The Admissions (13 page)

“Listen,” said Seamus O’Malley, taking Nora’s elbow and leading her to a quiet corner of the studio’s waiting room,
quiet
being a relative term, since inside the studio a clamorous beginners’ hard-shoe class was lurching along under the tutelage of one of Seamus’s underlings and on the other side of the waiting room the under-thirteen ceili group—Cecily’s—was ostensibly warming up for their practice but was actually engaged in an (illegal) bartering program involving gum and Twizzlers. They were sitting directly beneath a sign that read
NO FOOD IN THE STUDIO OR WAITING ROOM. WATER ONLY, PLEASE
. But Seamus seemed to be turning a blind eye, so Nora turned a blind eye too.

Usually, out of necessity, Nora just opened the door of the Audi while it was practically still moving and deposited Cecily in the parking lot to make her way into class. Today, though, Nora had a check to drop off and a mother to connect with about a costume piece. She was glancing at her phone, waiting for the mother, when Seamus grabbed her.

“Listen, Nora,” said Seamus. Nora took a second, as she always did, to enjoy the way her name sounded when Seamus said it. He was two decades in America but, thank God, the vestiges of his brogue remained. Seamus could say anything to Nora, he could tell her she’d just been diagnosed with a rare blood disease or that a buyer had walked half an hour before closing escrow and still it would sound like he was singing her an Irish lullaby. “Is Cecily okay?”

“Why?” Nora looked at Cecily, who was busy bartering with Fiona.

“She seems a bit shook, is all.”

“A bit shook?” It wasn’t unusual to be perplexed during a conversation with Seamus. Once he told the ceili team that they couldn’t hit a cow’s arse with a banjo. Cecily had looked it up on Nora’s iPhone on the way home. (
“Oh!”
she said. “It means we’re hopeless.”)

“A bit unwell. A bit not like herself.”

“She looks like herself to me,” said Nora. “She looks exactly like herself.” She glanced over at Cecily. When were Lawrence and Bee going to drop the hammer on her? How many miles a week was Gabe running, and
why
? Should she take Maya to a neurologist? Had Angela finished the application? And, seriously, what was for dinner?

“I think you know, Nora,” said Seamus, “that we need this team to do well. To qualify for Worlds. We’ve put a lot into this, everybody has.”

“I know. Cecily has too.” The ceili dresses had run each family $750. “Believe me, Seamus, Cecily has put as much into this as anyone.”

“Sure she has,” said Seamus. “But the uniformity, that’s what’s crucial here. Cecily’s a gorgeous solo dancer, we all know that. But she’s losing her concentration with the ceili and that’s where we can’t be losing it. Ceili is all concentration, that’s all it is.”

“I
know,
” said Nora. Seamus’s brogue was sounding less adorable.

“See if you can’t rein her in a bit, yeah? Normally I would say don’t be troubling yourself, you know our Cecily can always pull off whatever we throw at her. But keep an eye, will you, Nora?”

Cecily! Cecily was the light in the darkness, the bird singing in the trees. Worry about Cecily?

“Okay,” she said congenially to Seamus O’Malley. It was warm in the studio; Nora wanted to get out of there. She had thirty-eight things to do. Her phone was buzzing. “Okay,” she said. She was a wife and a mother and a real estate professional; she could add one more thing to her list. “I will keep an eye, Seamus.”

She answered the phone on the way out of the studio. Gabe.

“I think we made a big mistake.”

“How’s that?” Nora marched toward her car, slid in.

“I think we should have sent Angela to private school.”

Nora started the car.
“What?”

She could practically feel Gabe nodding. “I mean it,” he said. “Skip Moynihan told me that the Ivies aren’t taking from public high schools anymore. That if you really want to get in you have to come from a boarding school, like that one down in Monterey, what’s it called?”

“I don’t know what it’s called. That’s insane. We’re not sending our children to school in Monterey.”

She backed out of the space.

