by Steve Bloom
A bowling alley. It’s the last place I’d ever predict Celia Lieberman would take me. I can’t remember the last time I was in a bowling alley and now I remember why. I don’t know if it’s the heady aroma of moldy shoes, stale beer, and rancid food, or the migraine-producing clang and clatter of balls rolling and pins toppling, or the sensory overload of crisscrossing lasers and flashing fluorescence, or all of the above that is such a turn-off. No, bowling’s not really my bag; that plus that I really suck at it, which I find secretly both infuriating and humiliating. Thankfully Celia Lieberman hasn’t taken me to the lanes to bowl—or to the snack lounge or the bar—because I follow her past them to the game room at the very rear of the circus of wholesome family fun.
I stumble into abrupt pitch blackness. As my vision slowly adjusts, I discern the arcade’s overrun with obnoxious brats, which, by definition, qualifies as anyone more than six months younger than me. Screaming and shouting for no apparent reason, gathered in shadowy clusters at various vibrating multimedia units. I turn to see Celia Lieberman pretending to play foosball at one end of a long, chipped table.
“Isn’t he dreamy?” she sighs, face rapt, staring ahead, twirling and jerking sundry knobs and handles ineffectually. I strain to see through the dim chaos.
She’s referring to a tall, prematurely balding string bean who’s pulverizing a little girl in what I recognize as Bludgeon XIII, the newest, most extreme edition of an especially vile, exploitative, totally reprehensible video game in which I’ve been known to more than occasionally indulge.
“That guy?” I look at him, then back at her, then at him again. Surely Celia Lieberman cannot be serious.
“Franklin Riggs,” she breathes. “Just got in Early Action to Caltech.”
“That guy?” Jesus, I think, everybody’s getting in everywhere.
Franklin sadistically finishes off the little girl, pummeling her video self into a bloody welter of severed limbs, squirting arteries, and spurting organs until there are no virtual body parts left to lop off or obliterate. Triumphant, Franklin holds out his palm for payment.
“Fork it over, punk,” he crows. Charming lad.
“We’re in the Chess Club together,” Celia Lieberman continues, all radiant. “He’s president. I’m secretary-treasurer.”
I look again at Franklin Riggs. Besides no hair, he has no chin. Caltech not withstanding, I just don’t see it. The little girl forks over what must be an entire month’s allowance to him. Franklin mercilessly pockets every last cent.
“Next victim!” he sneers.
An even smaller boy takes the little girl’s place.
“Sounds like a match made in heaven,” I comment, at my most diplomatic.
“He barely acknowledges I exist,” Celia Lieberman says dejectedly, giving up all pretense of playing foosball. She waves to Franklin, demonstrating to me.
“Hey, Franklin!” she smiles brightly.
Franklin, aglow in electronic gore, merely contorts in a sickly grimace by way of response.
“Yeah,” I say. “I see what you mean.”
---
Back in the Prius, Celia Lieberman declares she’s ravenous and there’s still another hour to kill so we strap on the feed bag at an ancient diner she knows about, which she says no one else from Green Meadow Country Prep ever goes to. I can believe it ’cause the place is kind of a dump, the kind of place you’d find in Pritchard. Great chow, not so big on the décor and ambience. After the deprivations I’ve suffered, a double cheeseburger and chocolate shake go down easy.
“So tell me about your parents,” says Celia Lieberman, seated in the booth across from me. “They can’t be worse than mine.”
“Parent. My mom’s out of the picture,” I answer, chomping into greasy goodness. “It’s just me and Charlie.”
“You call your dad by his first name?” Celia Lieberman’s already plowed through her—of course—veggie omelet, hash browns, and toast in record time. I can see her greedily eyeing my fries.
“Charlie’s not much of a dad. Not much of anything really.” Celia Lieberman helps herself to my fries. Without asking. “Listen, forget what I said. Your parents are messed up, okay? I guess everybody’s are.”
“What does Charlie do?” asks Celia Lieberman, now grabbing my fries by the handful.
