“Oh right, but anyway, I think he’s living at home and plays video games all day. I don’t even know if he graduated. They never talk about him,” Nancy said, lowering her voice as if she were describing a young man with some ghastly disease. “Kelly, why aren’t you using the PAM? And why even bother with a school like that? What a waste.” Her mother broke off a tiny corner of a cracker and touched it ever so slightly to the fig spread before taking a nibble. “Did Elizabeth tell you Tanner has four job offers for when he graduates in the spring? I think he’s narrowed it down to UBS and a hot tech start-up. Kelly, why are you putting so much butter in the potatoes?” Nancy paused to take a large sip of wine. “And I’m sure you heard Taggart has an internship at Google in New York this summer?”
Kelly added another large dollop of butter to the potatoes. Why did her mother feel the need to update her about her own goddamn nephews? But then again, her mother seemed mystified that Seattle had running water and was still befuddled by the three-hour time difference despite Kelly having lived on the West Coast for thirty years.
“It’s really too bad Krissie isn’t being recruited for a sport like Tanner and Taggart. Did your admissions people give you a sense of how many students Stanford is going to take?” her mother asked, wrinkling her nose at the mere mention of Stanford, even though it had surpassed Harvard as the most selective school in the country years ago. “Kelly, aren’t you going to zest that lemon for the green beans?”
“We’re not sure.” The last thing Kelly wanted was for her mother to know Stanford was only taking one more EBA student. They’d eviscerate her for throwing away Krissie’s early admission opportunity on Stanford when she could have also played a legacy card at Harvard. But to Kelly’s relief (and amazement), Krissie hadn’t been interested in Harvard.
“I met a man on the plane who works for Amazon. He said their recruiters are using a drop-down menu of fifteen top colleges to screen job applicants. Kelly, you should get ahold of that list,” Nancy said, refilling her wineglass again. “I’m sure Stanford’s on it, but you should cross-check it with Krissie’s backup schools. You don’t want her to pick the wrong school and not be able to get a job when she graduates.”
“I’ll be sure to track it down.” Kelly pasted on a smile and slathered a cracker with fig jam and a hunk of goat cheese.
Nancy recoiled as Kelly shoved the entire cracker into her mouth. “What schools is Krissie looking at out east?”
“You know, Mom, EBA says students are deserving of their privacy when it comes to college, so they ask us not to talk about our kids’ lists,” Kelly said, completely exasperated. “It’s up to each student what they want to share. Maybe you should talk to Krissie yourself.” Kelly left her mom alone in the kitchen and headed upstairs for a moment of peace. That morning, Kelly’s mother had actually followed her into the bathroom to finish telling her about the SAT score of her manicurist’s daughter.
All in all, by the time Kelly and her family had filled their plates and taken their seats around the holiday table, Kelly was bone-tired and more than a little ticked off that nobody had offered to help her. This was not at all what she’d signed up for. Surveying her modest, adequately decorated table, sprinkled with the pine cones and twigs her nephews had gathered from the backyard, she tried not to think about what Diana Taylor’s “tablescape,” as she referred to it, would look like on actual Thanksgiving Day in her stately dining room overlooking Lake Washington and the Cascade Mountains.
With minimal ceremony, Kelly’s father announced, “This looks great. Let’s eat.” But before he could complete his first fork-to-mouth delivery, five-year-old Jake shrieked, “Stop! Grandpa Marty, stop!” And then, in his best imitation of a disappointed adult, he said, “Silly Grandpa. Don’t you remember about silent grace?”
The entire family stopped and stared at Simon and Monica. Grace, silent or otherwise, was not and never had been part of their Thanksgiving family tradition. Monica tried to wave off her young son with a subtle head shake and a frantic “It’s OK, honey,” but Jake was not to be deterred. They had to do silent grace.
After a crummy day, Kelly felt herself buoyed as her latent mischievous big-sister streak rose from the ashes. She sent a sideways smirk toward Simon and then turned to her nephew. “Why, Jakey, I don’t think we’ve ever done silent grace before. Can you show us how?”
Simon tried to muffle a groan with his napkin.
Jake nodded his head. “First we all hold hands like this,” he said, grabbing ahold of his neighbors’ hands. “Then we all put our heads down like this and say thank you to God for our food. But not out loud. You say it silent.”
