The Admissions

by Meg Mitchell Moore

  Arthur turned his back to Nora while he was at the bar—not out of any lack of manners; his position was dictated by the setup of the living room—so Nora had no idea what he was pouring. It certainly wasn’t wine, which Nora might have preferred. When Arthur handed her the drink—something goldish brown, on the rocks—she felt like an executive from Mad Men, sipping away on a Wednesday morning in the office. (“No, Don, I really don’t think we should go for that account, and let me tell you exactly why…”)

  Arthur Sutton, ever the gentleman, raised his own glass, gave a small chivalrous nod in Nora’s direction, and said, “How’s the family?”

  “Oh,” said Nora. She shouldn’t have been surprised by this question—the little niceties were part of Arthur’s character, as much as ambition and drive were part of Angela’s and an ear for slip-jig music was part of Cecily’s—but nevertheless she was unprepared to enter the arena of small talk. Not now, not today. She could still call up the sensation of the dirt from the Millers’ lawn on her knees (her burglar suit had been inadequately thin; if she planned to take endangered-plant killing up as a career she would certainly have to budget for more appropriate clothing). She could feel, again, the sense of semi-detached excitement she’d experienced on the way there, the memory that had been called up of riding in Stuart Mobley’s old Buick toward the beach. Then the panic rising in her throat as she heard the Millers’ back door open, saw the silhouette of the career-destroying housesitter peering out into the lawn. She remembered thinking, Well, that’s that, then. It’s all over now. The new frontier, broken and burned. The California dream, gone.

  No, she didn’t feel much like small talk. She just wanted to present herself for the chopping block and get on with her day, head in hand. (First wish, Genie. Get this conversation over with quickly.) But she took a deep breath and said, “They’re well, Arthur. Very well. Thank you.”

  Arthur nodded, and Nora took (or mistook) his pleasantly blank expression as a signal to keep talking. She helped herself to a giant sip of her drink. It scorched its way down her throat, but she made a point of not reacting, and soon enough her innards were filled with an overwhelming and not entirely unpleasant sensation of warmth, even well-being. So that was why people drank the stuff. She thought of Gabe’s amber-colored Bulleit, which made her think again of the gold rush settlers, wearing their hats and their suspenders, drying their socks over an open fire, sweeping out their tents with their corn-husk brooms. The card games, the whiskey, the eternal optimism of the new frontier, coming by land, coming by sea, whatever it took. She remembered, on Angela’s field trip to Columbia, learning about how fire had destroyed the newly built town in 1854. All but one building, gone. Did those miners give up and go home, tails between their proverbial legs, returning to the East Coast or the middle of the country or wherever it was they had come from? No, sir. They regrouped, they rebuilt, they used brick instead of wood. Then, three years later, another fire. The capacity this state had for rising from the flames was truly mind-boggling. Without the gold rush there’d be no California as they knew it today, no pricey Marin real estate, no rigorous public high schools. No blue jeans.

  “And we’re just waiting to hear about Angela,” Nora said into the gap. “About, you know, Harvard. Early action.”

  Arthur nodded and smiled. “Well, Harvard would be crazy not to want Angela.”

  “That’s what I think. But of course I’m a bit biased.” Nora’s smile felt loose on her face. This stuff hit you faster than wine. No wonder the characters on Mad Men were always doing heedless things. Nothing seemed of much consequence when your ribs were on fire.

  Arthur took a seat opposite Nora—the two couches in the room formed an L, with a small square table in between. He leaned in close enough that Nora could see a stray hair popping out from one of his eyebrows, which were usually well tamed. She looked deep into his eyes and saw there a bewilderment and a disappointment for which she knew she was responsible. She steeled herself: she was lying on the guillotine, waiting for the blade to fall.

  “I think of you like a daughter, you know, Nora.”

