Jane Austen in Scarsdale

by Paula Marantz Cohen

  It was typical of her father to sidestep responsibility this way. He had squandered the family fortune—which is to say, Winnie’s money—on his club memberships, bespoke suits, round-the-world cruises, and investments in dubious business ventures: a line of bow ties with club and college insignias; a line of personally engraved fountain pens; a line of handcrafted billiard balls—all “class ventures,” as he put it, that had failed miserably. More distressing was his apparent disregard of what Winnie, who had lived in the house for sixty years, would do once it was sold.

  After watching her father drive away in his Jaguar, Anne went inside to look for her grandmother. She had delayed telling her about the need to sell the house, but she could hardly put this off any longer; there were decisions that had to be made about where Winnie would live. This, she knew, should preoccupy her above all else, but the news of Ben Cutler’s appearance in the area had distracted her. Now she tried to banish the thought of him from her mind.

  She found her grandmother in her bedroom. It was a room Anne imagined that Jackie Kennedy might have inhabited— large and airy with green flocked wallpaper and a few tasteful, expensive pieces of furniture picked up long ago with the help of some top designer, now deceased. There had been a time when Winnie was as close to Westchester royalty as one could get, and it saddened Anne to think how things had changed. Not only was there no money left, but all the people who had admired her grandmother—that once large and glittering social circle—were gone too.

  Winnie was sitting in an armchair reading a book. When she saw Anne, she reached out a very thin but still surprisingly strong arm and clasped Anne’s hand in hers. Anne felt her grandmother’s love pass through her.

  “Edna St. Vincent Millay,” said Winnie, letting Anne’s hand go and holding up the book for inspection. “I thought I ought to look her over again before reading the new biography they reviewed in the Times a while back. I knew her, you know. A difficult woman, not very nice, but interesting.”

  Anne gave a strained smile. She was pleased to see that her grandmother was her usual cantankerous self.

  “You look like something’s on your mind, dear,” said Winnie, putting aside the book.

  Anne realized that she was almost glad that the news about the house made it possible to avoid any mention of Ben Cutler. “I’ve had to put the house on the market, Gram,” she announced simply.

  “I see,” said Winnie, nodding. “Don’t worry. Things will work out.”

  “Perhaps you could move in with Allegra.” It had occurred to Anne that this might be a solution. With a bit of reorganizing (the reclamation of Zack’s study, for example), Winnie could have her own bedroom.

  But her grandmother merely snorted at the suggestion. “It’s out of the question!” she declared derisively. “Your sister would be unwilling to have me, and I would be unwilling to be had!”

  Winnie had long ago placed Allegra in the same category as their father. “The two deserve each other,” she often noted. “They’re both impossibly selfish, vain people. Selfish and vain aren’t bad in their place, especially if there’s a degree of wit involved. But those two are wanting in that department. I can’t say that I don’t have a certain affection for your sister, who does have some of my blood in her veins—though I suspect it’s been diluted to a point where it’s more like Mercurochrome. As for your father, I don’t think he has anything resembling blood; if you cut him, he’d probably bleed cologne, though only private label, mind you.”

  “But what will you do?” Anne asked.

  “I’ll go into one of those senior facilities.”

  “But you hate those places! You’ve always said so!” There had been a time when Anne had urged her grandmother to spend a few hours a day at one of the Westchester senior centers, but Winnie had rejected the idea out of hand. “Old people babbling about their grandchildren and great-grandchildren!” she had scoffed.

  “I’m sorry about the absence of great-grandchildren,” Anne had responded, “but you could babble about me.”

  “I don’t need to babble about you. I can talk to you, which is what most of those poor souls never get to do.”

  “You wouldn’t set foot in one of those places before”— Anne spoke accusingly now—“and you’re saying you want to live there?”

  Winnie shrugged, obviously not inclined to defend her change of mind.

  “You know you can always move in with me. IKEA has some nice futons that I wouldn’t mind sleeping on.”

