“Absolutely.” She put out her hand. “Thank you again, I think it was a very successful visit, and I can’t wait to start reading the applications.”
“Yes. And one or two I’ll be writing to you about.”
“I’ll look forward to it.”
He waited to wave as she drove away, a piece of arcane protocol about how the departing representative of the desirable college must be the one to break contact. Portia knew it had nothing at all to do with her. Their interaction had been thoroughly predictable, professional, impersonal. Only a couple of times, in fact, over sixteen years had Portia felt any real connection with the college advisers she’d dealt with, and both times the locale had been thoroughly remote, both in the geographic sense and in terms of Princeton’s reach. The first was in the Central Valley of California, where the overwhelmed guidance counselor was herself newly graduated from community college and responsible for nearly six hundred seniors, many of them the kids of laborers or Hmong immigrants; the second took place in Sitka, Alaska, where she was the first Ivy League admissions officer ever to materialize, and the effusive guidance counselor had roused the entire PTA to throw a potluck in her honor, complete with dried bearded seal meat—an indelible culinary experience. (Portia could only imagine the potluck they must have thrown five years later, when the student she’d recruited on that trip had won her Rhodes scholarship.) Those two counselors had both moved on to other jobs, but Portia still thought of them. There had been time for human contact in their conversations, in their inelegant cinder-block offices, on rickety folding chairs, across laden Formica desks. She still remembered their names and didn’t doubt those women could produce her own. But William Roden would retain only one fact about her from this meeting: that she represented Princeton. She might have been lacquered in ivy and leading a tiger, Portia thought, driving west from Deerfield and winding north into the woods. He would not remember her face, or the fact that she had grown up nearby, or indeed anything personal about her. It was a good thing she had given him her business card. When it came time to get in touch on behalf of those “one or two” students he’d mentioned, he would undoubtedly need to reacquaint himself with her name.
I would have to say that I have been inspired the most by my older brother, Tim. Tim was diagnosed with a tumor in his lower leg when he was 14 years old. I remember when our parents explained to him that doctors would have to remove his leg. He was incredibly brave. He just said, “It’s all right. I know it has to be done.” After the amputation, Tim worked tirelessly to rebuild his strength and learn to use his new prosthesis. He eventually joined his high school lacrosse team and now plays lacrosse at UNH. His fortitude and perseverance have been the greatest inspiration to me, and I hope to follow in his footsteps at college and beyond.
CHAPTER TWO
INSPIRATION WAY
As borders went, Massachusetts/New Hampshire was not particularly dramatic. There were no long bridges to cross or welcome centers waiting just past the line, with placards declaring the name of the governor. There weren’t even any highways in this part of the state, only the lacy network of smaller roads bound from wood to wood, some of them the descendants of far more primitive roads from a time before the borders themselves. Even so, this reddest of red states had always felt like a very foreign land to Portia, or so she had been taught to feel in the bluest of blue states she was about to leave. Vermont was Massachusetts’s natural sibling, its cousin up north. One drove up to Vermont to visit friends, and friends of friends, and to attend music festivals and solar energy festivals and peace festivals. But nobody you knew lived in New Hampshire, land of Live Free or Die. Over there they were too busy incubating right-wing politicians and shooting their guns to take much of a look at solar energy or—God forbid—peace.
Many years before, it had come as something of a shock to Portia when she’d realized, crossing the Connecticut River en route to her Dartmouth interview, that she had never actually been to New Hampshire. So close and yet, to a girl raised in counterculture splendor by a mother who was gynocentric in all but her sexuality, an utterly foreign country. As in: Why would anyone want to go there?
“Why would you want to go there?” her mother would indeed demand six months later. (She was referring to Dartmouth in particular.) Cornell was pretty. It had gorges. Portia had also gotten into Barnard. Wellesley. There was always UMass just up the road. But Dartmouth was a school of louts and bullies in a state of louts and bullies. Who needed it?
