The Admissions (36 page)

Melvin Strickland got home before his wife, Carla, even left Kaiser. Sometimes—often—he stayed late at the school, but today, this close to winter break, he didn’t. The shortest day of the year, Winter Solstice, his birthday, was only five days away.

As Melvin drove home, as he observed the white outline of the moon on the rise, as he pulled into the garage, as he entered the house, he was thinking about Virginia Woolf. Fifty-nine years old when she’d put those stones in her pockets and walked into the river in Sussex, only three years older than Melvin would be next week. As a child he’d hated having a birthday so close to Christmas, he’d considered it the ultimate swindle, but now he enjoyed it, because often his children came home for the holiday and were home on his birthday, too. The house, so often empty, filled up again with yelling and laughing and texting and little piles of clutter that drove Carla mad but that Melvin cherished as precious signs of young life.

Who knew what Woolf’s output would have been had she lived. Perhaps her best writing was ahead of her; perhaps (more likely?) it was behind her.
Orlando, To the Lighthouse, Between the Acts.
So many brilliant works. Melvin thought again of his novel, the satire of the high school writing class. Yes, moving it to the college campus was just the thing to cure it. He would get started over break. He might get started now! Before Carla got home, he might yank the manuscript from where it lay—the desk drawer in his case not proverbial but actual—and give it a good airing.

On the front porch was a cardboard box that Melvin had asked to have delivered from the storage facility where he kept three decades of papers. He was a meticulous labeler, so this was the right box.

He switched on the two lamps in the living room, the low one on the end table and the tall one in the corner. He loved the way a room looked with lamplight. No garish overheads in the Strickland household, except the kitchen and bathrooms.

You have given me the greatest possible happiness,
Virginia Woolf had written in her final note to her husband, her suicide note. Was there any greater compliment? He hoped Carla thought the same of him. He did of her.

In his bag was the paper Leslie Simmons had finally brought him, “The Use of Indirect Discourse in Virginia Woolf.” A sophisticated topic but not one that couldn’t conceivably be thought of separately by two different students. It happened.

Some mild discomfort, a squeezing in the middle of his chest. He sat down in the living room. It passed. He’d make dinner for Carla for when she got home, pour her a glass of wine. His specialty was a Bolognese sauce like the one he and Carla had on their honeymoon in the Italian Alps. His secret ingredient was chicken livers, pulsed in the food processor. Sometimes a touch of veal stock, if he had it in the freezer.

Virginia Woolf, stones in her pockets. Dinner for Carla, a bottle of Pinot Grigio, her favorite, chilled, poured into a glass just before she walked in the door.
The greatest possible happiness.

But first, the papers. He used the kitchen scissors to open the box, then removed the folder from his satchel and spread everything out on the kitchen table. If there was one thing Melvin Strickland couldn’t abide (and, truth be told, there were many, just ask Carla!), it was plagiarism.

And there it was. Clarissa Dalloway, running into Hugh Whitbread:
They had just come up—unfortunately—to see doctors. Other people came to see pictures; go to the opera; take their daughters out; the Whitbreads came “to see doctors.” Times without number Clarissa had visited Evelyn Whitbread in a nursing home. Was Evelyn sick again?
Woolf’s use of free indirect discourse here serves a dual purpose…

He could go on, he would go on, but truly he didn’t need to.
You little shit,
he thought,
you baseball-cap-wearing louse. Plagiarizing. From your own sister. You, sir, I have no use for. I am going to bring you down.

Later, after the tears and the recriminations and the reunions and the you-scared-us-to-deaths and the thank-God-you’re-okays, they did what people do in Rhode Island in times of joy or sorrow: they went to Newport Creamery.

“I still cannot believe that you used to work here,” said Angela. She said the same thing every time they came to Rhode Island.

“I didn’t work in this one,” said Nora. “The one I worked in is closed now.” Nora said that every time too. She studied the menu and felt a pinch of nostalgia for her earnest, freckled high school self, upselling from a cone to a sundae. Even then she could sell anything to anyone.

