The Kindergarten Wars
Page 20
“I feel so lucky,” Lauren says. “Pemberley is a fabulous school. And it starts right away. There is a parent coffee thing next week for all the incoming kindergarten parents. Hopefully I’ll meet some nice people there, people I can relate to. We’ll see. Because now I am one of them.”
It’s Kind of the Least You Can Do
Shea Cohen dabs her eyes with a wad of balled-up Kleenex. The improbable has happened. Liam has gotten into the gifted program at Netherfield off the waitlist. Shea has been crying.
“I never expected this. Not in a million years. It never happens. Well, it happened. Liam’s in.”
She blows her nose. “The program at Netherfield is so right for him. We went there today, took a really extensive tour, went all through the place. I came out of there heartbroken. It’s a public school. The building is so bleak. They have no facilities. Their basketball court is a mess, there’s no art room, no science lab. I know, I know. You get what you pay for. And Liam isn’t really an athlete so he’s not giving up anything there. It’s just that it was depressing. My heart sank.”
She sighs. “But again, you look at what the kids are doing. In first grade they’re doing second and third grade stuff. It’s so academically challenging. The teacher was excited. The kids were engaged. Liam will thrive there. It’s the right thing to do.”
Shea’s eyes begin to well up. “Yesterday when we first told him, he didn’t say much of anything. He seemed fine. Donald and I were a little concerned because his best friend is going to Longbourne. That was part of what made getting in there so cool. Liam and his best friend would both be going. When we told him that he was going to Netherfield and Billy wasn’t, he sort of shrugged and said, ‘That’s okay.’”
She pats her eyes with the clump of tissue. “This morning he was just lying in bed, wasn’t really moving. I said, ‘Liam, come on, you have to get up for school.’ He said, ‘Remember yesterday I said that I was okay about going to Netherfield? Well, today, not so okay.’ And he started to cry. He said, ‘I don’t think I’m ever going to see Billy again.’ He was really upset. I told him he would see Billy all the time. I promised him he could have as many play dates as he wanted and that we could even work out a schedule where they could hang out on a regular basis. I’ll do everything I can to maintain their friendship. The reality, of course, is that you never know.”
Shea lobs the Kleenex into a wastebasket. “I had Donald deal with Longbourne. I told him, ‘I’ve carried the ball this whole way, done almost this entire process myself. You’re gonna talk to MK and our preschool director. It’s kind of the least you can do.’ So he did. MK was great. Expressed the appropriate combination of disappointment and understanding. Left the door open. If Netherfield doesn’t work out for whatever reason, there’s always a space for Liam. Which is nice to know. Now, if we had said we were bailing for another private school? Don’t think it would have gone so well. On the other hand, our preschool director is pissed. Pissed. She does not want us to go to Netherfield. She gave Donald a bunch of rhetoric. ‘Liam will be a star at Longbourne.’ Probably true. But he won’t be challenged. I think he’ll be bored out of his mind. ‘The facilities are nothing like Longbourne’s.’ True again. Then she went for the jugular. ‘He’ll be so much more comfortable at Longbourne because he’ll go in with his best friend.’ Low blow.”
A timer dings in the kitchen. Shea stands. She has been baking a batch of cookies for Liam’s class. “I think it’s all about the yield. In her case, the reverse yield. She gets no points for kids choosing a public school, because even though Netherfield is a gifted school within a school, it still counts as public school. We took a kid out of her private school pool. Points against her. We messed up her record. Kind of sick.”
And then Shea allows herself a crooked smile.
“Welcome to New York,” she says.
I Just Wanted a Choice
On a Sunday afternoon in early April, fog has socked in the Millers’ side of town, threatening to keep it hazy and gray until nightfall. In the kitchen, where Katie and Trina sit at the oval oak table, sweet moist air floats through the open window. They pick at a bowl of fresh strawberries that Katie has placed between them. Outside, children scream. Howls of joy. Miles is in the backyard, giving the women a break, playing God knows what with Alex, Pascal, and Nicky.
