The essay she most enjoyed writing was the one for The Progressive School, which asked the parents to write a letter to their child, expressing what they liked most about him or her.
“. . . The close relationships you have formed with teachers and many other adults are inspiring. You are truly a social creature. The enthusiasm and care with which you approach your work is commendable . . .” she proofread. Icchhh, I’m so embarrassed to think that someone out there is actually going to be reading this drivel. Helen cringed and then directed her attention to completing the section of the applications that asked:
“Number of siblings?” “0”
“Relatives who have attended the school in the past?” “0”
“Languages other than English spoken at home?” “0”
She feared that all these zeros looked very undistinguished and added up to a big nothing. At least in the section where the applications asked, “With whom does the child live?” she wrote, “mother and father,” but she doubted whether that answer would score them any points—conventional families were a dime a dozen. She could not believe she was thinking this way, and was anxious to get the damn things in the mail. All she needed were the checks (from Michael) and Zoe’s essays.
In a recent conversation, Zoe had been very clear: she insisted that she wanted to write the essays alone and that parental input was unwelcome. But she did agree to share them when she was finished, as long as Helen and Michael agreed not to make any changes.
Before Zoe went to bed that night, Helen asked her to leave the essays on her desk so that she could put all the elements together and sign, seal, and mail them. As she assembled the packets, she anxiously picked up the first essay and read:
My parents have been the most important influence in my life so far. They provide me with excellent role models for leading a moral and ethical life, and I am ever grateful that I have them as a constant and consistent beacon of light and strength.
My Dad is smart, successful, athletic and funny. He has taught me how to tell a joke, dribble a basketball, make profiteroles and balance a checkbook. He is always available for a laugh, a tickle, a game of one on one and a bedtime story.
My Mom is wise, stylish, creative and kind. She has taught me how to write a book report, embroider, look at art and stand up straight. She is always available for homework help, girl talk, hair braiding and moral support.
But the most important lesson I have learned from both of my parents is to be a loving family member and a caring citizen. They both exemplify these characteristics on a daily basis and teach me, in the smallest ways, how to live a life I can feel good about. I love them both for this more than anything. Through these daily lessons they have given me the tools to achieve whatever it is I choose to do with my life. I don’t yet know what that will be but I am confident that I can be successful on any path I follow.
Hearing Helen sniffling, Michael approached and put a hand on her shoulder.
“What’s up?”
“Take a look at this.” She handed him Zoe’s essay.
As Michael read, Helen watched his face for a reaction.
“It’s beautiful,” he blubbered. Helen had always loved the fact that Michael teared up almost as easily as she did.
“I’m incredibly touched by it. Is it possible this is genuine? Or has she been as calculating as I have?” Helen wondered aloud.
“She couldn’t possibly be that cynical. Not at her age. Besides, it’s all true, isn’t it?”
“When was the last time you made profiteroles?” she teased.
“I think it was the same year you did embroidery,” he replied.
OCTOBER
Sara always loved when the lush greens of September turned into the burnt oranges and golds of October. It meant that the lunacy of the admissions season was one month closer to being over. Her thirteen-block walk to work constituted the only exercise she would get that day, but she figured it was better than nothing, and at least it provided a tranquil start to what would inevitably be a hectic day. She was transferring her high-protein, low-carb lunch from her backpack into the office’s small refrigerator when Brandi buzzed to tell her Simone Savage was on line three.
“Sara, dahling. After all the years we’ve known each other I think of you as more of a friend than a colleague, and even more than a friend I think of you as . . . a confidante.”
There was a long pause on the line before Sara replied, “I feel the same way, Simone.”
“And sometimes friends—confidantes—have got to keep secrets from each other . . . Do you trust me, Sara? Really trust me?”
“Of course I trust you,” Sara lied.
“Then it is of utmost necessity that you do not repeat a word of what I’m about to tell you.”
“My lips are sealed,” Sara replied, quoting the title of her favorite old Go-Go’s song.
“Then just between you, me, and the lamppost, this is about the most outstanding student I have ever had. He makes every other child in the room pale in comparison. He is an extraordinary talent, yet utterly down to earth. He is truly the ideal student. His parents have asked me to use whatever little influence I might have to get him into The School . . .”
“So who is this boy wonder?” Sara asked impatiently. The preamble was becoming tedious.
“Due to a confidentiality agreement I am not at liberty to reveal his identity.”
“Excuse me?”
“I cannot reveal the child’s name at this time.”
“And when will you?”
“After the child has been accepted to The School, of course.”
“Simone, you know I can’t do that.”
“Sara! Don’t you know who this family is?”
“How would I? You haven’t told me!”
“Let me give you a hint, then: connections—big connections.”
“The Con Ed man?”
“Not funny. Think, power . . . access . . . wealth . . . touch football on the White House lawn . . . Easter egg hunts with the pope.”
“What is this, twenty questions? Simone, this is getting absurd. Are you going to tell me the name or not?”
“Not until I have your word that you will unconditionally accept him,” Simone said, knowing she was asking for the impossible but trying her luck anyway.
