Early Decision

by Lacy Crawford

  Dear Anne,

  I hope it’s okay that I’m e-mailing you. I should probably call you to talk about Hunter’s college list, which we received from his school’s college counselor yesterday. Just to give you a sense, his green light schools are Denison and the U of I. And I hate to say that she’s listed Amherst as a red light. Obviously this can’t be a good place to start. I’d send it to you but I don’t want Gerry to see it as is and I don’t know how to work the scanner. I can type the schools in an e-mail to you if need be. Please let’s discuss as soon as you have some time. Would you be available this afternoon maybe? I’ll have my cell on at the gym and home by 4:30.

  Thank you so much.

  Sincerely,

  Marion Pfaff

  Ah, the schools. Their names were spoken like jewels: emerald and ruby, Middlebury and Brown. Each child brought home a list divided into three groups, from the least likely to offer admission to the most. Some parents considered it an opening bid. Others collapsed. College counselors had past years’ statistics to guide them, and hunches, and at the very best prep schools they had years of experience placing kids exactly where they thought those kids belonged. By the time Anne was working, the top colleges were in such hot demand that the list was sent home largely as a corrective. Mothers wept and fathers raged. Schools they’d never heard of, schools whose presence atop a résumé would condemn it on their desk, schools attended in their minds only by some high school classmate, dimly remembered, who’d failed a class or two, OD’d.

  For the rare child of a trustee or a major prospect, the list was a smoke screen: ten applications would be made on the pretense of this being a meritocratic process. But the first-choice school would have opened a file on the child once his PSATs were posted. The result was already assured.

  For Anne, much of the work lay in managing these lists. How to carve, from the great shared dream of college destiny, a range to fairly suit each child? And how then to help bring round the parents, in their bafflement and their shame? More accurately, how to awaken these families from a fantasy that held colleges up bright and shining and implacably steady in character, to reveal each as just what it was—a living, breathing institution—struggling to serve young minds weaned on ambition and fear and heading into a job market that matched conscription to greed and made interns of all the rest?

  Take Middlebury: one thought immediately of all the blond kids with a green streak, the vegans, the skiers. Take the Ivies: the Euro kids wanted Brown. Jews, Yale or Penn. WASPs wanted Princeton. Cold athletes Dartmouth. Hot athletes, Stanford. Cornell was big and seemed possible but Ithaca was a high price to pay. Columbia for the city kids. Everyone wanted Harvard, if only to say they got in.

  Then the cult schools. Tufts, Georgetown, Duke. Big states that shined like Ivies: UNC, UVA, Cal. The cluster of California schools, Claremont McKenna, Pomona, Scripps. USC for the screenwriters and baby producers. Reed for the ceramicists with sky-high SATs. In the Midwest, Chicago and Northwestern—polar opposites, both polar—and Oberlin and Kenyon (mild poets and musicians). Denison rising fast. Wash U: sharp, but in St. Louis. The Boston cluster, BC BU Northeastern Wheaton Emerson. MIT, not so much—if you were the MIT type, you knew it, and you probably didn’t care about other colleges except for maybe Caltech, RPI, Rice. Mid-Atlantic: Villanova, Wake Forest, Washington and Lee, and the middle D.C. schools, GWU and American. Johns Hopkins for the premeds and writers who couldn’t reach Yale. Davidson, which was not Dickinson, though both deserved discovery. Vanderbilt for the skinny girls with dreams of the South. Tristate: NYU if cash was no issue or you intended to train at Juilliard. The Hudson River, art-and-English schools: Sarah Lawrence Barnard Bard Vassar Skidmore. B-plus Manhattanites turfed upstate: Hamilton, Colgate. Way upstate: St. Lawrence. The places where preppy kids went when they got turned down by their top choices: Trinity, Connecticut College, Richmond, Sewanee. Big drinkers in mining country: Lehigh and Bucknell. The Maine schools, BatesBowdoinColby, said in one breath, for Bostonian stars and lesser Grotonians. Williams and Amherst, twinned, tiny, elite. Funky-smart kids into free sex: Wesleyan. Funky-brilliant kids terrified of sex: Swarthmore. Outliers: Emory, Rollins, Elon, Marlboro, Carleton, Puget Sound. Colorado College for mountains and a block schedule. St. Andrews, Edinburgh, for those needing to get away. Rounding out the lights, like stars scattered beyond the constellations, every state school other than the big three, though Anne was forever wishing she could make the parents understand what was on offer there.