Katie sits at the edge of her chair, on edge being her perpetual state for two weeks now. She has slept only in spurts since the Hunsford waitlist letter arrived and has lost her appetite. She looks thoughtfully at a strawberry before resting it on the table in front of her.
“You almost ate that,” Trina says. “That would’ve been a breakthrough.”
Katie shrugs, rolls the strawberry around beneath her palm. “I’ve never heard of anyone turning down Meryton,” she says.
“You’re right. It’s not done,” Trina says.
“But you’re gonna do it.”
“I am.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m not. I’m probably crazy.”
A kid shrieks. The women stiffen, poised to bolt from their chairs and charge outside. The shriek dissolves into a laugh.
“That was Pascal,” Trina says. Her expression shifts. Her mocha complexion deepens. Seriousness darkens her skin tone, as if she is accumulating a tan. “The biggest plus for Meryton is that I won’t have to go through this stupid process again. St. Mary’s stops at sixth grade.”
“Have you sent in the deposit?”
“Yep. We’re going. It’s weird. St. Mary’s is so off the map. Nobody turns down Meryton and nobody goes to St. Mary’s. But I really think it’ll be better for Pascal. It’s the right fit. At least I think so. What do you think?”
Katie laughs. “Don’t ask me.”
Then in one fluid, violent move, Katie snatches the strawberry and stuffs it into her mouth. “I like Evergreen, you know?” she says, chewing. “I’ve always liked the school. Otherwise I would not have applied to the school.”
She slows her speech down to a crawl, measuring each syllable.
“It wasn’t my first choice. We know that. I am still reeling from the disappointment of not getting in. Still reeling. I just wish I had a choice. I wish I got into two schools. That’s all I wanted. Two schools.”
Trina touches Katie’s arm. Katie sits up straight as a pole. The move knocks Trina’s fingers off of her arm.
“Having said that, I want to tell you that I have been doing some research into Evergreen.”
Trina brightens. This is news. “You have?”
“Yes. And the research has led to intensive soul-searching.”
“Soul-searching can be a big plus.”
“I’m liking the school more and more.”
“Score,” says Trina, a smile flashing.
“I spoke to a mom I know at Evergreen. She shared something with me that was really helpful. She feels that Evergreen is what she wishes public schools were like. This city and this process are screwed up in terms of the money and the glitz and the connections and all of that. Evergreen is a pretty low-key place. There is an element of money there, sure, but it’s less so than at a lot of other schools. The school certainly doesn’t flaunt it.”
“It’s not showy,” agrees Trina.
“Correct. They’re kind of saying that growing up in this culture is weird enough. Let’s take some of the weird out and be as down-to-earth as we can. Not so easy. But it’s a conscious try.”
“I’m liking this, too.”
“You’re already spoken for. You’re going to the Catholic school across town.”
“Can’t wait.”
“The other part of the equation is that this mom is such an enormous fan of the school that it was sort of contagious talking to her. She talks about Evergreen as if there is no other place like it on earth and that it’s a privilege to send your kids there. She’s the poster mom for the school.”
“A lot of people love that school. I hear that a lot.”
Trina nods. “You’re not drinking the Kool-Aid yet but you could be soon.”
“A lovely image, but, yes, okay, I could be soon. Like three days. If Hunsford doesn’t take us off the waitlist by Wednesday, I think I’ll be able to embrace Evergreen. I’ll have to.”
“You’re going to wait until then? You’re not going to mail them a check tomorrow?”
“I’m holding on to one last stitch of hope. If I don’t hear anything from Hunsford by Wednesday morning before eleven, then I’m driving a check over to Evergreen.” Katie pauses. Pulls the strawberries toward her. She stares into the bowl like a fruit inspector. “I was hoping to hear something from Gracie, but I haven’t heard a thing. I’m going to call her again tomorrow. Just kind of hoping she’s heard from Brianna.”
“Did you have anybody call on your behalf?”
“Five people,” Katie says, nudging the bowl aside. “Five people called Brianna. Don’t know if they’re heavy hitters or what but five people spoke for us. The other thing is I don’t know where we are on the waitlist. I should say Alex, right? I don’t know where Alex is on the waitlist.”
