Admissions

by Nancy Lieberman

  “C’mon. Salt is salt. She’ll never know the difference,” Roland said when presenting the problem to Michael. Fully expecting him to agree, he was stunned when Michael blew up. “Get her the sel gros even if it has to be shipped overnight from Morton’s-sur-la-mer or wherever the fuck it grows.” Roland had never seen him this short-fused.

  The same went on with the kitchen equipment. Justine insisted upon an earthenware tian from Roussilon for her gratinée after rejecting the French ceramic casserole that was the network standard, because she thought it looked “peasanty.” Forget about their sturdy garlic press and pepper mill; she claimed she couldn’t possibly function without “le presse ail and le moulin à poivre,” which were available only in Paris. And she declared that the network’s restaurant-quality four-burner cooktop was insufficient, and demanded six burners and the installation of a new, super-turbocharged exhaust fan because, as she put it to Michael, “You wouldn’t want me coughing from smoke inhalation during the taping, would you?”

  The poor stylists were under even more pressure—getting the horsey Frampton to resemble anything close to a telegenic television chef was tantamount to transforming Chef Boyardee into Wolfgang Puck. There were numerous meetings that seemed to go on for hours, at which three professionals debated the pros and cons of the various hair and makeup alternatives. Unable to reach a consensus, Michael was called in to make the final decisions on all that and everything else.

  “I’ve called all over town and I can’t find the warm-toned klieg light that Frampton is demanding we use,” the usually mellow lighting technician lamented. “She’s claiming it’s the only light that will ‘do justice to her subtle skin tones.’ Her skin tones are anything but subtle. I think we’d be much better off with diffused lighting. Don’t you?”

  “Real chefs don’t wear toques,” the wardrobe mistress insisted impatiently. “Michael, I’m telling you, don’t give in on this one. She’ll look like the Pillsbury Doughboy if you do.”

  “Say no more.” He held up his hand as if he were stopping traffic at a four-way intersection where, if a head-on collision occurred, he would be the one to blame.

  In the middle of this Armageddon, his assistant, Charlotte, announced that Justine was on line one. He took her call immediately.

  “Michael, I want to make a last-minute change,” she told him.

  “Yes?” He braced himself, afraid to hear what was coming.

  “The lamb should be boned,” she stated authoritatively.

  “But we’ve already received delivery on sixteen legs of lamb on the bone, and we’re taping tomorrow. I don’t think that’s going to be possible. And you’ve worked so hard to finalize your recipes,” he added hastily.

  “Yes, yes. It was just a thought. But if I had my druthers I would rather do the butterflied leg of lamb. It’s easier to carve and tends to be . . .”

  Charlotte stuck her head in the door and whispered, “Vincent Gargano on line four.”

  Triage! The admissions director from two of Manhattan’s most prestigious schools were calling him, both for absolutely ludicrous reasons, and he had to quickly choose between them.

  Michael moaned and cut Justine off. After all, The Bucolic Campus School was currently their first choice. At least, he thought that had been the case this morning.

  “Yo, Vinnie. What’s up?” Michael switched gears.

  “Were you at the Knicks-Magic game last night?” Vince asked.

  “Yeah, man. McGrady really lit it up.”

  “So how are your new seats?” Vince hinted.

  “Great. Section one eleven, Row B. After ten years in the green seats I never thought we’d get an upgrade,” Michael replied. “We should catch a game together one night.”

  “That would be great, man,” Vince replied enthusiastically.

  “That is, unless you’re too busy with work,” Michael answered, remembering Helen’s orders to steer the next conversation with Vince in an admissions-related direction.

  Unfortunately, his effort was suddenly derailed by Charlotte, who stuck her head in and whispered, “Frampton again on line three. She sounds agitated.” He momentarily put Vince on hold.

  “Tell Frampton to please get here as early as possible tomorrow and we will discuss whatever it is then,” he hissed to Charlotte.

