We Regret to Inform You

by Ariel Kaplan

  “So what do I tell my mother?”

  He crossed his arms and nodded thoughtfully. “What do you think you should tell her?”

  “If I knew that, I wouldn’t be asking you in the first place!”

  He sighed. “If you told your mother what you told me, how do you think she’d react?”

  I shoved my coffee away. “She wouldn’t believe me, either.” I pushed my chair back and got up. “This has been super helpful, thank you.”

  “Just wait,” he said. “Listen. Just tell her the truth. You didn’t get in, period, full stop.”

  “But she’ll want to know why!”

  “Tell her you don’t know why. What are you going to say? The boogeyman kept you out of college?”

  God, coming out of his mouth, it did sound incredibly stupid. If I hadn’t seen the transcript with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have believed it, either. No one was going to believe me, because the whole situation was unbelievable. I imagined my mother’s face turning some unnameable shade of purple as I told her the dog ate my transcript.

  “You’re going to have to tell her sometime,” he said. “Just come out and say it. ‘Mom, I love you, but I didn’t get into Cornell.’ Was it Cornell?”

  “No.”

  “Well, where was it?”

  “Revere,” I said. “Paul Revere.”

  “Oh my.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You know, though,” he said. “There are other schools. You could apply someplace else. There are always other options.”

  “Yeah.” I sighed, not bothering to explain why, in fact, there were no other options.

  As a final offering, Rabbi Doug gave me a box of donuts to take to my mother’s office. “You know,” he said. “The first part of being accountable is admitting the truth to yourself.”

  “Yeah,” I said, taking the donuts, because I needed whatever help I could get. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  * * *

  —

  I walked the rest of the way with my giant box, like a prisoner going to the gallows. With donuts. I pulled a powdered sugar out of the box and ate it while I walked.

  When I got there, Margaret, the secretary, jumped up to greet me. “Mischa!” she said. “Well, this is a surprise.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Hi. Is my mom here?”

  “She’s in the conference room,” she said. “But you can go on in. I’m sure everyone would be glad to see you.”

  “Oh, no,” I said. “No, no. I’ll just wait. Why don’t I sit at her desk until she’s done?”

  “No, no,” she said, beckoning me onward. “Just go ahead.”

  “But—”

  She pulled open the conference room door. “Norah,” she said. “Look who’s here!” And then she shoved me inside.

  “Mischa!” my mom called. “What are you doing here?”

  My mother was at the oval conference table with her boss and about six of her coworkers, people I’d known since I was in diapers. They stared at me in surprise, like I was some rando who just crashed their meeting. Which I was.

  “I brought donuts,” I said weakly. “Surprise.”

  “Oh, wonderful,” my mother’s boss said, rising to her feet and reaching out for the box, which I gave her without protest. “We were about to take a break anyway.”

  “Lucky timing,” I croaked.

  I fell into a chair next to my mother while everyone fell on my donuts like ravenous beasts, or like underfed pro bono lawyers. “Mom,” I said quietly. “I really need to talk to you in—”

  “So, Mischa,” my mother’s boss said. “Congratulations about Revere. You know, I’ve been reading up on it more. They really do have a great internship program.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’ve heard that.” My mom squeezed my hand under the table.

  “So I’ve been talking to their career-services office about setting up a program here for some of their students.”

  “An internship program?”

  “Yes! Give the prelaw students some experience. What do you think?”

  “I. Uh. So. At Revere?”

  “Right! Your mother volunteered to coordinate it on our end.”

  “She did?”

  “She’s so proud of you. You must know that. Anyway, we’d love to have you here. It’s great experience.”

  I said, “Uhhhhhhhhh.”

  “We’re embarrassing her,” someone said.

  “Ha ha ha,” I said. “Ha.”

  “Mischa?” my mom said.

  “I LOVE DONUTS!” I said, reaching for another one and shoving half of it in my mouth, while my stomach reminded me that three donuts in ten minutes was really a lot of donuts. I choked it down anyway.