“Mostly he gets high and reads comic books. But when he’s not doing that, he delivers the mail.” I’m very particular about my fries. You see, I parcel out my fries so there are always still some left after I’ve finished the rest of my repast. Fries are like dessert to me. The tiny reward I’ve saved for myself. How so like Celia Lieberman to spoil my treat. Suddenly, I reach the breaking point, thwacking her hand hard with a spoon.
“Order your own fries,” I snarl.
“Hey, that really smarts!” Celia Lieberman complains, rubbing the sting out.
“Good,” I say. “It was meant to.”
Celia Lieberman watches me eat for a while. I take my own sweet time.
“Your dad’s a mailman?” she asks, picking up the thread. It’s almost amusing that the idea is so out there for her. That the mailman, the butcher, the tailor, all the little people who make life so convenient might have kids of their own. So, just for the hell of it, I decide to blow her mind.
“Oh, it gets better. He’s a mailman who went to Harvard.”
“Your dad’s a mailman who went to Harvard?” Her mind is blown.
“He wasn’t always a mailman. Before I came along, Charlie was an up-and-coming young novelist.”
I know, impossible to believe, but it’s true. Before I was born, Charlie had actually been somebody, had actually accomplished something of actual note.
“I’ve never met a novelist,” remarks Celia Lieberman. “Doctors, lawyers, investment bankers, too many dentists, but no novelists.”
“Skies of Stone by Charles Rattigan,” I inform her. I don’t think I’ve ever talked to anyone about Charlie’s semi-illustrious past. There has never been anybody who it might matter to. “The New York Times named it one of the top ten new works of fiction in 1995.”
“So then what happened?”
“Then 1996 happened, then ’97 and ’98. Nothing happened. Then I happened.”
The subject’s a bummer. Because I don’t know what happened. Was it me that happened? Was I the reason that Charlie lost the talent and drive or whatever gift he once had? “Listen, can we talk about something else?”
“Is that why you do this—take money for being a stand-in?” Celia Lieberman persists. “To get away from him?”
I stop eating, my appetite suddenly gone. Charlie’s a riddle that I’ll never solve. And though it pains me to admit it, Celia Lieberman has articulated something I’m just realizing that I’ve long felt but never quite faced up to.
“You know, I’ve never thought of it that way, but I probably am.”
“Amazing. We have something in common after all.” She eyes my fries again. “Are you through with those?”
Defeated, I push my plate toward her. She digs in without shame.
“Actually, I’m trying to save money to go to Columbia.”
“You have to pay for college yourself?”
“If I get in, which Charlie actively hopes I don’t,” I say gruffly. “Most likely he’s gonna get his wish. My cumes are still twenty-five points below the median. And my Personal Essay’s a train wreck.”
Celia Lieberman’s expression softens, seeing a new side of me, a side I make it a rule not to show, but I figure I’m never going to see her again so why not spill my guts a little?
“Anyway, this, as you call it, beats the hell out of getting paid minimum wage at a sub shop.”
“I’ve never met anyone my age who works for minimum wage,” Celia Lieberman muses. “Actually, I’ve never met anyone my age who works, period.”
Not a single one? Can it really be? Although it’s what I expect, somehow it’s still beyond comprehension.
“Well, they do in P
ritchard,” I laugh bleakly.
---
The drive back is silent. Celia Lieberman’s questions have churned up stuff I do my best not to think about because thinking about things doesn’t change anything. Charlie’s still a bum and I’m still on my own. I’m at a fork in the road. And if I can’t hop on the train hurling by, I’m never getting my ass out of Pritchard. As for Celia Lieberman, I have no clue what she’s thinking, which is normal because I never do. But I do know she’s thinking about something because she hasn’t made a peep for a good ten miles.
“You know anyone with pull at Columbia?” asks Celia Lieberman out of the blue.
“Are you kidding?” I answer. “I don’t even know anyone who knows anyone who knows anyone.”
“Are you great at anything?” she inquires. “Any talents you’re keeping hidden? Sports? Music? Computers?”
“I’ve got nothing special going for me,” I report mournfully. “Actually, if I was Columbia, I wouldn’t take me either.”
“My uncle’s a professor there in the physics department,” Celia Lieberman states.