“Breakfast?” said the waitress. “Coffee?” Her accent was so perfectly Rhode Island that Nora thought about hugging her.

“Ice cream,” they all said together, and Nora said, “Five Awful Awfuls.”

“Junior, or Outrageous?”

“I don’t know if I—” said Angela, but Nora plowed right over her words. “Outrageous,” said Nora. “Definitely Outrageous.”

When the waitress had gone Nora cleared her throat and said, “Okay, then.” She took out a napkin, and a Uni-ball Vision pen from her bag. They’d arrived at Logan Airport at 5:43 that morning and by 6:20 they were in a rented car heading south on 95 toward Rhode Island. She was exhausted—they were all exhausted. But she was also in Organized Mom mode. She said, “Angela. I’ve spoken to Ms. Vogel, and she had some wonderful suggestions for other schools you might want to look at, for the regular application deadlines. With the Common Application and your recommendation letters already written it won’t take too much to pull things together. There really are some lovely schools in the East that you haven’t considered yet. Small, close-knit, wonderful liberal arts educations. Mt. Holyoke, Smith, Williams.”

Nora paused and picked up the napkin while the waitress delivered the goods.

“This is gigantic!” said Maya delightedly. “I can’t believe you’re letting me drink this.”

Cecily took up her straw with a considerable amount of glee and said, “We didn’t even have
breakfast
yet.”

Gabe nodded wisely at Nora. “Wonderful schools. Maybe we can take a look at them while we’re out here.”

“Dad,”
said Angela, and there were tiny daggers attached to the word. Nora wanted to say,
Don’t say it that way. You’re breaking his heart.

“I’m sure you know, Henrietta Faulkner didn’t get into Harvard either.”

“Believe me, I know,” said Angela. “I know.”

“I don’t think it was so much your application, specifically, as it was—” He choked on the end of the sentence and failed to get it all the way out. Nora handed him a napkin from the dispenser on the table and he covered his mouth with it and blinked rapidly.

Cecily and Maya were tucking into their Awful Awfuls, blissfully unaware, but Angela, who had pushed hers aside and was drinking water, was taking it all in, watching Gabe from over the top of her glass.

Nora wanted to say, “Do something!
Help
him! Make him feel better!” But it wasn’t her place. Angela had to come to this on her own.

“Angela,” said Gabe.

“You’re stressing her out,” said Maya around her straw.

“He’s not stressing me out. But. I’ve been thinking a lot about it and—” Here Angela took a deep breath, seemed to gather some inner strength. “And I’m not sure I want to go to college…”

Nora said,
“What?”

Gabe said,
“Huh?”

Cecily said, “I
knew
she was going to say that.”

Angela took her first sip of her Awful Awful and said, “I wasn’t done! You interrupted me, you all interrupted me.” She continued, “Let me
finish.
I was going to say I’m not sure I want to go to college
next year.
I might want to take some time, figure out where I really want to be. Take a gap year, make sure I land at the right school when it’s time.”

“Wow, hey,” said Gabe. The old Gabe would have said,
Those always turn into a gap decade.
The old Gabe would have said,
Absolutely not.

Nora said, “I don’t know…”

“I’ve already decided,” said Angela. “I’ve completely and totally decided. I thought about it a lot. I’ve been thinking about it all fall.”

“You’re valedictorian,” said Nora. “It doesn’t seem—”

Angela grimaced. “I may not be, when they recalculate. Among other things, I didn’t exactly, um, set the world on fire with my last AP English paper. I was so stressed out trying to be perfect that I almost plagiarized.”

“Excuse me?” said Nora.

Maya said, “What’s plagiarized?” When nobody answered her she shrugged and went back to her Awful Awful.

“
Ugh,
never mind, forget I said anything, I totally didn’t. But it wasn’t my best, I wrote it at the last minute and it’s a big part of our grade.”

Nora thought it was wise of Gabe not to enter the fray just then.

“But what would you
do
?” said Gabe. “To be productive?”