Kelly shot all her kids a silent glare, distinguishable from a silent prayer by its ominous tinge, as they all clasped hands around the table and waited until Monica broke the silence with a breezy thank-you to Jake.
Grandpa Marty raised an eyebrow toward his own son as if expecting an explanation, and a good one at that, but Simon ignored his father’s entreaty. Grandpa Marty promptly resumed his turkey-destroying mission. He was a serious and focused eater.
Grandma Nancy never could resist a controversy though. So she posed the question that was on everyone else’s mind. “What in the world was that all about? We don’t say grace!”
Simon tilted his head toward Monica, begging for a rescue. But it was Jake who answered his grandma’s question. “Grandma, we’re Quakers now,” he proclaimed.
Kelly choked on her pinot noir and watched in slow-motion horror as it sprayed out of her mouth first and then her nostrils (and, was it possible, even her eyeballs?) onto the white tablecloth in front of her.
“Gross, Mom!” Katherine said.
Kelly noted her middle child’s mortified expression, saw a vision of Quaker Oatmeal cylindrical boxes, and burst into hysterical laughter. When she came up for air, she peeked over at Simon. He hadn’t looked this uncomfortable since that time in high school when she’d barged into his bedroom and interrupted a tube-sock moment. “Well, Si, care to enlighten us?” Kelly sputtered.
“Quakers? Quakers?” Nancy repeated. “What on earth?”
Monica sat up a little straighter in her chair. The whole family was agape. “We might as well tell you. Our family has made the decision to convert to Quakerism.”
“Yes, so we’ve heard,” Kelly’s mom said, a glazed look in her eyes. “But I don’t understand.”
“What are you talking about? That’s ridiculous.” Grandpa Marty waved his fork through the air, uncomfortably close to Kaleb’s head.
Monica cleared her throat. “Well—”
“It’s so I can go to the friendly school!” Jake piped in.
“What’s the friendly school, Jakey?” Kelly coaxed.
“It’s the school I went to play at one day. I want to go there again cuz the playground’s so fun, but Mommy says the kids who get to play there are Quakers. So now we’re Quakers, so maybe I can go there, and then after that, Mommy says I can go to a good college like Hanford.”
“It’s called Harvard, Jake. Not Hanford. Remember?” Monica snapped at her son.
Jake’s bottom lip quivered. “Sorry, Mommy. I always forget.”
Kelly watched as the puzzle pieces she’d already put together in her mind snapped into place for the others around the table. Simon had called Kelly last spring to confide that Jake had been rejected for prekindergarten at the prestigious Oakley Friends School, a private school rooted in the Quaker tradition. Monica was of the belief that the only road from DC to Harvard went through Oakley Friends and had been more enraged than Simon thought possible. Apparently, she feared Jake’s rejection would damage not only his future but his younger brother’s as well. At the time, Simon had told Kelly they intended to have Jake reapply for kindergarten. Monica had evidently decided to leave nothing to chance this time around.
“Wait, are you saying you guys actually swi
tched religions to get your kids into kindergarten?” Krissie’s mouth hung open. “Wow. And I thought my mom was obsessed.”
“Easy, Krissie,” Simon said, cocking his head toward the mini provocateur of the Thanksgiving table. “And anyway, it’s not just kindergarten. It’s entry into the best school in the mid-Atlantic.”
“That’s messed up.” Kaleb threw some side-eye at his uncle as he scooped another helping of mashed potatoes onto his plate.
“Look, you have to do whatever it takes these days to get a leg up on the competition,” Monica said. “I won’t apologize for being a conscientious mom.”
“Monica, do not apologize,” Grandma Nancy said. “I think it’s genius. Pure genius. Reminds me of when Elizabeth—anonymously, of course—ratted out that cheater who was higher on the Harvard tennis recruiting list than Taggart. Of course, one can never be sure, but we always suspected that was why Taggart got off the waiting list.”
“Are you kidding me? I never heard that story,” Kelly said, incredulous.
As the conversation meandered through the next hour of the not-quite-holiday dinner, Kelly pondered the constantly shifting line between conscientious and outright nutcase. If her mom, her sister the snitch, and the Quaker fakers at her table were any indication, Kelly had substantial room to maneuver without tumbling over the precipice.
