Almost Royalty: A Romantic Comedy...of Sorts

by Courtney Hamilton

  Once the application was accepted there were the necessary events which both parents of the prospective applicant had to attend together:

  Step 3: The Open House. Attendance mandatory. Watery coffee and broken Pepperidge Farm cookies to be served.

  To Brell, Step 3 was truly the beginning of her “Kill the Enthusiasm” campaign. In Brell’s design, the Open House was the day when she made her “very honest” speech, a speech which was intended to imply to prospective parents that, unless they were prepared to donate $500,000 or more, there was absolutely no chance that their little darlings would gain admission to Thorton.

  The principal components of the speech were the infamous Three Statements, something Brell always referred to as the ABC’s of Thorton to those grossly ambitious and highly educated parents:

  A. The Numbers.

  Brell’s favorite way to begin her Open House Presentation was to present this bit of information and then see who actually sat through the next two and a half hours to sign their attendance slip (required to proceed to the next step).

  “This year, we have 500 boy applicants competing for 40 spots (20 per Class) in the two Kindergarten Classes.”

  Brell would look around after this opening and usually hear nervous laughter.

  “But to be fair, I need to clarify this issue. First of all we give preference to siblings, alumni children, the children of staff and faculty…”

  (And of course what she didn’t say but was clearly the subtext of her “Goals of Thorton” section of her speech was, preference was given to anyone who had ever contributed more than $500,000 for the greatly desired new building and new soccer field, which, of course, included the trustees’ children, grandchildren and friends of the trustees’ children and grandchildren.)

  Brell loved to finish this beginning section of her Open House presentation by adding, “Unfortunately, we’ve just received 33 alumni/‌sibling applications for 40 spaces, and…” (to top it off by disclosing, shhh… like she was letting them in on a little secret which she really shouldn’t tell anyone) “Three of those alumni/‌sibling boy applications were actually for three sets of twins.”

  To Brell, there was nothing like watching the faces of those mathematically inclined parents as the smart ones quickly computed that there were now 463 applications competing for four open spots. Brell loved to look around the room and guess by the horrified expression on their faces which parent was the first to realize that they had just spent $200 for a very, very nice two-line rejection letter. Because as smart parents, they had also clearly understood the subtext of her Open House presentation: Those four (or possibly fewer) remaining spots were clearly going to the highest bidder, and unless they were willing to donate their entire retirement account they could just forget about getting in.

  B. Diversity

  Most Westside parents pretended to love diversity but in reality, unless Grandpa Joe had given $50 million to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford or maybe even Pomona (in 1960, when that really meant something) and Dad had not embarrassed the family too badly when he attended, they pretty much knew that the odds were stacked against them once the well-intentioned “diversity” got into the picture. When you only had four openings in your Kindergarten class to begin with, and your well-meaning trustees (who, of course, had secured places at Thorton for their family for generations to come) began carping about “diversity,” it was pretty much assured that you would be giving 20 percent of the openings in your class to someone who didn’t necessarily know about Thorton, and someone who didn’t necessarily care to attend.

  Brell had heard the rumors about another Westside school which had such a commitment to diversity that it openly discouraged those in the wrong ethnic groups—white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant, Jewish—not to apply. So she thought that she would go with the current trend and give her diversity speech.

  “Of course,” Brell began, “Thorton has a deep commitment to diversity. We have 120 nationalities represented in the student body. We feel that this gives our students a more complete experience of the world.”

  Well, not really. Yes, there were many, many ethnicities represented at Thorton. But although there were many different nationalities, in Brell’s mind the alleged 120 nationalities broke down into four prominent, four diverse, Thorton groups: Comfortable, Very Comfortable, Rich, and Fortune 500.

  1. Comfortable was a description Brell used to describe those writer/‌TV producer types living on the Westside who had hit it big on some TV show that went to number one, or managed to continually produce hits and amassed a mid-eight-figure wealth (and a new young wife of child-bearing age). Average gross assets for these individuals tended to be in the $20,000,000 to $80,000,000 range. These parents tended to be nanny-centric because dad tended to work 48 hours per day, and mom was desperate to keep the goods—hair, body, wardrobe—together, so she really never saw the kids. As a rule, these families were easy to deal with, as long as the nanny could speak some English.

  2. Very Comfortable tended to describe individuals who had gross assets in the $60,000,000 to $300,000,000 range. This description tended to go to those who had been the CEOs of major corporations, an occasional superstar athlete, or venture capitalists who had exercised their stock options sometime before April of 2000. These individuals tended to be very organized, generally provided excellent financial information regarding the assets to hold in the school’s endowment and desperately wanted, and would pay for, the ego satisfaction of landing a place on the Thorton Board of Trustees.

