Admission

by Julie Buxbaum

  I paint my nails, alternating cardinal and gold.

  I think about Levi’s cheesy sign: Hey SCC girl will you go to prom with this Harvard guy?

  That’s me, I think. SCC girl.

  I snuggle up in my sweatshirt, set my alarm for 6:15 a.m., and go to sleep.

  I let go of the pit in my stomach, the slightest ache of doubt, the shame I can’t quite shake.

  Tomorrow will be a new day. A better one. A clean one.

  I will forget.

  SCC girl.

  Here I come.

  * * *

  —

  The next morning, before the doorbell rings, I don’t hear the footsteps, or the line of men saying “On the count of three.” As I walk to the front hallway, I think of teal eyeshadow, of Levi’s handmade sign, of the bright, bright future unfolding before me like a promise or a vow. I smile quietly to myself, hand on the knob.

  I open the front door.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Now

  “Can an entire family hit rock bottom? Asking for a friend. Who is me,” my mom says. She sits at the kitchen table and eats cookie dough ice cream straight out of the gallon container. She’s gained weight, and the padding suits her. Her edges seem less jagged, her face softer. She looks like what my mom might look like if she were a regular person, not an actress. Still beautiful, but more human somehow. What I’d imagine her sister might look like if she had one.

  “The good thing about bottom is that the only place to go is up,” my dad says, and lifts his cup of coffee and clinks with her ice cream. He looks hollowed out, his eyes watery above blue bags, his face slipped off his jawline. Last night, after Hudson was sprung from the ER, my dad took him to his apartment and packed his bags, then drove him back to rehab. Apparently, he even followed him into the bathroom and watched him pee; he was scared that Hudson might climb out the window.

  “I’m only going because it’s the cushy place with the masseuses and the hiking and the chakra realignment in Malibu, not the mean boot camp in Tahoe where they check your orifices for drugs,” Hudson said when my dad told him that he’d secured him a bed at a live-in treatment center and that he was going whether he was ready or not. That we weren’t going to sit around and wait for him to die.

  We are all done waiting.

  “What’s that famous expression? ‘Fifth time’s the charm,’ ” Hudson said, and we all laughed, like he was joking. And maybe he was. A little.

  According to my dad, the short drive to Malibu was uneventful. Hudson stared out the window and mumbled the Serenity Prayer. My dad said he felt hopeful when they said goodbye, like maybe there was a chance he’d get Hudson back whole at the end of all of this, like something good might come from our nightmare day yesterday. Like maybe a near-death scare might be exactly the thing that he needed to be set straight. And then he caught sight of Hudson eyeing the door, as if he was going to make a run for it the second my dad turned his back and drove away.

  “I don’t know. What does rock bottom even mean? Things could totally get way worse, and then you’ll be like, Wait, that wasn’t rock bottom, this is. And then they could get even worse again, and then you’d be like, ‘Wait, this is it?’ ” I say.

  “Helpful, thanks, Chlo,” my dad says. “I spoke to the counselor this morning and she said they’re giving Huds meds to help manage the withdrawal. So for today at least, or for this hour, I’m going to be optimistic, because the alternative is unimaginable.”

  My mom rests her head on my dad’s shoulder, kisses his cheek. Hands him the ice cream container. I don’t correct my father, though unimaginable is the exact wrong word. I’ve had nightmares where we’re all dressed in black at Hudson’s funeral. Just yesterday, we took a test run.

  Of course we can imagine it.

  Just like I can now imagine my mom going to prison.

  I can’t stop imagining both scenarios.

  “You picked out all the cookie dough,” my dad says. “Maybe this is truly bottom.”

  “Hudson’s going to be okay,” my mom says. “I know it.” I wonder if she actually believes this or she thinks this is what my dad needs to hear. I don’t believe it—why would rehab stick on the fifth try if it didn’t on the fourth?—and yet I hang on to the thought with white-knuckled desperation. Maybe my mom, like Isla, knows things the rest of us don’t.

  I might hate my brother, but I also love him.