  Winnie sniffed. “That will be the day when I make my granddaughter sleep on an IKEA futon. But we have plenty of time to plan my future. Maybe I’ll enroll at NYU and get one of those cut-rate dorm rooms in the Village.”

  Anne laughed. She could actually see Winnie in a dorm, chattering the night away with a bunch of undergraduates.

  “Or I’ll find a rich man to take me under his wing. Too bad Mort Feinberg died last year. Had I known he would die so soon, I might have taken him up on his offer.”

  “Gram!”

  “What? I’m only being honest. Marriage is a gamble. If we knew certain things in advance—like how long someone would live—it would make things much easier. As it is, since we don’t know, it’s a wonder anyone gets married at all.”

  Anne was quiet a moment, then observed: “You and Grandpa worked out well enough, and you barely knew each other before you married.”

  “That’s true. But he came highly recommended by my parents. In those days, we put great stock in that sort of thing. Not that it was any guarantee. Look at your mother. Elihu seemed like a good enough match, but thank God Franny never lived long enough to realize what an insufferable fool he was.”

  Winnie’s capacity to cut to the quick of things—even when the quick was disturbing or embarrassing—never ceased to amaze Anne.

  “As I said, marriage is always a risk,” continued Winnie, “and sometimes you have to shut your eyes and jump.” Then, realizing that she had touched on a sensitive point regarding her granddaughter’s past, she changed the subject abruptly. “I’m glad to report that you didn’t miss anything on General Hospital today. I was hoping we might find out who the baby’s father was, but I think they’ll drag that out for another month. I’d rather hear about your day anyway—it’s better than a soap opera. What’s become of the boy who carried you down the hall on his shoulder? He sounded like a lively fellow.” This was a reference to Joey Pelosi, who had performed this feat in a Superman cape on a dare from his basketball buddies. “And how’s the little girl who’s always crying that the teachers hate her? Reminds me of how my friend Sarah Rosenthal used to carry on. Her father was off making crooked real-estate deals and her mother was too busy drinking everything in the liquor cabinet to notice her, poor thing. But such a crybaby—used to drive me mad with her incessant boo-hooing.”

  Forgetting momentarily about Ben Cutler and their dire financial straits, Anne began to laugh. There was no denying that Winnie Mazur, even at eighty-seven years old, was excellent company.

  CHAPTER NINE

  WHEN ANNE ARRIVED AT SCHOOL THE NEXT DAY, A YOUNG MAN, dressed all in black, was sprawled in one of the guidance rocking chairs. Anne recognized him as the speaker who had whipped the parents into a frenzy during Back to School Night. Now, fortunately, he appeared mellower—perhaps he was back on his Ritalin.

  “I’m Curtis Fink,” said the young man, giving Anne an appreciative once-over. “I’m here on behalf of Trevor Hopgood.” Had Anne not known better, she might have thought that Trevor had committed a felony and that this man had been retained to defend him.

  “I’m afraid I don’t have time—”

  “It’ll only take a minute.” Curtis Fink unfolded himself from the rocking chair and sidled up to her as she walked into her office. “I wish all the guidance counselors were as foxy as you are,” he drawled.

  “Flattery will get you nowhere,” said Anne, giving the young man an amused look. Curtis Fink, despite his success as an Ivy packager, ha
d the kind of pleasant, wrongheaded air characteristic of many of her male students—which made it hard for her to be angry with him. She had had the same response to Joey Pelosi when, as she had described to Winnie, he had thrown her over his shoulder and run with her down C Hall, dressed as Superman. Mr. Tortoni, the assistant principal, had wanted to suspend him, but Anne had interceded and gotten this reduced to three Saturday detentions and a community service.

  “I don’t think Trevor should apply to Williams,” Anne asserted succinctly once Curtis Fink had taken a seat in her office. ‘I don’t think he can get in.”

  “But there,you’re wrong!” Fink declared confidently “He’s a third-generation legacy, his father is a generous donor, and he has excellent SAT scores. What more could you want?”