  Nora could no longer meet Arthur’s gaze—it was too dangerous, like looking directly at the sun. Instead she looked at her hands. She was still holding her glass. Arthur hadn’t offered her a coaster and this was not the sort of house where you put your glass down without a coaster. (The coffee table in Nora’s childhood home still proudly wore the rings from many a beverage set down in haste or ignorance. Can after can of Diet Pepsi consumed by Marianne and Nora, before the wars against artificial sweeteners commenced.)

  She took a large sip and tried for a bit of levity. “For me to be your daughter you’d have to have been fifteen when you had me, Arthur.”

  “True.” A false smile, only the mouth moving, nothing in the eyes. He tapped two fingers together, a gesture Nora knew from years of experience to indicate not that he was thinking about something but that he’d already decided.

  While she was busy avoiding Arthur’s eyes she looked at the side table between the two couches. She saw there a photograph she had never noticed. It didn’t fit the décor at all, and Arthur and Linda were not people who left things out when they didn’t fit the décor. (This, of course, was a luxury afforded only the eternally childless.) It was as though somebody had just been looking at it and had forgotten to put it away.

  Nora resisted the urge to pick it up, but, emboldened by the drink, she allowed her gaze to linger on it, and confirmed that it was what she thought: an ultrasound picture in a little gold frame.

  Nora had one of those from when she was pregnant with Angela, and another one from when she was pregnant with Cecily. Her pregnancy with Maya had also necessitated (because of her advanced maternal age) an amniocentesis, with a terrifying large needle and lots of waiting to find out that everything was okay. She had never framed her ultrasound photos. Hers were in her nightstand drawer, along with a collection of Chapsticks that seemed to multiply like rabbits. She’d always intended to take them out and put them in the girls’ baby books. The photos, not the Chapsticks. Man, this drink was strong. It was difficult to put anything in her daughters’ baby books, since she’d never actually created the baby books in the first place. Someday she would.

  Arthur followed her gaze and said, “Oh.” Carefully he reached for the photo and placed it facedown on the table. “Linda was looking at that earlier. She must have left it out.”

  “Is that—”

  “Nothing we need to talk about now,” said Arthur. “Just something from a very long time ago.”

  But Nora persisted. She couldn’t help it. She loved Arthur so dearly, and respected him so formidably, that she had to know. She thought, she supposed later, that by asking she could possibly take on some of his pain as her own. Just in case he couldn’t carry it all by himself. Her voice seemed dwarfed by the large room, and dwarfed, too, by the information it was seeking. Out on the boulevard a siren screeched by. “Was that…was that your baby? Yours and Linda’s?”

  “It was,” said Arthur.

  “Oh, Arthur,” said Nora. “Arthur. I never knew.”

  “She was,” said Arthur. “But she didn’t live. She didn’t live past the first day.” His voice caught and he gave a meaningful nod that signified to Nora that she was not to take the conversation any further. Then gave a quick shake of his head, as if to banish all memories, and repeated, “It was a very long time ago.” Nora understood in that instant that everything she thought she’d known about Arthur and Linda Sutton had been based on incomplete information. The uncluttered house, the tickets to The Nutcracker with the Hawthorne girls: these things now took on a different, darker patina. Even the yoga obsession. She understood that what she’d always believed to be a conscious choice of Arthur and Linda’s had been no choice whatsoever. You never quite knew another’s story, did you, if you hadn’t walked by that person’s side their whole long lives.

  “This is difficult for me, Nora. Maybe as diff
icult for me as it is for you, I’m not sure.”

  Nora nodded—they were finished with the first conversation, then, and on to the next—and bit her lip. She felt suddenly like crying. She couldn’t speak. Her bag lay by her feet and she pulled it into her lap and searched for a tissue, which she didn’t find. Arthur, again channeling an English butler, slid a box toward her. Where the box had come from Nora couldn’t say—she hadn’t noticed it anywhere in the room before. It seemed to have appeared from the very air.

