Early Decision (38 page)

Anne watched Sadie's hands, the corners of her mouth, for any signal that she should have told the truth. Sadie sat, composed.

Her mother reached out a hand to her daughter's cheek and brushed at something with her thumb. Sadie shook her off.

“Quit,” she said.

“There was something there, is all,” said her mom. “A lash.”

Sadie shook out her hair so that it resettled over the collar of her dress. The portrait neckline showed off her collarbones and a small gold chain across her throat.

“That's such a pretty dress,” said Anne. “Where'd it come from?”

Sadie opened her mouth to answer, but her mother beat her to it.

“You know,” said Mrs. Blanchard, still gazing at her daughter, “when I met Gideon, I was wearing a blue dress. He fell in love with me because of my blue dress.”

Anne turned to her, astonished. Gideon Blanchard shifted in his chair.

“Yes, he did,” Margaret continued. She had forgotten them all; she was enchanted. “It was long, with a fluted waist.” She leaned forward against the edge of the table to reach up to her daughter's hair, which she pushed aside. “A collar that dipped like this”—gesturing now toward her own fallen bosom—“and I had this bracelet with little sapphire flowers all around it, tiny, to match.”

Half smiling, Sadie suffered this display.

“I looked so pretty,” finished Mrs. Blanchard.

There was a terrible quiet at the table. Around them the room grew louder. Champagne flutes chimed on the tabletops. Anne had a moment to think. Witnessing Margaret Blanchard's embarrassing recollection, her slip back up the river from daughter to mother, something came clear. Something hard and bright and terribly freeing. It was so simple, it took only time to understand it—only time, but time alone: how very much this woman envied her daughter.

It was envy.

My God, it was envy. Anne thought certain parents hijacked their kids' applications and tortured their essays because they wanted to give their children the world, which of course they did. But there was something more. Something ugly in their vigilance that tasted of ownership. Money made it worse but did not explain it away; rich parents were not necessarily bad parents. Nor was it a class concern. This madness was not, in the end, about the preservation of means or the perpetuation of a self-assuming elite. No.

It was about the hoarding of time. The one resource parents could not renew, try though they might. This generation would not go gentle. Gideon and Margaret Blanchard, Gerald and Marion Pfaff, all of those baby boomers aging now in the soft fields of Darien, Palm Beach, Summit, Mill Valley, Lake Forest, in the high floors and single townhomes of cities from New York to Boston to Seattle: they had made their choices. They were not seventeen. They were deep in their ruts and shuttling at top speed through middle age. It must have terrified them. They couldn't release their grip, though their children heading to college meant that their time up front was just about done.

But these kids? Well, they had it all to play for. Everything lay ahead for them.

Anne looked at Sadie and was able to imagine her whole life, just waiting. The cities, the people, the parties, the work, the home, the love. Surely love.

How very much some parents wanted to take it all back.

“Well, you can't,” Anne said, and only when the table turned to her in puzzlement did she notice that she had spoken.

“Can't what?” asked Sadie.

“You can't take back what's happened.”

Gideon Blanchard stiffened. “What is it you're saying?”

Anne bit her lip. They were all looking at her. She saw the dominion in the faces of the adults—Gideon's indignation and his wife's blind hauteur—and was stunned by how little they understood. Did they notice Sadie biding her time, her knowing patience? Or detect the alarm in the eyes of their confused little boy? It was easy to think, You fools. To love a child, you launch the child, and then you get the hell out of the way. But it was not so easy for her to admit what followed: that it's the child's job to let go of everything else. Poverty tours and cruel chessboards and whatever hell Anne would visit on her own children, because someday she would—all parents did—it was a kid's job to jettison all that, and put on her best dress, and say what it was that she wanted.

“It's up to Sadie now,” Anne said at last. “You're done. And, in fact, I have her essay with me. I just happened to print it out.”

Sadie widened her eyes, first in surprise and then in anticipation. Anne felt a shiver of pleasure. Sadie said, “Perfect
.
”

Anne tugged the page from her pocket and smoothed it flat on the tabletop. She spun it on the glass and slid it across. Beside her, Sadie took a deep breath. Mrs. Blanchard reached her claret nails to the page.

