“You and Deborah,” she said, to show she was keeping up.
“We’re not a couple. We were. Years ago. We’re not. We’re friends. And I know”—he was talking softly but faster, to get this in—“you’re with someone. I’m not unclear about things.”
“I’m not, actually.”
“Not… unclear?” he asked.
“Not with someone. The man I was with is with someone.” Oddly, she chuckled, as if this had just occurred to her. “And that someone is with someone. With child. Actually.”
He looked at her with pain in his eyes. Real pain, she thought, rather surprised to see it. But then she remembered that she ought not to be looking at him. She took her latte, which had indeed arrived, and walked to the back of the café, summoning what remained of her professional deportment as she went.
“It’s really nice to meet you,” she told Deborah right away as she sat down. “I missed you that day at your school.”
“Oh, I’m so, so sorry. It was completely ridiculous. I went over to Putney for a meeting. We’re trying to get a progressive schools network started, and my co-director teaches at Putney, and it was a last minute reschedule. Of course, I’m halfway there when I remember you’re coming that afternoon, but we’re in deepest Vermont, you know? No signal. Nada.”
“It was fine,” said Portia, loosening her grip on the slightest portion of her lingering resentment. “Your staff was great.”
“I know, they’re spectacular. Actually, though, I don’t think of them as my staff. We’re trying to make an equal sharing of administrative duties and responsibilities work. It’s challenging. We’ve been attempting to rotate the chair.”
“But she can’t get rid of it,” John said, sitting beside Portia.
“I’m trying. One of our colleagues had it for about a week, but she had to go on bed rest for a high-risk pregnancy. Then we had one woman who held the position for about a month last spring, and that really tested our resolve.”
“What do you mean?” Portia said.
John, beside her, laughed and drank his coffee.
“Well, she called a meeting over an ongoing issue. Important issue, but not, you know, critical. Not enough for an all-day thing on a Saturday, I can assure you.”
“What—” Portia began, but John answered her.
“Forms of address. Yes, really. Should the students call us by our first names? Or Mr. and Ms.? That’s it. I was ready to agree to whatever would get me out of the meeting.”
“Which was not helpful,” said Deborah. “But anyway, she’s chairing this meeting, our acting head, and she says that we’re going to go around in alphabetical order and say how we feel about this very important matter.”
“Please note,” John said, “the use of the verb feel.”
“Okay,” Portia said, actually diverted and not, she discovered, unhappy to be.
“So off we go, with Adams. Arnberg. Calder. Cisneros. Davidov. Et cetera. It’s fine for him,” she said, smirking at John. “He’s an H. I’m an R. I’m telling you, it just dragged on and on. But this is what killed us.”
Portia, noting the “us,” looked at them both.
“Whenever anyone forgot themselves and said, ‘I think… ,’ she would point to the ceiling and say, ‘No thinking! Today is all about feeling.’”
“Wait,” said Simone, grasping this opportunity to diss an authority figure, even a nominal authority figure. “Who is this? Are you talking about Shanta?”
“Formerly known as Linda Denise,” said John. “Shanta is her spirit name.”
“It means ‘Peace,’” Jeremiah said affably.
“Is it her?” Simone insisted. “Because, Mom, I always said she was, like, the worst teacher. ’Cause once—I told you this!—we were supposed to be talking about ‘Intimations of Immortality’ and we, like, had to correct her in the middle of the discussion, because she thought the poem was ‘Imitations of Immorality.’ Remember?”
“Simone,” Deborah said sharply, “you absolutely did not tell me that. And may I point out that you are hardly conveying to Portia the very serious intellectual environment we are striving to create at our school!”
“No, it’s okay,” Portia heard herself say, but she was laughing, which was such a surprising thing that she immediately stopped doing it.
“Well, it was her. Shanta, née Linda Denise Flitterman. Who teaches English. Very capably,” she said, glaring at her daughter.
“So I guess the first namers won?” said Portia. “If Simone isn’t referring to her teacher as Ms. Flitterman.”
