Early Decision (34 page)

 

P
ARKING WAS A
complete bitch. Had she thought about it, she might have said no altogether to Mrs. Pfaff's ridiculous request.

Still it was sort of fun to have passed the time up there, and now another terrible New Year's Eve was in full swing, which meant it was almost over. It was a freezing half mile home from the parallel spot she finally found. Perfect, though: Mitchell would be sorted for the night. She had popcorn to whirl and she was already two beers in. She thought she'd tape Gideon Pfaff's essay to the front of her refrigerator, just for fun.

In the same spirit of defiance she took the main stairs with Mitchell and his manky paws. It was a shame April was nowhere to be found.

But as she climbed, the thrill of her mini-revolution faded and she realized that she was taking a risk on behalf of Hunter, which wasn't fair. It was one thing to challenge his father's imperiousness, but another if doing so put college in the balance. There was a decent chance the kid wouldn't pull it together and get his applications in. He might be flummoxed by her lie and just pleased enough by her collusion to sink himself. She'd best get inside and call him.

She reached the landing only to find William Kantor sitting there, by her door.

“Sorry, I tried to call,” he said. He held up a bottle of wine with a ribbon tied at its neck. “This is for you.”

“You brought me wine?”

He stood. “I can't buy wine. Someone just left it here. Can I come in?”

“Um, sure?” She was not at all sure. She did not invite students to her apartment. Too small, too intimate, too inappropriate. “What time is it?” she asked, just to make the point.

“Nine-something.”

He was very close behind her, like a small child. She unbolted her door and flipped on a light. William surveyed her space. She regretted the open bathroom door and the clutter of lotions on her counter. Books piled on her coffee table and on the floor. A tuft of dog hair scooted along the baseboard. She closed the door to stop the draft.

“Nice place,” he said. “Cozy.”

“That's one word.”

“A great block, though.”

“Yeah, that's why. My parents thought it would be safe.”

“My parents would think the same way.”

“Do they know you're here?” She took off her coat and gestured to the love seat, hoping he'd sit—he'd be more manageable if he weren't standing there, surveying.

“They know I'm out. Who's the wine from? Mr. Waverly?”

It hadn't occurred to her, and for a moment she thrilled to the possibility. She read the tag:
Happy New Year! from the Baldwins, 1B
. Complete with a picture. Very kind.

“No,” she said, and left it at that. She suspected that whatever had driven William to her apartment, she still needed to be Martin Waverly's other half to earn the boy's revelation. And their breakup was none of his business, besides. “When's your curfew?”

“Not really an issue.”

“You don't have one? Special night?”

“Right.” He peered into the kitchen, a dark galley between the front room and the back door, which led to the fire escape and the yellowed alley beyond. She half thought he expected someone else to be there.

“William, what's up? Did something happen? Some admissions thing?”

“Just out walking,” he lied, wandering now to her bookcase. He passed his thumb along the spines. She'd have rather he fingered the dresses in her closet—those, she wore and put away. The books were unfinished business. The ones she'd read even more than the ones from her orals lists, still shrink-wrapped from the press. The ones she'd adored, most of all.

She was distracted by how thin William was—his pants belted so tightly at the waist they puckered all along his back and hung from there with no interference clear to his shoes, which, Anne was surprised to note, were sneakers. Very hip, suede sneakers, but still sneakers.

“That why you put on your sneaks?” she asked.

He turned to her, and then down to his feet. He shook his head no. But when he returned his eyes to her, they were wider than before and seemed uncertain at the far corners, as though his words were gathering there rather than in his throat, and just as it occurred to her that he might cry, she said gently, “William, what's going on?”

He opened his mouth. The phone rang, sharply, her landline. William looked away. “No, go ahead,” he told her, raising a loose hand to her desk.

“Oh, thank heavens,” she said out loud, relieved that the Pfaffs would be calling so she could at least sort out Hunter's little gamble. The person on the other end of the line heard this rather than hello, and was confused. Also ticked off.

