The Admissions

by Meg Mitchell Moore

  “Why?”

  This line of question was becoming borderline annoying; hadn’t Angela given up the why why why game at age three? It was highly unoriginal. She was better than this.

  “So you can get a good job,” he said finally.

  “Like yours?”

  “I have a good job, yes. That I worked really hard to get, and that I work every single day to do well at. Every single day. So I don’t need you to teach me about hard work.”

  “So you want me to go to Harvard like you did and get a job like you have so I can, what? Stress about living in an expensive city and struggle to buy a house and raise a kid who I can then put pressure on to do the exact same thing?”

  Gabe stared at her. Put that way, it seemed an unappetizing choice. He didn’t answer; his energy was flagging. But it seemed that Angela had plenty for the both of them. She regained her seat at the island and considered Gabe. “Would you say that you, with your Harvard degree, are, say, happier than the guy who pumps gas at the Fuel and Save down the street?”

  Gabe cleared his throat. “I don’t know that guy.”

  “The one with the snake tattoos up his arms. Always wears a white T-shirt.”

  “I don’t know,” said Gabe. “I don’t know him. But if you held a gun to my head, yes, I would say I probably am.”

  “What about the rangers at Muir Woods? The nurses at Pacific Medical Center? The guy who blows our leaves?”

  Gabe didn’t know what to say to any of this. Finally he said, “I don’t know.” Really, truly, what did any of them really know of other people’s happiness?

  “When I look at you,” Angela said, “I don’t always see happy.”

  Gabe shifted uncomfortably. “What do you see?”

  “I see worry,” she went on. “I see stress.”

  “It’s a stressful year,” he said. “Lots of pressure on everyone.”

  “I know,” said Angela. SMILE ALL DAY LONG, the little Post-it notes had said. He had saved that one; he should pull it out, stick it back on his mirror. Might be helpful. Then he thought, Damn it. She’s turning the tables on me.

  He was struggling to find a way to turn them back when they heard the Audi pulling up outside. And gone, suddenly, was the confident negotiator, the CEO in training. Angela’s voice became tiny, childlike. She looked like a little broken bird. “Who are you going to tell? Are you going to tell Mom?”

  “I don’t know. Yes. No. I don’t know.” He was genuinely perplexed. What good would it do to tell Nora at this point?

  “What is Mrs. Fletcher going to do?”

  “She said as long as you apologize, she won’t do anything. Won’t press charges. But you need to do it. You need to go over there as soon as she’s home and apologize. In person. Sincerely.”

  “I will. I definitely will.” She put the hat back on, scooped the socks from the stool.

  “And,” he said. “It wouldn’t hurt if you apologized to me too.”

  “Oh! No, you’re right. I’m sorry, Daddy. I’m really sorry.”

  She was halfway down the hall on the way back to her room when he heard her turn back. He was watching Cecily and Nora disembark from the Audi. Cecily held a giant paper bag from the hardware store with some official-looking metal tubing poking out of the top. Geez. What kind of science fair project were they in for this year? Last year they’d had to put up with a thorough swabbing of the kitchen counters and the toilet seats and even the inside of Gabe’s cheek so that Cecily could then grow batches of bacteria in little petri dishes.

  “Dad?” said Angela. “Daddy? I didn’t mean it, what I said.”

  “Which part?”

  “I do want it. I do want to go there. I just—I just lost it back there.” She came all the way over to him, stood on her tiptoes, kissed his cheek. He didn’t even mind the sweat.

  “You do?”

  “I do.”

  He felt his heart swell and then constrict as he watched her disappear back down the hallway.

  He’d started this train, and now he couldn’t get off.

  He watched from the window as Nora and Cecily carried their packages toward the side door.

  It was all going to be all right.

  Wasn’t it?

  “Hey,” said Nora, handing him a bag, kicking off her shoes. “What’d we miss here?”

  CHAPTER 34

  NORA

  5:20 a.m.

  Dear Marianne,

  You didn’t tell Mom about what I told you about the Millers’ yard, did you? I didn’t think so. I knew you wouldn’t. You’ve always been such a good keeper of secrets.