“I know that. We’ve missed the boat for that, obviously, with Angela. But if those are the kids who are getting in, maybe we should have—or maybe Cecily, or Maya—”

Nora thought of Angela, worn out, overworked, crescents beneath her eyes: moons beneath the moons. She didn’t know how kids stood it these days. She couldn’t have. She could barely stand watching it.

“Oh, Gabe. Gabe, Gabe. That is simply a dog you can’t walk back. You have done everything you could.
We
have done everything we could. Go back to work.”

“Fine,” said Gabe sharply, but he stayed on the phone, like he was waiting for her to say something.

“Or notice the bears asleep at the zoo. It’s because they’ve been dancing all night for you…”

Cecily was reading to Maya. Okay, that was sweet. That was very sweet. Gabe, on his way to his bedroom to change out of his work clothes, paused to listen.

Cecily looked up, saw him standing there. She smiled and went back to reading and he felt pinpricks in the backs of his eyes.
Don’t cry, you old bastard. It’s just two kids reading. No big deal.

He changed his clothes and returned to the living room.

The scene put him in mind of his own brothers, that was all. Michael and Ryan. Not that they sat around reading books with dancing polar bears on the cover together when they were kids. But they did play with Legos. When they had time. There were always chores on a ranch, endless work. Kids today didn’t do many chores. They didn’t have time: they were too busy training for adulthood. Also his kids didn’t live on a ranch, so there was less to do. In their defense.

From faraway places, the geese flew home,
read Cecily in a clear, firm voice.

The ranch. Gabe remembered a winter sunset, the whole sky a blood orange. The biggest sky in the world. He remembered waves of panic coursing through him when he was a small child, briefly lost in the Dillard’s in Cheyenne, his hands grasping a blue silk dress in the ladies’ department, waiting for his mother to claim him.

He remembered his brother Michael’s high school girlfriend, Lauren Foster, who had eyes like a cat’s, light green. He thought Michael would marry her, they all did. They’d all been a little bit in love with Lauren. Okay, Gabe had done more than
be
a little bit in love with Lauren. He’d acted on it. He couldn’t help it. Nobody could have helped it—Lauren Foster at seventeen had been an absolute goddess.

A coward move, Gabe.

A decades-old mistake.

The moon stayed up until morning next day, and none of the ladybugs flew away.
Cecily moved over on the couch and patted the empty space next to her and Gabe sat down.

Just before his mother’s death she told him that she’d seen Lauren at a county fair and that time hadn’t been kind to her. This news depressed Gabe. He preferred to think of Lauren Foster as forever seventeen and beautiful, long-legged and tan, sitting at the kitchen table at the ranch house with bare feet and jean shorts and a
bikini
top. Which at the time hadn’t seemed nearly as strange as it did in retrospect. In landlocked Wyoming.

So whenever you doubt just how special you are, and you wonder who loves you, how much and how far…

His brother had married a woman from Vancouver. He’d never gotten over what Gabe had done. Stupid of Gabe to tell him.

I can’t believe you would do something like that, Gabe.

“Now you read,” said Cecily. “Just this last page, take your time.”

“I can’t,” said Maya.

“Of course you can. It’s just one page, two paragraphs, really. You can do it.”

“I don’t want to do it. I want you to read.”

“Maya…”

What an asshole move, Gabe.

“Okay,” said Cecily, frowning.
Heaven blew every trumpet and played every horn on the wonderful, marvelous night you were born.

She closed the book.

“Daddy?” asked Maya. “What was it like on the night
I
was born?”

“Darkest midnight,” said Gabe. “Magical. Well, not exactly midnight, more like one thirty or two. But still magical. Angela was born at midnight.”

Cecily leaned her head against Gabe’s arm. “I remember when Maya was born. Aunt Marianne came to stay with us, and Angela had the stomach bug. I was born in the daytime. Right, Daddy? High noon?”

“That’s right,” said Gabe. “Lunchtime. That’s why you like lunch so much.”

“Everybody likes lunch.”