  “Yo, Vinnie, sorry.” There was an ominous dial tone at the other end.

  The next morning, not as early as Michael had hoped, Justine Frampton was on the set, and the cameras were ready to roll. There were just a few last-minute details to iron out, her appearance being the primary one. She had insisted on wearing a white chef’s jacket with her initials embroidered in red over her left breast, but given her double D cup, the monogram was oddly angled and nearly impossible to read, and the wardrobe mistress was dashing about trying to find a substitute. After a lengthy discussion, Justine finally relinquished the toque, and now the hairstylist was desperately trying to restrain her unruly hair and keep it off her face and out of the food. Every few minutes Michael ordered the makeup artist to dust Justine’s face with powder. “We absolutely can’t have her dripping sweat on the set,” he whispered. “And make sure her moustache doesn’t show.”

  The network cooks had been in the kitchen since the early morning and finally announced that all the prep work was complete. Behind the set stood eight legs of lamb in various stages of preparedness, from raw to fully cooked. One was oven-ready, smeared with herbs and garlic; another was in the oven, sizzling away. One was already carved and plated. There were several dishes of fully cooked potatoes gratinée, others partially prepared, and dozens of whole peeled potatoes and piles of potato slices. The ratatouille was set up in much the same way, with the whole raw vegetables, the sliced and diced vegetables, and the final product ready to serve. The kitchen counter was packed with dozens of little glass bowls that contained every ingredient on Justine’s lists, including minced garlic, chopped rosemary, ground mustard seed, shredded basil leaves, diced onions, and, of course, sel gros that arrived that morning from somewhere in France. All that was missing were Justine’s skilled hands and magic touch.

  “Ready on the set?” Michael asked the entire crew.

  “Ready,” they all replied.

  “Ready,” Justine spoke confidently as she cocked her head and looked kittenishly at camera one.

  “Four, three, two, one, action! Take one!” Michael ordered, and the cameras started to roll.

  For the next thirty minutes and twenty-two takes, Justine Frampton lurched around the kitchen like a hyperactive four-year-old in desperate need of a nap. In a gyroscopic frenzy, she spun from the counter in the foreground to the sink at stage right to the oven at stage left, while the two cameramen moved frantically to hold her in frame, and the sound technician scrambled to keep her on mike. She never stood in one spot for more than a few seconds, and as a result, her enormous rear end was bouncing in frame throughout much of the taping.

  Moving at a speed no one would have thought her capable of, she went from demonstrating the proper way to season the lamb to stirring the ratatouille, to peeling a potato, to zesting a lemon, to chopping rosemary, all the while talking coherently about the virtues of sea salt. As she whipped back around to pat the half-dressed lamb, one of her globular earrings fell into the simmering zucchini, and then, not missing a beat, she reached her bare hands into the steaming pan, fished it out, and clipped it back onto her ear.

  On take fourteen, the lamb was finally in the oven, and she began madly slicing potatoes with a frighteningly large cleaver. The crew in the control room gasped as she nicked her left thumb, instantly staining the white tubers a deep shade of crimson. She casually wrapped a towel around her bleeding finger as she made an off-color joke about passing the potatoes off as beets. Everyone in the control room laughed except for Michael, who was far too distressed to see the humor in any of this. Once the towel was totally soaked through with her blood, she tossed it on the counter and used both hands to demo
nstrate seeding a tomato. She then grabbed the same towel to swab the tomato juice that was running down her arms and, still with the very same towel, wiped a platter onto which she then plunked a tangle of grilled peppers. As someone in the crew made a crack about the health department, Michael covered his face with his hands and muttered something about his wife.

  Less than thirty seconds later, arms flailing as she lunged across the counter in an effort to catch a runaway bloodstained potato, Justine knocked over a measuring cup full of olive oil, splattering it in all directions as it fell to the floor. Wiping her hands across her now lubricated chest, she quipped, “Good thing I always insist on extra-virgin.”