  You know, sometimes when I’m awake in the middle of the night it seems almost funny, what happened there. I mean, can you picture it? I was dressed like a burglar! I had a child’s backpack! I was ready to steal an endangered plant! Which is absolutely a crime.

  And then I couldn’t even find the plant. I am not worth my salt, as a criminal. Marianne, your clients would be ashamed of me.

  Thank goodness that housesitter was as nice as she was. I’m not sure I would have been, in her place. I promised her that when the Millers come back from Maui I’ll take Loretta Miller out for coffee and tell her everything. And by everything I mean a tale I will concoct that will not involve the fact that I was going to dig up the plant. I will paint it more like an exploratory mission, totally inappropriate, but not as illegal as it was going to be.

  I think, if I play my cards right, I can keep from telling Arthur about it. If I do a really super good job with Loretta Miller. If I turn on the charm full-force. And I will be the best realtor he ever saw from here on in. I will find new buyers for the Watkins house if I have to scrape the pavement for them. I will make myself indispensable. I will prevail.

  Do you think I can prevail, Marianne? I really, really want to prevail.

  Cecily and Pinkie were bent over the iPad, their heads so close that if Cecily’s hair hadn’t been darker than Pinkie’s it would have been impossible to distinguish one from the other. They reminded Nora of sisters, of what she and Marianne must have looked like thousands of years ago, bent over the Monopoly board or a vigorous game of Clue. Marianne was aces at Clue—it was no wonder, really, that she’d gone into criminal justice. Nora constantly guessed Miss Scarlet, even when all evidence pointed to the contrary. She just didn’t trust the look of her.

  “What are you girls doing?” asked Nora, flying through the living room on her way to the kitchen. Maddie had called in sick today, very inconvenient, so Nora had come home early from Sutton and Wainwright to collect Maya and the fourth graders at school—she had promised Cathy ages ago that Pinkie could have a playdate at their house.

  “Nothing,” came Pinkie’s answer, and “Research,” came Cecily’s, or perhaps it was the other way around. They were basically the same person, so it was hard to tell.

  Cecily was “taking a break” from Irish dance. She might go back after the holidays; she might not. She didn’t want to talk about it.

  “Think of all the time you’ll have,” Nora had told her, even though it seemed to her like the wrong decision. “You’ll have your afternoons back.” Though, in truth, as the number of things to do had decreased, time itself had, unfairly, done the same. The Hawthorne family seemed to be exactly where they had always been, without enough hours in the day. It was the perplexing equation of the modern age.

  Nora passed through again—she was trying to get ahead so that when Thanksgiving came she’d be able to take a couple of days and relax after the big day itself. Maybe with a book! Nora couldn’t remember the last time she’d read a full book, cover to cover. Maybe she’d finally get around to finding out what all the fuss was over Gone Girl. Grace from the office had lent it to Nora ages ago and Nora hadn’t even cracked it.

  This time the girls had moved slightly apart from each other, the iPad on the table between them. Nora paused. “Is that the Golden Gate?”

  “Yes.” Cecily placed her body slightly in front
of the screen. “We’re supposed to do a report on a state landmark. Three pages.”

  “What have you learned?”

  “Opened on May 28, 1937,” reported Pinkie. “Six hundred thousand rivets in each tower.”

  “We found a documentary. We’re renting it from iTunes, on your account. Is that okay? It’s just a rental, two ninety-nine.”

  “Okay,” said Nora. “Sure. I’m glad you’re getting ahead of it.”

  CHAPTER 35

  ANGELA

  Angela’s hands were shaking so much she had trouble pushing the Fletchers’ doorbell. From inside she could hear multiple chimes, a piece of music that was vaguely familiar to her but that she couldn’t place. Didn’t matter, but it gave her something to think about instead of what was coming. (She should know the music, though, after all those flute lessons. Did you practice, Angela?)

  Footsteps, then the door opened to reveal Mrs. Fletcher, who smiled a half smile and said, “Angela.”

  “I came to apologize,” said Angela. (I came to expiate my selfishness. My felony. For which, of course, the evidence is incontrovertible.) She coughed to cover the fact that her sentence accidentally went up on the word apologize like a question. She knew better. Ms. Simmons was all over them for that, in class. Especially the girls. (Never sound uncertain, ladies! It diminishes how hard you’ve worked to get where you are. Never ever ever.)