  “How about good grades?”

  “A minor glitch,” pronounced Fink. “We can spin bad grades.”

  “And how, pray tell, do you spin bad grades?”

  “Simple. Our research shows that underachievers with a unique hobby or interest are currently a desirable commodity at elite schools.”

  “But Trevor doesn’t have a unique hobby or interest.”

  “Not yet, but he will!” said Fink cheerfully. “So far, we haven’t found a taste for Thomas Pynchon or Gregorian chants, but our field research shows that he listens to the Grateful Dead, and we’re hoping to package him as a Deadhead apres la lettre. We did it last year with a kid who liked Bob Dylan—titled his college essay, ‘It Ain’t Me Babe—Get Off My Case, Mom and Dad,’ and made it a modulated rant about how he wouldn’t buckle to parental pressure, had his own agenda, wanted to find his own voice, yada yada yada yada. The colleges ate it up. That kid’s grades were worse than Trevor’s, and we got him into Tufts.” Fink delivered this exposition glibly and then gave Anne a moon-eyed look: “Do you have a boyfriend?”

  Anne ignored the question. “Are you saying that a taste for the Grateful Dead can cancel Trevor’s bad grades?”

  “Absolutely!” declared Fink. “If anything, the bad grades can work in his favor. Schools want diversity. Word gets out at some college that everyone is always in the library, no one gets drunk or blows off classes, and, hey, soon no one wants to go. That’s what happened to the U of Chicago. We’re working with them now. The goal is to get some frat boys in to trash some of the dorm rooms, maybe some slackers to fall asleep in class. You don’t want everyone to look too wide awake. Turn it into the new party school: the Duke of the Midwest.”

  “Has Trevor decided to apply to the University of Chicago?”

  “No,” said Fink. “The dad wants Williams; that’ll take more legwork, but we’re optimistic. Once we get this kid on paper, you won’t recognize him.”

  “But isn’t the point to relay the real Trevor?”

  “Real? What’s real?” queried Fink, as though this knotty metaphysical question posed no problem for him. “Our job is to pitch these kids so the colleges think they’re hot stuff. Say he spends the summer working as a junior counselor and one of the campers wets the bed?—that’s ‘experience with troubled youth.’ A shlepper at the local rec center?—’an internship in sports management.’ Mows the lawn?—’work in landscape architecture.’ You get the idea.”

  “It seems dishonest,” noted Anne.

  “Not at all,” protested Fink. “It’s marketing.”

  “Do you have an MBA?”

  “No way. I was an English major. I learned how to bullshit writing term papers.” Fink veered off. “Do you want to go out?” He stared at her soulfully.

  “No,” said Anne curtly.

  “That’s cool,” said Fink.

  “It wouldn’t be professional,” Anne added more gently. “Hey, no problem,” said Fink, as if her rejection was all in a day’s work. “Where were we?” “Trevor Hopgood.”

  “Right. Just remember the sound bite: ‘marches to the beat of a different drummer.’ Try to use it in your reference letter. If you want, we’ll take care of the letter for you. Some of the guidance counselors appreciate the work we can save them.”

  Anne looked annoyed. Fink might have a daffy charm, but what he proposed was flagrantly unethical. She stood up. “I can write my own letter and come up with my own sound bite, thank you.”

  “OK, OK,” said Fink, “don’t shoot me. But don’t shoot the poor kid’s chances at Williams either. You may be beautiful, but you don’t look heartless.”

  “Good-bye, Mr. Fink.” Anne gestured toward the door.

  “Strong principles. Very good. But you might have to tangle with the dad. He isn’t pretty.”

  “I’ll manage.”

  “Tough lady, more power to you,” said Fink, giving her a thumbs-up. “I’ll be in touch.” “Please don’t,” said Anne.