“It's terrific,” Anne said. “You should be very proud of her.”

She stood, gathered her coat, and set a hand on Sadie's shoulder. “Bye,” she said. “Congratulations. Call if you need to.” Gideon Blanchard's hands were flat on the table as though he was about to rise, but he stayed put. To him Anne said, “You can just mail a check for the remainder of my fee.”

Then she waved to Charles and walked briskly through the sumptuous hall of the Four Seasons, out into the brightly lit dark.

PERSONAL STATEMENT FOR DUKE UNIVERSITY (FINAL)

By Sadie Marie Blanchard

I have always expected that I would go to college. To be honest, I always knew that I would go to Duke. Growing up, I had a Blue Devils banner on the wall over my bed. It was the only blue thing in my room—everything else was pink or yellow. Duke basketball games were the only television permitted in my house. I've gone to visit with my parents more times than I can count.

So lately, this past fall, people have started asking me: Are you excited about college? You must be getting so excited about Duke! And the answer, honestly, is No. But this is not because I'm not excited about college, or even about going to college at Duke. It's because when you grow up with expectations like that, you don't really imagine things on your own. Or, in other words, if you've always looked up at a blue banner on your wall, you haven't had a blank space in which to daydream. It was always already there for you.

If there is one word I think of when I think about the college application process, it is
expectations
. College is the final expectation teachers have of their students, starting from when they are very small. The colleges, meanwhile, have expectations of the applicants, in terms of grades and scores and so on, and then once they let students on campus, they have expectations of those students based on their applications. We like to think about childhood being a time all about imagination. About make-believe and pretending. College is the end of all of that. And unfortunately, the expectations surrounding college mean that the make-believe of childhood ends much sooner than I think it should.

In the last few months, I have learned alot about expectations. I have learned that expectations get in the way of imagination. I have learned that expectations make it difficult to see the truth. I have learned that while expectations can help us to succeed, they can also let us down. So I've done a little imagining about expectations vs. imagination. I like to think of them as characters, as people almost. Expectation, for example, speaks with a really deep, booming voice. Imagination is quiet and whispery. Expectation is typed in black. Imagination is hand-written, on the corner of your page, in purple. If you set up Expectation and Imagination in a debate, Expectation would win every time. Imagination would just stand there in a pretty dress with a crazy scarf and smile. Expectation goes for timed field hockey runs. Imagination jumps in Lake Michigan on a hot day. Expectation is a 2400 on the SAT. Imagination is zooming out of the building after they start the clock and hiding somewhere with your favorite book instead. Expectation is your dad, who you always knew is honest and faithful to your mom. Imagination is wondering what the hell he was doing making out with the slutty paralegal who lives upstairs from your college counselor. Expectation is going to Duke. Imagination is pretending I've never heard of the place and letting it be new so I can spend four years there that are all my own. Expectation is that I'll get in, because of my Dad's connections. Imagination is that the admissions office will think I might really be a good fit there. Expectation is the essay my parents worked on with me, that I wrote with my college counselor and that my English teacher and my school counselor both edited. Imagination is what I've used to write this.

I think Expectation comes with fear. Imagination comes with hope. So I'll just say it: I expect to attend Duke, and I imagine I will have a wonderful four years there.

Expectations are what have got me this far. But I sense that the braver, more difficult choice is to use Imagination, and that, I hope, is what will get me the rest of the way.

EPILOGUE

S
ADIE
B
LANCHARD MAJORED
in art history at Duke and pledged Delta Delta Delta. She spent her junior year in Florence, where she had her heart broken by a junior professor from Calabria who had taken her to Sicily for a spring break full of first things but was nowhere to be found by May. Her senior year was spent writing unanswered letters to him and securing a Manhattan-based internship with Sotheby's, where she now works in Old Masters. She lives in a classic six in the East Seventies. Since her parents' divorce, Tassel has come to live with her there. (Charles was sent to Eaglebrook.) Sadie's boyfriend, Preston, is an analyst with Bank of America. What little free time they have is taken up volunteering for junior boards and on Team In Training runs. She enjoys their summer weekends in a shared rental in Quogue, but some nights she still dreams about blood oranges and the tiny bright lizards of Taormina.