  Meanwhile, smoke was billowing out of the oven due to the untended, grease-spattering lamb; the pot of potatoes was boiling over, raining puddles of starchy water all over the stove; and the sizzling vegetables were now crisp and starting to burn. She picked up a piece of charred eggplant with her bare fingers, shrieked, threw it on the floor, and dashed to the sink. While running her hand under cold water, she asked her audience, “Don’t you hate when you burn yourself? It’s almost as painful as passing a kidney stone.”

  At the end of the taping, against a backdrop of bedlam, Justine proudly presented a camera-ready Provençal meal as if she had effortlessly made it all herself. But what was most remarkable about the entire performance was that despite her oil-stained smock, bleeding thumb, burned finger, and disheveled hair, miraculously, she never broke a sweat.

  “Cut,” Michael ordered from the control room, and the crew spontaneously started to applaud. As he glanced under his arms and saw two large, wet, circular stains, he didn’t know if he should laugh or cry.

  On the first frigid day of the year, Helen was busy assembling a bag of snacks for Zoe to take to the SAPS testing center. As she spread a slice of whole-wheat bread with peanut butter, she thought back to the many sandwiches she had packed for Zoe over the years. Every time there was a field trip, a picnic, a plane trip, or a lousy selection on The School’s lunch menu, Helen had packed a brown bag for her daughter. She felt a certain melancholy as she realized that those days had become fewer and farther between, and that before she knew it, Zoe would be living somewhere else and packing her own lunches.

  “Mom, what time do we need to leave?” Zoe shouted from her room.

  “The test is at one, so let’s leave at noon. That should give us plenty of time,” Helen answered as the phone was ringing.

  “Hi, Mom. Just calling to see how she’s doing this morning. Staying calm, I hope,” Bertha Kauffmann sounded uncharacteristically tense. She had a lot riding on this, too.

  “It’s kind of you to call, Bertha. And yes, she’s fine. She got a good night’s sleep and is ready as she’ll ever be.”

  “She’ll do great. Lemme speak to her a minute,” Birdie demanded.

  Zoe picked up the extension in her room.

  “Hey, sweetheart. Listen. Three of my students took the test yesterday and called to tell me the essay question. This year they’re using the old ‘what’s your favorite book, and why?’ Remember what we talked about. Form is more important than content. What book did we decide on for you?”

  “Of Mice and Men,” Zoe answered.

  “Right. Good. Just don’t go into your theory about the sexual overtones of Lennie and George’s relationship. You may think it’s interesting, but you don’t wanna risk offending your reader. Okay, doll?”

  “Okay. Thanks for letting me know the question. That will help a lot. Oh, Bertha?” Zoe lowered her voice so her mother couldn’t hear. “Do you really think I’ll do okay?”

  “Absolutely, sweetheart. I’m banking on it,” she answered. Zoe missed the double entendre. “Call me the minute you get outta there.”

  “I told my parents that either I come alone or I won’t come at all,” April Winter explained to Helen and Zoe when they arrived at the test center. “They’ve been driving me crazy since I got home from the hospital. I can’t stand their hovering. My dad actually came into my bedroom and sat down on my bed last night, just ‘to talk’”—she quoted with her two bent fingers. “How gross is that?”

  Helen took this as a signal for her to leave. “I’ll be back for you at four. Here’s something to eat at the break,” she said as she handed Zoe the bag. “April, did you bring a snack?”

  “No. I don’t need anything,” she answered wanly.

  “Zoe has plenty for two. You should both eat something at the break. Brain food.” She gave her daughter a big hug and whispered, “Good luck, sweetie. Just give it your best. I love you.” As she left the building, she saw Julian Toppler stepping out of a black town car, in a long coat and dark glasses. Very Sunset Boulevard.

  I doubt if the SAPS proctor is ready for this close-up, Helen laughed to herself.

