Jane Austen in Scarsdale

by Paula Marantz Cohen

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  GRADUATION AT FENIMORE WAS ALWAYS A JOYOUS OCCASION—IT was the great cathartic event that capped a stress-laden and chaotic year. By the time of graduation, everything, for good or ill, had been resolved. The last homework assignments were long since due, the final exams were thankfully over, and teachers had given up and passed those students who had resisted doing any work in the last months. Only Fenster remained steadfast in his meanness and threatened to fail Jodi Fields until Vince, adept at bribery, had promised him an extra, under-the-table personal day if he’d raise her 59 to a 60 for senior English.

  The final college admissions information had come in by late April. Jonathan had been admitted to Columbia after all but had chosen to go to St. John’s instead. Ben found that he was even more proud to have his nephew turn down the school he had thought so highly of, and out of a sense of magnanimity had gone ahead and underwritten Cutler’s Cultural Center at Columbia, a summer program for students interested in travel writing. Anne warned that with such a program in place, it was only a matter of time before it became a full-fledged academic program and parents started making their kids do unpaid internships in travel agencies in order to get in.

  Jodi Fields was going to the College of New Jersey (which had been sympathetic to her ADD), and Sandra Newman had gotten into Georgetown (which had broken with precedent and admitted two from Fenimore after all—though admittedly only after Sandra’s father had had several meetings with the head of Alumni Giving). A few students, with their hearts set on NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, had had to settle for SUNY Purchase, and some of the lesser jocks, despite the personalized, individualized letters from Blitz Athletic Recruiting, had not gotten the full scholarships to the colleges no one heard of and been obliged to settle for SUNY Binghamton. In short, some students had been gratified, some had been disappointed, but in the end, all had finally come to terms with the way things were going to be. The greatest source of stress for parents and children had been uncertainty; once this was removed, everyone relaxed. Graduation was about acceptance—replacing competition with a rite of passage. Every kid was moving on, away from high school into the larger world, where other, more pressing issues would crowd out the much smaller one of where one went to college.

  Now, as parents faced the prospect of separating from the progeny whom they had been nagging and yelling at for years, there was the predictable profusion of feeling. Gifts of Mercedes and Caribbean vacations were not unusual among this affluent population. “After all,” Mrs. Fields said of Jodi’s Mazda convertible, “she earned it.” Anne could hardly see how any of these kids had actually earned such gifts. Then again, Anne thought, graduation gifts were not really about the accomplishment of graduating. They were tokens of feeling from parents to their kids, frail baubles used to convey the ineffable sense of love and loss.

  Vince opened the ceremony with a few characteristic remarks. “This is a great day, folks,” he barked exultantly (when Vince spoke to large groups, one often felt he would have liked a megaphone). “We slid into home plate. We scored a touchdown. Let’s show our support for this gold medal team and send these gladiators into the arena of their college years with a big round of applause.”

  No one seemed to mind this profligate mixing of metaphors. For Vince, the more athletic allusions he could cram into his remarks, the more festive the occasion. Much appreciated was his gift for keeping things short. He knew that everyone was hot under those caps and gowns and wanted to get on to the graduation parties as quickly as possible (he had an acute memory of how he had felt when he was graduating from high school).

  Following Vince came the valedictory address. The selection of valedictorian and salutatorian had been uncontroversial this year. This was in contrast to several years back when there had been a vicious battle over the salutatory spot. The thing had come down to a fraction of a point based on an AP English grade—Fenster, who had taught the course that year, had strung both candidates along with vicious glee, finally awarding the higher grade to the kid he disliked least.

  This year, however, Ilene Gupta and Aaron Finkelstein had been unchallenged in their respective slots. Ilene, the school’s Olympian hard worker, had been so far ahead that even Aaron, winner of the prestigious Westinghouse science prize with a space reserved for him in a Columbia’s genetics lab when he finished Harvard, was a full one-twentieth of a point behind. In the old days, this sort of gap might have been considered negligible, but in the present climate, it was huge.

