Early Decision

by Lacy Crawford

  TO HELL WITH THEM. NO BRAIDED RIVERS IN AMHERST, MASS.

  Mrs. Pfaff’s crying grew louder. So she wished Anne to hear.

  “Please don’t be so sad,” Anne told her. “There are wonderful schools out there. He’s going to be fine. He’s going to do great.”

  “I’m not sure I can handle this,” Marion wept. Her voice was guttering. “I’m really not. I have never. I mean, never.”

  To which Anne thought, rather uncharitably, Never? This is the worst that has happened to you? And you’re sobbing?

  But she did not yet have her own child, so she could not imagine how it felt to have some stranger tell your little boy no. Even if it had been a long shot. And it wasn’t, in the end, the prospect of the gloating sister or the awkward graduation parties next year that had Mrs. Pfaff so rattled. It was that a door had, for the first time, been closed forever on her child. He was growing up. And the world was hard.

  “I’m so, so sorry this is so difficult,” Anne said again. “But Hunter is really terrific. He’s a great kid, and he’s going to have a wonderful life. He really is. Amherst is tiny and uptight and they wouldn’t have helped him flourish there in any case. Let’s just take a few days and then regroup and figure out how to go from here.”

  “Yes,” sniffed Mrs. Pfaff. “Yes, you’re right. Thank you.”

  Her voice was a kind of wet whisper. Anne wondered where in the house Mr. Pfaff was grieving.

  It was decided that Anne would come around the following week. School would be out. She’d take Hunter for hot chocolate, they’d get this sorted. Mrs. Pfaff gathered herself up and thanked Anne heartily. Anne used her best to-hell-with-it tone, professional and generous and even a bit chummy. She did not want Mrs. Pfaff to know that she was rocked deeply. Because, in truth, she hadn’t helped Alexis get into Harvard, and she hadn’t prevented Hunter’s being rejected from Amherst. She was helpless to reframe eighteen years of parenting and generations longer of expectations. She was just a custodian of fate, as she pictured herself now, an orderly, shuffling alongside these kids. Perhaps offering a bon mot. Sending them through the next set of doors, and turning back each spring to where the new year’s kids were waiting.

  Anne’s cell phone chirped.

  ITS COOL THANKS WILL BE BETTER IN MOUNTANS ANYWAY

  read Hunter’s reply.

  DECEMBER 18 WAS a mess of a winter day. All night rain had fallen, and by dawn, cold air had moved in from Canada and crystallized the city, including the sky. Hard little bullets of freezing rain sleeted under cuffs and down collars and made everyone walk sideways nearly into everyone else. Anne pushed her way up Michigan Avenue toward the Drake, which in this weather seemed to be perched at the corner of the city and the northern edge of the planet, the lake stretching beyond it to Canada and this polar wind. Had she thought, when accepting this invitation, that she’d be passing the same Bulgari store in the same festive season, even the same brass quartet on the same corner, as though she’d been given the opportunity to correct a bad dream? Not consciously, no. But it was in her stride now, in both her speed and her determination to make something go right. Cristina, at least, would pull this off.

  She found the reluctant star and her mother in the lobby, perched awkwardly on chairs set astride an enormous sideboard that supported an equally enormous arrangement of lilies. The air around them was wet with scent. The chairs were too far apart for conversation, so Cristina and her mother sat silently, wearing the same uncertain expression, and both seemed deeply relieved to see Anne come in from the street.

  “I hope it’s okay that Mami came,” said Cristina. Her mother nodded fiercely.

  As though there should be a question, Anne thought, with her best smile steering them back toward the ballroom. The halls were crowded with professional types and their wives, clumped toward the middle of the runner carpet and channeled by younger people who had the look of busy but entirely natural hangers-on, like cleaning fish, darting here and there to tend to someone’s gills. Anne spotted the mayor about ten suits up. Nobody took notice of the Latina girl and her mother until they arrived at the set of long tables stacked with printed name tags, each bearing a red ribbon and a sprig of greenery. Anne found hers and Cristina’s. There was no tag for her mother, of course, who had not been included.

  “Oh.” The young woman behind the table frowned. “Hmm. Well, let me see what I can do.” She turned and left them to consult with a pack of women holding clipboards.