“Not everybody.”

Gabe took the book from Cecily and studied the cover. Two polar bears doing a waltz, and above the title a full moon, with two eyes and a mouth just visible. The man in the moon.

1:23 a.m.

Dear Marianne,

There’s a three-quarter moon tonight. I don’t know the official name for that, but Cecily would. She’s doing the phases of the moon at school.

An email went out looking for a parent or two willing to preside over an evening trip somewhere-or-other for proper viewing.

They said “parent” but of course they meant “mother.” They always mean mother.

I pretended I didn’t get it.

Tuesday morning, eight twenty-three. Nora had seen all three of her girls off to school. Angela had slouched her way out the door to walk with a couple of friends from the neighborhood and Nora had delivered Cecily and Maya to the turnaround circle at the elementary school.

It was all very much the opposite of relaxing, this morning routine, and nothing about it seemed to get easier as time went on. Maybe when Angela was off at college—maybe then it would get easier, for there would be just Cecily and Maya to look after.

Nora did not remember her mother rushing around like this to get Marianne and Nora out the door when they were schoolchildren in Rhode Island. She stood in her robe at the door as they walked themselves to the bus stop under gray New England skies. Surely she provided them with breakfast, but Nora did not recall made-to-order omelets. Cheerios and milk, maybe a raspberry Entenmann’s strudel when they were on special at the market. Of course there were only two of them, not three. That made a difference. Suzanne Ramsey, one of the moms at Cecily and Maya’s school—mother of four—theorized that no matter how many children you had, everything seemed easier once you subtracted one.

Now, instead of going into the office the way she normally would, Nora was back in her kitchen, scrubbing dried egg from the stove, wiping smoothie residue from the counter, straightening the dish towel hanging on the stove handle, because she had to get to the monthly meeting of the Spring Fling committee for the elementary school.

She was feeling unfairly peevish about the Spring Fling meeting, coming at a very busy time of year: the Harvard application looming, Cecily’s ceili team gearing up, the science fair. Maya’s class was putting on some sort of play before the Thanksgiving holiday, and Nora needed to go back and read the email to see what was expected of her. Then, of course, there was the dwarf flax, looming over her like a storm cloud. She found herself hoping fervently that something would happen to the Millers’ expansion plans—nothing too tragic, not an illness or anything, but maybe a gentle dip in the stock market that would affect their earmarked funds, or a respectable yet irreparable falling out with the architect—

The dishwasher was chugging along, as it had been since before Nora dropped Cecily and Maya off. The more exclusive the brand, it seemed, the longer the wash cycle.
Ridiculous.
She had time to call her mother, whose phone call from a few days ago she had not yet returned.

“Nora-Bora!” said her mother. “I was just thinking about you.”

“You were?”

“Well, sort of. Inasmuch as I’m always thinking about you.”

Nora said, “Awww,” and was surprised to discover a little catch in her voice. She glanced around the kitchen, refolded the dish towel, and suddenly felt nearly as exhausted as she’d ever felt. She wanted to lean into her mother across the telephone wires, to be enveloped by Aileen’s sturdy and freckled arms.

“How are you, Nora?”

Nora sighed. The dishwasher was telling her that forty-nine minutes remained in the cycle. Seriously? She could have hand-washed everything faster. “Oh,” she said. “You know, busy. Tired.”

“Right,” said Aileen. “You’re always busy out there, all of you.”

“Big fall for Angela,” said Nora. She scarcely remembered submitting her application to the University of Rhode Island. There’d really been no doubt that she’d get in, and she hadn’t applied anywhere else. Was she being hypocritical, getting all over Angela for not coming up with another list of schools? Of course she wasn’t! It was
a different situation entirely.

“Well,” said her mother. “You
do
rush around quite a bit. I mean, you’re like a whirling dervish whenever I see you.”