  Ilene, despite her stellar record, was notoriously shy. She slunk to the podium and mumbled her speech rapidly so that no one could catch a word. Not that anyone minded. They were glad to have the ordeal pass so quickly and painlessly, and applauded with enthusiasm as Ilene slouched gratefully from the podium. She was followed by the president of the senior class, a popular jock, who shouted out a few disconnected phrases: “best class ever,” “remember the prom,” “Jodi Fields is bodacious,” and “good luck at F&M, Toby Tucker”—phrases that were received with roars of approval from the student body.

  After this died down, Vince stepped forward to read out the names of the graduating seniors. It was his favorite moment in the school year: shaking the kids’ hands and presenting the oversized envelopes containing the diplomas, the tangible evidence that he had done his job and shepherded this group to a place where they were no longer his responsibility.

  Now, with the ceremony almost over, the president of the senior class stepped forward again. It was time to make the yearbook presentation, the closing event of the graduation program. It had been decided some years ago that the The Fenimore Fanfare would be distributed following graduation instead of a week prior, as had previously been done. The change had been precipitated when Anne had discovered Ms. Gonzales-Stein, a young and well-endowed member of the language department, in tears in the faculty ladies room. It seemed that the boys in her fifth-period remedial Spanish II class had been trading anatomical drawings of her in one another’s yearbooks. Ms. Gonzales-Stein had somehow gotten wind of the portrayal (perhaps had even glimpsed it, when signing one of the yearbooks with her trademark “Felicidad” and smiley face). The portrayal had included a representation, creatively enhanced, of her ample bosom and even more ample posterior, about which Gonzales-Stein was particularly sensitive. After this incident, Anne had convinced Vince that distributing the yearbooks after the graduation ceremony would curtail the period in which they would circulate, thereby cutting down on the likelihood of such distressing incidents. It would also add another festive note to the graduation ceremony.

  It had now become conventional for the president of the senior class to present the first copy of the yearbook to the principal, who accepted it, with great pomp and ceremony, as a symbol that the class had navigated the arduous journey from one end of high school to the other. The presentation ceremony also included the announcement of the yearbook dedication, the paramount honor that the students could bestow on a faculty or staff member.

  “As members of the senior class we want to present this first copy of our yearbook to our principal as a token of our respect for our school, its teachers, and its staff,” said the president of the class, taking a sententious tone (the ability to oscillate between obstreperous conviviality and sententiousness was one of the prerequisites for being elected class president). “This year, our class has dedicated The Fanfare to a very special person: Fenimore’s head of guidance, Anne Ehrlich. As everyone knows, Ms. Ehrlich is awesome at guidance! She’s been there for us during this whole college thing—good luck at F&M, Toby Tucker!” The obstreperous side of the president erupted but was quickly reigned in. “We could trust Ms. Ehrlich to tell us the truth, even when we didn’t want to hear it. She always had our best interests in mind, and she wasn’t afraid of our parents. Let’s face it, we wouldn’t have made it this far without her. Way to go, Toby Tucker! Jodi Fields is bodacious!”

  The ceremony would have normally ended h
ere, but Vince stepped forward to speak again. This was unusual, since he tended to avoid public speaking wherever possible. Now, however, he cleared his throat and declared his intention of “saying a few words about this special lady here.

  “I know that people expect you to say certain things on occasions like this, so no one really thinks it means much. But in this case, it does. I don’t know if I could do my job as principal without the help of Anne Ehrlich. Her competence, judgment, and kindness have been invaluable to me. I cherish her as a colleague and I love her as a friend. Thank you, Anne, for being there for Fenimore, our Blue Ribbon School.”

  It was an uncharacteristically eloquent speech. Anne felt her eyes well up with tears. She stepped forward as Vince and the class president kissed her on the cheek (to hoots and catcalls). Then everyone exploded in celebration: Hats were thrown in the air, balloons were popped, a few of the more imaginative jocks showed they were naked under their gowns, and several of the more sensitive girls burst into tears as they contemplated the end of their high-school years—despite having spent a good portion of that time in the nurse’s office suffering from stress-related illnesses and romantic complaints.