  “I’m sorry, who did you say you were?” she asked Mrs. Castello, returning. After a moment’s silence, she gave up and turned her questioning face to Anne.

  “That’s Cristina Castello and her mother,” Anne told the woman, who was actually, now that she looked at her, a girl, probably her own age or a bit younger. How did you get into a job like this? What was her job, anyway?

  “I’m sorry,” said Cristina, and Anne worried that the table silliness would cost her the confidence she’d need at the podium. “I didn’t realize . . .”

  Anne said clearly, “Cristina is being honored today. She’s speaking.”

  Several heads turned. The young woman’s eyes opened wide. “Ohhhh,” she said. “Of course! You’re in the program! I’m sorry, I didn’t recognize—I didn’t understand the name, here, under C—it’s not—anyway . . .” Her voice trailed off. She wagged her fingers in the direction of the ballroom.

  But none of the snafus of their arrival—not the unfestooned tag with Sra. Castello scrawled in Sharpie, pinned ceremoniously to her sweater, not the chair hastily added and the place settings shuffled to accommodate her, not even the blank greetings every adult gave, assuming even “Hello” and “Merry Christmas” would be foreign to her—managed to rile Cristina, who, after a vague introduction from Gideon Blanchard’s partner Donald Winsett, stood and talked for twelve minutes, during which time nobody so much as lifted a fork.

  Hers wasn’t, in truth, a terrible story. There were no coyotes smuggling children across the sand under a desert night, no abusive men or drunken minders, no brothers lost or in jail, though of her seven aunts and uncles, both uncles were dead—one the victim of political murder in Guatemala, and the other of the drug-related depression that followed this first loss—and two aunties were still grinding out their lives back in Central America. The phrase “gunned down” drew the predictable gasp from the crowd. But more often the audience nodded, as though being reminded rather than informed of this girl’s home on the northwest side, where she lived with her mom and aunt and two other women (Inez among them, of course) and their children, four kids to a room plus a crib in the hall, eleven total if everyone was home, which almost never happened. In fact, it was rather an ordinary American story, only that nobody listening to it was the slightest bit ordinary, socioeconomically speaking. They were flattered to find that it lined up with their imaginings of the lives of others, and even more flattered by the reach and focus of Cristina’s language, which was articulate and graceful, and which made them feel not the tiniest bit unequal to her, above or below.

  “The opportunity to continue my education,” Cristina said, “is one that I will meet with pleasure, gratitude, and enormous energy. I am hungry to learn.”

  The mayor was the first to stand, rapping his hands together like bear paws and grinning around him as though she were his.

  Cristina returned to the table, patted and pressed as she made her way through the crowd. Donald Winsett reclaimed the stage and impelled his guests to give and give generously. The envelopes at the center of each table filled with checks. Anne watched Cristina and her mother watching this, eyeing the envelope by their very own centerpiece, and noticed that neither woman ate a single bite of food, and perhaps not for nerves; maybe this was their lone refusal of this torrent of abundance, which must have made them as suspicious as would a gang of men in a dark alley. Anne felt an odd affinity with the neo-Marxists at the U of C when she wondered at the degree of complication at play here: the law firm, the ba
llroom, the girl who has to stand and deliver, all to wrangle the checks in the envelopes on the table not a foot from the child herself. Why not, she thought, just have a guest slip off a Cartier cuff and press it directly into Cristina’s hand? But still it was all quite lovely, and Christmasy, especially when the chocolate desserts came round and a black boys’ choir began to sing up on the makeshift stage.

  Then Margaret and Gideon Blanchard were upon them. Everyone stood.

  “Well, how moving!” Gideon bellowed, reaching his long arms for Cristina and folding her in like a pin-striped spider. “And Anne.” He nodded carefully. “How proud you must be.”

  “In fact, this is Cristina’s mother,” Anne said, gesturing.

  He took a big, mock step back, and stared. Then he turned to Mrs. Blanchard and said, “Honey, this is her mom! How wonderful. Gideon Blanchard. Margaret Blanchard. And you are? Señora Castello, of course! Our pleasure. My goodness. And how proud you must be!”