I need it, Portia had thought. “It will be good for me,” she had said. If we’re always surrounded by people like ourselves, how can we grow? How can we effect change? She might not have actually said this part, but she was thinking it, or trying to be brave enough to think it. Because what she had really been thinking was unspeakable in the presence of her mother. She had been remembering how, on her college tour, skirting the lovely Green on which freshmen were building their towering stack of railroad ties for a traditional bonfire—one tie for each of the ninety-one years of their ’91 class—she had had a powerful surge of feeling. There had been a sense of great order, great beauty, with tendrils of that elusive thing Tradition wafting around the handsome students, like the smoke that would itself unfurl from those railroad ties a few days hence. The Dartmouth girls were—to a one—skinny and graceful, some degree of blond. The Dartmouth boys were not like the boys in her high school, who had mottled complexions and, more likely than not, hair tied back. Instead, they were like the students she sometimes saw on the Amherst College campus, where the past year or so she had developed a nervous habit of walking, or masquerading, to see if she could pass. (Amherst, in fact, would be the only college to reject her: a bitter, bitter pill.) But here were the same boys, two hours north, with perhaps an extra layer of clothing against the cooler air. And so, when the decision had to be made, she drew on the full complement of rational ammunition for her mother—the stunning campus, the brilliant faculty, the Ivy League, for Christ’s sake!—and hid the absolute truth. The truth was, she wanted to be one of those girls. And she wanted those boys.
Portia would spend most of the next decade in the state of New Hampshire, first as a student and later in her first admissions job, which was also at Dartmouth and where her first assigned territory was northern New England. In those years, she would come to know every nook and cranny of the state, charged as she was not to miss a single promising native son (or daughter) who might not be with it enough to think of applying to Dartmouth. (The college had always looked out for its own backyard, an academic noblesse oblige that went back to its Daniel Webster days.) In those years she drove every road, paved or not, from the Presidentials to the shopping outlets along the Maine border, the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it coastline, the prosperous little towns in the south. She might not remember the names of the roads, but she knew where they went, and she had been on this one before. There was, in fact, a distinct familiarity to the asphalt line coiling through forest, its spent foliage littering the roadsides, and the faint smell of burning leaves in the car.
MapQuest hadn’t been entirely encouraging in its directions to the Quest School. There was something in the street address (One Inspiration Way) the Web site hadn’t liked, and Portia had read with some resignation the usual admonition to do a “reality check” to confirm the existence of the roads and intersections. She hadn’t done it, though. The town, North Plain, seemed likely to be small, and she figured the locals would know the way, if it came to that; but as she passed through Keene and north into deeper woods, she started to get a little concerned. It was nearly two, the time of her appointment, and she wasn’t sure where she was headed or where she was.
When she found a gas station she pulled in, but her cell phone couldn’t get a signal. The teenage boy tending the gas pumps had never heard of Quest School, or Inspiration Way, for that matter, but the man whose gas he was pumping said, “Wait, it’s that hippie school, right?”
“I couldn’t say,” Portia
said. “I’m afraid that’s all the information I have.”
“Oh,” said the kid. “I know that place. It’s up towards Gilsum, right? They took over that big dairy barn and fixed it up. I heard they, like, keep the cows.”
“Yeah?” the man asked. “Why?”
The kid didn’t know. Portia didn’t know.
“Can you tell me how to get there?” she asked.
They told her. The drive wasn’t long, but it was complex. The directions involved a red barn, a hex sign, and a new house with blue shutters. She listened with a sinking heart, calculating: twenty minutes late, at least; half an hour, more likely. Portia drove away. She found the red barn and then the hex sign, and made the appropriate turns. The road turned dirt. There were no new houses with blue shutters. There was no Inspiration Way.
But there was, to her great surprise, a large sign for the Quest School mounted on rustic logs at a crossroad in the woods. It looked handmade, like a student project. She turned down the lane indicated (an unmarked lane, but indeed—she supposed—Inspiration Way) and drove between sudden fields flooded with afternoon light. Cows grazed to the left. There was hay, baled and piled, on the other side. Ahead, she saw the white barn with cars parked around it. A group of teenagers played volleyball. Another group, seated beneath a tree, seemed to be having an open-air class. She drove past them, parked at the end of the row, and got out quickly, relieved to be only fifteen minutes late. No one seemed to notice her arrival.
