But though the Corcoran case was frequently invoked by area citizens as a sorry tale (especially since Mrs. Corcoran was rumored to find Tuscany boring and to miss the malls of Westchester County), many felt that the Corcorans had erred less in kind than in degree. No one argued with working the system in moderation. But the Corcorans had overreached. They should have been satisfied with one or two disability diagnoses and a salutatory spot, instead of insisting on the whole shebang. The lesson, in short, was that one should bilk the system more discreetly, which meant that cases less dramatic than the Corcorans’ cropped up all the time. That was why Mandy Fields was sitting in Anne’s office right now.
“As I said, it’s rather late in Jodi’s high-school career for an ADD diagnosis,” Anne explained patiently.
Mrs. Fields eyes opened wide. “Will that count against her?”
“Well, it’s unlikely that our child study team will approve the diagnosis at such a late date, which means she wouldn’t get extra time on the SATs.”
“But Jodi needs extra time,” protested Mrs. Fields. “You should see how long it takes her to pick out an outfit in the morning. She has to try on fifteen tops until she’s satisfied. All of them are left inside out on the floor for Rosalee to pick up.And she doesn’t even put her underwear in the hamper. I tell her it’s disrespectful to leave dirty panties lying around for the maid to pick up, but she just can’t seem to do it.”
“Mrs. Fields,” said Anne, “this really doesn’t have bearing on Jodi’s diagnosis.”
“I thought that it reflected her difficulty getting things done and keeping on task,” said Mrs. Fields. “I haven’t even told you about the makeup and the shoes. There must be ten pairs of shoes that she tries on before she chooses one that I usually don’t like. It’s a wonder she gets herself out of the house at all.”
“She could lay her outfit out the night before,” suggested Anne, finding that she had somehow been drawn into this bizarre discussion of Jodi’s wardrobe issues.
Jodi’s mother nodded. “You think I don’t suggest that? But she ends up laying out five outfits, saying you never know the weather or if something will make your legs look fat.”
“And you believe this problem getting dressed is connected to her ADD?”
“Absolutely. She’s always been a dawdler.”
“Dawdling and ADD are not one and the same,” noted Anne, “though they both have d’s in them,” she couldn’t resist adding.
Mrs. Fields looked at her blankly. “Are you saying she doesn’t have ADD?”
“I’m saying that the diagnosis looks suspicious coming at this time late in her high-school career. And noting it on her college application might raise a red flag.”
“Are you saying ADD won’t help her?” asked Mrs. Fields in a more incredulous tone.
Anne shook her head wearily. She wanted to say that she thought Jodi was spoiled, lazy, and possibly dumb (although with a highly developed fashion sense inherited from her mother) but restrained herself.
“Why not think the diagnosis over and consult with your husband?” suggested Anne.
Mrs. Fields waved her hand; apparently this creature labored in the coal mines of Wall Street and was rarely at home.
“Or talk to your clinical social worker,” Anne amended. “The diagnosis, if it lacks proper backup, might give colleges the wrong impression—they might think that Jodi was taking advantage of the system.”
“I thought that was the point,” said Mrs. Fields, “to take advantage of the system if you can.”
“No,” said Anne slowly, “that’s not the point. And it certainly won’t help if the system sees it’s being taken advantage of.”
Even Mrs. Fields seemed to grasp this point.
“So talk it over with your social worker. Maybe she can help you decide whether it’s better to present Jodi as a fun-loving girl with a large and varied wardrobe or a victim of ADD who can’t dress herself in the morning. I leave the final decision to you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“HELLO, PETER, THIS IS ANNE EHRLICH. WE MET—”
“You don’t have to say where we met,” interrupted Peter. “You’re the beautiful, sad guidance counselor.”
Anne was momentarily taken aback. That he found her beautiful was flattering. But sad? She had always thought of herself as a rather cheerful person—all things considered.