  “We’re also thinking of endowing a small scholarship there,” my mother’s boss went on. “For students interested in social-justice law. Five hundred a year, so nothing huge. We’re talking about naming it after you and your mom. The Abramavicius Award.”

  I grabbed another donut. “That’s. Wow. That’s. Something,” I said. “Wow.”

  My mom said, “Mischa?”

  Four donuts in ten minutes was really, really a lot of donuts. “I think I need some water,” I said.

  “I’ll get you some from the kitchen,” my mom said.

  “I’ll go with you,” I said.

  In the tiny Legal Helpline kitchenette, my mother got me a mug of water from the sink. I took a long drink, which really did not make my stomach feel any better, and stared at the mug. On the side was an image of a man on horseback, carrying a lantern.

  “Oh, no,” I said.

  “I just got that one,” she said. “It’s part of a set.” She turned the mug in my hands so I could see that the other side said PAUL REVERE CLASS OF 2022.

  “I should get going,” I said.

  “But,” she said.

  “I just came to give you the donuts. As a thank-you. To everyone. For the gift card.”

  “Okay. How are you getting home?”

  “Metro,” I said.

  “If you stay another two hours, I can drive you. You can sit at Eleanor’s desk. She’s out today.”

  “No,” I said. “I should be getting home. I just. Say bye to everyone. Okay? Thanks. Yeah.”

  On my way down the street, I thought: I am going to vomit. And then I thought: I am really going to vomit. And then: I vomited. Onto a shrubbery. It was an unkind thing to do to a shrubbery. I felt really guilty about it. So, so guilty.

  Afterward, I wandered back into Tom Bombadil’s, because my stomach did not feel equal to the pressures of mass transit. Doug was behind the counter, yelling at people about lumpy glaze. “Hey,” he said. “How did it go?”

  “I’m going to sit here,” I said, pointing at a chair. “And then I’m going to leave.”

  “Whoa,” he said. “What happened?”

  “Give me a ginger ale,” I said.

  He filled up a cup from the dispenser and set it in front of me. “Do you want to talk?” he said.

  “No.”

  “Do you want another donut?”

  “Doug,” I said. “I never want to see another donut again as long as I live.”

  That weekend, I considered running away from home. The only hitch was that I had nowhere to go and nothing to do when I got there. I was too uncoordinated to run away and join the army—I’d probably shoot myself in the foot the first day. I had almost no money saved up. I had no useful job skills, and my only work history consisted of a lot of babysitting and three summers checking people in at the front desk of the Y.

  I was like Robbie the robot vacuum. We both had a very specific skill set. (Robbie could suck up dirt. I could suck up to teachers.) Beyond that? We could do nothing.

  I woke up on Sunday morning bizarre
ly early because someone had texted me and I’d forgotten to put my phone in airplane mode before I’d gone to sleep. It was from Leo Michaels, of French club fame.

  I was really starting to dislike him.

  The text said, Can you pick up the madeleines for the meeting this afternoon?

  You aren’t seriously texting me at—I checked the time—6am about this.

  Sorry, he said. Didn’t realize how early it was. I just got back from a run. So can you?

  I’d forgotten that we were meeting at Leo’s that afternoon. I rubbed grit out of my eyes and stared up at my ceiling. I did not want to pick up madeleines, and I did not want to spend my afternoon in a French club meeting. I said, Sorry, I’m sick. I can’t make it.

  We’re supposed to be getting ready for the summer abroad fair, and you already missed the last two meetings, he said. Can I drop off some of these posters so you can work on them?

  I really can’t.

  Mischa, unless you are literally dying, you have to do this.

  No, I thought, in fact I don’t have to do this. I typed, I think it might be mono. It’s probably contagious.

  Fine. I’ll just leave them on your porch.