  Arthur downed the rest of his drink, and Nora saw that his hand shook in a way that suggested that this was possibly not his first drink of the day. Goodness, thought Nora. This is almost as hard on him as it is on me. (Please, Genie, let Angela get some sort of scholarship. Let the Millers decide not to sue me.) Arthur went on. “You are one of the best I’ve ever seen in this industry.” He paused and nodded, confirming the truth of his own words, before continuing. “Probably the very best. You’re better than I am. You’re years better than Sally Bentley. The things you understand about people, about what makes them tick, what they want and don’t want from their lives, what their homes represent to them—well, it’s rare.”

  Nora whispered, “Thank you.” She clutched her tissue and kept her gaze on the facedown picture frame. From another room, a clock struck the hour. Twelve chimes, high noon. Leave it to Arthur to own a clock that still struck the hour. If Nora had a clock like that, which she didn’t, she would never remember to keep it properly maintained. You had to take care of things like that, you had to respect the craftsmanship that went into them. She thought of the Tower of Jewels: cut glass on the surface, burlap and plaster underneath. That was more her style. “You could have excelled at so many things, Nora. And I’ve thanked my lucky stars more times than you know that you chose to be good at this, and that you chose to do it with me.”

  Nora nodded again. Big compliment. There was a boulder stuck in her throat. It was too big to swallow around.

  “But you made a big mistake, at the Millers’. A very, very big mistake. As you know, of course. And you put the reputation of the firm at risk.”

  This time Nora didn’t even have it in her to nod. Nora had read somewhere that when they trained doctors to let a family member know a patient had passed away they had to use the exact words, “and he died.” Because otherwise people willfully misunderstood the message; they allowed themselves to believe there was still hope. Had Arthur Sutton read the same article? Because so far he’d said only that she’d made a big mistake. There was room for hope.

  “I’m sure you know you can’t continue working for me. Nora, I have to let you go.”

  And: he died. Arthur had read the article.

  Three wishes, Genie? Oh, screw it. What’s the point.

  Nora might have been okay had she not spoken, but the very act of opening her mouth to utter the pitifully inadequate trio of words (“I’m sorry, Arthur”) released a torrent of tears over which she had zero control. She took a great, gulping breath; she was like a toddler having a tantrum in the cereal aisle, trying to regain control of herself so her mother would let her out of the cart.

  As inadequate as the words was the tissue, and the next one she selected, and the one after that: she was soaking through all of them. She didn’t know where to put them so she collected them in her lap. Arthur said, “Oh, Nora,” and he moved closer to her and placed a comforting, paternal hand on her back. She could smell that tweedy cologne and the sharp scent of the liquor on his breath. “I’m so sorry, Nora.”

  “You don’t have anything to be sorry about,” sobbed Nora. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “I hate to see you this upset,” said Arthur. “I hate that this has happened. I hate that you felt—well, for lack of a better word—desperate enough to do this. After the Watkins incident.”

  “Yeah,” said Nora from around what was now her fifth tissue. “Me too.” Desperate was the perfect word for it. She hadn’t put it that way, even to herself. Desperate. That’s exactly what she’d been: desperate to pull those little plants out of the ground, desperate to save the sale, desperate not to get sued, not to get in trouble. Desperate enough that she hadn’t even told her own husband about it. Now she’d have to tell Gabe about this, and her children. The other mothers at school—soon they’d know, if not the specifics of her job loss then at least the fact of it. (“I’m so glad!” Cathy Moynihan might say. “We’ll get more of your time now, Nora!”) They’d want her in the classroom; they’d want her painting Adirondack chairs and going into the science lab or helping out on some art project that she’d be hopeless at. They’d all assume it would be good for Cecily and Maya and Angela but it wouldn’t be good for any of them, to have a dreadfully depressed, hopelessly unemployed mother around more. It wouldn’t be good for anyone.

