by Alli Frank
10:18 A.M.
JOSIE
Yep, Etta. She’s seventeen & a senior at Fairchild. Total smarty-pants.
10:19 A.M.
TY
What’s she doing next year?
10:22 A.M.
JOSIE
Going to Cornell or Dartmouth, hopefully.
10: 25 A.M.
TY
I went to Cornell for undergrad and medical school! And I volunteer for the Cornell Bay Area Alumni Association. My kid needs help with admissions, your kid needs help with admissions—maybe we can help each other out. I’m just saying . . .
10:26 A.M.
Ugh I should be saying NO, but instead I leave the text banter at that and hope this conversation doesn’t get picked back up next week at the Golden parent interview. Face-to-face I’m not sure I can turn down an offer to help Etta get into Cornell.
* * *
• • •
JOSIE
Lo—Aunt Viv told the hot dr. I call him Golden Boy. DYING. Since the heart attack didn’t get her I may have to kill her.
11:42 A.M.
LOLA
Aunt Viv didn’t tell him I did.
11:44 A.M.
JOSIE
WHAT?!?!? When did you see him?
11:45 A.M.
LOLA
I picked Aunt Viv up from her Dr.’s appt, you know, because you suck as her niece. It just kind of slipped out. He’s so good-looking I lost all sensibility again. I gotta say though, worth the trek across town to get a glimpse.
11:46 A.M.
JOSIE
Why didn’t you tell him YOU call him Golden Boy? Clearly this is my punishment for not taking Aunt Viv to the Dr.
11:48 A.M.
LOLA
Duh I wouldn’t want to embarrass MYSELF would I? Gotta go teach now. Ava has pencils sticking out of every orifice on her head. Holla. Lo
11:49 A.M.
Aside from the carpeting, I have a beautiful office because parents come to see me more than anyone else in the school, though Nan would argue otherwise. It doesn’t have the stately appearance of Nan’s oak-and-Tiffany glass–fortress, but from where I sit during parent interviews I can gaze right over Baker Beach and out to the Bay. When I’m conducting an interview and the most painful of parents talk incessantly about their budding thigh-high Steve Jobs, their recent vacation, or their most current venture fund investment, I can appear engaged while staring at a view I never tire of.
I have two Herman Miller knockoff chairs, a coffee table (covered in Fairchild materials), and a killer couch that is perfect for a mid-afternoon catch-up snooze (of course, never when I’m interviewing although every year there are always a few that I have to fight to keep my eyes open). Sometimes Aunt Viv sneaks in for a few winks if she has to cater a reception in the evening after cooking all day for the kids. I like that she has a place she can come and rest. Her work is not easy for a woman in her late sixties. The school (Nan) treats her like she’s still in her early thirties, and I often feel like they (Nan) are taking advantage of her, but then she always says yes to whatever is asked of her. I know Aunt Viv comes from a time and a place when a job, any job that is not as a domestic, is worth putting up with the Nans of the world. But I don’t come from that time and this is California, not Louisiana. I think she’s too accommodating, she says she likes to feel needed. A difference of opinion I guess, which Aunt Viv reminds me to keep to myself. Only problem is, the work does exhaust her, and now I have her heart to worry about, too. Also, when she comes to my office for a quick nap Aunt Viv snores something awful. If she’s snoozing on my couch and starts her guttural roar I can fairly accurately peg her with a chocolate pretzel or a paper clip from my desk. She usually rolls over and quiets down before anyone outside my office hears her and blows our napping cover, but I do worry one day she will come into my office when I’m not there, get all comfortable, start sawing logs, and the jig will be up.
“Save me!” Roan demands, blowing into my office and slamming the door.
“It’s too late for you, Roan, you best end it now. It’s been a good twenty-nine-year run, but time’s up for you.” I’m feeling feisty after my text exchange with Golden Boy.
“Aren’t you so not funny this morning, Wanda Sykes. Your twelve-thirty is here for their interview.”
“Not following your drama.”