  Anne checked a clock. It was just eight-thirty. She’d been raised never to call someone’s house before or after nine. She got up to pour herself the first Diet Coke of the day. She drank copious, even vile amounts of the stuff, served up over ice with one third of an organic lemon in a glass she kept topping up all day long. The lemon would turn dusky with caramel coloring and her mouth sour with sweetener, causing her to need fresh ice and newly bubbling soda, and so on. Though Google hadn’t turned up a reliable study regarding toxicity, Anne knew by the way her hands would be shaking by noon, and the fact that she had to pee every twenty minutes, that something wasn’t good for her. She imagined her kidneys crimping at the edges like little calzones. It was why she switched to something more wholesome at supper time, a good red wine, which in turn she only permitted herself if she promised to run the next morning. That was the liquid portion of things. For food, she subsisted on cereal, popcorn, and miniature frozen Snickers bars, the little Fun Size ones. This was a gift of one’s twenties: to live on almost no money and clearly no nutrients and still be thin and fairly healthy, with shiny hair and good fingernails. Anne was aware that it was a bit of a budget boondoggle but not that it would one day begin to disappear.

  Her Diet Coke fizzed just to the top of the glass, no higher—a perfect pour. She sipped before it began to settle and grabbed two Snickers bars from their bag in the freezer, which was lodged right next to poor Old Nassau. Old Nassau was, had been, an elaborate ornamental goldfish Anne and her roommates had bought the summer after college, in almost conscious recognition that now they ought to begin to take care of something. The fish had lived for two impossibly long years in his big round vase with a fake plant and a little bubbling rock. When the roommates had scattered—one to law school, one to an investment bank, one for a Ph.D. in microbiology and immunology, for God’s sake—Anne had inherited Old Nassau. But her first year in graduate school he’d taken a terrible turn, growing first pale and then ragged, his fins falling away from him in strings. It was clear he wouldn’t make it through Christmas. She didn’t want to just flush him. And indeed an Internet search revealed that flushing was a slow and terribly cruel way to kill a fish. Much better, the site said, to freeze them—gradually reduce their metabolic rate until they just drift to sleep. So she’d poured Old Nassau into a sandwich bag and set him on the shelf in the freezer, next to the Snickers, and then she’d gone home for the holidays and forgotten. A week later he was solid. Encased in ice, his fins suspended gloriously, like a crystal paperweight. She didn’t have the heart to toss him. The defrosting would ruin his perfect little world.

  Soda and candy in hand, she moved to the couch with a book. Downstairs the building’s front door wheezed open and slammed shut behind Stuart, the hot husband from 1B, who’d be leaving in his business suit. Six-thirty in L.A.; Martin would be up pacing, reciting his lines, or doing sit-ups in a sweaty haze on the floor. Whose floor? she wondered. She hadn’t thought to ask. In fact, now that she thought about it, it seemed she was not welcome to ask. He hadn’t thought it made sense for her to go visit yet; he’d come east when he could. Presumably Columbus Day. Besides, as he reminded her, she knew the city. She’d been to L.A. before, to work with the Harvard-Westlake girl; so what that she’d just holed up in the girl’s PCH waterfront home? Anne remembered the sun off the ocean like lightning on the ceiling. Whitewashed walls, and a mute Latina who served delicious salads every afternoon at one. The student would be heading into her junior year at S
tanford now. They’d worked on a glass coffee table shaped like a kidney. If one of them leaned too hard, the whole thing threatened to tip up and guillotine their knees. For three days Anne balanced her elbows carefully and sipped iced tea, and then she’d been returned to LAX by stretch sedan.

  The loneliness of that grand ocean room was enough. Anne got up and dialed Mrs. Pfaff.

  “So, tell me,” she said softly.

