Jane Austen in Scarsdale

by Paula Marantz Cohen

  “We’ll talk more in a few days.”

  “Blackmailing my dad—that would be way cool!” exclaimed Trevor as he left the office, looking much more cheerful than when he came in.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “ ‘I HAVE ALWAYS HAD A GREAT INTEREST IN THE SCIENCE OF GOVERNANCE, and Georgetown University would allow me to study this fascinating subject with which I am so enthused, while observing the political process firsthand in our nation’s capital. The university also has a beautiful campus with a fascinating atmosphere that I think would further enrich my education and add greatly to my development as a person.’

  “I used ‘fascinating’ twice,” said Felicia Desiderio after reading this paragraph of her college application essay aloud to Anne. The essay went on for another page and a half, but Anne had asked her to stop. She got the idea.

  “Sometimes it’s better not to use so many adjectives,” said Anne, not knowing where to begin.

  “I know it’s awful,” groaned Felicia, who had followed Trevor as Anne’s last appointment of the day. This was the third rewrite of her essay, and it was, Anne thought, as awful as ever.

  Most students wrote awful essays—whipping out their thesaurus to expound windily about aspirations and goals, lifelong friendships, and the joys of learning that the particular institution (changed for each application) would uniquely fulfill. The sample essay that had been distributed by one of the educational testing services had been awful as well: It explained how the student’s experience climbing a mountain had brought into view the academic, social, civic, and economic heights to be scaled in the years ahead. The essay, which had hammered out this stultifying metaphor with as many big words as could be crammed into the smallest possible space, had come with a tag line saying the student who wrote it had gotten into Harvard, Dartmouth, and Cornell—proof that an awful essay might not be an impediment to admission to a top college.

  Indeed, if Felicia Desiderio had received a perfect score on the SATs or been a nationally ranked soccer player, her awful essay would in no way count against her. If, for that matter, she had received a presidential citation for her work helping an indigenous people reform their voting practices or spent her summers in Washington solving the budget deficit, an awful essay might also have been overlooked. But Felicia had nothing of that dramatic order to show for herself. Her extracurricular activities were of a sustained, unglamorous sort. She was a fixture at Fenimore town council meetings, where she could be counted on to have a copy of Roberts Rules of Order at the ready and know the names of all the minor officials in local government that no one else knew. She was a longtime intern for the League of Women Voters, prized for her ability to cajole the area’s nursing home residents to forgo bingo and get out and vote. She was also the chair (and sole member) of the Fenimore High School Elections Committee, arranging for students to vote for class officers in Mr. Tortoni’s office and not, as had previously been done, in their homerooms (where teachers, preoccupied with taking roll and giving bathroom passes, had been unable to prevent rampant bullying and ballot-box stuffing).

  Felicia had also deployed her mathematical abilities (which were thankfully greater than her expository ones) to civic ends: She had devised a program to predict, within a two-day margin of error, when Fenster would give a pop quiz, and she had conducted a survey, based on a well-constructed homeroom sample, proving that no one ate the carrot sticks in the Bargain Buster lunch. The former calculation had allowed countless students to thwart Fenster’s desire to fail them, and the latter had saved the school money and prevented many injuries from carrot-stick projectiles.

  In short, Felicia had devoted herself in small but significant ways to forwarding democracy, civic peace, and fiscal responsibility. She deserved to go to Georgetown.

  “Can’t you be more specific about ‘the fascinating experience that taught you to see the greatness of the democratic process in action’?” Anne had taken the essay from Felicia and just read the sentence: “ ‘Working on a political campaign was a fascinating experience that taught me to see the greatness of the democratic process in action.’”

  “God,” moaned Felicia, “I used ‘fascinating’ again.”

  “That’s not the real problem,” noted Anne. “You’ve worked on five local campaigns and seen how local government works; you must have some good stories or insights about the experience.”

  “Most of what I did was very basic,” said Felicia apologetically, “getting coffee and Xeroxing. Nothing really challenging. Not that I minded,” she hurried to explain. “I thought it was interesting being so close to the process.”