“I wanted to call you,” Peter continued, “but I didn’t have your number and I didn’t know anyone at that party. I know practically no one. I spend most of my time in bed or at my desk, trying to write. Lately, I’ve had some bad writer’s block.” He said this as though he were talking about a case of athlete’s foot or indigestion.
“I’m sorry,” said Anne.
“Don’t be. It’s not your fault. Though I did have a dream about you.” “You did?”
“Yes, I was consoling you for your loss.” “But you’re the one who had the loss.”
“I know; it was strange. Even in the dream I remember thinking: ‘I’m the one who had the loss.’ But there was no arguing with the dream. And I suppose when I met you I sensed you’d lost someone, at some time, which was part of what drew me to you.”
“Well,” said Anne, feeling that the conversation was making her uneasy, “I’m calling about Poetry Day at Fenimore High School. If you remember me, you’ll also remember your promise. You volunteered to take part in our attempt at high-school literary uplift. We hold the event during the last week of October, which lets us coordinate with the Edgar Allan Poe unit and have the kids dress up as their favorite poets in the spirit of Halloween.”
“How charming,” said Peter doubtfully.
“Actually, it is. There’s something refreshing about seeing high-school kids trying to figure out whether the shy girl in the back is Emily Dickinson or Elizabeth Barrett Browning. We always have our share of boys in tights as Shakespeare, and of course an assortment of Edgar Allan Poes, with capes and stuffed birds. And we have the more original efforts too. Last year, a kid came as T. S. Eliot, in black-rimmed glasses with his hair parted down the middle. And there was an Allen Ginsberg with beads and a hashish pipe. A few years ago, we had an excellent Byron: he wore a smoking jacket, walked with a limp, and strolled through the halls holding his sister’s hand.”
“Sounds neat,” said Peter without much enthusiasm. “Unfortunately, they won’t know me.”
“But they will, once they read your poetry. They’ll be hailing you as the next Shelley. We may even have a few who want to dress up as you.”
“They can hold a box of tissues and a bottle of Prozac.”
“Oh dear,” said Anne. “But if that’s how you’re feeling, I promise we’ll cheer you up. I can begin by offering you a five-hundred-dollar honorarium, pried from the rapacious grasp of my principal. You see, he was impressed—not, I’m afraid, by your poetry—he’s too busy to read—but by the Pitzer Prize. He thinks we can publicize it in our Newsforum”
“That’s very kind,” said Peter laconically. “But you don’t have to pay me anything.”
“But that wouldn’t be right,” Anne objected.
“Why not?”
“It would set a bad precedent.”
“You mean other Pitzer Prize winners might want to come for nothing?”
Anne laughed but hesitated before responding. “It would look too much as though you were doing me a personal favor.”
“And if I am? But if you’d feel better about it, I’ll accept the money and donate it back to your school’s arts program. Not that five hundred dollars would make much difference, but it would look good in your Newsforum!’
“It would,” agreed Anne. “I accept your donation.”
“Thank you.” Peter sighed, as though the conversation had worn him out. “And now that we’ve settled that, how about going with me to the exhibit of nineteenth-century mortuary sculpture at the Met this Sunday? It’s only there till the end of the month.”
Anne paused, ov
ertaken suddenly by a wave of memory. She and Ben used to go to the Met on Sunday mornings when the place was relatively deserted. On one outing, perhaps three months after they met, they had stood for almost half an hour in front of a portrait by Titian.
“He looks like you,” Anne said.
“Not at all,” said Ben. “He’s haughty and proud.”
“It’s just his posture. He’s really very nice. You see there around the eyes; they’re kind, like yours.” She had pointed to the portrait and then turned to touch Ben’s eyes gently.
That’s when he grabbed her hand and pulled her toward him: “Do you know what?” he said. “I love you.”
“Are you there?” said Peter.