  I tossed my phone to the foot of the bed and fell back against my pillow. I felt a little bad about missing another meeting, but not bad enough to actually go. The longer I thought about it, the less bad I felt. What did they need me for? I was supposed to be making posters about three different summer programs, in Paris, Toulouse, and Grenoble. I’d never been to any of those places. It was ridiculous. The whole thing was ridiculous.

  My phone was buzzing again, so I picked it up and looked at it. Leo was saying, What’s your address again?

  I couldn’t help it. I texted, 818 Fraser Ave, Great Falls, which is not my address. It’s Meredith Dorsay’s address. Make sure you come right now, and knock really loud or I might not hear you.

  I would pay for that, I knew, in a bunch of different ways. Maybe I could blame it on the mono. I was delirious.

  I decided to get up.

  My morning ritual, ever since I’d gotten my rejections, was to start the day by probing the spot in my brain that kept the information about my college-less future. I am not going to college, I reminded myself. I can’t go to college, because my transcript is a mess, and my letters of recommendation are worse. There is nothing I can do about any of these things.

  And I waited for that horrible pang of despair. But this time it didn’t come.

  I probed some more: All my hard work has been for nothing. Soon, I really will have to tell my mother. Everyone in my life will know. I poked a little harder: I am a complete, unmitigated failure.

  But I felt…nothing. Because one other thought had crept in, perhaps part of some self-preservation instinct that wouldn’t let me wade too long through the pits of despair, and it was this: If I have nothing left, then I have nothing to lose.

  Now that made me feel something. A little tingle, somewhere in the vicinity of my heart or my lungs, deep in my chest. I knew it wasn’t technically true: I still had some things—my health (for the moment, at least), my mom, a place to live, and the rest of the basics. But all the things I’d been working my butt off for, those were all gone, and if those things were gone, there was really no point in continuing to work for them, which meant I could essentially do whatever I wanted. Here was my new truth: I was no longer Mischa with ten million things to do, Mischa the hardworking, Mischa the perfect. I was Mischa the untouchable. Mischa the underdog. Mischa, destroyer of worlds.

  That last one may have gone too far, but only just.

  I sat up in my bed. I could walk away from Blanchard and never come back, and that idea certainly had its appeal. More reasonably, I could stick around just long enough to get my diploma and then sign up for the summer term at the local community college.

  But that seemed too logical. Too much like the desperate next step of Mischa the perfect, and being Mischa the perfect had proved to be both unsatisfying and, ultimately, a waste of time. I looked at my phone. It was six in the morning on a Sunday, not a normal time for me to be up, and I knew my mother would be asleep for at least another four hours. I pulled the Mischa Abramavicius Bucket List back up. But the only thing I really wanted to do was the thing I’d been too chicken to write down in the first place.

  I got up, brushed my teeth, and put my shoes on. I got in the car, and I drove away.

  Not away away. I knew where I was going.

  I parked in Nate’s driveway; his parents had left the garage door open in their hurry to leave for whatever sports thing Nate’s sister had that day. I gently knocked on the front door, but there was no answer. Of course there was no answer. Nate didn’t get up at seven on a Sunday for anything. I mashed my face against the glass inset in the door, and the catch popped open—his parents must not have shut it all the way when they left. I gave it an experimental push, and the door swung open the rest of the way, leaving me to stare at the Millers’ slate entryway.

  I don’t normally go into people’s houses uninvited. It’s rude and super creepy. But Nate wasn’t the type to care, and anyway, I was just going to sit in the kitchen and wait for him to wake up. I’d make myself a pot of coffee. I’d find something to read.

  I’d just just finished pouring my first cup of coffee when I heard a noise from the living room, and my heart plummeted because maybe not everyone in the house was gone except Nate. Maybe his dad was home sick, and I wasn’t exactly sure how to explain why I was in his kitchen, making coffee in my pajamas. Why hadn’t I gotten dressed?

  Then I remembered the worst thing Nate’s dad could do was toss me out of the house. I felt a little bubble of laughter come up my throat, and I stuffed my fist in front of my mouth to stop it. I heard the noise again; it was coming from the living room. It was a faint snore.

