“It’s a Puppeteering Club,” the spokesperson for the weird-looking group now explained. She was a moon-faced girl with long braids, a dirndl skirt and middy blouse, an outfit that located her far outside the bounds of high-school cool. She looked at Anne fearfully, as though expecting an adverse reaction. When this did not occur, she seemed relieved and continued: “One teacher told us we were too old for puppets. That was painful. Puppeteering is a very dissed art form, which is one of the reasons we want to form the club. We plan to start off with a puppet production of Much Ado About Nothing. We think doing Shakespeare is the way to get puppets more respect.”
Anne thought this was unlikely, but she didn’t say anything. It had been her experience that high-school students were unpredictable. Perhaps there existed a large group of potential puppet enthusiasts with a taste for Shakespeare who would mob the puppet production of Much Ado About Nothing.
She had no idea how these students had developed their interest in puppeteering or, for that matter, how they had found one another and organized the club. It was again one of the great uplifting mysteries of high school that kids seemed to find their peers in eccentric tastes—whether it was an interest in low-cal snacks (the Calorie Counters Munchies Club), browsing discount outlets online (the Computer Shopping Club), folding old homework assignments into frogs and cranes (the Origami Club), or discussing whether people who ate Chinese food on Sunday nights could call themselves kosher (the Kosher Club).
In light of these clubs, a puppeteering club seemed downright conventional. Anne surmised that the failure of the group to find a sponsor was owing to fear on the part of faculty members, always wary of being lassoed into extra work, that they might have to help make the puppets.
“And you don’t have to help make the puppets if that’s what you think,” said the dirndled spokeswoman, as if reading Anne’s mind. “I think Ms. Fineman didn’t believe us when we told her that. Emily is already working on the Beatrice and Benedict puppets.” She indicated a very thin girl with a waxen complexion who had perhaps spent too much time with the flour and water that were used to make puppets. “And Arthur is doing the supporting-character puppets. Casey and Fred are our writers; they’re working on making Shakespeare’s play puppet-friendly.” The speaker indicated two young men, who blinked anxiously at being singled out. It occurred to Anne that puppets gave them something to hide behind while still managing to have a “voice.”
It made sense, Anne thought. If you weren’t lucky enough to find support and understanding from other people, puppets were a logical alternative. And that’s what these kids were after, wasn’t it? Some way to gain acknowledgment and appreciation in a world that seemed indifferent, if not outright hostile, to their existence. The need that she discerned in these kids was the basic human need for recognition and love.
The thought made her conscious of her own search for these things, and her mind swerved suddenly to Ben Cutler. She had spoken his name to Marcy at lunch, and now the image of the person, whom she had not seen in thirteen years, pressed itself into consciousness. There was the tall, somewhat slouching figure, the unruly dark hair, and the intelligent, amused eyes that had looked at her in a way that no one else ever had. Men had desired her, had loved her even, but none had looked at her like that—with such undiluted pleasure in who she was; none had listened to her with the concentrated attention that he had. She shut her eyes for a moment as the memories flooded in, making her feel almost dizzy with a sense of longing and loss.
CHAPTER THREE
ANNE’S MOTHER HAD DIED OF A VIRULENT BREAST CANCER WHEN she was four and her older sister, Allegra, six. It had fallen to her grandmother to step into the maternal role.
It helped that Winnie Mazur was a highly intelligent and practical-minded woman, and it helped even more that the Mazurs had money—lots of it. Winnie’s husband had made a fortune in the garment industry before keeling over from a heart attack, a year before his own daughter’s death. “Two in two,” Winnie had said philosophically—she was not a sentimental woman. “He smoked like a chimney, so it was no wonder; with your mother, who knows?” Winnie, to her credit, had her granddaughters get breast exams and mammograms twice a year from the age of thirteen.
Neither of the girls had ever wanted for anything. There had been plenty of private lessons, trips to Europe, and expensive toys and clothes. Growing up, they had lived in the Mazurs’ large and gracious home in Scarsdale, where their widowed father, Elihu Ehrlich, would materialize periodically for what he termed “a little R&R,” when not in his own family’s Manhattan apartment or at the Harmonie Club, the Princeton Club, or the Union Club. He was particularly proud of his membership in the last of these because it was still largely restricted. “You can count us on one hand,” he liked to say, obviously seeing such selectivity as a point in the club’s favor.
Playing golf and wandering among his various clubs took up a great deal of Elihu Ehrlich’s time. He was descended from a German Jewish family that had done something once in the way of refined commerce but, for several generations, had taken the less strenuous route of marrying money
Elihu had decided early on that Anne was a disappointment. Unlike her older sister, Allegra, she did not look like his side of the family. In the rare instances that he deigned to notice her, it was to criticize some minor detail of her appearance. “Anne, why did you cut your hair? It looked better before.” Or: “That’s quite an unsightly break-out on your chin, my dear. Perhaps you should consult a dermatologist.”
Anne could remember when she was ten years old and had asked her grandmother why her sister had gotten the pretty name and she the plain one. Winnie had paused to frame her answer.