“I’m not just going to sit around playing
Minion Rush.
If that’s what you’re thinking.”

“I wasn’t,” said Gabe.

“That’s what
I’d
do with a gap year,” said Maya. “I love
Minion Rush.
”

“I’m going to volunteer somewhere,” Angela said.

“Not a bad idea,” said Nora thoughtfully. “I know there are lots of inner-city schools in Boston, and I bet there are some rural programs not too far—”

“Somewhere far away,” said Angela. “I’m thinking India.” Her look said,
Go ahead, challenge me. I dare you.

“India?”
said Nora.

“Absolutely not,” said Gabe.

“Or Belize,” said Angela. “But probably India. It’s the right thing for me. Mom. It’s the right thing. Daddy, I know it is.”

Across the restaurant someone dropped silverware, and closer to them the door opened and brought with it a slice of New England winter air. A baby cried. Ordinary, ordinary, all of it was very ordinary. But not to Nora. Later she would look back on that moment and say,
Yes! Right there. That’s when it happened. That’s when things began to change back to the way they were supposed to be.
Or maybe that moment actually started a day earlier, when Angela boarded a plane to Boston by herself and wrestled her demons to the ground.

Daddy.
Could you feel a person brighten from just one word? Nora thought that you could. She had been sipping at her Awful Awful the whole time. It went down even easier than a glass of Cabernet. Easy peasy lemon squeezie. It was the flavor of her youth—the flavor of full-fat, high-calorie hope and optimism. She looked down. It had happened quickly: her glass was already half empty.

Or was it half full? Corny as it was, Nora permitted herself the question.

One Year Later

“Come on, Maya,” said Nora. “We’ve got to hurry, or we’re going to be late.” Cecily was in the car already.

Sometimes Nora caught a glimpse of Maya out of the corner of her eye and thought she was looking at Angela a decade ago. Maya had grown taller and leaner over a summer spent at the beach and in an ocean discovery summer camp, which she attended when she wasn’t working with her new reading tutor to prepare for third grade. When, at the end of August, Maya came to Nora and cleared her young throat and read page one, chapter one, of
Betsy-Tacy
to her in a voice as smooth as butter, with real expression, pausing at all the right spots, Nora had to try hard not to bawl.

“It wasn’t just me,” said the tutor, shrugging modestly. “Something clicked. Things fell into place. That just takes longer for some kids than it does for others. She’ll be right on track before you know it.”

“Buckle up,” said Nora now. “Hurry, hurry.”

“I thought you weren’t in the business of hurrying us anymore,” said Cecily. Maya’s seat belt was tangled, so Cecily reached over and helped her.

“Sometimes, I am,” said Nora. “Today I am. I don’t want to be late.”

Traffic wasn’t too bad; it was early afternoon still. They’d get socked with it on the way back, though. No doubt.

Very occasionally Nora missed looking out of a car window and seeing the mountains and the valleys and the majestic Pacific, symbols, all of them, of the vastness and promise of a recently discovered world. But most of the time she felt better in the canopy of trees along Interstate 95. Even when they were bare, awaiting the first snow, as they were now. Apparently they were in for quite a winter.

“Do you think Santa is going to bring me an iPhone on Thursday?” asked Maya.

“Absolutely I don’t,” said Nora. “You’re eight years old. You just got out of your car seat. In fact, I can pretty much guarantee it.”

“
I
don’t have an iPhone,” said Cecily. “And I’m eleven.”

“It could happen,” said Maya optimistically.

More often than Nora wanted to she dreamed about the Golden Gate Bridge. Sometimes she dreamed she saw a dark shadow falling, falling over the rails. She always woke up before whoever it was hit the bottom. Sometimes she called out, but other times she woke up and lay quietly, while Gabe slept beside her and Ace, the rescue dog they’d adopted in the fall, snorted and shifted and dreamed in his bed under the window. Ace was of unknown origins—there was maybe some shepherd in there, maybe some collie, perhaps a dash of retriever, but not an ounce of Newfie. That was okay. You couldn’t go back and repeat the past, even if you tried. It was never the same.

