrity, and wished him safe travels. Hunter himself had been mute. She'd left him there, bent over his laptop on the floor, his wide shoulders crowding the useless keys, and concluded that the Common Application was a terrible bottleneck for all the energy and ambition of a young man, no matter how restless and spoiled he might be.

She'd asked him to drop her a line when the applications were submitted. That note was still forthcoming, but she wasn't surprised; Hunter was burned out. You couldn't blame him for not finding time for her administrative oversight.

She read there were tremendous snowstorms in Wyoming. Anne hoped at least the skiing was good. It was the sort of thing she discovered, idly clicking about online, which is what she was doing on New Year's Eve, just as the afternoon set in. Outside, the sidewalks were starting to crackle with high heels and the occasional illicit firework. Anne was in blue jeans and socks. She'd been invited to a party hosted by former grad school classmates, a couple who'd met as M.A. students and who were slogging through the Ph.D. together, mano a mano for the same funding dollars in their shared passion, nineteenth-century visual theory. She could already taste the boxed wine and watery hummus, could already see the low lights of Hyde Park out their porthole of a back window. Not sure what she would say when people asked what she was up to now, she'd sent her regrets. But casting about for phantom signs of Martin in the L.A. news was too solitary, even for her, so she leashed up Mitchell and set out to find some pizza.

Twice her phone rang, and twice she ignored it. It could have been Martin. But she had grown tired of hoping, and exhaustion had brought her closer to reason than careful thought ever had. Her kids were all taken care of. Her parents could wish her a Happy New Year in the morning. Her mother would only be rooting around to discover Anne's plans, anyway, and could be counted on to say something like, “You should be going to a big party.”

But the third time it rang, in quick succession, she picked up.

“Anne, oh my God, thank God.”

She recognized a breathless Marion Pfaff, on a crackly line from the mountains.

“Oh my God,” she wailed. “They're not in. Hunter's applications are not in. Oh my God, they're due today, aren't they? Tonight?”

“Tomorrow . . .” interrupted Anne, feeling immediately ashamed but determined not to sound it. “Why on earth—”

“Oh my God,” continued Mrs. Pfaff. “I just asked him, thinking, you know, of course they were done—I've been staying out of it all since, you know, Gerry stepped in—and today on the lift I just asked, because we were sitting there and I thought, ‘How nice that all of that is behind him, he must be so relieved,' and he said, ‘No, Mom, I haven't done it yet.' And I near about fell off that thing but I couldn't do anything and thank
God
Gerry was in the one behind us. I mean, he knows now but I think he might have pushed the kid right out of that seat.”

“
None
of them are in?” asked Anne. “But they're all finished. They've been finished—all he has to do is hit submit. It's really nothing.”

“The thing is, Anne, I don't even ski anymore, I really don't, I hate it. I get cold. But something told me, ‘Today, Marion, you should go up.' And I wondered, was it that Hunter was going to get hurt? Was today the day he breaks a bone? But then when I asked him and he answered, I thought, that's it. Mothers always know, Anne. We always know.”

“Okay. It's all saved on his Common Application. All he has to do is log in, and choose each school's application, and—”

“I mean, he wouldn't have gone to college next year! At all! Anywhere! Can you apply late? You can't, can you?”

“No, you can't. Is he there?”

“No no, they're still up on the mountain. But here's the problem, Anne, here's why I'm calling you. I came down to call you. I'm just standing here in the lodge now! Still in my boots and everything! The problem is, the finished essay—you know, the one he and Gerry pulled together—apparently that's on a piece of paper, not in the computer, is that right? And Hunter's got his laptop out here but not that. So he can't submit.”

Anne was quiet. There seemed no solution. Not to the problem of the applications, but to the problem of stupidity. Gerry Pfaff wanted his essay, and Hunter had neglected to type it in. Of course he had. Clever boy. But what could she do now? Maybe the kid would finally get his way. His dad's essay was in Chicago! What was he to do? No way they could make it back in time.