“Oh. Well, consensus was reached, yes. By the time we reached the K’s, we were begging for a vote.”
“And shortly after,” said John, “the chair rotated back to Deborah, and we chained her to it.”
“My motto, as regards meetings, is: Brevity above all.”
“Nasty, brutish, and short, in other words,” John said, and Deborah, to Portia’s unexpected dismay, swatted him.
“I am expecting to be declared ‘president for life’ at any moment.” She laughed, this time at Portia, and Portia was even more distressed to find that she rather liked this woman, who did seem for all the world like the very significant other of the man to her right, on whom she had no claim at all but whose left leg, she now noted, was in definite contact with her own. How long had it been there?
“I’m sorry?” Portia said. She was only now realizing that they were all looking at her: five pairs of eyes. Had she said something? Or not said something when she was supposed to?
“I said, how long have you been here? It’s noisy in this place, isn’t it?”
“Nearly ten years,” Portia said with relief. “I worked at Dartmouth before that. In admissions.”
“Oh, that’s right.” Deborah nodded, stirring her coffee. “I forgot that. You went to Dartmouth with John.”
“Well, yes and no. We were there at the same time, but—”
“She doesn’t remember me,” said John with a laugh. “She’s too polite to say so. You see how unmemorable I was?” This last was directed to Nelson, who grinned predictably. “What a loser.”
“Yeah!” his son said with palpable delight.
“I would have remembered you,” said Portia, “if we’d met.”
“Oh, we met,” he said disconcertingly. To Deborah he said, “I knew an old flame of Portia’s. She was far, far too good for him.”
Portia seemed to be missing her breath. She hoped he would stop talking of his own volition.
“Isn’t that always the case,” said Deborah. She turned to her daughter. “They grow up eventually. Men. They get better.”
“They suck,” said Simone.
Once again, Portia heard herself laugh aloud. “Tell me,” she said to the girl, “what changed your mind about applying to college? You seemed to feel the whole thing was a patriarchal conspiracy the last time I saw you.”
Simone, unmistakably, blushed an unusual color: persimmon, magenta. But only fleetingly.
“Simone?” her mother prodded.
“It’s not for everyone,” she said, shrugging.
But? thought Portia.
“But?” said Deborah.
“I just don’t think it’s in the best interest of me as an individual to help perpetuate this bogus tradition of sitting at the feet of learned white men, getting trashed, cheering for the football team, and then collecting a piece of paper,” she said with more than a hint of her former hostility.
“Simone…” Her mother sighed. “I don’t think many American colleges are still operating on the feet-of-learned-men principle.”
“I wouldn’t want to get anywhere near the feet of some of the learned men around here,” said Portia, and she felt—rather than heard—John laugh.
“No, but… I’m just saying, you can maybe figure out a way to take what you need from the experience without participating in the bullshit, you know? Maybe you can even fuck with the system from within. Wouldn’t kill some of
these people to learn how racist they are.”
“And that’s your job?” said John, but gently.
“It’s all of our jobs,” she said with passion. “Places like this need agitation. They need students who refuse to consider themselves superior to other people. I mean, what do you think is going to happen when you bring privileged people to an elitist institution? You just validate their elitism.”
“Appearances to the contrary,” Portia said wearily, “this is not an elitist institution. At least, not in the way you imply.”
“Oh, come on.”
Portia shrugged. She was not in the mood to fight with a teenage girl.
“Well,” said her mother, “I’d say that about wraps up your application to Princeton, Simone.”
“That’s for sure,” said Nelson, grinning.
“No, not at all,” Portia told them. “You should absolutely apply. I’d maybe omit the word bullshit from your application. Just a tip.”
“Simone,” Deborah said, shaking her head.
“I’m not expecting to get into Princeton,” Simone said defensively, looking squarely at Portia. “I don’t even know that I’d want to come here. I might be happier at an institution that’s a bit more forward thinking. Hampshire, maybe. Or Wesleyan. Oberlin.”