After she loaded the last dishes into the dishwasher, Kelly quietly stole upstairs. For some reason, she’d been unable to throw away the disposable phone she’d used last month to text the made-up rumor about Winnie’s college plans, instead hiding it in her sexy-time lingerie drawer. No doubt the least-frequented place these days in their entire house, so she’d been confident no one would stumble across it.
As Kelly powered up the phone, she mulled over the salacious nugget from Maren’s past she’d uncovered in the background check she’d invested in a few weeks earlier. She hadn’t for the life of her been able to figure out how to use it to Winnie’s Stanford detriment. Brooke was another story altogether. Kelly had the goods on her, but she kept holding back from going after her directly because Alicia was so damn powerful. But what kind of mom was Kelly if she didn’t have the backbone to go all out for her daughter? Admission decisions were less than three weeks away; it was now or never. Kelly punched in the phone number she’d committed to memory. At the sound of the beep, she spoke in the deepest voice she could muster and anonymously reported to the Stanford Admissions Office the fraudulent essays submitted by one Brooke Stone of Elliott Bay Academy.
28
Maren
The flight attendant set down the elaborate celebrity-chef-created meals on their linen-lined tray tables. Maren could still scarcely believe they were sitting in first class on a plane to San Francisco, complete with spacious seats, bowls of nuts fresh from the oven, and free cocktails served in heavy-base lowball glasses. “Don’t get too used to this,” Maren said to Winnie.
Winnie grinned from ear to ear in response, unable to speak with her cheeks stuffed full of gourmet chocolate.
Their packed Thanksgiving weekend itinerary was even more mind-blowing. Tonight: check into a five-star Palo Alto hotel. Tomorrow: guided tour of Stanford. Thursday afternoon: Winnie’s solo visit to the Alders’ home in Berkeley to meet her half sister Olivia and Chase’s father, who had already sent an email to Maren expressing his eagerness to meet Winnie. Thursday evening: Thanksgiving buffet dinner for Maren and Winnie in the hotel restaurant. The Alders had invited them to join their family Thanksgiving dinner, but that was a “hell no” for Maren. Then, on Friday morning, Winnie would check in to the children’s hospital where Eli was currently getting slammed with chemo to prepare for his transplant of the stem cells the doctors would extract from deep inside Winnie’s bones. If all went smoothly, Maren and Winnie would be home by Sunday evening, and no one in Seattle would ever know the details of their excursion, which would surely top the list of most bizarre college visit weekends in history. Eli’s fate would take longer to determine.
The Stones were spending Thanksgiving week in Telluride, so Alicia had reluctantly acquiesced when Maren asked for time off to take Winnie camping on the Washington coast. Normally, Maren would be busy over the long holiday weekend taking care of Cardinal and her eight additional canine clients around town, but a young tech at Cardinal’s vet was thrilled to step in for Maren and earn a little extra money. And Maren’s industrious daughter had taken it upon herself to send Naomi a spreadsheet detailing the financial hit they would take by leaving town. Naomi had responded with a Venmo payment three times the quoted amount.
Maren’s leg jiggled. For most of her life, whenever she’d let down her guard, she’d ended up regretting it. Worrying had become part of her armor, like a garlic necklace to ward off the evil spirits. It was exhausting living this way, but she couldn’t seem to stop. What if something went wrong with the procedure? Had she asked the doctors enough questions?
Due to Winnie’s acute epidural hematoma only a month earlier, the doctors were reluctant to use a more current stem cell harvesting procedure that involved repeated but relatively painless blood draws. As it was explained to Maren and Winnie by the pediatric oncologists, there was a slim but real risk to Winnie’s recovering brain associated with possible changes in pressure with that procedure. However, given the gravity of Eli’s condition, they offered Winnie the alternative of using an older surgical method for collection involving dozens of bone marrow aspirations in her pelvic bones. Winnie would need to be under general anesthesia for the brief procedure. The doctors said her lower back would be sore for a few days, but as long as there were no complications, Winnie would be back at the hotel by dinnertime the same day.