  I stepped into the doorway and saw that Nate had fallen asleep on the couch.

  He had one arm propped behind his head, and I guess he’d gotten hot in the night because his T-shirt was in a ball on the floor. His mouth was open, just barely, and every third or fourth breath came out like a sigh. His Zen Buddhism book was on top of his chest, with Post-its sticking out from its pages; also, one of them was stuck to his shoulder.

  Now even in my not-perfect state, I knew that watching someone sleep is, like, number one on the list of creepy stalker behaviors, but I didn’t think going back into the kitchen felt quite right, either. So I sat down on the arm of the couch by his feet, and I touched his wrist and said, “Nate.”

  He sucked in a breath and opened his eyes. “Mischa?” he said in this groggy, croaky voice that was probably the sexiest thing I’d ever heard. He rubbed sleep out of his eyes and sat up against the arm on the other side, setting his book down on the floor.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “The door was open and…” I shrugged and plucked the Post-it off his shoulder. “I made coffee.”

  He left off rubbing his eyes and looked at me. “What happened to your hair?” he asked, which was when I realized that I’d forgotten to brush it on my way out the door. I did my best to smooth it out with my hands.

  “Did you have a fight with your mom? Did you tell her?” He sat up a little more. “Are you having a nervous breakdown? Because if you are, it’s okay. I know all about those.”

  “No,” I said. “None of that. I just…”

  “You just…,” he prompted. “You wanted my mother’s expensive imported Kenyan coffee?” He gave a lopsided smile. “You wanted to catch me naked and asleep?”

  I looked down at the blanket that was tangled around his hips. “You aren’t—”

  “Nude on my mother’s Bauhaus sofa? No.” He let the blanket fall enough for me to see the waistband of his boxers. “Sorry to disappoint.”

  I looked away, but I knew I was blushing.

  “So yo
u aren’t warring with your mother, in the throes of a psychological meltdown, or hoping to see me without my pants. Give me that coffee.” I handed over the cup I’d made myself and he took a sip and then made a face because I take three sugars and he only takes one. “Someday you’ll drink your coffee like a grown-up.” He drank another sip and shook his head.

  “You could make your own, you know.”

  “Too much trouble. Anyway, I was just shocked awake by a girl who broke into my house to ogle me while I slept. I’m traumatized.”

  I got up from the arm of the couch. “You want me to leave. I’m sorry.”

  “No,” he said, setting the cup on the coffee table. “I don’t want you to leave. I’m babbling because I’m half-asleep and you’re in your pajamas and I figure if I keep talking long enough, at some point you’ll interrupt me to tell me why you’re here.”

  I fiddled with the ends of my unbrushed hair. Perfect Mischa would have had a lie close at hand. I needed some government notes. Or maybe: I was in the neighborhood visiting someone else, and I wanted to pick up that book I loaned you last week. But not-perfect Mischa said, “I woke up this morning and realized I could do whatever I wanted.”

  “You wanted to hang out at my house at seven in the morning?”

  I picked up the coffee again. Maybe he was right. Maybe it was too sweet. “I wanted to tell you…” I faltered again.

  “Should I put my shirt on for this? This sounds serious.”

  I growled because I didn’t know what to say. Perfect Mischa would have had a quotation handy. Something poetic. Something romantic. Neruda, or Tennyson. Or at least I would have timed the moment better. I would have been wearing deodorant, for one thing. But I was not going to chicken out and do my little “there’s someone I like” dance again. If he said no, he said no, but I was not going to die from it. The world would keep going around the sun. I would be sad, and then I would get over it. Apparently, getting over things was something I could do. I screwed my eyes shut and said, “I am in love with you. I have been in love with you for a long time, actually, and I didn’t want to say it and mess things up, but now everything’s so messed up anyway, so I’m saying it. I love you. I love you. I love—oof.”