“For real?” A physics professor isn’t exactly what I have at the top of my wish list of connections, especially when I have no intention of ever again taking a physics class. I’m hoping more along the lines of a nationally elected public official or prize-winning somebody or other or just your basic filthy-rich alum. But hey, a professor at Columbia. It’s a fingerhold, something, better than nothing.
“Uncle Max. Mommy Dearest’s older brother. But they haven’t spoken for years.”
Great, just when I’d really psyched myself up about the guy. Just my luck.
“But I think he’s still speaking to me,” Celia Lieberman adds. “I bet I could arrange an interview if you think that’d help. He’s a bit of a crank.”
I’m sure he is, I think.
“I don’t care if he’s a serial killer, I’ll take anything,” I say, but not believing she’ll follow through. People never do.
We slow to a stop, having reached the Lieberman abode. I pull up the Prius in the driveway beside the Beast. Celia Lieberman gets out. I do too.
“You don’t have to walk me to the door,” she says. “My parents aren’t home to make a scene.”
“They aren’t?”
“They went into the City. Pops is getting some big-deal award for saving the life of some president of some West African country. They’re being put up in a penthouse at the Plaza.”
The whole night she’s been telling me we have to stay out all night because of her parents and now it turns out they’re not even around to invade her privacy? Are you shitting me? Why, that little stinker! I glare at her in mute outrage.
“Might as well get them their money’s worth,” she smiles innocently. “Speaking of which . . .” Snapping open her purse, she pulls out a thick folded envelope filled with cash. “Paid in full plus a little something extra.”
She tosses the wad underhanded at me. I snag it.
“We’ll be in touch,” she says, strolling to the door.
But I know we won’t.
December 7, to be exact.
Pearl Harbor Day. A day that will live forever in infamy. Man, I hope not. Because, more auspiciously, it’s Early Decision Notification to Columbia Day. Today the verdict is finally rendered. Applications have been processed, numbers crunched, achievements quantified, intangibles categorized. Today, young lives will be judged. And most will be found extremely wanting.
I picture the cart stacked high with the sealed fates of thousands as it’s wheeled from the Columbia admissions office across the ivy-draped quad to the campus post office. The mountains of thin, identically stamped, officially embossed envelopes bringing disappointment and despair to those who gave it their all and still couldn’t pass muster. The smaller stack of fat packets bulging with forms to be filled out by the cream of the crop, the lucky stiffs who have whatever it is it takes. By three thirty, great news and terrible will have been sorted and loaded into trucks, fanning out across the length and breadth of the land like a virus.
Which brings us to one minute before five, which is what it is now. In less than a minute, in addition to snail-mailing the letters, Columbia will post thumbs up or down online. In less than a minute, the Future could be determined. In less than a minute, I could be bestowed with instant status, become an esteemed member of the elite, claimant of an ancient pedigree. In less than a minute, the past, modest and pedestrian as it’s been, could no longer matter. In a less than a minute, I could begin again at square one. Everything could change for me. Everything. I’m not old, but I’m old enough to know that defining moments like this are few and far between. Thirty seconds, twenty-nine . . .
Twenty-seven seconds and the Shelby Paces of the world become a possibility. Twenty-three seconds and Pritchard becomes a distant memory. Nineteen seconds and I’m one of them . . .
My hands are shaking, my throat’s dry, my heart thumping.
Single digits. Five. I’ve worked so hard, waited so long for this, for now. Three, please God, two, please God . . . One.
I can’t open my eyes. I can’t breathe. Actually I feel like I should probably lie down, but I don’t. Instead I stare at the flickering screen before me. My student ID number’s already been entered and I’m logged onto the Columbia website. Sure enough, I have an email from the Office of Admissions. The email.
Summoning all my remaining strength of will, I click on the tiny envelope icon.
It opens and unfurls, expanding into a neatly typed letter on official university stationery. At first the electronic words are indecipherable, like Egyptian hieroglyphics, but gradually they resolve into context and meaning.
“Dear Brooks,” I am greeted.
It quickly goes downhill from there.
Because there’s no first paragraph beginning with the hearty exclamation, “Congratulations!” No second sentence saying, “We are pleased to inform you.” Nope, none of that good stuff for the likes of me. Instead, there’s mention of record numbers and smaller percentages than ever. The same old bullshit about how they’ve had to turn down legions of eminently qualified candidates. It’s over. I didn’t make the grade. I’ve been rejected.