  In response to an urgent e-mail sent by Lisa Fontaine late the previous night, Helen had agreed to meet her for lunch while Zoe was taking the SAPS. In the taxi on the way to the restaurant, Helen speculated on what the highly confidential school matter Lisa referred to in her e-mail could be, and decided that it most likely had to do with the financial crisis she had alluded to a few months back.

  When Helen arrived at the small Lexington Avenue café, she found Lisa in a corner booth, engaged in a heated cell phone conversation. Lisa gestured for her to sit and held up a finger to say she would be just one more minute, leaving Helen in the impossible and awkward position of pretending not to listen.

  “Did you speak to our attorney?” Pause. “What kind of lawsuit? No way, keep John Toppler away from this. I mean it.” Pause. “I’ll call you later. I’m with her now.

  “I’m sorry, Helen. Thanks for meeting me on such short notice. Let’s order something to eat. I’m ravenous.”

  As soon as they had ordered a ladies’ lunch of salads and sparkling water, Lisa began.

  “The board received the auditor’s report last night, and the news was very distressing. I hope you’re ready for this,” she said, and cleared her throat dramatically. “During the course of the last three months—that’s the first quarter of The School’s fiscal year—Pamela has withdrawn something in the neighborhood of two hundred thirty thousand dollars from The School’s primary cash account. Much of it was in the form of funds wired to an account in her own name. That’s money above and beyond her salary, of course. In addition, some was wired into an account that we have learned belongs to Felicity Cozette. There was a large sum wired to that cooking school in France that belongs to Justine Frampton of The Fancy Girls’ School, presumably for Pamela and Felicity’s visits last summer, and a deposit for next summer. There was money wired to a real estate company in the Caribbean for a vacation rental this month. The list goes on. On top of all that, she’s submitted receipts for reimbursable expenses for the quarter to the tune of twenty-three thousand, four hundred and fifty dollars, which far exceeds her T and E budget for the entire year!” She paused to take a bite of her salad.

  “Those are huge numbers. How did she possibly think she could get away with this?” Helen gasped.

  “Delusions of invulnerability? Inflated sense of entitlement? An uncontrollable self-destructive impulse? What do you think?” Lisa asked.

  “Mental illness?” Helen ventured. “I’m serious. I think she’s really sick. She’s lost what little sense of reality she had.”

  “And in the process of losing her mind, she’s committed prosecutable criminal acts,” Lisa added. “At this point the board’s job is not to figure out why she’s done this but to decide what to do about it. And clearly, that decision must be made with the utmost sensitivity. The bottom line is, we have to act in the best interest of The School. The board asked me to get your input on this, the feeling being that as president of the Parents’ Association, you would have a good read on what kind of response we can expect to get. However it plays out, it will be explosive. But we need to have a plan in place before anything leaks. You and I both know that the board’s a sieve.”<
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  “Can you give me some idea of the board’s thinking on how it would like to proceed?”

  “Big debate. Many trustees want her fired immediately. Someone even suggested she be arrested and led out in handcuffs. Personally I think that’s a little extreme. Others want to allow her to stay until winter break, which is only two weeks from now, and announce at the Holiday Festival that she’s not coming back in January. At that point we would begin legal action, if that were still considered necessary. We’re meeting again tonight to make a decision. What do you think?”

  “It’s a tough call. Either way, you drop a bomb like that and you can expect some heavy fallout.” Helen’s mind was racing as she weighed the options. “But maybe the board shouldn’t act so quickly. I mean, what about due process and ‘innocent until found guilty’?” Helen asked. She couldn’t have cared less about Pamela’s civil rights. She was just angling for a stay of execution until after February 12.

  “Helen, there’s no question that she embezzled large sums of money. The decision to terminate her was not made lightly. It was the result of a thorough investigation. Believe me, everyone wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. There’s just no more doubt at this point, and it’s time to give her the axe. The only question is when.”

  “Oh,” was all Helen could think to say to that. “What about an interim head of School? That’ll be the first question everyone will ask. Who will be running the show?”