“Right,” said Portia, losing it. “A congregation of the enlightened, where everyone in the choir gets to preach to everyone else.”
John, beside her, burst out laughing.
“I think,” Deborah said carefully, “there might be a middle way. Where we don’t seek out people who are just like ourselves but we also refrain from attacking people who are different from ourselves.”
Brava, thought Portia, again momentarily perturbed to note how much she liked Deborah.
“We like iconoclasts here,” she told them. “We like young people who have a sense of mission. And we absolutely love to bring them together and watch them mess with one another’s preconceptions. Inside every admissions officer is a mad scientist.” She laughed.
“Well,” Simone said, still petulant, “I’ll think about it. I’m still looking around. I don’t apply until the fall.”
John said quickly, “We’re going to Penn tomorrow. And Swarthmore. I think Swarthmore would be a fantastic place for Simone.”
“And Bryn Mawr,” said Deborah. “This summer I’m taking her out to Kenyon and Oberlin.”
“Those are all great schools,” said Portia. “What about you?” she asked Jeremiah.
“I want to be here,” he said plainly. “This is for me.”
“Jeremiah,” John said uncomfortably, “you’ve applied to a bunch of places. We haven’t seen any of the others.”
“I know. But I know.”
“It’s a wonderful place,” Portia said carefully. “But it’s not the only wonderful place. A student who wants a great education can get one at almost any American college. It’s a terrific time to go to college.”
“Sure,” he said affably. “But this. I love this. I wanted to go into every classroom we passed.”
“He kept trying to sneak off the tour,” John said with forced humor. “I had to restrain him.”
“I wanted to disappear into that library,” said Jeremiah with a motion of his head. He meant Firestone, she supposed. “I kept thinking I could run up to people and ask them what they were studying. Everything on the kiosks…” He looked at her. “You know? The kiosks?”
“Sure.”
“Everything I saw, I wanted to do. Not the singing groups. I can’t sing. Not… you know, I run around, but I’m not an athlete, like a team athlete. But everything else. I wish we could stay here. I don’t need to see the other schools.”
“Jeremiah,” Deborah said tersely, “we haven’t driven all this way to see one college.”
“Would you like to stay?” Portia heard herself say. “I could probably arrange an overnight with an undergraduate. You could go to classes in the morning.”
They all looked at her, except for Nelson, who was digging for the marshmallow in his cup.
“Really?” said Jeremiah.
“But… we’re staying at Tara’s tonight,” Deborah said quietly to John.
“Deborah has a friend in Bucks County,” he explained to Portia. “We were going to stop there and go on to my parents’ tomorrow.”
“Well, it was just a thought,” Portia said. She was suddenly feeling awfully uncomfortable. She had not thought before she spoke of how it might appear to them, or what it signified for her.
“He could,” said John, looking at Deborah. “The three of us could. And meet you tomorrow at my parents’.”
“I don’t want to stay here,” Nelson said bluntly.
Silence ensued.
“Shall I just make a phone call?” Portia said, getting up. “I can see if it’s even possible.”
“Yes!” Jeremiah said, oblivious to the tension around the table.
“That’s very kind of you,” said Deborah after a moment. She looked at Simone. Portia, too, was looking at Simone, belatedly taken aback by her own rudeness. Was this offer, so suddenly formed, open to her as well? It had to be, obviously.
“Simone… ,” she began carefully.
“Oh, no thanks. I want to go see Tara.”
“And Bryn Mawr in the morning,” added Deborah.
“Right. But thanks.”
“Let me call,” said Portia, taking out her phone. “Give me a minute.”
She went outside, where the cold was now welcome, clarifying, and somewhat punitive. Her thoughts were racing. What it meant, what she had done, they must all have some grasp of it. Who first? Deborah? Or John? Simone, with her tractor-beam expression? What were they saying back there? She thought fleetingly of skin and heat. She thought of his mouth. She felt as if she had declared herself in some irreversibly public way. She felt at once excited and deeply humiliated.