“The name Allegra was your father’s choice,” she finally explained. “Elihu wanted something head-turning and dramatic. When you came along, it was your mother who chose your name. She was already ill, you see, and the idea of getting back to basics appealed to her. She had always liked the name Anne—Anne of Green Gables, Anne of Cleves, Anne Bancroft, her all-time favorite actress. Your father wanted to name you Ariel, but she fought for her preference and he finally gave in.”
Anne had spent many afternoons sprawled on the Laura Ashley bedspread under the John Travolta poster in her bedroom, contemplating her name. She sometimes felt a surge of resentment against her dead mother for insisting on naming her Anne. As Ariel, she believed, she would have been prettier and more seductive, at least in the dramatic way that she associated with her sister. Anne, by contrast, was lacking in drama; it seemed to denote a rather drab and lackluster self—until the day she met someone who changed her mind.
It had been a few weeks before her twenty-first birthday. She had stopped off at a travel agency on upper Broadway to book the spring-break trip to Italy that her grandmother had decided would be her gift.
“I want you to go in style,” Winnie had specified. “You’re to stay at the Hassler in Rome and the Excelsior in Florence, and you’re to meet an Italian prince out of a Henry James novel.”
Anne had said she would do her best. In those days, the idea of cutting corners had not occurred to them.
Anne had been in her senior year at Columbia at the time. Both her father and sister had gone to Princeton, but Anne had preferred the more cosmopolitan atmosphere of the city, and her grandmother had backed her choice. “Much better to be mugged on the Upper West Side than buried alive in New Jersey,” observed Winnie in typical acerbic fashion.
On the particular morning in question, a warm late March day, Anne had walked briskly into the travel agency not far from her dorm. She intended to book the trip quickly so she could get back to the library and study for an exam that afternoon. A quick look around the agency suggested she would not have to wait. There were no other customers, though only one person on duty, a young man who seemed unaware that she had come in.
He was engrossed in reading a book—Ruskin’s Stones of Venice—apt, though not conventional, reading for a travel age
nt. The book was propped up on a desk cluttered with travel brochures and flyers. He was wearing the student uniform of jeans and a sweatshirt, and his face was scruffily handsome—he had very dark eyes and unruly hair, a well-shaped if prominent nose, and a trace of stubble.
Anne happened to have just finished reading Stones of Venice in her Victorian prose course and felt prompted to show off. “So, do you agree that glass beads are a mark of slave labor?” she asked rather flippantly, referring to a passage where Ruskin condemns glass beads as the corrupt products of an exploitative factory system.
The young man looked up from his book. He examined Anne for a moment with attention and then paused a bit longer, as if giving her question real thought. “I don’t know,” he finally said. “Working conditions in Ruskin’s time were nothing like factory conditions today. But the general idea seems right to me: that people need fulfilling work in order to be happy.”
The response was more measured and serious than Anne had expected. She noted that the young man, having delivered it, continued to look at her closely.
“And what do you plan to do in the way of fulfilling work when you graduate?” she said lightly, trying to counteract the not unpleasant feeling of being looked at so intently.
“I’ve already graduated and I’m working here.”
Anne paused, embarrassed. “It’s nice to travel,” she finally said.
“I can’t say I travel,” said the young man. “But planning other people’s trips has its points. I like researching destinations, both in practical ways—and literary ones.” He motioned to his book. “Not that too many people really want to know about Ruskin’s impressions of St. Marks.”
“So you like what you do?” She somehow felt a need to press him.
“It’s a paycheck”—he shrugged—“and I suppose I like it, up to a point. I’m not suited to law or medicine, and I figure that, for now, this gives me time to imagine the world and ‘find myself,’ as they say. Plus, I get to work in a new part of town.”
“You’re not a Columbia grad?”
“No, I’m a product of the city system.” He motioned to the words on his sweatshirt, which she now saw read Queens College. “Well, I’ve come in to book a trip to Italy,” Anne said, flustered by her mistake and feeling she should get down to business. “It’s a birthday present from my grandmother.”
“Lucky you,” said the young man. There was envy but not rancor in his tone. “I’m hoping to go there eventually. If you work here a year, they spring for a vacation—airfare at least. Paris and London are first on my list. Another year earns me Florence and Rome. That assumes two years of hard labor—not slave labor in Ruskin’s terms, but a lot of hours checking airfares and registering frequent-flyer miles.”
At this point, he closed his book, as though he wanted to concentrate more fully on her. “My name’s Ben Cutler, by the way,” he said, putting out his hand. “You should ask for me whenever you book your trips—we earn a commission.”
“I will,” said Anne, taking his hand. “I’m Anne Ehrlich.”
“Anne’s a great name,” said Ben.
“I’m sure you say that to all the Tiffanys that come in.” “I don’t. I happen to like the name Anne.” “And why is that?” “It’s simple and pure.”
Anne looked at him skeptically, but his expression was serious. “Anne and Ben,’ he mused, continuing to study her, “there’s a bookend quality to our names.”
“Like Dick and Jane,” observed Anne.