  “Oh, Anne,” said Mrs. Pfaff, and she began quietly to cry. “It’s just—I’m sorry. I was so shocked. I mean, let me read this list to you. I have it right here—hold on a sec—” Anne heard shuffling sounds and imagined frantic hands. A dog shook its collar, tink-tink-tink, from a tufted bed. A coffee cup was lifted and set down, and a gulp. Anne briefly entertained the beginning of a thought about women alone in their rooms in the bright mornings, fretting over men and boys, but the receiver came alive again. “Okay,” said Mrs. Pfaff, squaring herself to the task. “You there?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Here we go. Red-light schools: Amherst Princeton Penn Cornell. Yellow light: Middlebury Tufts Bates Hamilton Davidson. But Middlebury’s orange, if you can believe it. Whatever that means. Green light: Denison Champaign-Urbana St. Lawrence Elon. I mean, Elon? What is Elon?”

  “Up-and-coming, small, North Carolina.”

  “Well, yeah. No. I mean, Gerry went to Cornell, and don’t tell him I told you this, but it always smarted because he wanted to go to Yale. And now this. I don’t think she’s factoring in Hunter’s tennis. And what about peer counselor? There are only twelve of them, you know, six boys and six girls. It’s a big, big honor! So I just, I don’t know what to think!”

  What Anne thought is that Hunter’s school college counselor was spot-on, but her loyalty mustn’t seem shaky. “What’s the counselor’s name?” she asked.

  “Tiffany Schmitz.”

  Anne knew just the one. She was a pro. “All right, don’t panic,” Anne said. “Tiffany’s job is to manage expectations. She needs parents to feel that their children succeeded, not failed, right? So she’s going to go out of her way to be careful with her recommendations. She’s not making the decisions here, remember.”

  Though, of course, to some extent, she was; Tiffany Schmitz had just signaled to the Pfaffs that she would not be pounding the table for Hunter at Amherst, Princeton, Penn, or Cornell. It would cost her too much with the admissions officers, and there would be other, much stronger candidates in Hunter’s class.

  “Yeah, I guess that makes sense,” sniffed Mrs. Pfaff. “But, Anne, what can we do?”

  “Well, we’re going to be smart and thoughtful and realistic. Tell me, first, where does Hunter most want to go?”

  “Oh. Well, we’re just positive Amherst is the best fit for him. I mean, a small school, lots of faculty attention. Hunter really thrives with mentors. He’s got a cousin there, she’s going to be a junior, and she just loves it. She tells us all the time that he would be perfect there.”

  “Has he seen it?”

  “No, we couldn’t quite make it there last summer. It’s so remote! But he really liked Middlebury when we saw that; we had a wedding in Woodstock, so, anyway, it’s similar—in the mountains, you know, the rural thing, trees. He keeps talking about Montana but that’s just a nonstarter.”

  “And the rest of the list? Has he seen any of those?”

  “Let’s see, Cornell, yes, with his dad, and Princeton, and Yale, but that’s off the list. I’m forgetting the others, but yes, I think he has. No to U of I and this Edon.”

  “Elon.”

  “Uh-huh. Oh, and he liked Davidson well enough. Gerry took him to look. Said it was kind of southern, but the tennis might be a good fit.”

  It was almost always the case, Anne reflected, that the kids knew where they belonged. If left to their own devices, they rarely set their hearts on impossible schools. “Okay,” she replied. “I think it would be good to think about which schools Hunter’s seen and really liked—we should put those at the top of our list. We’ll just rewrite it according to his interests, and worry about the red-light–green-light stuff later. It’s good of Tiffany to be so tough; it’ll help us think clearly about all of this. Has Hunter been in touch with the tennis coaches?”

  “Yes. I called all of them except for—what was it?—Tufts. Didn’t try there. But I mostly left messages.”

  “Has Hunter been in touch with them?”

  “Oh, you mean, has he actually . . . No. Oh God—do you think I screwed up? Do they want to hear from the kids themselves?”

  “It’s fine, we’ll follow up. Leave it with me. Just, if you could, leave me a list of which coaches you’ve contacted. And, listen. Amherst is—well, look. When I was applying to colleges, what was it—ten years ago—Amherst accepted just under forty percent of their applicants. They’re down below the twenties now, around fifteen. It’s very, very tough there. Fewer than one in five, and it’s a tiny place to begin with. So let’s not put all our eggs in one basket unless we have to.”