Portia hunted in her satchel for the Quest School file. There wasn’t much in it—a sheet with the name of her contact, Deborah Rosengarten, and the MapQuest directions. Also a printout that Abby, Clarence’s secretary, had given her of the school’s Web site, most of which was devoted to the mission statement. (“We believe that the purpose of education is to open doors, not close them. Recognizing that no one form of education will stretch to fit every unique individual, we cherish the beauty of each distinct mind.”) She shut the door of the car and looked around.
The barn was massive and from the outside somewhat confusing. The great bay doors that had, presumably, once seen herds of cattle pass through were still in place, but they looked unused, possibly sealed. There was nothing else that looked like a door, let alone a front door. She walked to the end of the building and turned the corner, coming upon the outdoor class in their circle beneath a maple tree. The group regarded her with some curiosity, not least the evident teacher, a man roughly her own age in a white buttoned shirt and khakis.
“You look lost,” he said affably enough.
“I’m here to meet Deborah Rosengarten.”
“Deborah?” He looked at his students. “Anyone seen Deborah?”
“She went to Putney,” said one boy. He had an open book on his lap and looked up only briefly. “She told me she was going to Putney.”
“Oh,” Portia stammered. “But… well, we had an appointment.”
“I’m so sorry,” the man said. He got to his feet. “Can I help? I’m John.”
“Portia. I’m here from Princeton.”
“Yes,” he said, looking at her intently. “I remember you.”
“Our appointment was for two. I’m a little late. I got lost. Perhaps she couldn’t wait.”
“Perhaps she simply forgot,” he said, notably irritated. But at the missing Deborah, Portia thought. Not, she was fairly certain, at herself.
“I apologize,” said John, confirming it. “This is terrible. Deborah… you know, she’s a great educator, but prone to distraction. And you’ve come so far.”
“From Deerfield, Massachusetts. Not that far,” she said, loosening up a little. “So, what should we do? I’m happy to give my presentation if you’d like to round up your eleventh and twelfth graders.”
He stood in the center of the circle and looked down at them. The kids were variously arrayed, supine, cross-legged, stretching. Some had put down their notebooks, but the boy who had spoken earlier read on, unruffled. He sat with his book unfurled across his lap, head tipped forward, thick black curls so shiny that they almost reflected back the sunlight. Curious, Portia tried to make out what he was reading and was just able to decipher the legend at the top of the page. Edie: An American Girl. The incongruity of that, here, beside a cow pasture in deepest New Hampshire, struck her as odd. Then sort of hilarious.
“What do you say, guys? Are you up for some college guidance?”
Portia looked at him. “Is this your eleventh and twelfth grade?”
“Not all. A few are doing other things. We’ll ring the bell. Caleb? Would you ring the bell?”
A lanky kid got to his feet. He had an acne-spattered jaw and a blond ponytail. He walked off without a word.
“All of our sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds should attend, I think. We’re trying to learn how to do this, actually. Our first students are just coming up to graduation this year. We’ve been focusing on other things.”
“I see. Well, I expect you’ve had other colleges visit.”
“Oh dear.” He smiled ruefully. “Would it complete your already terrible first impression of us if I told you you were the first? I know we’ve put in a call to Hampshire. And Goddard.”
“I think Goddard has closed, actually.”
“Ah. Maybe that’s why we haven’t heard back.”
“Maybe.” She smiled. She was surprised to discover that she wasn’t, actually, pissed off. She ought to be. But she wasn’t. It had warmed up through the day, and the air smelled of hay and the best version of cow. At the very least, this was going to be interesting. “I’ve brought a short film. Can I use your television and DVD player?”
“Oh, I wish we had them. It’s on our donation list. To tell you the truth, I think there’s some resistance to the idea.”
“Resistance? Do they think if they let in a TV, the students will all sit around watching General Hospital?”