“Meredith Lawton is here for her parent interview. I invited her to wait for you in my office, but she says she can’t, she needs to start immediately. She has a hydrotherapy appointment at one-fifteen that she must make.”
“Seriously, she told you she has a hydrotherapy appointment?”
“Yeah, is that a big deal? I’m an easy guy to talk to. You know: open, approachable, and . . .”
“Judgmental. Hydrotherapy is code for a colonic.”
“I wonder if she shits diamonds?”
“Okay too far, even for me. What does Christopher look like?”
“There’s no Christopher. She said he’s in the Middle East for work and her friend Beatrice Pembrook will be joining her for the interview.”
“But no Beatrice yet?”
“Nope, the aristocracy of alumni has not shown up yet.”
“Hmm . . . Seems Beatrice doesn’t care much about Meredith’s colonic appointment, either. Give me three minutes then show her in.”
“Yes, my queen.” Roan gives me a sarcastic curtsy and backs out of my office sure not to make eye contact. Clearly, he’s been watching too much PBS.
I heat the water in my teapot to offer Meredith a warm drink before we jump into our conversation. I grab Harrison’s file off my desk and quickly review his teacher recommendation. Despite his over-the-top five-year-old lifestyle, he sounds like a pretty down-to-earth child according to his preschool teacher. Shares easily with fellow classmates and is a well-liked community member. He engages in creative imaginary play, willingly cleans up, enjoys doing his classroom jobs, and he is steady with his emotions. The cherry on any entering kindergarten application, he can go to the bathroom without adult supervision. I suspect his aim is off from time to time being a rising kindergarten boy and all, but at least he can wipe. Go, Harrison! The last question of the teacher recommendation form is about parent participation in the school. Harrison’s teacher has switched from black font to red for the answer. Interesting to note.
We have never met Mr. Lawton, but we have to assume Harrison’s kind and giving personality comes from his father’s side of the family. While Mrs. Lawton means as well as any other mother in the school community, her version of parental involvement and support differs greatly from the definition provided in the People of the Pacific Primary School parent handbook. When we asked for families to collect used and found objects to contribute to our art studio (buttons, egg cartons, yarn, cardboard, etc.), Meredith hired her interior decorator to come work with the students for a week to teach them about color matching, textiles, and textures. Apparently, she spends so much time at the Lawton house that Mrs. Lawton considers her family or at least on the family payroll and offered her up to fulfill Mrs. Lawton’s required parent volunteer hours for the month of March. When we asked families to sign up to bring various items to the school potluck and art show, the Lawtons flew in one hundred lobsters from Maine and hired a chef to dish them up for the community. Once a week we have Ready Set Read time where parents read to groups of three or four kids for about twenty minutes. This fall Mrs. Lawton signed up her new bodyguard, Randy, to come every week. Initially he terrified the kids in his black suit and dark sunglasses, but I do have to say a few weeks into the school year, the kids have gotten to know him and love his undercover spy uniform. Mrs. Lawton also volunteered to fly in Dav Pilkey, author of the Captain Underpants series, but we politely declined. This is all to say that the Lawtons are a very gen
erous, supportive, and involved family, it’s just that their involvement is based on their own unique interpretation of what the school says it needs and how the school would like its parent volunteers to help.
A diplomatic recommendation, but I get the preschool teacher’s drift. Mrs. Lawton outlandishly outsources her school commitments, but she views it as being highly involved in her child’s school and education. Noted. A dab of lip gloss, and I’m ready for you, Meredith. I open the door to my office to see Roan shifting uncomfortably in the hallway and Meredith texting away on her phone. He wasn’t joking when he said she refused to wait in his office.
“Hello, Meredith, it’s lovely to see you again,” I say, shaking her hand firmly, a conscious power move I always employ in parent interviews.