“Yes,” said Anne, pushing away the memory “I’d love to go with you to the Met on Sunday I’m just dying to see some good mortuary sculpture.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
FOR THE OCCASION OF HIS SIXTIETH BIRTHDAY, ELIHU EHRLICH had reserved a large table in the dining room of the Princeton Club in New York City. The club was one of Elihu’s favored hangouts, possibly because it was as vain as he was. The rooms were festooned everywhere with the school’s colors; there were banners and shields, emblazoned with the school insignia, and statues and portraits of the school’s founders and famous alumni. Yet it would be wrong to single Princeton out in this. All colleges, even the more lackluster ones, were given to lavish self-promotion, which extended to a wide array of customized merchandise: T-shirts and pens, ties and mugs, bed linen and even toilet paper.
Anne often thought that colleges performed a dual function in American life. On the one hand, they were sites of intellectual enlightenment, bastions of important research and original thought. On the other, they were the breeding ground for a highly conventionalized identity, fostered by a rah-rah spirit and a profusion of regalia and commodity items. If her father was any indication, one could keep these two functions entirely distinct. Elihu Ehrlich had majored in economics at Princeton, but his grasp of this subject was extremely weak. By the same token, the school had also taught him to indulge expensive tastes, a lesson he had learned extremely well and that had helped to bankrupt the family. Indeed, Anne sometimes thought that she might be justified in sending the bills in her father’s desk drawer to the Princeton alumni office.
Tonight, Elihu sat in state at the head of the table under a large orange and black banner. Allegra was to his right and Carlotta to his left. Why Carlotta was there at all puzzled Anne. She was not a relative or even a particular friend of the family, having only recently begun work on The Widening Gyre. She had been hired based on her ability to flatter Allegra and her alleged affiliation with the famed Iowa Writers’ Workshop (in reality, this had consisted of her sharing the bed of one of the “writers in residence,” making her a “girlfriend in residence,” so to speak).
Opposite Carlotta and next to Allegra sat their cousin Rachel Kramer, who looked tired. She was holding down a waitressing job as she continued to audition for soap operas and commercials. Allegra’s boyfriend, Zack, was absent. Presumably, he was stuck with a deadline for his piece trashing Peter Jacobson in favor of the Bosnian poet living in the Mamaroneck train station. But Anne suspected that Allegra had dumped him. Her sister liked to discard her boyfriends suddenly, as if in a fit of creative whimsy, though these decisions were usually planned, like the dramatic readings at her parties, to appear spontaneous.
Anne arrived last, having traveled in from Westchester, where she had kept her grandmother company over an early dinner. She now took her place next to Rachel at the end of the table. As she sat down, she could hear her father loudly summoning “the sommelier” to bring them wine. The sommelier was actually a harried-looking waiter.
“What do you suggest, monsieur?” said Elihu, looking at the waiter without expecting an answer, which was fortunate. “I think we will start with a few bottles of this lovely Chardonnay. How is your fish this evening, monsieur?”
“It’s good,” said the waiter.
“I will have the sole, then,” said Elihu. “I want it light on the butter sauce, Pierre.” The waiter’s actual name was Pedro. “As you know, I watch my waistline. The fish is quite well prepared here,” he announced to the group seated around him, “though not on a par with La Chanterelle. Now, there was a restaurant that knew fish.”
He was unable to expound on La Chanterelle’s knowledge of fish, since no one was listening. Carlotta was busy adjusting her bustier, and Allegra was trying to convince Rachel to audition for a Pinter play in some obscure hole-in-the-wall theater downtown.
“I don’t understand what it’s about, so I couldn’t try out for it,” said Rachel.
“You don’t have to understand it,” said Allegra with irritation. “You just have to read the lines. The director will tell you what to do.”
“But it’s such a small part,” protested Rachel, “and it doesn’t look like it would be any fun.”
“Fun?” exclaimed Allegra in an incredulous tone. “What does fun have to do with it? If you’re looking for fun, you might as well join the circus.”