Her intention was to phone Rachel, but at the last moment she reconsidered and dialed David’s office. No, he assured her. She was not interrupting.
“I have a prospective student,” she told him. “I was hoping you might know an undergraduate who can put him up tonight. Preferably someone with a philosophy class in the morning. He’d like to attend a class.”
“Is it the zombie kid?” David said excitedly.
“What? Oh no. But interested in philosophy. Very unusual kid. Not very polished, you know? But brilliant.”
“Brilliant and not very polished.” David laughed. “The philosopher’s coat of arms. Hang on.”
She heard him speak, indecipherable. A knocking sound as he put the phone down, she supposed, and then a scrape as he took it back up.
“I’ve got a freshman in my office now,” said David. “He has my metaphysics and epistemology seminar tomorrow at nine. Will that do?”
“Only perfectly.” She smiled. “And he has room?”
“Hang on.”
More indistinct sounds. She heard laughter—unmistakably David’s.
“There’s a bed,” David said, returning. “One of his suite mates has a girlfriend in Forbes. Apparently he hasn’t appeared all term.”
“Fantastic.” She wrote down the kid’s name and arranged to bring Jeremiah to his dorm room in Mathey. Unless she called back in the next five minutes. Then she thanked David profusely and hung up.
Back at the table they were waiting for her in alert silence, like a nineteenth-century family portrait: father, mother, children, attentively seated with all hands visible. Between the two adults there was no discernible tension, which was at once perplexing and reassuring. “He can do it,” she said, addressing Deborah for some reason. “If it’s all right with you.”
“It’s fine,” she said with surprising warmth. “I think it’s a tremendous idea.”
“This is so great,” Jeremiah said, half out of his seat already.
“Shall I put him on the train to Philadelphia in the morning?” Portia asked, amazed to hear herself speak these words. Sh
e paused to admire her own ingenuous cool.
“Oh,” John said, frowning. “I’m going to spend the night. I’ll find a hotel in town and take him on the train tomorrow. It’s all set.”
She looked at Deborah. Deborah was not returning her gaze.
“And you’re sure you don’t want to stay yourself?” she asked Simone.
“No. Thank you. I think I should try to see as many places as possible.” She said it so primly, Portia thought. This Simone was very nearly a Bryn Mawr girl of the old school: brittle, clever, imperturbable.
“Can we go?” said Jeremiah, and Nelson, who had evidently been ready to go for some time, careened to his feet, tipping the table. They put on their coats and went outside into the new dark of the afternoon, and walked back to their car in the municipal lot by the town library. John slung Jeremiah’s bag over his shoulder, and his own. Portia gave directions to the highway as Nelson and Simone strapped in, and Deborah, she thought, drove off rather abruptly. She looked at John.
“Lead on,” he said amiably.
Back up Witherspoon Street, back onto campus, through the arches, and across the courtyards to Mathey, its faux Gothic courtyard belying the newness of its actual construction. They climbed a staircase perfumed with stale beer to the beat of ambient rap music and found the appointed suite on the second floor, door flung open to display the universal décor of the newly emancipated Princeton male: alcoholia (on a shelf, the empty bottles of beers of many nations, all in a row), technology (an oversize television screen and snarls of wires), and Princetoniana (tigers, tigers everywhere, and in the prime position on the sitting room wall, an orange-and-black class of 2011 banner).
“Luke?” she called, knocking on the open door.
“Yes! Hey!” came a yelp from one of the bedrooms, loud over the music, which actually seemed to come from elsewhere in the building. “I’m Luke.”
He was tall and reed thin, with ginger hair. He was from Albuquerque and had never been east, he informed them, until the previous fall. Winter had taken him somewhat by surprise, he admitted. He reached for Jeremiah’s bag, opened the bedroom door of the absent suite mate, and tossed it on the pristine bed within. A bunch of them were planning to check out This Is Princeton after dinner, he told Jeremiah. Was he cool with that?
Admission Page 32