  Margaret Blanchard managed not to look at Anne at all, as though she weren’t standing there, flanking Cristina’s other side. Well, so be it. Sadie wasn’t there to sense her envy, so what did it matter?

  “Your daughter is very special,” she said. Unprompted, she repeated herself in Spanish.

  Mrs. Castello said, “Thank you.” But her eyes were turned to another couple who had approached them, a short pair, one round and the other slight. For a moment Anne did not recognize Gerald and Marion Pfaff. She did not expect to see them here, and indeed she had not seen them since the afternoon of the Muslim-applicant incident, since they had both taken pains to be out when Anne had gone to look in on Hunter and the remainder of his applications. It took what was for her an uncomfortably long minute to recall their names. But no matter; no one else seemed to expect her to know them either.

  There was first a raucous round of greetings: “Gid!” “Marion!” “Gerry!” “Margaret!” Heads lowered and rose again, kisses and thumps were exchanged. Jewelry clinked. Programs were shuffled and folded away. Then their four heads came up as though from underwater, and Gideon Blanchard feigned embarrassment.

  “Here, let me introduce you,” he said. “Marion, Gerry, this is Cristina Castello, our student of honor. And this is her mother.”

  The Pfaffs cooed and lowed.

  “And this is Anne, the young woman who works with Cristina at her public high school on the northwest side. She’s a volunteer college counselor there.”

  Mrs. Pfaff smiled as though to demonstrate what was meant by the term “smile,” assembling her face into an approximation of pleasure. Her traced lips allowed no teeth to peek through, but Anne detected the smallest crinkle at the bottom corners of her eyes, which gave, graciously, a tiny hound-dog angle beneath a brow smooth as cream. The expression was balanced perfectly between recognition and the sense that Mrs. Pfaff had only just been caught deep in thought about something else. “Marion Pfaff,” she said, and extended her hand.

  Anne felt her cheeks tighten in a blush. She had been ignored, on city sidewalks and at school performances, but never summarily denied. She had to work to take in enough breath to manage, “Hello.”

  Gideon Blanchard, the most comfortable liar of the bunch, caught nothing. “Cristina was wonderful, Anne,” he said. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me, please.”

  “Anne works with the kids up there every Saturday,” he continued. “Isn’t that right? So she spotted Cristina’s gifts, and now here we are.”

  “How wonderful.”

  “Mmm,” added Gerald Pfaff.

  “It really is a labor of love,” observed Margaret Blanchard, the first words she had spoken to or of Anne. It was her television voice, confidence atop a rolling purr, and it confirmed that she wasn’t about to give up the game either. “Anne, you must tell us more about it sometime.”

  “Must be very rewarding,” replied Marion Pfaff. “Now tell me, did she apply early anywhere? She must be admitted already.”

  Only now did Anne notice that Cristina and her mother had faded back to the table, where they were sitting alone.

  “No, regular admission,” Anne replied, noting that Margaret Blanchard’s camera-ready grin was flashing again and again, almost involuntarily, like a lighthouse. She added, “It’s a decision related to the financial-aid process.”

  “Which is of course a moot point now,” said Gerald Pfaff, rolling forward onto his toes in the direction of Gideon Blanchard. Together they were like a comedy duo, one small and round, one tall and jutting. It was clear that Margaret Blanchard was claiming victory in this display. She took a step closer to her husband so that she was more nearly above Gerald Pfaff. Mr. Pfaff did not possess the self-observation required to notice such one-upmanship. He’d been short and round all his life and it bothered him not at all. But Mrs. Pfaff was irritated, and working to keep conversation light.

  “And such lovely hair, too,” she said.

  There was an embarrassing silence. Cristina did indeed have lustrous long hair, but it was unique only because nearly everyone else in the room was blond. Or bald.

  Speaking of which. “Where has she applied?” asked Mr. Pfaff, giving Anne his best neutral gaze. “Let me guess: Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Williams, Amherst?”