“That’s out of the question! You know I can’t do that. The way you’ve described him, he sounds like Monica Lewinsky’s love child.”
“You’re getting warm.”
“Simone, I don’t have time to play this game.” Sara was ready to hang up when Simone interjected, “Pamela will be very disappointed if I tell her you wouldn’t even consider him.”
Sara quickly weighed her options and then replied, “I no longer report to Pamela. Our new associate head is overseeing the admissions department.”
“And who is that, may I ask?” Simone asked indignantly.
“Felicity Cozette.”
“WHO?” Simone gasped.
“Exactly,” Sara answered.
The Dragers were preparing for their first interview. From what little they knew about it, The Safety School was in no way their first choice, but, unsure of what their real options would be, Helen insisted that they approach it as though it were. So when Zoe emerged from her bedroom wearing a faded pair of hip-hugger jeans and a tight ribbed shirt that exposed about three inches of midriff depending on how she positioned her arms, Helen voiced her disapproval.
“I don’t approve of your outfit, either, Mom,” Zoe bit her back.
“What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?” Helen had carefully chosen a navy pencil skirt, blue-and-white-striped blouse, and pale yellow cardigan—the ultimate uptown-mom look.
“That skirt is so not cool. It makes you look really chunky.” Zoe knew exactly which button to push.
“I’ll change my skirt if you change your shirt. Deal?” Helen proposed, suddenly aware that her skirt did feel a little tight.
“Okay. Deal.”
“No exposed belly buttons, right?”
“Okay, okay,” Zoe replied resignedly.
“Helen, do I need to wear a tie?” Michael asked as he emerged from the bedroom.
“You can dress yourself. I’m not your mother.” She realized she was overreacting, but she was on edge about their interview. “By the way, the answer is yes.”
“Sorry, just asking,” Michael replied.
Their morning visit to The Safety School began with a tour led by an eleventh-grade student named Katrina Stroheimer. As soon as they were introduced, Helen and Zoe, simultaneously noticed Katrina’s pierced belly button and then, as she turned around, the artfully rendered yin-yang symbol tattooed at the base of her spine, both made visible by the insufficiency of her shirt—a size 4 on a size-12 girl. Zoe stuck out her tongue at her mother while, at the same time, Michael, who had noted that the other three fathers in their tour group were tieless, glowered at Helen.
When did I become the official Drager family wardrobe watchdog? she wondered.
There were three other families in their group: two with boys, and the third with a girl. Helen noted that the girl was minus a mother and that the father was quite attractive—a “yummy daddy,” as her gay friends called attractive men with children. She wondered where the mother was. Away on a modeling shoot? A Doctor Without Borders? It was unusual for a mother to miss such an important event in her daughter’s school career. The motherless girl was a lovely, frail Pre-Raphaelite type with a slightly melancholic air about her. The father also had a sort of dreaminess about him, or was he merely tired? She couldn’t decide whether he was a hapless romantic or a sleep- deprived somnambulist.
The bespectacled boy in their group had dressed the part of Encyclopedia Brown, with horn-rimmed glasses, schoolboy blazer, and voluminous book in hand. Helen tilted her head to read the title: The Complete Works of Homer. She tried to remember the last book Zoe read, and seemed to recall its having gnomes on the cover. The boy’s tweedily dressed father was also toting a weighty tome—the third volume of the Durants’ History of Civilization.
God, how obnoxious, Helen thought. Who do they think they’re kidding with these props? She checked out the mother, who had also dressed the part in a Mitford-sisters-on-a-garden-tour-type suit, a leather-bound book in hand, in which she was busily scrawling notes. Helen craned her neck to read: “Latin required—only four periods per week. Sanskrit not offered—mediocre language department.”
The fourth family in their little group provided a study in contrast. The parents looked like characters out of a 1950s sitcom, strikingly ordinary throwbacks to a simpler decade. But their son, with his Nirvana sweatshirt, sebaceous skin, slacker posture, and expression of abject boredom, was the quintessential disaffected adolescent. The parents and their child, through their mirrored body language, expressed one common sentiment: estrangement.
Hmmm. If faced with a choice between these two boys for Zoe, which would get my vote? The namby-pamby son of the intellectually insecure overcompensators, or Kurt Cobain, the despondent son of the vanilla people? Helen wondered, weighing the lesser of the two evils.
With her group in tow, Katrina raced around the school at a breakneck pace. Breathlessly struggling to keep up with her long-legged strides, not wanting to ask her to slow down, because that would suggest they were out of shape, the Dragers scrambled to keep up.
The Safety School was in the midst of a major construction project, so that everywhere they turned, they were confronted with scaffolding, masonry, and stacks of Sheetrock. But even more disruptive was the intermittent pounding of jackhammers that made it nearly impossible to hear Katrina as she explained the expansion plan. Helen thought she heard the words “ten million dollars” and “new gym,” but missed everything else in between. She was sure she heard Katrina swear up and down that the project would be completed before the start of the next school year, but then caught the eye of one of the construction workers as he snickered, shook his head, and, with his right hand curled as though holding a large salami, performed a familiar obscene gesture that Helen took to mean “in your dreams, lady.”