“Essentially.” He laughed. “You know, our parent base is part Luddite, part day trader. It’s hard to get consensus on some things.”
“Well, never mind. They can watch it on my laptop. They’re a small enough group.”
“That would be great,” he said. “We’ll go in.”
Atop the barn, a bell creaked to life. The volleyball game stopped. Out in the fields there was movement as students slouched toward home. “That’s a useful thing,” Portia said.
“It’s our original bell. It was once used to call the cows home for milking.”
“Interesting metaphor for education.” She smiled. “How long have you been here?”
“Me?” John asked. “Or the school? Well, it’s moot. I was here at the birth. Six years. Eight if you count the time it took us to get set up. We were refurbishing inside and getting accredited. Some of us lived in trailers on the site. Thankfully, that’s over.”
“You must be very dedicated,” Portia said, stepping carefully. Her leather boots, so understated that they virtually disappeared on the streets of Princeton, seemed absurdly urban in this setting. She felt as if she had left the familiar world, the world of Starbucks and cabs and Vanity Fair, and wandered through a hole in the backdrop, emerging in the dazzling light of 1967, or 1867, where the old bell rang to call in the cows and the farmers of both genders wore feather earrings. The students, save the still immersed reader, stirred and got languidly to their feet and began to amble across to the barn. She saw kids coming in from the fields and the volleyball court. There were a few adults now, looking curiously in her direction. Everyone wore jeans and had a sun-kissed, genially bedraggled air. Or almost everyone. The comparatively prepped-out John’s white shirt seemed blindingly clean. It made him look as if he’d wandered seriously off course, somewhere between Groton and Brooks Brothers. Mr. Chips Goes to Woodstock, Portia thought, suppressing a smile. He had dark blond hair, thinning but oddly rakish. He wore a watch on a cracked plastic band. At least he wore a watch, she thought.
The barn was thoroughly renovated. They walked down a corridor flanked by
classrooms, each fitted with a single long table. “One of our earliest decisions,” John said, noting her attention. “We took ideas from everywhere, as long as they were good ideas. One of our board members went to Lawrenceville. Every classroom had a long oval table. No one gets lost at an oval table. We implemented that. We also borrowed our farming model from Putney and our all-school runs from Northfield.”
“You’ve obviously thought long and hard about everything.”
“Oh yes. We had a lot of time to think. And argue about things, it has to be said. After all, we were working on the school long before we had our first student. And we still learn something new every day. We’re constantly tripping over places where rules ought to be, then we have to write the rules and implement them. That’s a consensus process, so it takes time, but we get there in the end. I know we look like Lord of the Flies,” he said apologetically, “but I can assure you, we’re legit.”
“I didn’t doubt it,” Portia said, though of course she had.
The corridor ended in a meeting room. A wall of new windows overlooked the cow meadow. The view was stunning, pristine. It was a jolt back into that other world: a room a millionaire might insist upon for his rustic New England retreat, though perhaps without the shabby, mismatched sofas that filled it.
“Our commons,” said John.
“It’s beautiful. Like something out of Architectural Digest.”
“I’ll let our designer know you said that,” he said. “He’ll be over the moon. Technically, he specializes in reclaimed spaces and green construction, but the truth is, he’s a secret consumer of shelter mags. When you go to his house, there’s a hidden stash of architectural porn in the cupboard next to the compost toilet. I swear I found it by accident,” he said.
“I didn’t ask!” said Portia, laughing.
The room was flooded with light, which made the challenge of showing a movie on a laptop all the more acute. She placed her computer on a table and inserted the DVD. Acceptable, but far less satisfying than the state-of-the-art equipment she’d been given at Deerfield. The room was filling with older students who drifted to the sofas and talked in loud, unself-conscious voices. No one here, it was obvious, was trying to impress the visitor from the Princeton Office of Admission. She saw the reader come in, a finger protectively inside his book, holding his place. John was talking to another teacher, a heavy woman in overalls with two fat, graying braids. The woman left the room without introducing herself and with—was it possible?—the faintest whiff of hostility.
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