“No—Dick and Jane are the shallow products of 1950s suburban culture.”
“And Anne and Ben?”
“Anne and Ben are the profound products of spiritual history.”
She laughed—and after that, never saw fit to question the absolute perfection of her name again.
CHAPTER FOUR
“MR. AND MRS. JEFFREY HOPGOOD ARE HERE,” ANNOUNCED Cindy, after the puppeteers had shambled out—then she whispered into the phone, “That’s what he told me to say.”
When Anne came out to the guidance waiting room, Mr. and Mrs. Jeffrey Hopgood were sitting in the guidance rocking chairs. Vince had ordered the rocking chairs after reading that they could lower blood pressure (“Anything to take the parents down a notch,” he rationalized)—but the chairs did not appear to be doing the Hopgoods much good. They were sitting in them stiffly, not rocking. Mrs. Hopgood looked like she wanted to go home and have a drink; Mr. Hopgood was leafing morosely through a college brochure. An avalanche of brochures (expensively produced, more-or-less-identical advertisements for “a unique educational experience”) were scattered around the waiting area as though blown there by a typhoon.
“Never heard of this one,” observed Mr. Hopgood sourly after Anne greeted him. He held up a brochure for St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland, a small liberal arts college where students spent four years reading the Great Books in order to lay the foundations of knowledge. Anne had left the brochure out in a token gesture. She knew that St. John’s was unlikely to appeal to Fenimore parents, who wanted prestige and the prospect of a good job when shelling out forty grand a year for their kid’s college education. Laying the foundations of knowledge wasn’t high on their list.
In the case of Jeffrey Hopgood, the school he wanted for his son was Williams. He had gone to this venerable institution himself, as had his father before him. It was his unshakable determination that Trevor would go there too. That Trevor did not have the academic record to get into Williams did not faze him. Mr. Hopgood was of the view, common among certain affluent parents, that he could get what he wanted if enough money and bullying were applied to the situation.
“We’re thinking early action to Williams,” announced Jeffrey Hopgood pugnaciously, once settled in Anne’s office. “With backup applications to Wesleyan, Duke, Dartmouth, and Amherst.”
Anne hesitated. She had already addressed this issue with Mr. Hopgood on the phone, but her words apparently had not penetrated. “I think you’re being a tad unrealistic,” she reiterated now. “Trevor barely has a 3.0 grade point average. The schools you have in mind want GPAs that are much higher.”
Mr. Hopgood looked insulted, as though mention of his son’s bad grades was in bad taste. “Trevor’s SAT scores are excellent,” he countered huffily. “We are very pleased with Trevor’s SAT scores.” Trevor had, in fact, scored an impressive 2250 on the SATs, shocking everyone, most of all his father, who had never before dreamed that his son had a brain in his head.
“His scores are impressive,” acknowledged Anne, “but they can hardly counteract his grades.”
“His grades are a reflection on the school,” declared Jeffrey Hopgood, resorting to the tactic he used routinely in business of shifting into the attack mode. “The school obviously failed to teach him.”
Anne refused to rise to this bait, which she knew could lead to a tangled argument about whether the school had failed to teach Trevor or Trevor had refused to be taught. “Be that as it may,” she proceeded briskly, “the colleges you have in mind want sustained academic achievement. I think Trevor would do better to apply elsewhere.”
“We don’t think so!” declared Jeffrey Hopgood.
Anne glanced quickly at Mrs. Hopgood, wondering if the “we” bore any relationship to her. “Be that as it may,” she repeated, “I wouldn’t want Trevor to be disappointed. It might be very upsetting for him to get too many rejections.”
Mrs. Hopgood, silent up until now, seemed to rouse herself at this. “She has a point there, dear,” she proffered meekly. “We wouldn’t want Trevor to be hurt.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” snapped Jeffrey Hop-good. “Since when would Trevor give a damn!”
Mrs. Hopgood retreated back into silence, but Anne felt prompted to respond: “If you talked to Trevor once in a while, you might find that he did give a damn.” No sooner did she say this, however, than she felt herself relent. It occurred to her that Jeffrey Hopgood had probably been mistreated as a child by
his own father; she had a sudden image of a pint-sized Hopgood in a baseball uniform being yelled at for not catching the “goddamn ball.” Sports used to be the primary arena for parental abuse, at least for boys, but now parents had upped the ante, and the once-bullying baseball dad had become the bullying college dad, berating the child for not buckling down with the review books and raising that SAT score by 100 points. It all boiled down to the pressures of modern life—of being conditioned to be competitive and status conscious and having no clue about how to channel one’s anxiety. Although she could not condone such behavior, she could understand and at times even sympathize with it. Jeffrey Hopgood was a boor and a bully, but at some deep level, she felt he loved his son.
“Even if Trevor chooses Williams as his ‘reach’ school,” Anne continued in a gentler tone, “common sense dictates that you add a few safety schools that would be more within the range of his grades. I’d suggest some of these.” She extracted a sheet from a file on her desk containing a list of schools that tended to accept students with erratic records, if their parents were able to pay full price.
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