  Graduation marked the symbolic end of childhood as these kids moved out from under the wing of parents and teachers. Now they would at least have to pretend that they were embarking on responsible adulthood. Not that many saw things in such momentous terms. They would grow up slowly, at their own rate, making their own mistakes and gaining ground in their own time. The real rite of passage, Anne thought, was for their parents. They were the ones who really deserved the graduation gifts. Like artists who had worked on a canvas over a long period of time, they now had to release their work into the world, not knowing if it was important or original, or even, God knows, finished. The hysteria over college was an expression of the anxiety of child-rearing, an imperfect art if there ever was one. Now they would have to stop their continual meddling and nagging, and let go.

  Anne looked around her and was struck, as she often was when she looked at the kids in the school, by how beautiful they were. Their beauty was dazzlingly present in their strong bodies and open faces. It was the wondrous adjunct of their youth. Being young made them capable of shrugging off the sorrows and disappointments that would later stall and weary them. It was important to trust them, she thought, to believe that they could, despite their ignorance and inexperience, ultimately turn out OK.

  The graduates and their parents were moving on, but for Anne and the other teachers at the school, graduation was only a temporary pause in a recurring cycle. In the fall, a new crop of freshmen would flood the halls of Fenimore, their parents hovering in the wings, preparing for the siege to come. The cycle would begin again. But for now, Anne had the summer stretching out in front of her.

  “So I hear you and Ben are going to the Lake Country for your honeymoon,” said Marcy as they surveyed the spread that Home and School had laid out in the cafeteria after the graduation ceremony.

  “Yes, it’s the one place where he never felt he spent enough time. Rachel and Peter are there, working on the update for the Sojourns with the Romantic Poets, so we’ll probably see them. But there’s no work involved for us. It’s pure pleasure,” said Anne, coloring slightly. It seemed to her that the passion she had felt for Ben long ago was as strong now as it had once been. It said something for having lost the love of your life at twenty-one; if you had the good luck to get him back thirteen years later, you could feel twenty-one again.

  “I admit that Ben did turn out to be as good as you thought he was,” said Marcy. “You two are a perfect match. It just took a little time for you to see it.”

  “I knew it all along.”

  “Only you let your grandmother talk you out of it.”

  “That’s true. Winnie had great influence on me. But it wasn’t her fault. She did what she thought was best at the time, and I shared some of her prejudices and was afraid to act on my own. But you know, I don’t regret the past. I like to think that it’s best that things worked out as they did.”

  “I suppose,” ruminated Marcy. “If you’d married him earlier, he might never have gotten rich and your grandmother might never have gotten to like his family so much. And you wouldn’t be able to keep the house and have that great wedding in the backyard. By the way, what are you going to do with the Murray Hill apartment?”

  “We decided to hold on to it. We thought that we might want to spend some evenings in the city, and it’s nice to have a place to escape to.”

  “A house in Westchester and a pied-à-terre in the city.” Marcy nodded. “Very impressive. New York magazine says a pied-à-terre is the new status accessory.”

  “Maybe it will replace the Harvard decal.”

  “I don’t know,” mused Marcy, “although Yale would be good too.

  Anne looked at her friend. It suddenly struck her that Marcy was actually eating her turkey sandwich—and drinking a glass of milk.

  “Marcy!” she said. “Marcy—you’re not—?”

  “Yes,” said Marcy sheepishly. “I’m pregnant. And Rich is ecstatic. He says it’s what he’s always wanted but was afraid to tell me. One day he just said: ‘You know, I’d really like you to have my children.’ When he put it that way, how could I refuse?”

  “You couldn’t,” Anne agreed.

  “So, as you can imagine, I’ve been busy,” said Marcy, breathlessly “I’m taking the enhanced mothering seminar at the Y and the prenatal exercise program at the Health and Racquet Club—Parenting magazine says it can improve your child’s chances of becoming an Olympic athlete or at least making the travel soccer team by twenty percent. I’m sitting in on the ‘tips for preparing for preschool’ at the library—I know it’s early, but I want to be ready for the hard questions. And of course, I’m playing Vivaldi and doing French immersion for the baby in utero.”