  CHAPTER TEN

  AFTER CURTIS FINK LEFT, ANNE HAD TREVOR HOPGOOD CALLED out of his sixth-period study hall and told to report to the guidance office. Trevor was the least consulted party in this case, though his life happened to be at issue. This struck Anne as sad. Why couldn’t parents love their kids for who they were and not for who they wanted them to be? Trevor’s father—like her own—was a particularly egregious example of this mistake, yet all parents were guilty of it to some degree. It was the dark paradox of parental love—that it came tangled up with oppression and disappointment.

  “So what are your thoughts about college?” she asked after Trevor had shuffled into her office and seated himself morosely in the chair opposite her desk.

  He scowled and said nothing.

  “I’ve spoken to your parents and your college consultant,” Anne continued in a soothing voice, “but I really wanted to talk to you.”

  “Why?” asked Trevor glumly.

  “You’re a senior, and you need to start work on your applications.”

  “That guy is taking care of everything,” muttered Trevor. “Taking care?”

  “He’s doing my Williams application.”

  “Trevor”—Anne sighed—“you know it’s not right to have someone else do your college applications for you.”

  “Everyone does it.” “That’s not true.” “According to that guy, it is.”

  “It’s still wrong. I know you have the moral sense to realize that,” said Anne, changing direction. It had been her experience that most adolescents did have a feeble moral sense that was definitively killed off only later in life.

  “I don’t like having him do my application,” mumbled Trevor, supporting this supposition, “but nobody asked me.”

  “Why do you need to be asked?” asked Anne sternly. “Why don’t you tell them?”

  “Yeah, right!” Trevor sneered.

  “You think they wouldn’t listen?”

  “I know they wouldn’t listen.”

  “Well . . .” Anne considered this for a moment. “I’ll listen. Why don’t you talk to me?” She waited, leaning forward slightly, but Trevor remained silent.

  “So what are you interested in?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Yeah. I hate everything.”

  “O-K,” said Anne. She had heard kids speak this way before and knew not to take it too seriously. No doubt they did hate everything at the moment, though in an hour they might like quite a few things.

  “Hating everything is a start,” she noted. “You’re stating a position, even if it is a negative one. Which is good. And hating everything has the advantage of leaving your options open. Which makes you an especially good candidate for a liberal arts college like Williams.” She threw this out.

  Trevor grimaced. “I don’t want to go to Williams!”

  “You don’t?”

  “No! Williams reminds me of Fenimore. I hate Fenimore!”

  Having already announced that he hated everything, Trevor had forfeited some credibility here. Still, Anne thought, he had a point. If you didn’t like the bucolic affluence of the Westchester suburbs, why would you want to spend four years in the bucolic affluence of William
s College?

  “OK, then.” Anne nodded. “Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to give you a list of schools that are all very different but which have a wide range of offerings and which I think you’d have a good chance of getting into. I want you to read about them on the Internet and see if any of them appeal to you.”

  Trevor shifted uneasily in his seat. “My father will kill me if I don’t apply to Williams.” “I doubt that,” said Anne. “You don’t know my dad.”

  Anne didn’t say that she had a pretty good idea. Instead she said, “I know you’re young to have to counter a man like your father—who of course wants only the best for you—but you need to have a say in this. After all, it’s your life.”

  “But it’s his money,” noted Trevor, realistically.

  “True, but if your father refused to pay, you could always declare yourself independent and apply for financial aid on your own.”

  “I could?”

  “Yes. It’s a drastic step, but it could be done.”

  “Neat,” said Trevor, perking up a bit. He paused, ruminating on the idea for a moment. “I could just tell my dad I’m going to do that. It would probably be just as good.”

  “I suppose . . .”

  “He wouldn’t want people to think I would do something like that. He might let me do what I want just to keep from being embarrassed.”

  “I don’t know . . .” said Anne warily.

  “It would be like blackmail,” Trevor concluded.

  Anne coughed. “I wish you wouldn’t use that terminology. It makes me nervous.”

  “Hey, I don’t have to tell him I’m blackmailing him; I just have to do it.”