  “Hudson’s stronger than you think, Dad,” Isla says, and I notice she too is drinking coffee. When did that happen? She usually drinks milk in the morning, a tall, cold, sweating glass, like a toddler. “He looked me in the eye yesterday when we said goodbye, which is the first time he’s done that since I don’t know when. Maybe two Christmases ago? That has to mean something.”

  “I hope so,” my dad says, and grips my mom’s hands. When I see them locked like that, I let my usual fury turn to warmth, an unexpected twist in my gut.

  Maybe we’re all stronger than we think.

  Maybe there are worse places to be than hitting bottom with the people you love-hate.

  Maybe monsters can give up their monsterhood.

  “When are the lawyers and Paloma coming back?” I ask. My parents have returned from Boston, and I assume their new entourage will soon follow. The kitchen will again smell like tuna sandwiches and cologne. The dining room will give off that anxious hum of a command center.

  “They’re not,” my mom says, looking around as if surprised not to see them here with us. “Actually, we have a lot to talk about. Isla, would you be able to take tomorrow morning off from school? Would that be okay, honey?”

  I look over at Isla, but I can’t read her face. My mom has never asked our permission for anything, has never said the words Would that be okay, honey? Not even that time she flashed that picture of me in my Halloween costume in eighth grade on the Tonight Show—even though I was dressed as a carrot—or when she tweeted that I had my first crush.

  “I guess,” Isla says.

  “And you can be here too, Chlo? Tomorrow morning?” my mom asks.

  “I’ll have to clear my very busy social calendar,” I say. “But I think it can be arranged.”

  “Thank you. Thank you so much,” she says, with real gratitude, not the sitcom variety, and that’s when I get scared.

  * * *

  —

  For the first time, I call a meeting with Kenny. I decide it’s unlikely that I’ll run into Levi or Shola or any of my classmates in a high-rise in Century City, so we meet in his office. Also, Isla, as usual, is right: I need to get out more, even if it’s to have a chat with my lawyer. Later, if I’m sure there are no paparazzi following me, I’m going to check in on Cesar.

  I pace in front of his couch, an expansive view of Los Angeles laid out behind me like a glittery net, and talk. I’m here to tell Kenny my story, whether he wants to hear it or not. I’m done with the waiting on every front.

  I start with studying for the SAT the morning of the Marie Claire interview and don’t stop until I reach the moment when the FBI knocked on our front door. I tell him how I thought I would be met by a box from Sephora, not men with guns. How Levi became my boyfriend and then my prom date, and how, like everything else, that fell apart. I tell him I miss Shola.

  Unnecessary details from a legal perspective, maybe, but essential to me. I need him to understand how it felt, for even a moment, to be SCC girl. How it feels to have lost my best friend.

  He takes notes, stopping me every once in a while when he thinks I’m dipping into dangerous territory. The weird emails and the SATs and the overheard phone call. I guess he’s worried I’ll incriminate myself, but I don’t care. I continue despite his warnings.

  Even villains are allowed nuance.

  I learned that in English 4.

  I think of Hudson in his
hospital bed yesterday, how much courage it must have taken him to half smile and say “Fifth time’s the charm.” He didn’t lie or pretend he didn’t have a problem or make promises he isn’t sure he can keep. Instead, he promised to try his best.

  I’ve never tried my best. It’s time to start.

  When I finish my story with its grand finale, my big confession—I saw the application in my dad’s office and made the decision to forget about it—Kenny goes quiet. I finally sit down in one of the big club chairs facing his desk, breathless, and my leg shakes up and down. My mother is not here to comment, yet I hear her in my mind like I always hear my parents’ voices, so I uncross my legs and hold still.

  I wonder if that’s one definition of growing up—replacing your parents’ voices in your head with your own. I wonder if I’ll one day get there.

  I check out his office. The walls are decorated with black-and-white photographs of old Hollywood stars: Marilyn Monroe. Rita Hayworth. Marlene Dietrich. I hear Madonna in my head—Rita Hayworth gave good face—and I think about my mother. How much harder giving good face is than it looks.