“So what I need you to do,” said Mrs. Pfaff, “is go to our home and dictate it.”

“Uh—” Anne began, casting for an excuse. She didn't have one.

“I'll tell you how to get in, don't worry about that. Hunter said it should be upstairs, do you remember where? So listen. I told him I'd have you call his cell once you've got it in front of you. Then you can just read and he can type it in. Okay?”

“Now?”

Mrs. Pfaff sounded shocked. “Yes! Now! When else?”

Anne felt pitted against Hunter. On this side, a crowded and cowed only child, almost eighteen. And on this side, his insane parents, with their trusty sidekick, Anne. Off she goes now, to throw the last punch! The knockout blow! To dictate his father's essay into his ear so he can type it into his application as though his fingers doing so, rather than hers, or his father's, made it true.

“Anne?” pleaded Mrs. Pfaff. “We can't do this any other way. I'm sure you understand.”

“Okay,” Anne said. At least she could talk to Hunter, tell him again that he could submit whatever he wanted. Maybe he could take the bull by the horns here and just tell his father no. “Okay, fine. I'll call when I have it.”

Anne hit the freeway. There was no one heading north out of the city, but the inbound lanes were choked. For a short while the gray expanse of asphalt was brightened by the feeling that she alone was escaping, with Mitchell, curious and patient, in the seat beside her. She exited at Willow Road and headed east toward the lake, deeper and deeper into the suburban shadows. There was the feeling of socking in. She saw no one. The sidewalks ran out, and tall hedges walled the road.

It was all as Mrs. Pfaff had said. The gate rolled open obediently when Anne punched in the code. The privacy of the driveway was broken only by the flight of a crow startled by a spray of gravel beneath Anne's tires. She counted four paving stones to the right of the front steps and located the gray rock that was not a rock. She slid out the key. The door wasn't even bolted. The way the knob turned, she figured a credit card or bobby pin would've done the trick.

She was grateful to Mitchell for following closely up the stairs, the first sweeping flight and then the second, smaller set, to the little study under the eaves. The vacant house was creepy. She thought of the gun cabinet in the hall. She imagined terrible things, in quick, fleeting glimpses, like flipping through a book of options for her own demise: surprised burglar, disgruntled ex-gardener, straight-up ax murderer. Enough light made it through the two dormer windows that she could spot the two pages of cruelly rewritten essay, Hunter's formatted paragraphs covered over in his father's hand like the work of some uptight, private-equity graffiti artist. Anne grabbed it and fled back down the stairs to the kitchen, which was still lit through the wall of French doors. She flipped out her phone and dialed Hunter.

Gerald Pfaff answered. “I hope this means you're there,” he said, instead of Hello.

“In the kitchen, in fact,” she said.

“Well, thank heavens. Good. Christopher's just in the hot tub. I'll have him ring you when he gets out.”

“Sure.” Though she didn't wish to spend one moment more in that house. She snapped her fingers to summon Mitchell, who was snuffling round Rommel's enormous bed.

“Lucky thing you were free,” added Mr. Pfaff, the closest he could come to gratitude. “So typical of the kid to forget the most important bit.” He eased his voice lower, as though in confession. “I keep thinking he'll outgrow it, but I fear it's just part of his makeup. Going to make for a tough life, I tell you.”

“Oh, I think he'll do just fine,” she said. She agreed, of course, that it might well be a tough life. Just for completely different reasons.

He heard her insincerity. “Ah, well,” he said, resigned, as though there were nothing to be done about the boy. Amherst really must have been a cruel blow. Now the man was suffering a complete failure of imagination. He couldn't think there might be any other future for his son, or any value in traits other than servitude and solicitation. “Bye, now.”