“I'm sorry, hello? Is this Anne? I need to speak with Anne. It's Margaret Blanchard.”

Anne was surprised to realize that she was not terribly surprised.

“Speaking.”

She waved a deliberate hand at William to suggest he sit, making a point of gritting her teeth and baring them: it might be a while.

“Gosh, am I sorry to have to make this call twice,” said Margaret Blanchard, sounding not at all sorry. In fact, she sounded very much the way Mitchell looked when he spotted a cat: muscled and keen, his most primal self. “Anne,” she said again, drawing out the consonant. “Anne.” She paused once more before continuing: “I've just read Sadie's essay, the one I assume you're all ready to send in tomorrow, or tonight, who knows, and I have some very deep concerns about some of the things that are said in it. Very. Deep.”

“Okay,” said Anne carefully. “And you've only just seen it? Just now?”

“Sorry, dear,” she answered coldly. “I have a rather full docket, as you may imagine, if you can imagine that, and I haven't had a chance until now. But here I am, now, on New Year's Eve, and I've had to send Gideon on to our party alone while I address this.”

“I'm sorry,” said Anne, about the party. “What's the problem?”

“First of all, I have to say that I hardly think it's Sadie's best work. Gid and I have seen her pieces from creative writing class, and she is much more talented than this. I really think you've not helped her to reach her potential at all.”

Because she always asked to read several examples of a student's work, Anne had seen those very same pieces, and so she knew that Sadie's final essay for Duke was by far the most coherent, sophisticated, thoughtful bit of prose she had produced. And of course she had tuned her ear to the sound of Sadie's voice at its most fluent, so she could best recognize the ideas that came from her heart and help her to develop those. She knew what made Sadie most proud, and what had made other people make her think she should be proud. But the question of achievement wasn't Margaret Blanchard's point, and in any case they both knew it to be irrelevant in the case of Duke admissions, so Anne waited.

“More than that, though—which is of course the point of hiring you at all—is this other thing, which is that the essay has this crazy bit about both parents working, when there's no place for that in a college application. It makes Sadie sound spoiled. Most mothers do work, you know. I don't know if yours ever did but most do, and it's just not like Sadie to go on about it. It makes her sound truly very naive and that's not the case at all.”

“Sadie thought it relevant that she spent a good deal of time alone as a child. This helped to form her character, her independence. That's not a bad thing to say, I don't think.”

“Well, but it's simply not true. I mean, she goes on like . . . like she's Cinderella or something, you know, and that's just embarrassingly off. The whole thing is just—I don't know how it got so wrong, but this is not our daughter's work. So it will be redone.”

There was a moment when Anne might have responded in kind. She might have told Margaret Blanchard that, in fact, her husband had not wanted the essay to be his daughter's work at all; that he had already concluded that her work would be insufficient for his reputational needs. And he'd taken Anne to a really nice lunch to make this request, and then high-stepped his way back into some silly formality as though he'd never tried to offer her a job or career counseling or whatever it was he'd dangled before her. But William Kantor by now had settled on the floor beside Mitchell and was rubbing the dog's ruff. Anne wanted to return to him. Some feeling of guilt was nudging her, and it seemed the longer he stayed in her apartment, the more on the hook she'd be. “Could you read the sentences that trouble you?” she asked Margaret Blanchard. “Perhaps we can address those directly.”

“Oh, I don't have it,” said Mrs. Blanchard wearily, not to be bothered. “It's, you know, the stuff about both of her parents working long hours and being left to brush her teeth alone, all of which is nonsense that must have been put there by someone else, I'm not sure who.”

“Those sentences are pretty much intact from her first draft,” said Anne, in self-defense.

“Well, that's hard to believe.”

“Believe it.”

There was a pause.