  I wait for his verdict.

  “Remember a few weeks ago I asked Siri about the origin of the word capisce?” Kenny asks, resting his chin on steepled fingers. He looks professorial today, in a fashionable beige cardigan with leather buttons and suede elbow patches. Exactly what I’d imagine my English 101 teacher would look like at SCC. “Well, I googled it, and it turns out it comes from the Italian capisci, which means ‘to understand,’ which itself comes from the Latin capers, which means ‘to seize, grasp, take.’ I love that. The idea of understanding being linked to the idea of taking something. We seize knowledge when we understand. Interesting on so many levels, right?”

  I’m not sure whether I find this interesting. I didn’t come here for a vocab lesson; that was Linda’s job. What I want to know is if he thinks I will or should be charged with a felony.

  I nod anyway, hoping that speeds things along.

  “Legally speaking, you didn’t understand,” Kenny says. “No capisce. Not really. You might have had a sense that not all was kosher, but you can’t be charged for that. A strange SAT experience and an out-of-context email and call do not make a criminal case for fraud.” A high-pitched noise escapes my throat. A strangled sigh, an exhalation of relief. “I think the US attorney’s office was posturing even more than I realized.”

  “But what about the fact that I saw the file and decided not to say anything?” I ask, because that’s the part that has been hardest to swallow. I might have told Isla that I didn’t know, but that was a technicality. I didn’t know-know, until finally, I did.

  I knew.

  “Nope. The crime had already been committed. Ethically speaking, you should have said something then, but legally it’s a different story. Either way, you didn’t have a chance, because the raid happened literally the next day,” he says.

  “So I’m in the clear, legally speaking?”

  “Yes. Based on what you’ve told me, yes. But clients lie to me and to themselves all the time.”

  “I might have been aggressively oblivious, but I’m not lying,” I say.

  “Did you know I have kids?” Kenny asks, apropos of nothing. I’m surprised. His cell phone lock screen is a generic picture—a fishing boat in the middle of a bright blue sea. My dad’s, on the other hand, is a picture of our family from about thirteen years ago—me, Hudson, and Isla at Disneyland. Hudson, in metal braces and the oily, pimply throes of puberty, is squished up against Mickey Mouse. Though it’s clear he doesn’t want to have his photo taken, he’s smiling anyway, even matching Mickey’s thumbs-up. I figured the fishing boat meant Kenny lived alone. “Two boys, actually. Both went to UPenn and UPenn Law. Really great, smart kids.”

  “How old are they?” I’m curious about Kenny. I’ve shared my deepest secrets, as if he were my therapist, not my lawyer, and I know so little about him. He hands me the photo from his desk and I see two young men who look a lot like Axl and Simon: white, healthy, polo-shirted. I recognize our country club in the background. I wonder if we’ve ever been there at the same time—maybe the Fourth of July barbecue or the Easter egg roll. I wonder if when this is all over, or when I return to my old life, I will see Kenny there, drinking a martini, his tall, healthy, smart Penn boys besides him.

  “Twenty-two and twenty-four. And until your case, I hadn’t really thought about all the ways my kids had a leg up. That’s not to say I’m not proud of them—I am, very—but I paid for counselors and tutors and summer programs and camps and club soccer and private school, and they’re legacies, of course, on both sides actually.” He points to two degrees on the wall from the University of Pennsylvania, one from the college of arts and sciences and the other from the law school. “I didn’t buy a building, probably because I couldn’t afford one, but I bought into the system. I still do. Every day. And lately I don’t know what I think about that.”

  “Yeah,” I say, and feel tears well up in my eyes.

  “I like you, Chloe. And I hope maybe one day you find your way into college on your own. In the meantime, I hope you take a minute to think about the Latin capers, ‘to seize, grasp, take.’ Remember, knowledge is power. An important part of growing up is letting yourself see the world around you as it truly is, even if you don’t like what you see or your own complicity in it.”