  “Of course,” said Anne, amused that it had already begun. Perhaps, soon, she would be joining the ranks of nuttiness herself.

  But for now, she would revel in being in love and childless— which is to say, carefree and sane.

  A Reading Group Gold Selection

  JANE AUSTEN IN SCARSDALE

  By Paula Marantz Cohen

  In Her Own Words

  • “Tips on Writing a First Novel at Age 47,” an original essay from Paula Marantz Cohen

  About The Author

  • A Conversation with Paula Marantz Cohen

  Historical Perspective

  • “Austen Characters Are Much Like Us” by Paula Marantz Cohen

  Keep on Reading

  • Recommended Reading

  • Reading Group Questions

  For more reading group suggestions

  visit www.readinggroupgold.com

  ST. MARTIN’S GRIFFIN

  In Her Own Words

  Tips on Writing a First Novel at Age 47

  by Paula Marantz Cohen

  Ever since I can remember, I wanted to be a writer. My early experiences with writing, however, were not encouraging. I began keeping a journal in the third grade because writers were supposed to keep journals. I was conscientious for the first few days, then, inevitably, forgot to keep up. Sometimes I’d have a resurgence of energy a week or so later and fill in the missing pages, trying to fool the journal into thinking I’d written them when I should have. But I rarely went more than a few more days before petering out again.

  “If you visit my parents’ basement. . .you will find notebooks—all empty except for the first few pages.”

  As a result, if you visit my parents’ basement today, you will find notebooks—large and small, spiraled and stitched, with Moroccan leather and tie-dyed covers—all empty except for the first few pages.

  In junior high school I began writing short stories and sending them off to women’s magazines. It was a time when women’s magazines published stories about how resourceful young women captured eligible young men in marriage (stories since replaced by fea
ture articles entitled “How to Satisfy Him in Bed”). I recall the feeling of trepidation as I slipped the manila envelope with my name and address and the requisite return postage into its sister envelope containing my latest literary effort (“young woman snags young man on Nantucket beach”). I also remember the pall I felt when the SASE arrived back at the house a few weeks later.

  In Her Own Words

  But the nail in the coffin of my dream of becoming a writer occurred during college. I had submitted a story to the hot-shot novelist—former heroin addict—now Hollywood screenwriter who was teaching a special writing workshop at the school that semester. It was one of the hallmarks of the very selective college that I attended that it continued to be selective even after you had squeezed through its portals, making you compete again and again for special classes and programs. In this case, the visiting writer was given an oak-paneled office in which to peruse submissions for his special writing workshop. After reading our work, he interviewed us, one by one, for the coveted spots around the seminar table where he would chain smoke and pontificate about the moron producers in Hollywood. I got the stuff about the chain smoking and the producers secondhand, since I was rejected from the workshop. When I entered the office for my interview, he delivered his verdict succinctly: I had, he said, “a tin ear for dialogue and no sense of dramatic plotting.” I had already been told something along the same lines by a nasty elderly novelist at Bread Loaf Writers’ Workshop the summer before, so it didn’t come as a shock. What destroyed me was that the visiting writer, known to chase anything in a skirt, hardly looked up while pronouncing on my literary incapacity. My writing was obviously too bad to rate even a leer.

  Having failed all the supposed tests for the true writer, I did the logical thing: I went to graduate school and became a literary critic. That was twenty-five years ago, time enough to put the dream of fiction-writing behind me. But life, as they say, works in mysterious ways. One day, I happened to pick up Judith Krantz’s memoir Sex and Shopping. I can’t say that Krantz is a favorite author. My tastes run more to Jane Austen and George Eliot. But I’m not ashamed to say that I’ve read Judith Krantz with pleasure on beaches and on mountaintops and that she can hold her own with Robert Ludlum and Michael Crichton any day. What they do with guns and money laundering, she does with sex and shopping. If you think the former is more important than the latter, read Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own.