“Oh, Josie, I think by this point we know each other well enough to kiss hello, don’t you? You’re kinda like a sista to me by now.” Meredith goes in for the customary French double cheek kiss. Nowhere in the Lawton application did I note French lineage or anything else that would lead me to believe we could be sisterly in any way. Meredith has added herself to the long list of white folks who knowingly or unknowingly put on an air of ghetto thinking we will then be able to better relate. They throw out a sista here or brotha there, a claim to love fried chicken or Jay-Z’s jacked teeth and then, presto, we’re practically bosom buddies. Whether it is conscious or subconscious, there’s an assumption that the change in tone and language will somehow bridge a racial divide between the two of us. All it does is put a person’s ignorance on display and deflate the conversation before it has even started. I am no more ghetto than Meredith is poor and from the hood.
While Meredith is working overtime trying to up her street cred, I notice her Miu Miu fur slides. Only two hundred pairs of them were made this season. The model in me has not totally died. I still covet the most unique and gorgeous of clothing and shoe design and indulge myself now and again with a couture eBay “YAY ME!” present. The hunt, the find, and the low-bid for the win are my Triple Crown. I can’t deny that I would love to slip my foot into one of those soft leather slides and let the world be jealous.
“Would you like a cup of tea before we get started?” I grab my tea box to show her my selection.
“Oh, yes, I would indeed, but I always travel with my favorite tea, which Christopher brings me whenever he goes to China. They have yet to import this tea to the States and it’s absolutely divine and detoxifying. Would you like to try some? I have several bags with me.”
I can’t help but wonder how much one needs to detoxify prior to a colonic. Doesn’t that completely clean you out? But I know it will serve me well to accept her offer and not ask too many questions.
“Yes, I would love to try your tea, thank you.” I fill our cups with water and carry them over to the coffee table, so we can sit down and get started. Before Meredith drops the two tea bags, which smell like rancid garden fertilizer, into our cups she chants something vaguely Hindi under her breath.
“Do you mind if I leave the door open a crack, so Beatrice will feel comfortable walking right in when she gets here?” Meredith asks once her tea ceremony is over. Not waiting for an answer, she opens the door. “Christopher so wishes he could be here, but his company is opening an office in Abu Dhabi, and he has to be there for a few weeks to get everything up and running. He invited me to join him, but I told him I absolutely cannot leave the States during admissions season, impossible.” Meredith is excitable as she talks, playing with her rings and wristwatch while checking the door every ten seconds. I notice she seems to lack the confidence that she will be enough to carry the Lawton family interview. “I just don’t know what could be holding Beatrice up. She promised she would join me today in lieu of Christopher.”
“Well, since this meeting is about your family, why don’t you start by telling me what activities you, Christopher, and Harrison enjoy doing together?”
Meredith is momentarily put off by my disregard for Beatrice joining the interview, but then reconsiders and launches into the story about the first Lawton family vacation to Bali when Harrison was six months old. As the urban legend of the rich and well-traveled goes, he was swimming on his own in the resort pool and in that moment Christopher and Meredith considered contacting Michael Phelps’s head coach to find out the proper age to start training Harrison for the Olympics. He has continued to show swimming prowess, and they are currently lifting up the four-story mansion they just built and putting an indoor swimming pool underground, so Harrison has a place to train. I stare out the window and wonder why she can’t just take his butt down the hill to the YMCA for guppy swim team like a normal kid. I nod my head to encourage her to keep going . . . The Bay sparkling in the sun is one of the most beautiful sights on earth, a view I can lose myself in again and again. Or perhaps that’s not actually Mother Nature doing her best work; it’s just Meredith’s enormous diamond stud earrings reflecting off my windows.
* * *
• • •
Etta and I are heading to the school parking lot when I hear Nan calling after me. I keep walking, not feeling up to engaging with her at the moment, but Etta, always kind, stops and waves.
Ignoring Etta, “Josie, was that Meredith Lawton I saw leaving the campus around lunchtime?” Nan huffs, a bit out of breath. I would have thought those five-mile early morning runs she takes along the waterfront would be doing a little more for her cardiovascular system.
“Yes, it was. I had the Lawton parent interview today.”