Anne heard him sign off and looked around his kitchen. The empty expanses of marble were as blank as an operating theater, washed in the flat light of the late afternoon. One framed photograph of Hunter as a little boy stood alone on the countertop. Over it the nest of bright copper pots hung low, like the autumnal foliage of a dying domesticity. It would have taken five children to make this a home, Anne thought, feeling the house sprawl around her. Or six or seven. She wished Hunter had had a sibling. Someone to help him face his father and laugh with him about his mother's frantic ministrations. In the picture he looked impossibly young, freckle-cheeked. He held up a toy boat to the photographer. The camera had caught him looking proud of something he loved.

She studied the two crumpled pages on the table. The light had faded further, but she was half afraid to get up and find switches. It was almost dark when from behind her came a loud click, followed by a reddish glow. She gasped and turned around. Mitchell trotted a few paces ahead of her into the hall, facing the vast living room. There they discovered the family Christmas tree looming, all lit up on its vacation timer. Anne approached through two sofa bays. The tree stood in a dry bowl, bronzing to its tips and covered with giant colored bulbs. Presumably so potential intruders would think the Pfaffs weren't out of town. The lights shone off the empty furniture, the lacquered wood picking up rich reflections of color, rainbows on the armoire.

Suddenly Anne was even more spooked, and she hurried with Mitchell back into the kitchen to find the overheads. The room came ablaze. She went to the fridge and opened it. There was a comforting clink. Many condiments in little glass jars, and a row of bottled beer. She took one. There was an opener right where she expected it in the utility drawer to the right of the sink. She selected a crystal goblet from the glass-fronted cabinet, which had its own internal lights. No Whirly Popper here, to be sure. Or Fun Size Snickers. Just easily forgotten bottles of Chimay ringing like jingle bells in the Sub-Zero's door. A stack of mail in a corner yielded nothing to read, so Anne pulled out some cookbooks and sat back down to wait. Mitchell settled in Rommel's memory-foam bed and let out a deep sigh.

She had almost finished a second beer—it was New Year's Eve, after all—when Hunter finally called. Her phone made her jump. The drinks, and the recipes, had caused her to forget that the house was probably bristling with escaped felons. Now she was shivery again, and she wanted to get the hell home.

“So hit me,” he said.

Still sensing all the imagined violence around her, with a little bravado from the beer, Anne felt ready to fight. She'd never lived in a house like this, thank God, and she never would. But she needed to make something happen. It was not like her little apartment was going to work forever. Her little life.

She stared at his essay and said, “Hunter, I can't find it.”

“What?”

“It's not here. I've looked.” Her words were slow and clear, demonstrative, a tipping of the hand.

After a moment he said, “Oh.”

“Must've got lost in transit. Maybe at the airport. Didn't you work on it there?”

“Oh, yeah, that's right,” he said. “I did.”

“I guess you'll just have to apply with what you've got.”

“Yeah.”

In the background she heard his father beginning to grow concerned.

“Dad, it's not there,” said Hunter.

“Tell him I've looked everywhere. Tell him I'm so sorry.”

She heard Mr. Pfaff yelling. “Tell her to rewrite it, then! Here, give me the phone.”

He crowded the line. “That's impossible! We've just got to have that!”

Anne sipped her beer. His beer. The glass was almost empty, but the crystal was so wonderfully heavy it was as though it were full. She set it down gently as an egg and reminded Mr. Pfaff, “Or he could just submit his applications now with the essay we had polished. It's quite strong.”

“The one about compasses and ponies?” She could hear the spit cracking between his teeth.

“Well, I don't know what to say, then. I'm so sorry. I have to get back to the city, I'm afraid.”

“This is your
job,
” he said.

“I've done my job, Mr. Pfaff. And Hunter has done his.”

“The hell he has. Those applications are not complete.”

“I think they are. I have to get back to the city now, Mr. Pfaff. Could I talk to Hunter again?”

“I think you've had quite enough to do with my son,” he answered her, and hung up. In retaliation, she switched off her phone.

She stayed long enough to wash and dry the crystal and replace it on the shelf. The ruined essay pages she folded into a tight square and tucked in her jeans. Empty bottles clinking in one fist, she flipped off the lights and found her way to the door by the jangling glow of the gasping Christmas tree.