  Mrs. Fletcher didn’t say anything. She appeared to be waiting. Probably to hear Angela say the exact words, like how if you went to Alcoholics Anonymous you had to come right out and say, My name is so-and-so, and I’m an alcoholic. At least on television. Angela had never been to a real Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. She thought of Edmond gulping down his chili beers. Maybe he should go.

  Mrs. Fletcher was still waiting. Ugh. Fine. Fair enough.

  So she said, “I apologize for taking Joshua’s pills. I don’t know what got into me.”

  Mrs. Fletcher’s smile stretched out: it was now approximately three-quarters of a smile.

  “I’m really sorry. I’ve brought them back, what I took.” Angela had put the rest of the pills in a Baggie like the kind her mom used to pack Cecily’s and Maya’s lunches in. (Though Angela, as part of the Green Team, had tried to get her to switch to something reusable.)

  Angela presented the Baggie to Mrs. Fletcher, who accepted it and nodded quickly. God. They were practically doing a drug deal. They may as well be standing on the street corner in West Oakland. She wondered what would happen if she tried to make a joke about that. Nothing good, she imagined. Drug jokes probably didn’t go over well with someone from whom you’d actually stolen drugs.

  Angela was hoping that was that, but. That was not that. Mrs. Fletcher motioned to Angela to come inside. She led her through the kitchen, where she stopped to place the bag on top of the refrigerator. Out of Angela’s reach. As though Angela might feel compelled to steal the pills a second time! Please.

  Angela followed Mrs. Fletcher out to the patio (into the maelstrom, she thought), where Mrs. Fletcher poured two glasses of lemonade from a pitcher in the outdoor refrigerator and handed one to Angela. Angela’s mother, by the way, would kill for the Fletchers’ outdoor refrigerator. Or so she always said. Angela looked around for Colton and Joshua. All things considered, as far as little boys went, they were pretty cute. Colton always smelled like cinnamon.

  “The boys are with their dad,” said Mrs. Fletcher, before Angela had a chance to ask. “A little getaway down at the beach.”

  “That sounds nice,” said Angela. Mrs. Fletcher pointed to a chair and Angela sat down in it. She wasn’t going to disobey, at this point. Geez. Imagine. She was here seeking clemency.

  Mrs. Fletcher didn’t sit. She leaned against the bar—the outdoor refrigerator was built into a granite bar with a sink and cabinets and a shelf fully stocked with all kinds of liquor—and shook her head. “It isn’t nice. It’s horrible.”

  “Oh,” said Angela. Whoops. “Why is it horrible?”

  “He loads them up on sugar and forgets to put sunscreen on them. And then they come back all hopped up on crap and it takes them days to get back to their normal routine. Just days.” She scratched vigorously at the nape of her neck and said, “It’s awful, I hate it.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Angela. She took a sip of the lemonade. Mrs. Fletcher turned to face a collection of bottles on top of the bar and tipped a little bit of vodka into her lemonade, then considered Angela for a long moment. It seemed that Angela was expected to say something. (What, though?) Eventually she said, “I’m not using pills anymore. I’m not, like, addicted to them or anything. I just needed them to get through a really tough time this fall. And I’m really, really sorry.” She folded her hands contritely next to her lemonade glass. She was really sorry. She felt terrible.

  Mrs. Fletcher nodded, as though that was just a casual comment, not the reason Angela was here. In fact she sort of brushed over it. Then she said, “You know what’s funny, Angela?”

  Angela shook her head: she did not know what was funny. She drank more lemonade.

  “I used to be so envious of your family. Your parents with their perfect marriage, and you three perfect little girls.”

  Angela tried not to be offended at the word little.

  Mrs. Fletcher tasted her lemonade, shook her head and frowned, and tipped a little bit more vodka in.

  “This was a few years ago. When I felt like I was spending all my time just trying to get Joshua to sit still, pay attention. Focus, I used to tell him. You’re just not focusing. I didn’t know there was something official that could be done, in the beginning. To help him. God, it was so hard! Every single day was exhausting. The fights Alan and I had, you can’t imagine. And I would look across the street and see the five of you piling in your car, or playing soccer on the front lawn—and I was just so envious. Those pills saved Joshua, you know.”