“I’m not saying I’m just looking for fun,” persisted Rachel, “but if it’s no fun, I don’t think I’d want to do it. I mean, I might as well do something that’s less, like, hard to break into— like teaching.” Rachel, to her credit, glanced over at Anne at this. “No offense,” she said. “I’d actually like to be a kindergarten teacher. I’m just saying that acting is, like, my dream, and I wouldn’t want to do it unless it gave me some, like, satisfaction.
“Pinter is possibly the greatest living playwright,” pronounced Allegra, on whom this logic was lost. “Are you saying that it wouldn’t give you satisfaction to perform in the work of a living legend?”
“I don’t know,” said Rachel with some confusion. “I mean, even if he were a dead legend, I don’t think it would help me like him more.”
“Taste requires cultivation,” interjected Elihu, who, as was typical of him, had been half-listening to the conversation while gazing around the table and sniffing the cork of the wine that the “sommelier” had brought. “One isn’t born with the taste for a fine wine”—he held up his glass—“one develops it through attention and practice.”
“But I don’t want to develop a taste for the kind of play you’re talking about,” said Rachel, holding stubbornly to her line of thought. “It’s boring.”
“Ennui. The scourge of youth,” intoned Elihu.
“Henri? I probably wouldn’t like his play either,” declared Rachel. Anne refused to catch her father or sister’s eye and, instead, proceeded to ask her cousin when her sinus commercial was going to air.
“They decided not to use it,” said Rachel sadly. “They said my nose looked too red.”
“But wasn’t your nose supposed to be red?” asked Anne. “After all, it was a sinus commercial.”
Rachel sighed. “I know, but they said it was red in the wrong way. They thought I looked like I’d been drinking, not like I had hay fever. It wasn’t my nose’s fault; it was the makeup artist. But it was still a bummer.” She sighed again and Anne noted that Rachel, far from looking red, looked extremely pale. She was obviously being worn down in pursuit of her life’s dream.
At this juncture, Elihu, who had been fingering his wineglass and looking around the table in vague anticipation, interrupted Allegra’s conversation to whisper: “Don’t you think we should have a toast?” He would not ask Allegra to give the toast, since no one ever presumed to ask Allegra to do anything, but he obviously felt she could get someone else to give it.
Allegra shrugged and looked lazily around the table. Anne wished she could leave the room. It would be just like her sister to say: “Anne, why don’t you give Dad a toast?”—and Anne knew she would never have the nerve to start a fight by answering, “Why don’t you?”
Fortunately, before Allegra could say anything, there was a bustle of activity at the front of the table as Carlotta stood up, adjusting her bustier
again and smoothing down her micro-miniskirt. She raised her glass.
“Tonight, we are celebrating the birthday of a very special man,” she began, looking down at Elihu tenderly, who looked up at her—or rather, at her ample decolletage. “In an age of vulgarity, Elihu Ehrlich is an emblem of elegance, refinement, and taste.”
“Hear, hear,” said Elihu on his own behalf.
“This is a man who understands good food, good wine, and good company,” Carlotta continued. “He knows how to wear his clothes, choose his cigars, and treat his women. He is, quite simply, a gentleman. And it is a pleasure—nay, an honor—to celebrate his birthday with him tonight.”
After Carlotta sat down, Elihu, raising his hand in mock modesty, rose, as if under duress (though no one seemed the least interested), and held up his glass. “How do I begin to survey the span of so many years?” he asked, and looked around, as if waiting for an answer. When none came, he continued: “Not easily, I assure you. Others have experienced joys and sorrows, but I believe I can boast a greater share of life’s pleasures and vicissitudes.” (Rachel furrowed her brow at “vicissitudes.”)
“I find myself now in the bosom of loved ones, feeling both the whisper of my mortality and the call of life still to come. What can I say? The outpouring of affection here leaves me speechless.”
Anne cringed in the face of her father’s inflated verbiage. She was back in the realm of the college admissions essay where there was a similar tendency to sever words from any reality to which they might conceivably correspond. Her hope was that the “sommelier” would soon bring out the birthday cake, and she would be able to make a quiet escape and go home to bed.
Jane Austen in Scarsdale Page 13