  3. Rich was a creative group if there ever was one, and fun to be with because these people usually had no ego. Typical to this group were the software-inventor types who drove 15-year-old Toyotas and found themselves in the ridiculous position of having 20,000,000 shares of a publicly traded company at its IPO. Average gross assets of this group tended to be in the 300 million to 10 billion dollar range (as it often happened, this group occasionally included people who actually had more money than those in #4, owing to the bull market and such). Lots of fun, hands on with the parenting, and generous with the donations owing to their usual middle-class background. Brell wondered how she could attract more of these people.

  4. F5s (Fortune 500) Not as much fun as you would think, and generally stingy and eccentric. Most people didn’t believe that there were F5s types floating around Los Angeles, but there were a few and they were a pain. These parents had always inherited their money and never, ever had any connection to reality because they had never worked. Ever. And unless there was some connection to some pet project that the parent was involved in—a Folk Art Collection of Tijuana Border Art, restoring the Great Barrier Reefs of Dubrovnik, or saving some strand of seaweed that existed only near Bikini Atoll—you could forget about a donation. Unless, of course, their kid was a total disaster. But then Brell had the job of explaining to the 38 other parents why it was so important that little Madison remained in that class because her frequent violent temper tantrums and biting represented an important real world experience for her 19 classmates.

  C. A Good Match

  Many private schools made the mistake of allowing average children to become members of the student body. That was never, ever going to happen at Thorton. The children admitted to Thorton would never be average (economically). Unless that horrible situation occurred where Brell recognized that the majority of sibling/‌legacies applicants, although passing the Thorton entrance exam, were actually slow or delayed. This presented a minor dilemma for Brell because she really needed to prop up the overall test scores of the Thorton students so that they didn’t totally embarrass her on those public exams such as the ISEE or ERB over which she had no control.

  For this, Brell had two strategies:

  (1) Was the applicant “ready?;” and

  (2) Was the applicant “a good match?”

  “But of all of the things I have mentioned, we at Thorton know that despite everything, what we truly are looking for are those children w
ho are (Brell loved to pause here for effect) ‘ready.’”

  “Ready” was a term and factor which gave Brell all sorts of subjective room with which to play with admissions candidates. To be honest, “ready” was the only tool she had to ensure that her incoming kindergarten class was not composed of 40 legacy/‌sibling non-domesticated feral children.

  It was one thing that the applicant had to be five years old by July 1, but what Brell and her admissions officers had been trained to look for were applicants who were not just five, but applicants who were ready—a word which had all sorts of unusual connotations on the Westside—to participate in a structured and highly academic kindergarten, but mostly to ensure that the little sibling/‌legacy was so overqualified for Thorton (or spread in small doses if truly “delayed”) that they wouldn’t dare lower Thorton’s national ERB scores. However, should Brell suspect that the scores were going to be thrust down (because there was too much in-breeding between those legacies and absolutely no intelligence to balance it out), Brell would let in a few average (economically speaking) applicants who were exceptionally “ready.”

  The “readiness” of the child was to be judged in the famous Thorton “Readiness Exam,” a little test given to the prospective students in January of the year the applicant expected to enter the kindergarten. The Thorton “Readiness Exam” was so basic that even the most “delayed” legacy/‌sibling usually could be expected to pass. Basically, it asked the admissions candidate: (1) to count to 20; (2) color a picture of a giraffe yellow, and (3) hold your hand up when the teacher called your name.

  However, ever since it became accepted that boys developed slower than girls, many parents had decided that if their little Jonathan’s birthday came close to the July 1 cut-off date they would simply hold him back for another year and give him “a gift year.” The theory of “the gift year” was to give the socially immature child the ability to “mature” and thus be developmentally ready when the child entered kindergarten (and to ace the Thorton “Readiness Exam”). This made sense, somewhat, if the child’s birthday fell in the spring, as a spring birthday translated into being one of the younger members of the class.

  However, where it got interesting was when a the parent of a fall birthday decided to hold back their child for an additional year, a year beyond the year in which he was already being held back. This meant that little Jonathan would be seven when he started Kindergarten. But if those upper-middle class, highly educated parents were willing to put their little son into four to five years of pre-K, well, you had no idea how well they would perform on those national ERB’s by third grade (much less the Thorton “Readiness Exam,” especially when that six-year-six-month-old competed against the unsuspecting four-year-old boy). And this didn’t even take into consideration those parents who would spring for the latest private school scam: Transitional Kindergarten.

  Brell wasn’t exactly sure, but it seemed that the Transitional Kindergarten for the offspring of highly-educated high achievers on the Westside first appeared in the Westside nursery schools when some ambitious Westside private school administrator realized that Westside parents would pay for, in fact were desperate for, anything which would give their little 5.6–6.1-year-old-child a leg up in the entrance exams for private schools.

