Getting In: A Novel (38 page)

Ted watched the smoke ring dissolve in midair and made an appreciative little snort, even as he wondered if there was a prep school anywhere in the continental United States that allowed its faculty and staff such a public vice.

“Nice,” he said.

“Years of practice,” Trey replied.

They had struck a cautious truce since resolving the mess about Brad’s slot. Ted referred to it that way, as Brad’s slot, as though it had mistakenly been assigned to another student before being returned to its rightful owner. Trey might be disappointed that Ted had been unable to close the deal without a $350,000 boost, but he had to know that there had been a couple of dozen college counselors around the country fighting for the space.

Trey nodded in the direction of the ceremony.

“Not an interesting boy, I have to tell you,” said Trey. “Brad would have done a better job up there.”

Ted nodded. “Mike,” he said. “He knows exactly what he needs to do to get what he wants. A pragmatic kid.”

“And nothing more.”

“Well, that’s between him and his god,” said Ted.

“Five years from now his dad’ll give him a production job,” said Trey, dismissively.

Ted smiled. “And Brad?”

Trey blew another smoke ring. “Harvard Law, don’t you think?”

He winked, stubbed out the cigarette, and headed back toward the tent. Ted felt every muscle in his body unwind. He should have known. Trey was never going to complain about Ted’s abilities as a college counselor. Trey was going to endorse Ted wholeheartedly, because people might start to wonder if he sounded anything less than enthused. Had there been a problem getting Brad into Harvard? Had the illustrious Four required some kind of special help? No, Preston Bradley III had to be very happy, and loud about it, to compensate for the truth. Ted was safer than safe.

A good thing, for the usually compliant head of school, a man who in the past had done everything he could to accommodate and reward his director of college counseling, had taken an odd position in their initial conversation about the coming year, one that Ted was in the midst of sorting out. He had gone in to see Dr.
Mullin a week earlier with what he thought was a very cagey proposal. He had decided to back off from his original notion of resigning, at least for the first year, because the chance to bank every penny of the private fees was irresistible and because Crestview gave him such great access to potential clients. Instead, he told Dr. Mullin that he wanted to take on a few private clients in his off hours, high-maintenance Crestview students who might otherwise siphon off his workday energies. He saw this as a good solution for everyone—certainly better for Crestview than if Ted had asked for the kind of raise that would be appropriate to his sixty-or seventy-hour workweek at the height of the application season. He saw no need to define how many students constituted his notion of a few.

To his surprise, Dr. Mullin had responded with words like “clean break” and “conflict of interest,” and inquired as to whether Ted had considered all of the ramifications of being self-employed. Specifically, had Ted investigated the cost of the excellent health insurance that Crestview provided its teachers? Had he considered the employee benefits he would lose? Dr. Mullin was sure that private consulting seemed at first glance like a far more lucrative field than high school college counseling, even with Ted’s ample annual bonuses, but had he thought about how he would ride out a tight second year if the first-year acceptances did not go as he hoped they would?

“Surely, Ted,” said Dr. Mullin, “you, of all people, know how difficult getting into college has become, even for the most qualified of students.”

Dr. Mullin found himself in the unusual position of being able to throw his minimal weight around. He was riding on the unexpected receipt of resumés from directors of college counseling at two East Coast boarding schools, as well as an indiscreet comment by Joe’s father that Rita had dutifully reported to the head of school before Ted asked to come by for a chat. As he had
never before had the upper hand with Ted, he quite enjoyed himself. He urged Ted to take a week or two, no more, to think over the pluses and minuses, and he hoped that Ted would abandon this freelance idea and return to his post next year. He made no mention of the shared directorship that one of the East Coast counselors had suggested, or of Rita’s promotion to junior counselor.

Everyone at Crestview would miss Ted terribly, said Dr. Mullin, if he decided to strike out on his own.