  Anne studied him. She remembered their fantasy Muslim girl, the—how had his wife put it?—“extreme ethnic.” Well, here she was. He had determined that Cristina was the enemy. And there was Mrs. Pfaff, too, for whom Anne felt rather sorry. Her ankles seemed too thin to hold up her slender frame, wrapped as it was in a quilted black suit, couture, expertly tailored to her wrists, which were turned to a sleek bag. The look was designed to be both elegant and warm, but on her bones it gave the impression of being purely decorative and somehow wrong, as though she were a throw pillow in search of a chair. Marion Pfaff wore her breeding in a uniquely Midwestern way, a phenomenon Anne had not understood until she’d gone east and returned: the Pfaff bank accounts may well have been big, and indeed Marion’s cousins by marriage in Greenwich lent her additional claim to that old world, but there was always something a touch off about her choices. And the tiniest bit defensive. Harbor Springs was not Fisher’s Island, after all, any more than Lake Shore Drive was Park Avenue. The suit, the brooch, the clutch—it was just a little bit too much. Her sister in New York would have known to forgo the jewelry or wear a higher heel. Still, Marion Pfaff’s Second City berth had seemed utterly secure until the arrival of such as Margaret Blanchard, a wholly new kind of arriviste: not just new money, but celebrity money. And some of it was her money. Much of it, in fact. Earned by her, in her lifetime.

  And, of course, there could be not a soul in that ballroom who did not know that Gideon Blanchard chaired the board at Duke, which meant that when it came to college admissions, the only truly relevant test scores for Sadie were her Apgars (eight and nine). Marion, with nothing to show for her labors but an early rejection from Amherst and ten outstanding applications, stood trembling. She clutched closer her lizard clutch.

  “She has applied to several places,” answered Anne, when in fact the truth was Cristina had applied only to the U of I, and the Duke application was waiting, stamped and sealed, for the high sign. Anything else was out of the question in terms of financial support. “She’s looking into a bunch of schools.”

  “Probably the very same schools as young Hunter, eh?” said Mr. Blanchard, addressing the Pfaffs. “Such a bright kid. So much potential.”

  “Some of them, I think,” said Gerald Pfaff.

  “Don’t I remember that he has cousins at Amherst? Isn’t that so?” This was Margaret Blanchard. “I think we met them last Christmas, didn’t we?”

  “One, yes,” said Mrs. Pfaff.

  “So Hunter must have applied,” concluded Mrs. Blanchard. “How wonderful.”

  “No. ”

  “No? Oh.”

  Mrs. Pfaff recovered. “No, no. So small! No, he’s looking to play tennis, so we’re working with coaches, you kno
w. It requires waiting to see how things shake out, the team ladders, it’s a process on all fronts that way.”

  “Of course,” said Gideon Blanchard. “I will never forget that kid’s forehand. Comes at you like the Concorde, I swear.”

  “That’s nice, thank you.”

  “And what about Sadie?” asked Mr. Pfaff.

  “Well, she’s quite fond of Duke, so we’re pleased,” answered Margaret Blanchard. It was another sign of the difference between her and Marion Pfaff: she felt no shame, saw no need to trim her sails.

  All four parents smiled, but only one of them was genuine. Gideon Blanchard hadn’t a doubt in the world. So for the benefit of them all, he said, “Well, Anne, this must be so boring for you! You can’t have much to do with this side of things, seeing as you serve the population you do at Cicero North.”

  By now Anne was game. “Not at all. It’s a challenging time for every student, no matter her background,” she replied.

  All four adults nodded gravely.

  “Well said,” pronounced Gideon Blanchard.

  Marion Pfaff nodded lightly to Anne. “Well, nice to meet you.”

  “Yes, very,” said Margaret Blanchard. “Gid, we must—”

  “Yes, Gerry we should—”

  They moved off.

  Anne was left at the empty table. Cristina and her mother had gone. On their plates remained chocolate mousse terrines, drizzled with raspberry glaze and dotted with berries. Their name tags lay neatly alongside their untouched spoons.

  BUT IN THE foyer of the Pfaff residence, late in the evening of December 23, Anne was greeted not only by name but with an embrace. Mrs. Pfaff reached round her twig arms and pressed awkwardly, as though measuring Anne for a dress. Her eyes beneath her plucked brows were hollow. You’d have thought the family had received a diagnosis rather than a denial. Anne stood by the gun case, uncertain.