Most Saturday mornings Nora and Marianne and sometimes their mom and usually the girls drove to the beach with giant coffees from TLC Coffee Roasters and let Ace run on the sand. Gabe came occasionally, if he wasn’t buried with work. Gabe loved being buried with work. He was working as an independent consultant, making steps toward starting his own firm in Providence. It was tough going, getting clients on his own, but when he got them, he shined. He had a new résumé—a correct résumé—and a strong letter of recommendation from the founding partners at Elpis, who cited “family reasons” as the impetus for Gabe’s departure. Joe Stone had cautioned the partners against signing the letter, but they’d gone ahead and done it anyway.

Nora had a stack of ten books on her nightstand and she had read at least two of them in the past three months. Progress! When they’d first moved to Rhode Island she’d made inquiries at a few of the real estate companies in the area, but none were hiring. That was okay too, she decided. She wasn’t sure she had it in her anymore—shining a bright light on all the corners of other people’s lives, poking around to see what was worth what. Leave that for others. (“You could always sell anything,” her mother told her. “Just pick something different to sell. I have a bird-watching friend who has a business selling—” But Nora stopped her. She wasn’t ready.)

“How much longer?” asked Maya. Nora glanced at the clock. “Thirty-five minutes,” she said. “I hope.”

The Hawthorne house in Marin had sold after two days on the market the previous summer. Nora had asked Arthur Sutton to take the listing but he had bequeathed it to Seth, who, truth be told, had done an extraordinary job with the marketing materials. They had their first offer after the open house, and then a small but vehement bidding war ensued. Sally Bentley represented the buyers, go figure, and all went smoothly, with each and every disclosure sheet filled out correctly and filed on time. Nora even disclosed things she knew nobody cared about. She disclosed the heck out of that house. When Loretta Miller filed for divorce and moved in with a woman she’d gone to college with, neither Miller had the energy to bring up Marin dwarf flax. Barry was considering selling.

There was a lovely little Irish dance school not too far away from their new house and every now and then Nora drove Cecily by and parked outside and they watched the dancers through the big glass window and Nora said, “Well?” But Cecily always shook her head. She had taken up soccer. She was a latecomer to the sport—most of the girls in the fifth grade had been playing since the tot league—but after all of those hours and days and years of Irish dancing her footwork was outstanding. She was scrappy, when she cared to be. And she was a fast learner. Her coach thought she had real promise.

“Like, college scholarship promise?” Gabe asked, and Nora had to say, “Stop!”

With their rescue dog, their gap-year-teaching-in-poverty-stricken-India daughter, their modest Rhode Island house, worth a fraction of what their house in California had been worth, you might look at them and think they’d learned to look only outward. Do unto others, and so forth.

But in fact Nora spent an inordinate amount of time going over the events of the past year in her mind, combing them for clues, or looking for some understanding. And every now and then she caught herself doing something she shouldn’t, like checking Gabe’s email. Just to see if she was missing something. Just a quick little peek. Of course she
trusted
him. But. A spouse was allowed to wonder, sometimes.

One day she spotted an email with the subject heading “Abby Freeman.” Her heart constricted.
Don’t,
Nora told herself.
This is not meant for you.
With quaking fingers, she clicked it open anyway. It was from Doug Maverick, letting Gabe know (in case he was wondering) that Abby Freeman, soon after being hired for a full-time position at Elpis, had begun sleeping with Joe Stone. Well, who was to say when it had started, really. Could have been during Abby’s internship. Doug Maverick called it “a sordid affair, really messy.” He didn’t give any other details, though Nora really wanted them. Both had been summarily dismissed once the affair was discovered (unfortunately, by Joe Stone’s wife). The whole situation was awkward, Doug noted, because typically the HR department did the letting go, but in this case…well, anyway. Doug Maverick was going to be on the East Coast just after the New Year, did Gabe want to get together in Boston? Doug had a couple of leads for projects, he’d heard great things about the work Gabe was doing…

You shouldn’t take joy in other people’s misfortunes, Nora told herself sternly. That is not the way you were raised. That’s not the way you’re raising your children, is it?
Is it?