“I feel like the end to the pain and suffering is near,” Trina says.
“You know what it is? I’m cool with Evergreen during the day. At night, as soon as my head hits the pillow, my mind starts going into high gear and I come up with all these things about Evergreen that bother me.”
“Thank God Alex is going to school during the day,” Trina says.
Katie sighs. “I can’t wait for this to be over. For a final decision. I want to embrace something. This is killing me.”
“It’s killing me, too, believe me.”
Ignoring her, her shoulders sagging, Katie mutters, “I’m not sleeping. The anxiety is keeping me up. My days are a blur. I’m getting less than two hours a night. I’m a seven-hour-a-night sleeper, minimum. I need my rest. I’ve gotten sick. My resistance is in the toilet.”
“All over a school,” Trina says.
“It just bugs me,” Katie says. “Why did she have to say, ‘We’ll see you soon’? If she knew we were going to be first or second on the waitlist, fine, great, but you can’t let things like that slip out of your mouth. Maybe she ends every interview that way. But it gave us false hope.”
“I know,” says Trina.
Katie puffs out her cheeks, then allows a thin line of air to slowly escape. “So, okay, if I don’t hear anything from Hunsford, I write the deposit check and bring it over to Evergreen. Has to be in by noon, Wednesday.”
“How much are they hitting you up for?”
“Didn’t I tell you? Forty-five hundred dollars.”
Trina almost blurts, “Chalk one up for parochial schools,” her deposit being less than two grand, but she holds her tongue and says only, “That’s a lot of money.”
“Forty-five fifty to be exact,” Katie says. “And you know what? If I got a call at 12:01 from Hunsford, I’d eat it.”
On Wednesday morning at 11:45, after a night of virtually no sleep despite swallowing an Ambien at midnight, Katie Miller climbs behind the wheel of her SUV and heads over to Evergreen School, even in traffic just a seven-minute drive. Previously that morning, she’d busied herself with a flurry of household activity: folding laundry, emptying the dishwasher, vacuuming, rearranging the contents of the fridge. Her lack of sleep and poor appetite, combined with her feelings of disappointment, frustration, failure, and loss, have left her emotionally and physically battered. Katie is a woman of high energy and focus, but since receiving the Hunsford letter she has been moving through her life as if trudging through a foot of mud. She is used to getting what she wants, especially when she works hard. She is a person who creates goals and meets them.
But this process has blindsided her. She lies awake at night trying to pinpoint where she went wrong. She probably should have pulled out all the stops before, she thinks. She should have had her contacts at Hunsford write letters to Brianna before her interview. She should have been cooler about Alex’s visit. Maybe Alex torpedoed her school visit because she was nervous, sensing her mother’s anxiety.
And maybe it has nothing to do with her or Alex, and maybe none of it matters. Maybe Evergreen is and has always been their school. And still, Wednesday morning, as she opens her checkbook and prepares to write a check to the Evergreen School for more than four thousand dollars, she stares at the phone, praying that it will ring, and that Brianna is on the line, offering her a spot off the waitlist.
Wednesday afternoon, Katie navigates her cart over the polished tongue-and-groove floors of the high-end health food store. The ceilings are wood-beamed the color of whole wheat, the aisles crammed with herbal remedies, skin care products derived from goat’s milk, and bins of granola, oats, and dozens of varieties of dry and shucked beans. The air hangs heavy with the smell of peach incense.
Katie’s cell rings. She fumbles in her purse. Flips it open. Trina.
“How did it go?”
“I’m bummed.”
“Oh,” Trina says. “Did you bring the check over?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Katie chants in a monotone. “Waited till the last second. Got it in right under the wire.”
“I bet they loved that.”
“Actually, Connie couldn’t have been nicer. She called me yesterday to see if we were coming and I said, ‘We’re coming with bells on.’ I was all enthusiasm. I didn’t want her to hear the disappointment in my voice.”
Katie parks her cart against a barrel of pinto beans, just missing a woman in a tie-dyed dress comparing two different types of mustard.