Ted’s initial reaction was to leave the little guy in the dust; let him promote everyone once Ted was gone, including Rita, and hire the woman from Ocean Heights who had sent him her resumé, to answer the phones. He would not give any of them a second thought, because he would be too busy making bank deposits and looking at larger condos. Ted hoped to stick to his resolve for another week, print up his letter of resignation, and pack up his office. All he had to do was squelch the worried voice that had begun to speak to him, usually at about five o’clock in the morning, asking him if he was ready to make such a big move, suggesting that the real risks outweighed the imagined benefits, reminding him that Brad and Lauren and drunken Katie had come this close to not working out, reminding him further that he worked in a world where getting into Penn and Williams and Cornell and Wesleyan and Princeton and Berkeley and even Northwestern by way of Prague somehow qualified as coming this close to not working out.

For ten months, the seniors and their parents had acted as though all they wanted was to be done with Crestview and college applications. As the afternoon and Mike’s speech wore on, they started to drift, to wonder what life might be like in an hour, over the summer, once college started. The unknown, as it turned out, was
larger and more mysterious than they had ever realized, back when their days were full of the distractions of process, of paperwork and deposits and questionnaires and essays. What came next was huge and unfamiliar, and many of them wished a small, private wish for time to slow down a bit while they got used to having no idea of what was coming, which only made time toss its head and run faster.

Parents wondered what they would do if an assigned roommate had a live-in boyfriend or a drinking problem or both, whether their own children had the potential to turn into troublemakers, and how they might find out before they got a call from a school official. Children wondered if they had a large enough wardrobe to last from one visit home to the next without having to do laundry, whether college really was easier than Crestview had been, and how to acquire a fake ID. Random thoughts filled the air like radio static. Few people would later be able to recall Mike’s anecdote about Crestview’s Model United Nations team.

Mike, for his part, did not notice the mood change because he was headed for his big close, the only part of the speech his father had not heard him rehearse, his own original idea—not quite original in concept, as he had heard about the Ocean Heights graduation, but certainly original in execution, which had to count for something.

“Since I speak for every member of the senior class, I gave great thought to what I want to say, in parting, representing everybody up here as we head off for adventures all over the country,” he said. He squared his shoulders, gamely searched for the right pitch, missed it, and began to sing anyhow.

“I will, I will
rock you
.” He thumped hard on the podium, twice, stamped his foot, twice, and sang again, “I will, I will
rock you
.” Thumps, stamps, silence. The goalie on the Ocean Heights soccer team had sworn that the class went crazy for that Black-Eyed Peas song, and Mike figured he had nailed it with Queen, particularly
with the funny swap from plural to singular pronoun, as he was the only one singing. He had expected to have everyone on their feet.

Nothing. What Mike had failed to take into account was the difference between a spontaneous outburst by a bunch of impatient Ocean Heights seniors and a constructed joke at the end of a speech that left everybody out except the winners. He had no constituency. Any senior who had ever had an original thought resented the fact that a human tote board had been named valedictorian, and every parent whose child was not on Mike’s winner’s list had stopped listening before he finished reciting the athletic honors. The handful of parents who straggled to their feet to applaud, now, did so either out of pity or to persuade Mike to make this the end of his speech, whether it was or not.

When Nora started to get up, Joel put an urgent hand on her arm.

“What are you doing?” he asked. “You can’t think it was a good speech.”

“I can’t see her,” she said, shaking free. “With people standing up, I can’t see her. I just want to see her.”

Chastened, Mike mumbled a final farewell and abandoned the podium, and Dr. Mullin quickly took his place, lowered the microphone, and awarded the diplomas with daunting speed. Once the graduates had filed past him, paused for the photographer, and taken their seats again, he gestured to the choir to stand. The choir always ended graduation with “The Wind Beneath My Wings,” because the musical director had made the first round of callbacks for the Harlettes in 1982, and because it was an evergreen on the private school graduation circuit, right up there with “Stand by Me.” Parents sometimes needed help letting go, and there was nothing better than a ballad about eternal love,
preferably love in the face of separation, to get the stalled tears flowing. As the choir sang, a confusing set of synapses began to fire, old, unused connections, distant sparks of all the emotions that had gotten this generation of parents to reproduce in the first place. Even Nora and Joel got misty, testimony to the enduring power of the song, as Lauren had practiced the alto part so often at home that they were frankly sick of it.