  “OK.” Anne nodded encouragingly. “But what does it mean to be so close to the process? What was so interesting about it?”

  “It’s just fascinating to see people working to make things happen,” said Felicia.

  “You need to be more concrete,” said Anne, realizing that Felicia’s tendency to speak in cliches was probably a surefire recipe for success in politics, but not necessarily for getting into Georgetown University.

  “I guess I need to try harder,” said Felicia sadly.

  “Think about it some more,” Anne conceded.

  “OK, I’ll bring you a new draft tomorrow.”

  “You don’t have to bring it tomorrow,” Anne hurried to assure her. “Just relax and let your mind wander. Sometimes it’s better not to try so hard.”

  “I always try hard,” said Felicia. “I can’t help it.”

  “That’s your assignment, then,” said Anne. “Try not to try so hard. Watch TV, go to the mall, veg out.”

  “I’ll try,” said Felicia doubtfully.

  “Do you know Trevor Hopgood?” Anne asked on a whim. “He’s in my history class.” “Have you ever talked to him?”

  Felicia considered this a moment. “I asked him for a homework assignment once. I don’t think that’s really talking—” Then, with surprising enthusiasm, she added: “He doesn’t get much credit for his ideas because he mumbles and Ms. Fineman doesn’t have patience for that. Like she was looking for a mint in her purse the other day when he said something really good about Hitler and Chamberlain, so she probably didn’t hear it.”

  “I see,” said Anne. She knew that Marcy’s limitation as a teacher was a certain distractedness, the result of thinking too much about what she wasn’t going to eat for lunch. “I’ll tell Ms. Fineman to listen more closely in the future. Meanwhile, I wonder if you could do me a favor and talk to Trevor a bit about the college application process. You can say I suggested it. I’m giving him some Web sites to look through, but you might be able to help him sift through the rhetoric the schools use and get at the reality of what they offer—sort of what you would do in figuring out the real policies of a candidate when you listen to a campaign speech.”

  “OK,” said Felicia, obviously pleased by the idea. Perhaps the notion of dealing with propaganda, even if it took the form of college brochures, appealed to her political interests. Or perhaps she had a crush on Trevor Hopgood. Anne knew that there was no predicting where adolescent affections might land.

  When Felicia left, Anne felt she had done a good day’s work.

  Not only had she penetrated Trevor’s surly demeanor, setting him on course, albeit one that might involve blackmail, but she had steered Felicia in the direction of Trevor, which might assist his college search and do something for the girl’s love life.

  The thought of Felicia’s love life made Anne’s mind revert again to Ben Cutler. She had glanced at the folder Vince had been holding the other day and noted that Ben’s sister was renting a condo about a mile from the school. She wondered whether he was living there too. Despite her efforts not to care, she was agitated by emotions that she didn’t like to admit, even to herself. She wanted desperately to know about his life—but she was also afraid of what she would learn.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  ANNE ARRIVED LATE TO SCHOOL THE NEXT DAY. SHE HAD MET WITH the Realtor that morning, a depr
essing ordeal that she knew she could not put off. The house had to be sold, and given the state of the grounds, not to mention the roof, the walls, and the floors, she knew she was lucky that Sally Solomon, the premier real-estate agent in Westchester County (where good real-estate agents are on a par with movie stars), had undertaken the sale.

  Sally had agreed to do so because she had not forgotten the excellent college recommendation that Anne had written for her son, Spenser Solomon, when he was a student at Fenimore eight years ago. Without said excellent supporting letter, Spenser might never have been admitted to Penn, gone on to NYU law school, and to a career as a prosperous tax attorney. Instead, he might have become a deadbeat like his father. Selling a measly house seemed the least Sally could do to thank Anne Ehrlich for averting such a dire outcome.