  Angela shifted her weight in the chair and tried to nod and smile bravely. How much easier this conversation would be if she hadn’t actually stolen the pills that had saved Joshua. Mrs. Fletcher’s face was open and honest and under any other circumstances Angela might really have enjoyed talking to her. But. She wanted to bolt like it was the last two hundred meters of a 5K. Finally she said, “I understand.”

  “I don’t think you do,” said Mrs. Fletcher. “But why would you? I don’t expect you to, not really. You’re, what? How old are you now? Seventeen? Eighteen?” She looked over her yard, which was small, but meticulously maintained, with not one stray leaf or weed. There was a lemon tree in the corner.

  “Almost eighteen.”

  “Okay. And I’m sure people tell you these are the best years of your life.”

  Angela nodded. Actually nobody had told her that in a while. (If this was the best, she wondered, what was the worst? Man oh man.)

  “In some ways they are. Your metabolism, for example, will never again be as good as it is now.”

  Angela never thought about her metabolism. Was she supposed to?

  “But the truth is, Angela, I remember being your age. And it’s not that easy.”

  “Thank you,” whispered Angela. More lemonade, down the hatch. “Thank you!” It really wasn’t easy. It was really, really hard.

  Mrs. Fletcher drank lustily, put her glass down, and said, “It’s confusing. It’s really fucking confusing. Life, all of it, whether you’re eighteen or eighty. I know that. I’m not as jealous of you all now as I used to be. It’s hard for everybody in some way, right?”

  Angela wasn’t sure how she was supposed to react. In general, in her day-to-day life, adults did not say fucking anything to her. There was a paucity of cursing adults in her life.

  “But you know what else?”

  Angela’s lemonade was gone. The ice cubes hit her teeth as she took her last sip. Carefully she asked, “What?”

  “It’s no prize being my age either. Divorced. Single mother. Shuttling the boys back and forth. Do you know Colton left his gym s
neakers at Alan’s house two weeks ago and you cannot imagine the drama we went through trying to get him to school without them. It was gym day, and we didn’t notice until the morning, and all hell broke loose. Seriously, all hell. Not a tragedy, right, in the big scheme of things?”

  Angela wasn’t sure if this question was rhetorical or not but after some time she whispered, “Right.”

  “But it almost undid us, I swear.” Mrs. Fletcher was now looking off into the middle distance, as though she were an actress in a play talking to an unseen audience. Monologue time. “Just those sneakers.” Now she looked directly at Angela. Angela held her gaze. Mrs. Fletcher must have gotten those eyelash extensions that many of Angela’s mother’s friends were getting. “I never thought this would be me. I thought Alan and I were going to be together forever and then he just…Oh, never mind, I shouldn’t have brought any of this up.” She put her face in her hands and let out a noise that sounded like ppppuft.

  “I’m sorry,” whispered Angela. “I’m sorry about everything.” And she wasn’t being specious. She meant it.

  “I know,” said Mrs. Fletcher, her face still packed away inside her hands.

  Angela said, “I’m really sorry I took the pills. I will never, ever do anything like that again.” She stood. “Thank you for the lemonade. Thank you for not—” She paused. Pressing charges seemed too crime-drama-ish. (Seriously, though, thank God she hadn’t…)

  Finally she said, “Thank you for understanding.”

  Mrs. Fletcher opened her arms, and there was nothing for Angela to do but step into them. Mrs. Fletcher’s hug was surprisingly strong—almost violent—but Angela didn’t let herself squirm or pull away. She had sinned, and this was her penance. She even hugged back, just a little bit at first, and then, when she found she was still entrapped, a little bit more. Mrs. Fletcher’s back was firm and muscled; hugging her was like hugging a bunch of tennis balls. It wasn’t bad, the hugging, though admittedly it was a little strange. Angela hadn’t hugged anyone not related to her in a long time. All in all, though, the hugging made Angela feel a little better about everything. Not just about what she’d done—but maybe like she was helping Mrs. Fletcher out too. Maybe Mrs. Fletcher didn’t get hugged enough, now that Mr. Fletcher—Alan—had left her and was busy getting the children sunburned and feeding them bad food. So: a net gain.