When the song was over, the choir director stepped to the baby grand and began to play “Pomp and Circumstance” and the choir, on cue, filed offstage, followed by the new graduates and the Crestview faculty. The members of the audience stood again to bear witness, their digital cameras held aloft, and headed for the reception on the front lawn. Joy forgot aisle etiquette and bashed several sets of knees with her purse in her haste to get to Katie. Boredom was Joy’s enemy, and the ceremony had given her far too much time to consider and reconsider the women’s whispered exchange, which she was now sure was about the valedictorian. Try as she might—surely there were numerous other members of the graduating class who were capable of having too much to drink—she could not dismiss the notion that Katie had been deprived of the valedictory for cause. Clearly, Joy had been duped by the story about Chloe and projectile vomiting and Katie’s Good Samaritan tendencies, and sleeping over at Lauren’s for old time’s sake should have been the tip-off. There had not been a sentimentalist on either side of the Dodson family tree for generations. The only reason for Katie to end up at the Chaikens was to avoid coming home.

Joy stepped past the puddle of graduation gowns that the seniors traditionally left in a heap at the edge of the stage and found Katie in a Medusa’s knot of sniffling, hugging, overheated girls who seemed suddenly to think that being apart next fall was the emotional equivalent of amputation. They clung and sighed,
and it was difficult to figure out which intertwined arm belonged to whom, but Joy tapped on the wrist wearing a Tiffany gold cuff, and Katie extricated herself.

“Yeah,” she panted. “Can you believe it? Done!”

Joy took her elbow and guided her a few steps away.

“Done, yes,” she said. “I just wanted to ask you, though. I was thinking. About your prom dress.”

“Except that this would be the moment to congratulate the graduate, don’t you think?”

Joy gave Katie a perfunctory hug and held her at arm’s length.

“I meant to ask you then and life got in the way,” she said, trying to sound as though the answer did not matter as much as it did. “Chloe was drinking what?”

“God, I don’t remember. Some mixed drink in a can. Why?”

“I’m just amazed it didn’t leave a stain. And it swam back into my mind while I was sitting there.”

Katie kissed her on the cheek and darted toward a friend who was assembling a group photograph.

“Well, let it swim back out again,” she called, over her shoulder. “Do the backstroke. It’s fine.”

Joy stood there, immobile, until Dan caught up with her.

“I could have done without the valedictory,” he said.

“If Katie hadn’t gotten drunk at prom we would have done without it, because she would have given a decent speech. Honestly. You think you know your kid, and all you really know is the lies she chooses to tell you.”

“What exactly are you talking about?”

Joy took a deep breath and pushed a flare of anger back into her stomach, which was where it usually lived, tyrannized on a less stressful day by a daily dose of Prevacid.

“Nothing,” she said. “Temporary insanity.”

“You cannot possibly believe that she was drinking at the prom. Where would she…”

Dan continued his defense of their daughter, but Joy had stopped listening. She did not know what she thought, except that she did not perceive herself as the kind of mother who would raise the kind of daughter who would allow herself to be stupid in this kind of way. The closest Joy ever got to flamboyance was the costumes for their Summer of Love theme dinner a few years back, and she expected a similar rigor from her children. She disdained the easygoing moms who swore that all they wanted was their children’s happiness, because it sounded like a euphemism for spoiling a child instead of raising her properly. Joy loved Katie ambitiously—which implied the setting of standards and the evaluation of performance.

Katie had no trouble expressing her disappointment in her parents, ranging from the dubious quality of their first offspring to their taste in friends. For the first time, Joy wondered if a parent ought to be allowed to express disappointment in a child. Unconditional love did not seem like much of a parenting strategy.