 

A
LEXIS
G
RANT GRADUATED
summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard. She turned down the Marshall to accept the Rhodes Scholarship, which she used to study the ethics of international development at Balliol College, Oxford, while simultaneously pursuing an MSc at the London School of Economics. One autumn, connecting through Heathrow on his way to Prague, Michael Schleinstock staged a prolonged layover to spend two days wandering London by her side. Standing before the Rosetta Stone, their rain-soaked jackets in his arms, he professed his love. She took his hand and said, “I love you, too!” Nothing happened next. He was still confused when she waved him good-bye on the Piccadilly line the next day. Her Geneva-based job with UNDP will follow an extended field placement in Kurdistan. Her first published paper, on tent libraries, indigenous language, and the integrity of refugees, appeared in
Foreign Affairs
.

 

C. H
UNTER
P
FAFF
took a year off after high school. His parents engaged a private consulting firm based in Boston that specializes in planning such hiatuses. Consequently, he spent the autumn doing trail maintenance with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the Clearwater National Forest; for the winter he traveled to Bogotá to brush up on his Spanish and intern with a private equity firm that manages structured debt transactions in emerging markets; and in the spring he rented a condo in Miami, where he spent mornings teaching tennis to Cuban refugee children and afternoons focusing on his own game with a private coach. He submitted his college applications from Colombia. After all that travel, he was happy to settle at Bates, playing varsity singles on the tennis team and hiking the Maine trails on Sundays, but his parents disagreed that it was the right fit, and he came to see the light in time to apply to Cornell to complete his degree. Also at their urging, he switched majors from environmental science to economics, and graduated in five years. He is now an M&A analyst with UBS in London. He lives in a small flat in Battersea. From his bathroom window, when it is not fogged from the shower or the radiator, he can see the Thames rolling by. Its banks are concrete.

 

C
RISTINA
C
ASTELLO GRADUATED
from Duke with honors in history. She was able to return to Chicago exactly twice during her four years in Durham. The law firm of Blanchard, McHenry, Winsett & Blair paid her tuition, room, and board, freeing her, upon graduation, to accept a Teach for America position in South Central Los Angeles. She lives in a rented bungalow in Silverlake. It shares an alley with a McDonald's, but she has her own little porch and a jacaranda tree. Her younger sister, a high school freshman, attends the Cicero North Excel program every Saturday.

 

W
ILLIAM
K
ANTOR GRADUATED
from Penn with a major in politics and a minor in theater. He moved immediately to New York City, where he is a production intern for a small avant-garde company with a roving stage. He found a fabulous Reform shul that meets out of a Presbyterian church in the far West Village and that holds services on Monday nights to accommodate members who work in the theater. He and his boyfriend, Alan, go almost every week.

 

A
PRIL
P
ENZE LEFT
her job at Blanchard, McHenry, Winsett & Blair to become a desk assistant at the local NBC News affiliate. She has been shopping her test reel as a weathergirl for about a year. The editor, a married man, assures her she's got what it takes.

 

D
OUG THE
C
OFFEE
Shop Guy is a portrait photographer whose loft studio is adored by local celebrities for the way the El rattles by its three huge windows and for its gentle morning light. He never completed his degree.

 

A
NNE APPLIED FOR
the graduate fellowship to study international comparative education in England, which turned into a long-term position. She took a small flat in St. John's Wood. Despite calls from parents at the American School, she has no time to work on college applications. Several major philanthropic organizations, not to mention the current American administration, have shown interest in her team's proposals regarding vocational training and higher-ed reform in Western Europe. Mitchell is delighted to be off leash in London's lush parks. Occasionally Martin shows up with his new girlfriend, a pop singer, in the back pages of weekly celebrity magazines. The singer's name is always listed first. (It is not Lynn.) Anne hasn't bothered to remark on this to her fiancé, Greg. Every now and then, she finds herself doing the math to determine in what years their future children might graduate from college. It makes her heart drop and soar at the same time.