Maren had once again pressed Winnie to consider calling off the stem cell donation; the thought of Winnie enduring the more painful procedure for Chase’s benefit was almost more than Maren could bear. She had even urged Winnie to think about whether her schoolwork might suffer, thus jeopardizing her grades for this all-important senior fall. But Winnie would have none of it. She worked ahead in all her classes just in case and insisted she could handle a little discomfort to save someone’s life. So the plans had moved forward, with Maren equal parts proud of her brave daughter and terrified.
Maren shook her head in disbelief at the current state of her life. Before the blood test, she had sworn to support whatever decision Winnie made. Once they’d learned Winnie was a near-perfect match to Eli, Winnie was determined to go through with the stem cell harvest. It wasn’t like Maren wished the poor little boy would die. She was damaged, for sure, but her heart still had a warm beating center even if it was encased in a protective shell. Selfishly, though, Maren had hoped a negative match would end their association with the Alders before they could sink their teeth into Winnie and form an independent relationship with her. Maren wanted desperately to hate them all. But if she was having trouble sustaining such feelings after what Chase had done to her, then what were the chances Winnie would remain immune to their considerable charms?
* * *
On Wednesday morning, Maren and Winnie awoke to a basket from the Alders delivered to their hotel room filled with fruit, chocolate, popcorn, directions to everything, and gift cards to nearby coffee shops and restaurants. Maren and Winnie used one of the cards to devour a locavore breakfast at a diner near the Stanford campus. The Stanford tour, delivered by an enthusiastic, backward-walking, lightning-fast-talking sophomore, reconfirmed for Winnie that this was where she hoped to spend the next four years. Even Maren had to admit it seemed perfect. Great weather, Nobel laureate professors, a beautiful, fountain-filled campus.
As she lay in bed in the dark late that night, Maren watched the peacefully sleeping form of her exhausted daughter in the bed opposite hers. Her logical brain was pleased she’d submitted Winnie’s application in the wake of the accident, and she hoped for Winnie’s sake she would be admitted. But there was something about t
hat place with its shiny facade and laid-back vibe that screamed fake to Maren, as though underneath all the practiced smiles, there existed a seething underbelly of competition and privilege, much like EBA. Perhaps it just appeared to Maren more country club than institute of higher learning? Anyway, there were no guarantees Winnie would get in.
But what if she did? This was no longer a theoretical question. A flood of adrenaline washed through Maren’s irrational brain and swept into every corner of the hotel room, forcing all hope of sleep out the door. Early admissions decision day was only two weeks away. Even covered in the luxurious warmth of the hotel’s silky down duvet, Maren’s entire body shivered. If Winnie won the spot, would a competitor target her as a scapegoat for their own disappointment? Or might they catch a break at long last, with the madness of this fall finally lifting once decisions were delivered and outcomes settled? Maren tried to quell her anxiety with a deep belly breathing exercise, to no avail. All she wanted was for Winnie to realize her dreams, but as decision day crept closer, so did a familiar sense of dread—and a vexing awareness that there had to be more to the picture than she was currently able to see.
* * *
Maren had done everything she could think of to pass the time while Winnie spent Thanksgiving afternoon at the Alders’. She took a walk through downtown Palo Alto, window-shopped at the local bookstore, sipped coffee, and even went for a swim in the hotel pool. As she toweled off after her shower, she wondered for the hundredth time how the visit was going. It was a peculiar, deeply aching kind of loneliness for Maren, knowing Winnie was off meeting new family members to whom Maren would never feel connected. She thought this must be how divorced parents felt when their kids went off to celebrate holidays with their ex’s family, only about ten thousand times more alienating.
At five p.m., Winnie’s card key finally unlocked the door, and she burst in, her eyes bright with excitement. “Oh my God, my half sister, Olivia, is so incredibly cute. She looks just like pictures of me when I was her age. That sounds kind of obnoxious, huh?” She laughed at herself as she did a full body flop onto her beautifully made bed. “I must have seemed familiar to her, too, because she took one look at me and decided I was her new best friend. She sat in my lap or held my hand the entire time.” She turned onto her side to face Maren’s bed. “She was so sweet, but she misses Eli, and every five minutes, she would tell me how she can’t wait to play doggie—that’s their favorite make-believe game—with him when he gets home from the hospital. It was so sad. Every time Olivia talked about Eli, Naomi would go into the other room for a minute, I think to try to stop crying.”
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