“Remember, Josie, they’re on my list of for-sure acceptances. You cannot, under any circumstances, blow this for me. For Fairchild. The Fairchild community needs the Lawtons. They will be integral to the capital campaign I’m launching next year to build the new STEAMS building.”
“What’s the S at the end for?” I ask, genuinely curious. Schools all over the country are building STEM and STEAM facilities, but STEAMS is new to me.
“Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Math, and Social Responsibility. Being a school in the Bay Area, the technological epicenter of the world, it is never too early to grow a new type of generation: a Larry Ellison meets Al Gore type. I want to make sure we are the first STEAMS school in the country because this is my brain baby and I want to be recognized for, I mean, I want Fairchild to be recognized for it. The project must start next year, and I need the Lawtons to lead the campaign effort.”
I have to give it to Nan; sometimes her insecurity and need to win at all costs does lead to great thinking and fast action. I decide to throw her a bone and make her afternoon.
“Nan, that’s truly brilliant. You’ll make my admissions job so easy with a STEAMS facility; everyone will be begging to come to Fairchild. Well done.” I wear a look of mock amazement knowing she will thrive on the facial as well as verbal adulation.
“Well, everyone already wants to come to Fairchild, but this will place us so far in front of the competition that I’m sure the National Association of Independent Schools will want me to be the keynote speaker at an annual conference in the next year or two. It is a brilliant idea, isn’t it? This is why they pay me the big bucks, Josie.” Nan beams and points to her brain. I stand motionless. When I don’t agree with her she turns to head back into the building.
I might have actually meant the compliment I dished out if she could have just said, “Thank you” and left it at that.
THIRTEEN
FROM: Krista McCann
DATE: November 12, 2018
SUBJECT: Etta’s college essays
TO: Josephine Bordelon
Hey, Josie,
Well, no easy way to say this, but I know you like things told to you straight so here it is . . . Etta’s essays suck. There’s no way she can send these to Dartmouth and Cornell early decision (or any school for that matter, that’s how bad they are). And there’s no time to fix them since they are due in two days. Actually, there’
s nothing to fix; she needs to scrap them and start over for regular decision. I think you and Etta need to meet with me today after school. Can you guys swing by before ballet?
Please try not to kill Etta between now and 3:00 p.m. I’m sure she has a good explanation.
See you later,
Krista
DIRECTOR OF COLLEGE COUNSELING
FAIRCHILD COUNTRY DAY SCHOOL
Deep breath. Even I need some of that namaste, crystals, and higher-power voodoo right now to keep me from marching into Etta’s first block Calculus II class and dragging her bony booty out by her ballet bun. What has gotten into that child? Krista was so nice to offer to read Etta’s admissions essays last minute. The school rule is that college counselors need a minimum two-week lead with each essay before it’s due or it’s a no-go on feedback. Krista made an exception for Etta, and I made sure Etta knew that Krista had gone above and beyond by reviewing her essays this late in the game. Etta insisted that though she was late with her essays, everything was under control. And I believed her because she has had everything under control for her whole life.
When Etta was working on her essays I tried everything I could think of to let her know I was available to help. I folded laundry in her room while she was on her computer. I made her bed while she was on the common application website. I was even so brave as to ask her straight up if she would like my help with her applications. That was a terrible idea. I was met with stone-cold silence and then a surprising teenage tantrum that started with, “You don’t think I can do anything right! You’ve never believed in me!” and ended with a heartwarming declaration of, “YOU ARE THE WORST MOTHER EVER!!” If Etta had ever talked to me like that in the past I would have grabbed a duffel bag, stuffed her clothes in it, thrown it on the front stoop, and told her not to let the doorknob hit her in the ass on the way out. But against all instincts I bit my lip, gave her a dark stare that said, One more word out of you and your life will be over in thirty seconds or less, and walked out of her room. Or really my room, she is simply a boarder on a fourteen-year lease—payment due immediately if she does not change her attitude and get these applications in on time.