Of course it wasn’t. She would never. But she couldn’t help it. She smiled, and it felt good.

They pulled into the international terminal at Logan and Nora began scouring the area for a parking spot.

Three wishes, Genie.

Bring her back to me.

Bring her back to Gabe.

Go back to the beginning and start again.

The emails were first addressed only to Nora but as time went on she noticed they were addressed to Gabe too and they got more colorful and descriptive the longer Angela stayed away. This may or may not have had something to do with the fact that Gabe had handwritten Angela a long letter in October. Nora didn’t know what the letter said, although of course she was
dying
to read it. (It was much more difficult to spy on communication that wasn’t electronic. Unfortunately.)

Angela was teaching in a school for the disabled. India was hot and dusty and beautiful and destitute and terrifying and loud and bright and wonderful and overflowing with life—it was like no place she’d ever seen. A majority of the children at the school had prosthetic limbs. Most of them were so full of love and joy that Angela couldn’t believe it. Given their circumstances. Given any circumstances! Angela had learned to make chutney and to eat
paneer parathas
and
aloo tikki.
And
dal.
Lots of
dal.
Angela sent a photo of herself in a sari; a photo of herself on an overnight trip to the Taj Mahal, the building rising like a great white ghost behind her; a photo of herself touching an elephant’s trunk; a photo of herself with her arm around a tiny Indian girl named Sakshi who looked seven but was apparently twelve. Sakshi’s eyes were
ridiculously
enormous.

“Moon eyes,” said Gabe wistfully, looking at the photo.

In November, Angela emailed and wanted to know if her friend Owen from England could come home with her for Christmas. He taught at the same school.

“Of
course,
” wrote back Nora immediately.

“Where will they sleep?” asked Maya now, as they all squinted at the arrivals board in the international terminal.

“Remember?” said Cecily. “You’re sleeping in with me, and Angela gets your room. Owen gets the guest room. You’d better not sleepwalk, you know that freaks me out.”

“I don’t sleepwalk anymore,” said Maya.

Nora and the girls found the gate and positioned themselves where they had a good view of the passengers. Four hours from New Delhi to Dubai, then a six-hour layover, then fourteen and a half hours to Boston. They would be exhausted. She checked her phone again; Gabe was coming from a meeting in Boston, and he wasn’t sure if he’d make it in time. Nothing yet.

“I see her!” said Cecily, craning her neck. “I
see
her!”

Nora might not have recognized her own daughter if Cecily hadn’t pointed her out first. Her hair was pulled back loosely. She had more color in her face than she’d ever had before. She was wearing some sort of complicated cottony number. The planes of her face had softened significantly. And—here was the unfamiliar part—she was glowing. She was positively
glowing.

“Oooooh,” said Maya. “Look at Angela’s
boyfriend.
They’re holding
hands.
” She bounced up and down on her toes.

They drew closer. Owen was tall and thin and
British
looking, with a serious expression and Harry Potter glasses and an adorable flop of dark hair. As Nora watched he bent down to Angela and said something in her ear and she smiled and pushed against his arm and lingered there in the way you would do only if you were, for lack of a better word,
intimate
with somebody.

Oh!
thought Nora. Oh. Oh my. She recalculated. Of course, they were young and in love, of course there was
sex,
but she hadn’t expected…well, she didn’t know how to explain it.

She guessed, when you got down to brass tacks, she hadn’t expected to feel like she’d gotten her daughter back and lost her all in the same afternoon.

“Daddy!” cried Maya, and here came Gabe, bounding toward them, his computer bag banging against his hip, his cell phone in his hand.

“Am I too late?” He looked nervous, like a child about to go up and give an oral report in school.

“No,” said Nora. She reached for his arm, pulled him toward the little cluster of Hawthornes. “No, you’re not too late at all. You are perfect. You are exactly on time.”