  There wasn’t enough air in the room for Nora. There wasn’t enough air in the entire city of San Francisco to fill her empty lungs, her empty heart. Because Nora wasn’t crying just for her job; she was also crying for Cecily falling on the stage, and for Angela coming in eighth in a race she wanted to win, and for Maya trying to hold her tears in after school, and for the tiny unborn baby in the ultrasound picture, and even for this glorious city that rebuilt itself again and again, the phoenix rising from the ashes. She was crying because it was so hard to be a parent, but it was also hard—look at Arthur, look at Linda!—not to be a parent. It was all just so, so hard.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said again. She knew she should pull herself together, get up from the couch, gather her things, exit as gracefully as she could manage. “I’m trying to—I mean, I can’t—”

  “Take your time, Nora,” said Arthur. “I’m going to go back into my office for a minute, I’ll be right here if you need me. Please, take all the time you need.”

  CHAPTER 45

  GABE

  At first Gabe thought it was one of the golden retrievers, back for a visit. A flash of tawny brown, silent in the already silent hills, one in the afternoon, nobody around.

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” said Gabe softly, and he knew Nora would disapprove of his language but he hoped this one time she might forgive him. Under the circumstances.

  The mountain lion was on the skinnier side—bad sign, Gabe knew, that meant it wasn’t hunting effectively on its own. It was below Gabe, looking up at him, not yet advancing. But Gabe couldn’t descend without passing it. He was close enough—just—to see the yellow eyes. The animal held Gabe steady in its gaze. Neither man nor beast moved.

  And then Gabe realized it: the drought. Not enough food or water sent the animals out of their usual locations, into residential areas, sometimes. Or maybe just a well-traveled hiking trail they would typically avoid.

  The mountain lion, standing now, somberly beautiful, almost innocent (though not), whiskers, snub nose, softly rounded ears, like a house cat (though not), mouth closed over what (Gabe knew) was a formidable set of teeth. And the paws! Oversized, compared to the size of the lean body, like a Labrador puppy that hadn’t yet grown into its own. Though of course it had. Those paws could kill with a swipe. The teeth, of course, presented the greater danger.

  A plaid quilt, pulled tight around his bed at the ranch house. Will you marry me, Nora? His father’s funeral, his mother crying into an old-fashioned handkerchief Gabe hadn’t known she owned. A Lego set spread out in front of a fire, construction vehicles in primary colors, working with one of his brothers, his concentration utter. No, his brother said. The wheel goes over here. Let me do it. An infant Cecily grasping at his finger. Will you marry me, Nora? His father lifting him into a saddle for the first time. There, you’ll be all right, easy does it. A grilled cheese sandwich dipped into a bowl of tomato soup. A bull elk. A rifle hiked over his shoulder. A yellow school bus rounding the corner. The steering wheel of a pickup, Gabe’s hands steady. Maya toddling toward his open arms: her first uncertain steps. October snow in Wyoming, a bison calf trekking through the drifts. Nora, will you ma
ke me the happiest man alive? Angela on his shoulders at the Harvard–Yale game. A crisp New England fall day, colors so bright it almost hurt to look. His hand on Nora’s thigh, on her beautiful pale neck. I’m sorry, Mr. Hawthorne, but I couldn’t reach anyone else in your family. I’m afraid I have some bad news about your father. Center field on a day as hot as blazes, running, running, a pop fly to the middle of the glove. A beautiful catch, everybody said so.

  It was true, then, about your life playing before your eyes. Wait. Did that mean he was going to…

  And one thought ridiculous enough to push its way to the surface, glinting in the sunlight so quickly—like the flat edge of a knife—and then disappearing before he really had time to grasp it, was how embarrassing it was going to be to die here, in the early afternoon, in the East Bay (of all places!) on a Monday, a workday, when he was supposed to be at Elpis. To add to that, his bladder had given way and the front of his khakis was soaked.

  No.

  Remember, he told himself, you’re an animal too. He tried to recall exactly what the sign at the trailhead had said. Make yourself big. Don’t back away, don’t run. Make lots of noise. Throw rocks, throw sticks, throw anything. If attacked, fight back.