I sit there, numb. I taste ashes. Feeling the fool for ever daring to hope.
Then I notice the letter hasn’t ended, but goes on longer than it should if I was rejected because I haven’t been rejected. Well, I have, but not totally.
I’ve been Deferred.
A final decision will be made in late March or early April, at which time I will be notified. Oh, those mothers.
I try to fix on the positive. I’ve been given a reprieve from the crushing demise that might have been. There’s a shaft of hope. I’m still alive!
But, in truth, it’s a tremendous body blow and devastating setback. Early Decision was by far my best odds. Almost a 20 percent acceptance rate. Now that I’ve been cast adrift into the general applicant pool, my chances are reduced to a shade under seven. I’m one of the clamoring hordes. Oh, those mothers.
I curse my own mediocrity and catalog of inadequacies. Nothing quick and easy for Brooks Rattigan. No, for Brooks Rattigan, the ordeal will be dragged out indefinitely to a most likely bitter end. But as long as there’s a particle of a prayer, I’ll dangle in limbo, a pawn in their vicious game. The hell of denial would be better than the purgatory to which I’ve just been sentenced. My agony will continue for months. Not only that, it will grow, it will fester, it will burn like acid. How much can one single adolescent male endure? In the next few endless months, I’m about to find out.
---
The Gun’s discernibly busier and tidier than it was the last time I visited. There’s a steady line at the counter; the tables are filled with a cross section of what passes for Pritchard society. Your basic just-off-from-work, too-tired-to-cook moms and dads having a quick bite with their kids, the guys from the fire station killing time, ballers replenishing after hours of hoops
, stoners satisfying munchies, a homeless dude taking temporary shelter over a cold cup of coffee. Also, I notice minor physical touches have been made. Red and white checkered curtains hang from the windows, and cheaply framed glossy photos from The Godfather adorn the walls. Frankie Valli’s falsetto croons from a just-installed used jukebox. I don’t want to go overboard—I mean, The Gun’s hardly a major dining destination—but I have to say that in a remarkably short time, The Murf’s transformed it from a disgusting dive to avoid at all costs into a comfy neighborhood hangout with decent food. Who knew he had it in him? I most certainly hadn’t.
“I could have been rejected,” I tell The Murf, who’s intently polishing the new self-service soda station with a toothbrush and a chamois mitt. “I mean, if I wasn’t somewhat in the ballpark, they could have just axed me. That’s what they do to most people.”
Is there anything more pitiful than somebody who’s desperate to be consoled while at the same time refusing to admit there’s anything to be consoled about? Well, say hello to the New Me.
“So I’m actually no worse off than if I was just applying for regular admissions,” I maintain, persisting in presenting my very best-case scenario. “In fact, you could say I even have a slight advantage because now Columbia knows they’re my first choice and that I’ll go if they let me in. Colleges like knowing that.”
“That’s awesome, Brooks,” replies The Murf, hustling to open the front door for some departing customers. “Thanks, folks. Come again soon.”
Suddenly, The Murf goes pale, staring ahead in shock.
“It’s Her,” he gasps, going unsteady.
I turn to see what could have caused such an extreme reaction. It’s Julie Hickey, bouncing our way after Pom Pom practice with her almost as bountiful co-captain Mandi Piddick. Stepping back inside, The Murf quickly shuts the door, shouting:
“CODE RED!! STAT!!!”
I watch in amazement as the two flunkies instantly mobilize into action. One unfurls a white linen tablecloth over a center window booth, which I see is always kept available with a “Reserved” sign. The other produces a vase of plastic flowers and candles. The Murf resets the jukebox with a bump of his hips. His own personal mix of romantic classics begins. Darting back and forth past me, the flunkies converge on The Murf. One positions a mirror in front of him so he can recheck the hair, the other holds out a sport jacket, which The Murf nimbly slips into. One brushes The Murf’s shoulders with a whisk broom, the other dims the overhead lights. All part of the drill and accomplished just in time for The Murf to casually swing open the door and greet the object of his most hardcore desires.