  “I have to be frank,” Sally said this morning (Sally was known to be frank about houses the way cosmetic surgeons are frank about faces, making her ability to sell them way over market price that much more miraculous), “the place is a dump. I mean your bathrooms are from hunger. Where’s the Jacuzzi? Where’s the ‘his and her’ sinks? Where’s the towel warmer? And your kitchen! There’s no island. A kitchen without an island sinks the market price by twenty percent. And the grounds! No landscaping. For God’s sake, no grass. Then there’s the driveway—when did you have the thing paved, fifty years ago?” Anne said that was about right.

  Sally squinted at the property as she stood on the broken flagstone in her red four-inch heels with her matching red umbrella. “The place will look better in the spring,” she observed. “Sunlight is a great accessory. We could bill the weeds as an English heath.”

  Anne said waiting until spring was not an option, and Sally clucked and said that would make it harder to squeeze every last cent out of a prospective buyer—but she’d see what she could do. Forms were filed, and Sally went out into the jungle of life to try to sell Anne’s dump of a house for three million dollars.

  When Anne finally arrived at school two hours later than usual, she found Gus Dexter, one of Fenimore’s two other guidance counselors, talking to Cindy. Gus was just out of college, and it often struck Anne as ironic that someone who, only a few years earlier, would have sat cluelessly in her office, tapping his pencil against the chair and staring into space, was now administering sage advice to boys only a few years younger than himself. And yet that was the wonder of the educational process: It could have a renovating effect on individuals like Gus. Indeed, Gus was actually a very good guidance counselor, particularly with some of the lazier students, with whom he had an affinity: “Come on, man, you don’t want to be working in the 7-Eleven for the rest of your life!” Such nuggets carried weight, since Gus freely admitted that he had been only a step away from the 7-Eleven himself, saved, during his junior year, by seeing one of his idols, Stu Parker, four years his senior and once “a really cool guy,” working there. “Scared the crap out of me,” admitted Gus. “Do you know what it’s like making those Italian junior subs all day long? Or refilling the decaf for like the thirtieth time in an hour? I mean reading poetry isn’t as boring as that.” The lazy student, when faced with such vivid testimony, would stop fiddling with his eyebrow ring and pay attention.

  When not administering this kind of advice, however, Gus was generally leaning over the ledge in front of Cindy’s desk, engaged in a seemingly endless, muffled exposition, punctuated by loud bursts of giggling from Cindy. Even in her office with her door closed, Anne was able to hear the laughter coming from Cindy in response to the low, indecipherable murmur of Gus. The exchange had so intrigued Anne (what could he be saying that could so riotously amuse?) that she had finally managed to eavesdrop one day while pretending to look for the Syracuse catalogue on the College Materials Shelf behind them.

  She discovered that their conversation consisted principally of Gus’s teasing Cindy about such things as how she held her pencil and the way she marked off appointments with different colored markers for different days (details which, by virtue of his noticing them, translated into his finding them adorable). The two also seemed to spend inordinate amounts of time in mock arguments about whether Cindy looked better with her hair up or down (Cindy argued for up; Gus, down) and about whether Justin Timberlake’s latest album was really awesome (Cindy) or pure crap (Gus).

  Today, however, Anne had no time to eavesdrop on Gus and Cindy. Before she had finished hanging up her jacket, Daphne Morgan motioned to her to come into her office.

  Daphne, Fenimore’s third guidance counselor, was the most senior if also the most wifty of the three. The fact that she wanted to speak to Anne was a novelty in itself. Mostly, Daphne preferred knitting and meditating to speaking. Until recently, her method of dealing with the college admissions frenzy had been to tell students to chill out and take a year off. Then, after Vince had a talk with her, she had taken to playing Indian music and giving them an oatmeal cookie.

  “I wanted to let you know that a man was here this morning who knew you,” said Daphne now as she sipped from a mug of herbal tea.

  Anne felt her pulse quicken. “A man?”

  “Yes. Cutler, I think his name was. He’s the uncle of a new student.” Daphne began to fumble through the papers on her desk but quickly gave up. Names and dates, not to mention board scores and GPAs, had a way of slipping through Daphne Morgan’s fingers, a fact that many parents found terrifying.