“There’s been a sort of new development,” Katie says, reflexively cupping her hand over the phone.
“What?” Trina’s eagerness attached to the word new is nearly a shout through the phone.
“Alex’s friend, that girl who got into Hunsford and Evergreen and Bingley?”
“The little princess. Yeah?”
“They chose Evergreen.”
A beat. Static through the cell.
“So that’s an ouch, right?” Trina says, trying to disguise the hurt that even she feels.
“Major ouch. Why didn’t Hunsford replace her with Alex? Are we that far down the waitlist?”
“I don’t know.”
Katie rubs her forehead. Her head is rumbling. “They’re not taking me in the first round, okay. But now I know there’s an opening and we’re not getting the call off the waitlist? Opening for a girl, too. I’m like shit, fuck, damn, ass.”
The mustard lady looks up, cradles both jars, quickly moves away.
“I think you forgot a couple,” Trina says.
“I’d rather not let loose. I’m in Whole Foods.”
“Alex will have a friend,” Trina says. “Look at it that way.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” says Katie.
“Oh, Katie.”
“I’m not excited. I want to be at a school that I’m really excited about. This is so much money to pay for seven years of feeling fine, whatever.”
“Katie,” Trina says, “you have to let go. You have to try to get excited.”
“I know,” Katie says. “I know I do.” Her voice is soft and filled with sadness. “I’m just hoping something gives. That’s all.”
A stabbing pain arrives above her eyes like a blow to the head. Katie closes her eyes, rubs her forehead in a circle.
“That girl getting off the waitlist,” she says, eyes slammed shut. “Why couldn’t that have been me? Why do I have such bad luck with this?”
“Maybe it’s not bad luck,” Trina says. “Maybe this is where Alex is supposed to be.”
“I keep telling myself that. I do. The problem is I care too much. When you don’t care about something, that’s when you get it. I have to figure out a way not to care anymore.”
“It’s going to
be fine,” Trina says, exhausted, trying to find a different remedy for the same pain.
“Maybe I just do need to give up hope,” Katie says.
“Good. Try that tactic.”
“But every time I give up hope I start to get really nauseous.”
“Why don’t you get out of town? Go skiing. Go to the beach. Go to New York.”
Katie opens one eye. She suddenly feels dizzy and weak-kneed. She looks at the floor. She could easily curl up in a fetal position right here, right between the barrel of beans and a bin of oats.
“You’ve had worse ideas,” Katie mutters.
“I have to go,” Trina says. “Pascal will be outside karate class waiting for me. You don’t want to piss off a five-year-old yellow belt.”
“Go,” Katie says.
“Call me later. We’ll continue this.”
“You must hate me. All I do is obsess and bitch and moan.”
“You don’t moan.”
Katie puffs out a small laugh, flips her phone shut, and stuffs it into her purse, which is snuggled against a half gallon of low-fat organic milk and a tub of Greek yogurt, the only two items she has managed to cross off her list, the only two she has had the strength to lift into her cart.
EPILOGUE
Teacups and Crispies
I tell parents all the time. Don’t look too far into the future. Today’s messed-up, crazy preschooler is tomorrow’s Bill Gates. And today’s brilliant, adorable four-year-old is tomorrow’s crackhead.
—an educational consultant
I Feel Bad Enough as It Is
The letters are written and signed, the envelopes sealed and mailed. The candidates have been chosen. What’s done is done.
“When I’m out to dinner with my husband or friends, or I’m in the grocery store, I constantly run into people, either prospective parents or parents I didn’t admit. It puts me in such a position,” said Brianna, director of admissions at Hunsford. “You have to say hello. It’s usually the ones you didn’t admit who come over and interrupt your dinner. That doesn’t sit well with me. What am I supposed to say? I’ve declined them. There is nothing I can do. I declined them for a reason. If they stopped to think about that for a minute, maybe they wouldn’t come over. What do they want to happen? What is coming over going to do? Do they want another opportunity for me to bond with them? It’s tough. I already feel bad enough as it is.”