“In any case,” continued Mrs. Blanchard, “it makes her sound terribly privileged to suggest that all kids don't have two working parents. I mean, to even
have
two parents is lucky. That's just not a healthy view of the world. And it goes without saying, I should mention, that Gideon is appalled.” She paused again, this time so Anne could do the math on the impact of Gideon's emotional state. She got it, loud and clear: one Cristina Castello, still in limbo. The stakes thus presented, Margaret Blanchard wrapped up: “Look, I'm sending her over now, I've given her money for cabs both ways, please see to it that she's safely back when it's been fixed. She's skipping the party, too, I might add. This really must end now. Really.”

Not until Margaret Blanchard had hung up did Anne realize the power she now had over this woman, who had called, quite simply, to protest the truth in her daughter's college essay. And not a terribly unkind truth either. The woman was a workaholic, so was her husband, and their two children had been raised by a loving Guatemalan immigrant who saw her own babies only in the nights and on Sundays because that was what it took. And so what? Would this so surprise the Duke admissions office, and especially old what's-his-name from Choate? But the 489-word looking glass was not what Ms. Blanchard had intended to
call down,
and she hadn't thought to think that everyone else could see plain as day, too. So now she was sending Sadie over to have it fixed. On the night before it was due. As though they might rewrite her parenting choices, have her home rocking her baby girl. Reading to her, Anne thought cruelly.

“So, I have another student coming over,” she told William.

His eyebrows went up. The usual, slightly insouciant slack had returned to his eyes. “Boy or girl?”

“Girl.”

“Pity. Latin or Parker?”

“Latin.”

“Of course. Do I know her?”

“Don't know. Probably.”

“Name?”

“Sadie Blanchard.”

“Hmm!” he said, sitting up taller. “I don't know her. Everyone knows
of
her, of course, but I've never met her. Supposed to be nice. Has that mother, is that who . . . ?”

Anne nodded.

“Oh gosh. You must get a lot of that.”

“I do. Though yours has been very mellow on that score.”

“Yes, it's not really her thing. More Dad's.”

Anne looked around quickly and didn't wish to have Sadie show up to find another student, a boy, however homosexual he might be, sprawled on her floor nearing ten at night on New Year's Eve. She ran about switching on lights and poured some glasses of water to set on her table, as though they'd been working there. She fetched a pen and took some paper out of her printer. “I'm going to have to do some work with Sadie,” she explained, “so we should sort out whatever it is you've got going on. Deadline tomorrow.”

“It's okay,” he replied. “I should get going.”

Anne shrugged. “Whatever you want. I'm happy to talk, just maybe not right now? I don't want to be rude—”

The buzzer sounded.

“That'll be Sadie,” she said. She gathered up William's coat. Then something occurred to her. “How did you get in?” she asked him. “Was the door propped open?”

“Some weird woman was coming in. I followed her. I think she went upstairs.”

“Big hair, lots of perfume?”

“Yeah.”

“Ugh, that's April. She does live upstairs.” Over the intercom, Sadie sounded exasperated.

“She wasn't very nice,” continued William. “Looked at me like I might be a mugger or something.”

Anne opened her door and lowered her voice. “I know, she's terrible. She steals my newspaper every morning, can you believe it? Like she even reads. My
New York Times
.”

Sadie was wrestling with the vestibule door. William fixed his eyes on Anne. “No, she doesn't,” he said. “I do.”

“Wait, what? Why?”

William shrugged, then smiled. “It's not cool, I know. I'm sorry. I walk by here mornings, on the way to school. I grab coffee then a taxi out on Clark. Used to see you with him”— he gestured to Mitchell—“and one day you turned in here, and I kind of followed you, but most mornings you weren't around, and the paper was there . . . But I didn't know it was yours! My dad swears it's propaganda, you know. The worst of the worst. Israel, liberals, they get it all wrong. So I just wondered. And then I just, I don't know, I liked the way it unfolded into your hands like these
slabs
of life—you have the news, the sports, the arts, they slide out of each other like everything is just there for you to have, like you might as well be in New York City that morning. I'm sorry. It's really not right, I know. I think if I'd known it was yours—anyway. I'm glad I told you.” Sadie crested the landing. “Hi,” he said.