  “Gerry won’t hear of anything else. Maybe Princeton. Not even Cornell, in truth. It’s only on the list because he’s a legacy.”

  “Has your husband kept in touch with the university at all?”

  “Not really.”

  So Hunter was not really a legacy either. Anne was shaking her head. The poor kid really was doomed.

  “So what do I tell Gerry?” asked Mrs. Pfaff. “About this list?”

  “I say you tell him, ‘Look at how tough it’s gotten to get into schools! How silly! I’m so glad we raised a solid young man who will thrive at any of the excellent schools on his list!’ ”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “No, I’m not. And then you say, ‘But of course we’re going to give it our best shot, and he’s a great kid, and they’re going to see that in his applications.’ ”

  “He is a great kid, isn’t he? I’m so glad you think so. I really, really do.”

  “He’s a good one. I’m really happy to be working with him. So, listen. Leave the lists with me. I’m seeing him next week.”

  “You’re a lifesaver, Anne, really.”

  “Not at all. Call again whenever you need to. It’s going to be fine.”

  But Mrs. Pfaff was crying again, so Anne gave a gentle good-bye and hung up the phone.

  IN HER EXPERIENCE so far, the lone exception to the sleeping-boy rule was William Kantor, who appeared at his door in button-downs and loafers, though occasionally in brightly colored saddle shoes, with his files in his arms and a glass of ice water for them each. He had two older half sisters, long since fledged. His father was a top plastic surgeon—responsible, no doubt, for the taut grins of several of Anne’s clients—and his mother ran her husband’s practice, the job she’d been hired to do when the first family was still young. Since coming home from Exeter, which William hated (“If I wanted to freeze my ass off and eat shit food, I’d walk to school and forget my lunch”), he’d been left mostly to his own devices in a twentieth-floor condo on North Lake Shore Drive. Anne followed him into his study, where his computer hummed. Usually a floor-length mirror reflected the condo’s wide-open view of the lake, but today it was covered with a sheet.

  “Sitting shiva?” she asked.

  “No,” replied William. “I just find I’m self-conscious with the mirror these days. I don’t like seeing myself working. I do this thing with my tongue.”

  “You do? I’ve never noticed it.”

  “That’s because I don’t work when you’re around. You work. I just watch you tear up my essays.”

  “Maybe we should change that.”

  “Happily.”

  But the truth was, William’s essays weren’t getting any better. They were in a rut. Anne was stumped to understand what it was. William was writing about the question of global warming, with a specific eye as to whether it was a scientifically legitimate phenomenon. It was his view that it was not. “There’s gotta be a conservative quota at these places,
right?” he’d said.

  “Depends on the place,” Anne told him. His personal statement read like a high school op-ed piece, highly critical of environmental movements and, in particular, the Francis Parker School’s efforts to recycle in the cafeteria and encourage carpooling. He didn’t sound curious or even skeptical; with his Lake Shore Drive address, he sounded like a brat.

  But he wasn’t. On Friday afternoons, he made his family challah on the marble countertop. Anne sat and watched him roll ropes of dough while they talked. He spent weekends volunteering at the Jewish care center in Streeterville, where he knew the names of the residents he saw every week. And in the evenings, she knew, he went alone to the theater as often as he could. She’d come close to telling him about Martin, whom he would probably recognize from Steppenwolf shows, but that was a dangerous detail to reveal.

  The conservative stuff was direct from his father; sometimes William’s phrases were so pat that it was as though the boy were being ventriloquized. “Did you know there are more trees in the U.S. now than there were two hundred years ago?” he challenged her. “Did you know that so-called global warming stands to improve the lot of many so-called endangered species?”

  William had been tipped to go to Penn. He was an excellent student and would probably get in, assuming Anne could convince him to lighten up on the ExxonMobil stuff. But he’d told her at their first meeting that he was most interested in Vassar and its terrific theater program.

  “That’s a women’s college,” said his father, when Anne later called to discuss William’s list.