  Those Westside parents were so desperate to ingratiate themselves with their chosen private school that they were willing to pay for a “gift year” in the ridiculous $18,000 per year Transitional Kindergarten tuition at the private school at which they wished to send their children for two and a half hours of class per day (“circle time,” singing, and macaroni crafts project included at no extra cost). Brell was surprised that those parents were willing to do this for their perfectly ready 5.6 year olds, especially since entrance to the Transitional Kindergarten program did not guarantee them entrance to the regular academic program at Thorton or any other private school. And even if they did the Transitional Kindergarten program, Brell (or any other Head Administrator) could—and usually did—decide that they, well the family, was still not “a good match” at Thorton. Yes, “a good match” was the last tool that Brell had to ensure that the students whom she admitted to Thorton were going to produce a diverse and balanced class. And to be sure, if the parents weren’t at least “comfortable” and she didn’t get the proper balance between “comfortable,” “very comfortable,” “rich,” (the most desired group) and the very eccentric F5s, it just never ever seemed to work.

  To be honest, it pained Brell to see a family who was not even “comfortable” attempt to compete with the other families during the thrice annual Thorton Foundation drives: the Fall Foundation Marathon, the Winter Silent Auction, and the Spring Golf/‌Tennis Classic. It just pained her to see a family who was not a good match pledge $50,000, 15 percent of their yearly income, by agreeing to pay $2,000 per mile run at the Fall Foundation Marathon (26.2 miles), to spend $15,000 to buy a fruit basket worth $25 at the silent auction, or to spend $25,000 to play tennis with a Rivera Pro who normally charged $100 per hour. That kind of donation, the expected donation, was truly going to play with their lifestyle. It was unfortunate, and exemplified the reason that Brell worked hard to find families who were a good match: those who could afford to donate not $50,000, but $500,000 without giving it a second thought.

  “And because you will be in the Thorton community for the next seven years, what we are truly looking for is an experience which is a good match, for the entire family. It’s just so important,” said Brell at the very end of her presentation.

  “Bullshit,” thought Bettina as she listened to Headmistress Brell Donovan give her “Steps to Thorton” speech.

  “Lies and bullshit,” said Bettina in a stage whisper to the few startled and traumatized parents who could hear her.

  Bettina was disgusted with herself. In fact, she didn’t even recognize herself. Who was this person who wanted to send her child to this obviously life-sucking school where a child could not be more bored? That little robot who had taken her husband, Bernard Jean (aka “Bean”), and her on the school tour could not have been more depressed. Was that kid on tranquilizers? And Bean had gasped when, on the Thorton tour, they had wandered past a music class and heard 12–13-year-old boys who rode on skateboards, listened to rap, and probably hacked into pornography on their parents’ computers singing “The Hills Are Alive With the Sound of Music.”

  “Oh. My. God,” said Bean as he walked by, “$30,000 a year so that they can sing that?”

  “You love that song,” said Bettina.

  “Sure,” said Bean, “at a midnight Sing along Sound of Music when I’m high.”

  During the evening when we first came to Elizabeth’s house and attended our first meeting of Leslee’s Book Group, I noticed that the Book Group had seemed very uncomfortable when Bettina casually asked how one obtained a recommendation to Thorton Hall. But during our second meeting at Elizabeth’s house, Bettina noticed that the room chatter came to a crashing halt when she told the Book Group that she wanted her daughter, little Sapphia, to attend Thorton, and had in fact applied.

  They were attempting to discuss The Lovely Bones. It was Elizabeth’s pick. Elizabeth thought it sounded like a good exercise and diet book.

  The book group—Elizabeth, Renata, Laura, June and Patty—eyed each other with worried looks and put down their almost empty wine glasses. Leslee shook her head and rolled her eyes. In addition to Bettina’s pronouncement, June had just told her that despite not having worked in twelve years, she was sending Leslee her resume. “Hobeck has a spot for a Harvard Law grad, right?” I couldn’t tell if Leslee was more upset with June or Bettina.

  I shrugged my shoulders. “What’s the big deal about Thorton Hall? I pass it every day on the way to work and it looks like just another ordinary private school in a cramped space.”

  “Shhh… Courtney,” whispered Marcie, rolling her eyes.

  No one said a thing.

  “Thorton… as in Thorton Hall
?” said Renata.

  “Yes,” said Bettina.

  “Interesting,” said Elizabeth.

  Again, dead silence in the room.

  “Well,” said Renata, “you’ll be one of the many victims of the March Massacre.”

  “What’s the March Massacre?” said Bettina.

  “The last two weeks of March,” said Elizabeth. “That’s when all of the acceptance letters go out. But in your case, it’ll be a rejection letter.”

  “How do you know I won’t get in?” said Bettina.

  “Oh, I know,” said Elizabeth.

  “We’ve all been there,” said June.

  “The most that you’ll get will be wait-listed,” said Renata.

  “And then you’ll have to start the campaign,” said Elizabeth.

  “What campaign?”

  “The one where you spend every week from March until Labor Day sending emails asking for ‘updates’ and reassuring everyone that you remain ‘committed,’” said Renata.

  “Or making endless phone calls and desperately pleading with some alumnus of the school to write a good recommendation,” said Laura.

  “Basically, you spend March until Labor Day begging them to let your kid in,” said Elizabeth.

  “C’mon,” said Bettina.