  “You’re talking about knowing without knowing,” I say, because I am not one of Kenny’s kids; I’m a mediocre student who likes to have things spelled out.

  “Yep. Though our crimes are different—and to be clear, I mean crimes in a moral sense, not a legal one, of course—we both have a lot of thinking to do,” Kenny says. “We’ve both been aggressively oblivious, as you so eloquently put it.”

  A giggle bubbles up in the back of my throat. I wish I could call Shola. She’d find it hilarious that my mom’s felonies have had the unintended consequence of making my lawyer woke.

  On second thought, maybe she wouldn’t find it funny at all. Maybe she’d wonder why it’s taken us all so long to open our eyes.

  Again, she’s three steps ahead of me. She knows the answer to that too.

  To be fair, so do I.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  Now

  The next morning, my parents march into my room with the sort of militant urgency they usually reserve for special occasions, like movie premieres or pop-up shop appearances. I’m still in bed, the first hour of my day reserved for my new masochistic hobby: scrolling Shola’s and Levi’s Instagram feeds. I’ve watched their honor society speeches, seen tiny bits of the fencing farewell lunch, celebrated Shola’s send-off from the newspaper, even vicariously shopped for a prom dress with Sophie, Levi’s date. She modeled six different dresses from the Bloomingdale’s dressing room for Instagram live and then let people vote.

  I preferred the red one, though I kept that opinion to myself.

  “Get ready, Chloe. The outfit you need to wear is on the back of the door. I don’t think you’ll be on camera, but it’s always good to be prepared, sweet pea,” my mom says. Her hair has been blown out, again in the new style—straight and simple and curled under—and she’s wearing a boring black sheath dress, understated jewelry. I wonder where it all came from. My mom’s stylist doesn’t usually do conservative, and I imagine it took all her willpower not to attack the dress with scissors and make a long leg slit and a rib-cage keyhole.

  “Wait, what?” I ask.

  “Keep up, honey. The film crew will be here in an hour,” my dad says. He’s freshly showered and wearing one of his sharp suits, though he too compromised—with who? Paloma?—on the tie and handkerchief. Both are a solid pale blue I’ve never seen before. He’s been forced to forgo his usual loud patterns.

  “What film crew?” I ask.

  “Duh, 20/20,” Isla says, coming in behind my p
arents. She’s wearing a dress also, but hers is overly girlish—pink gingham with flutter sleeves. She mock-curtsies and makes a silly face.

  “Wow,” I say.

  “Yeah. Don’t get too excited. Yours matches,” Isla says.

  “We wanted The View, but they make you go to them,” my mom says, unconcerned about the fact that Isla and I will be dressed like twinsie toddler royalty. “Also, those ladies can get a little mean. I wanted the set to be our home, to show we are real people,” my mom says. “That we are a real family.”

  “Show who?” I ask.

  “The whole goddamn world,” my mom says.

  * * *

  —

  By the time I go downstairs, our entire living room has been taken over by men and women with walkie-talkies hooked to belts. Furniture has been moved to the side to make room for cameras and boom microphones, and the floor is zigzagged with taped-down wires. It’s similar to the invasion of the lawyers, except this time, the energy is frantic instead of frustrated. Also, I don’t see any sandwiches or curly lettuce droppings.

  The anchorperson, Brittany Brady, stands off to one side while a woman powders her face and a man lint-rolls down her suit. A third person tapes a mic to her lapel.

  In the corner, Paloma talks with a dark-haired woman who reminds me of Hudson’s mom—same blunt bangs and grim smile. They seem deep in conversation, unaware of the commotion around them.

  “She’s the producer, I think,” Isla says, gesturing over to them. “I’d bet they’re going over the terms of the interview.”

  “Do you know what’s going on? What’s the point of all of this?” I ask.

  “I assume damage control? So Mom can spin her story? Seems like a risky strategy to me,” Isla says.

  “I spoke to my lawyer yesterday. I think I’m at least in the clear, legally speaking,” I say. “For real.”

  “Thank God,” Isla says, and grabs me in a quick hug. We’ve recently become sisters who touch.