Katrina opened a classroom door, gestured for them to enter, and then silently instructed them to stand in the back to observe a tenth-grade English class in action. The teacher, who looked to be just a few years older than Zoe, was doing what Helen thought was a credible job of comparing the rogue in nineteenth-century picaresque literature to dot-com executives in Silicon Valley. Helen marveled at his ability to conduct such a heady discussion amidst the chaos of the construction project and thought that if Zoe were a student here, she would be inclined to register a complaint about the ear-splitting noise. She smiled when she caught the teacher’s eye, and he flashed her one back; he took her smile to mean that she approved of his teaching, while his contained a hint of sympathy because he knew her daughter’s chances of becoming his student were slim.
In an adjacent classroom, a group of Latin students were conjugating the verb “sum” aloud over the roar of a buzz saw. “Sum, es, est, sumus, estis, sunt . . .” She thought she heard a practical joker sneak in the forbidden “C” word, but with such a racket, she couldn’t be sure.
As Katrina led them out, Helen thought she caught Mr. Cobain staring at Katrina’s ass. She checked to see if Michael was doing the same but, worse, caught him speaking convivially with Mr. Encyclopedia Brown.
“This is the first school we’ve toured,” she overheard Michael say.
“Where else are you applying?” Mr. Brown asked.
Helen yanked on Michael’s arm.
“What?” he whispered, looking bewildered.
“Don’t divulge any strategic information,” she ordered under her breath.
“You’re kidding, right?”
A few minutes later, Katrina deposited them back at the office, and the associate director of admissions came out to greet them.
“I hope you enjoyed your tour with Katrina and got to know a bit about who we are. Now, please make yourselves comfortable. You will be called momentarily for your interviews. While you’re waiting, are there any questions?” he offered collegially.
“Is literature taught in the original language, i.e.: Günter Grass in German?” who else but Mrs. Brown asked.
I hate when people say “i.e.”: it’s one thing to write it, but to say it, icchh, Helen thought.
“Um, that’s a question for the head of the English, or, uh, is that for the language department? I’ll have to get back to you on that,” the associate fumbled.
“This school has the reputation of being pretty druggy. Do you think there’s much drug use among the students?” Mr. Cobain asked.
The associate looked at the family and paused before replying. Helen bet he was wondering not whether their son was into drugs, but which ones. He then answered defensively, “I have very little patience for this kind of question. I don’t know how these rumors get started, but there is absolutely no truth to them, and in fact, we have a highly effective antidrug policy. But, we also feel that ultimately it is the responsibility of each family to monitor and discipline their children as regards drug use.” He stared accusatorially at the Cobains, and Helen could almost hear him make a mental note to pull their file and mark it with a red flag.
“Their chances just went up in a puff of marijuana smoke,” Helen whispered to Michael.
After this admonition, Helen shied away from asking about the construction completion date, afraid the associate might perceive her to be a troublemaker. In response to the Cobains’ query, the yummy daddy recommended an article on teenage drug use that recently appeared in a highbrow psychoanalytical journal, with which Helen was familiar but which she doubted the Cobains would have ever encountered. She liked the sound of his voice and the generosity he exhibited by offering the suggestion. He also had a gentle, considerate manner with his daughter—warmly protective but not overbearing. She appeared to adore him and stayed by his side at all times.
And finally, Helen noted the absence of a wedding ring, which, for reasons she couldn’t explain, intrigued her.
After an annoyingly long wait, all three Dragers were called for their interview with The Safety School admissions director, Shirley Livingston. After introducing herself, she threw them all off guard with her first question. “Zoe, how would you describe your relationship with your mother?” Helen thought this a highly provocative way to begin an interview and waited breathlessly for Zoe’s response.
“We’re very close, most of the time. Sometimes we—” Livingston cut her off.
“My daughter and I were also very close. Particularly when she was living at home. Now she’s in college . . . thankfully in the Northeast . . . in Boston . . . well, more precisely, Cambridge . . . Harvard, to be exact, and we’re still very close.”
Helen smiled, glad to know that Shirley’s daughter made it to the Ivy League, but couldn’t help but wonder where this was leading, and about its relevance to Zoe.
“And Michael. What do you like to do best with Zoe?”
“Oh, you know, go to the park and play a little ball or—”
Shirley interrupted again. “Oh! You play football?”
“Well no, actually, we play basket—”
Shirley interrupted yet again. “My son is a great football player. He made the varsity in his sophomore year and is ever so sweet about inviting us to all the games. Do you know, they still do tailgate parties at Princeton?”
“Boola-boola,” muttered Helen.
“It sounds like The Safety School has a pretty strong record of getting their graduates into the Ivy League. Your kids did go to school here, didn’t they?” Michael asked.
“Well, er, no, actually. Well, I mean they did both start here in kindergarten but then transferred out to The Very Brainy Girls’ School and The Very Brainy Boys’ School, in fourth and fifth grades respectively. But they were unusual cases,” Shirley hedged awkwardly.
Admissions Page 9