  “Ben Cutler?” Anne prompted Daphne now.

  “Who?”

  “You said this man Cutler was here this morning.” “Oh, yes,” said Daphne. “Mr. Cutler. He was very nice.” “And?”

  “Well, he came in to talk about getting his nephew into Columbia. I said I wouldn’t presume to give advice there. My area was more on the order of Bard or Hampshire. Though I don’t know that I’m quite up on those schools anymore either. Anyway, when he said Columbia, I mentioned your name and said he should speak to you. That’s when he jumped.”

  “He jumped?” Anne felt slightly faint. Fortunately, Daphne didn’t notice—but then, Daphne didn’t notice much of anything.

  “Well, he didn’t literally jump, dear. His feet didn’t leave the floor. But he did seem surprised. It took him a moment to recover. I gave him some herbal tea. It seemed to do the trick.”

  “And then,” said Anne softly, “what did he say?”

  “Not much, dear. He mentioned something about knowing you once a long time ago and not realizing you worked here. That’s all. But he seemed a very pleasant sort of man, not someone you need to worry about—though I’m no expert, of course.” Daphne was known to prefer women to men, and cats to both.

  Anne left Daphne’s office and went into her own, closing the door. She could hear Gus and Cindy giggling in the waiting area.

  She buzzed Cindy. “Would you remind Gus that he has to pick up the Colgate recruiter at the station this morning.”

  “Ms. Ehrlich says to remind you that you have to pick up the Colgate recruiter this morning,” Anne heard Cindy say to Gus in a coquettish singsong.

  “He’s not due in till eleven,” she heard Gus say, “but I guess I better mosey over to my office and get a little snooze in before I have to go.” There was laughter again, and Anne hung up the phone. She sat at her desk for a moment, trying to clear her brain. Ben Cutler knew she was at Fenimore. Would he want to see her, she wondered—or not?

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  BY POPULAR DEMAND (WHICH IS TO SAY LOTS OF PRESSURE FROM parents), Fenimore held a college fair on the last Saturday morning in September. Most schools had college fairs in April or May, which Fenimore did too, but someone on the Home and School Committee had suggested that if one was good, two would be better—a quantitative philosophy that operated everywhere in the college admissions process.

  The fall fair was generally a lackluster event, since most schools waited till spring to send a representative. This did not prevent the Home and School Committee, not to mention local real-estate brokers, from trumpeting the f
act of the fair as another example of Fenimore’s pedagogical excellence.

  The fall fair, like the spring fair, took place in the school gymnasium, where school dances were also held. This was apt, since the fair was like a school dance. The popular colleges got all the attention; everyone else just sort of sat around and watched.

  This year, there were some thirty schools represented in the gym, but students were clustered around only a few. A large gaggle stood shmoozing with the Duke representative, a fashionably dressed black man (chosen perhaps to counteract Duke’s Southern cracker associations), while Dickinson and Denison reps sat overlooked off to the side. Most of the reps from the smaller, less well-known schools had become reconciled to slim pickings and brought a book or did a crossword puzzle. The Denison rep was reading The Sound and the Fury. A student approached the table curiously: “I never heard of your school,” he said.

  “And you probably never heard of William Faulkner either,” noted the rep, looking up scornfully from his book. This rep was known to be caustic and had been dressed down a number of times by Denison’s dean of admissions—though some in the admissions office thought that his disdainful attitude spurred the interest of certain students. This appeared to be the case now.

  “So what kind of school are you?” asked the student, who seemed disinclined to reveal if he had heard of William Faulkner.

  “We’re known as a fine small liberal arts college,” snapped the rep. “But only by those who care about such things.” He returned to his book, while the student dawdled a moment at the table, took a brochure, and wandered off.

  Anne noted that this year there was a representative present from Flemington College, a traditionally black school with high academic standards. She approached the rep and introduced herself. “I have to tell you,” she said frankly, “most of our best African-American students are inclined toward the Ivies. I don’t know if you’ll find much interest here.”