“It’s a lot to keep up with!” protested Nora, who wasn’t sure about the whirling dervish comparison; she knew from Angela, courtesy of an extra-credit project for eleventh-grade English the previous year, that a whirling dervish was not, as Nora had always believed, a type of bird similar to a roadrunner, but a member of a Muslim order known for its ecstatic dancing rituals.

“You’re the busiest person I know,” her mother went on cheerfully. “That’s what I’m always telling my bird-watching friends.” Her mother had, to Nora’s knowledge, never watched a single bird until she became a widow. Now she watched them constantly.

“What about Marianne? She defends
murderers
! She works
all the time.
Nights, weekends.”

“
Accused
murderers,” said Aileen. “Innocent until, you know.”

“I know,” said Nora.

“But you’re busier,” persisted her mother. “It’s different when you have children, and when they demand so much of you. Now, honey, I have to go—I’m meeting a friend for a morning walk.”

“Which friend?”

“Stella. You don’t know her. New friend. The leaves are turning. It’s gorgeous today.”

Childishly, Nora felt pushed aside, and homesick for a New England fall.

“I’ll call you soon,” promised Aileen. “I want to hear what my beautiful granddaughters are up to. How’s Maya’s reading coming along?”

“Slowly,” said Nora. “She can sound out some words, but…well, it’s much slower than it should be. I’m trying to get in with this tutor everybody
raves
about but he’s got no openings forever. I’m worried Maya will be in tenth grade before this guy has a free slot.”

“No big rush,” said Aileen. “All in good time, you know. Just because Angela was so early with everything doesn’t mean they all will be. You weren’t toilet-trained until you were almost four!”

“Mom.”

“And Marianne was, what? Two? She practically trained herself, I just pointed her toward the bathroom and off she went.”

“Mom. Is this supposed to be helping?”

“I’m just reminding you that everyone develops at her own particular pace. And Nora?”

“What?”

“Take a minute. Take a few minutes. Deep breath. Enjoy every moment. They’re young only once, you know.”

“I know,” said Nora. To herself, after the call had disconnected, she said, “Thank goodness.”

By eleven ten, Nora had unloaded the dishwasher, showered, run the dwarf flax problem through her mind for the four hundredth time that week, made her face up minimally, and was on her way over to Suzanne Ramsey’s for the meeting.

She let herself in and seven voices said, “Nora!” in unison; the greeting made her feel like Norm from
Cheers.
Suzanne was balancing her youngest, a gorgeous eight-month-old boy with heart-stopping eyelashes, on her lap and trying to eat a croissant without letting the baby grab it out of her hands.

Suzanne nodded toward a plate on the coffee table. “Have one, Nora,” she said. “They’re gluten free.”

“Oh, no!” said Liza Massey. “Who has an allergy?”

“Nobody, yet,” said Suzanne. “But they think Lucas might have a
sensitivity.
”

Lucas said, “Baaaaah!”

Nora bit into a croissant—funny, you didn’t think much about gluten until it was gone, and then you realized what an important job it did—and tried to focus on the meeting. She gave a not-very-informative report on the booths, about which she hadn’t done much of anything yet (“We’ve got a long time still,” said Suzanne soothingly) and half listened while the head of the entertainment subcommittee and the head of the food and drink subcommittee offered their updates.

Then she allowed her mind to wander. She was thinking about Gabe. She had heard a report on the radio that said that people underwent significant changes in their early twenties—that was why marriages between younger people were more likely to break up than they were if people got married older. That part wasn’t really news to her. When she was in her early twenties she’d been a certifiable disaster, living in Rhode Island, dating a man named Brandon who was so unkind to her that he’d once told her she was so pale he felt like he could see right through her. Then one day she’d packed up her rust-colored Corolla and announced to her mother, to Marianne, to all of her childhood friends, that she was moving clear across the country. And she’d done it! Talk about impulsive.

“Another one?” someone said to Nora. Melanie Morris.

“No thanks.” She waved a hand. “I’m stuffed.”

“No, another
baby,
” said Melanie. “You look like you’re going to eat Lucas.”

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Nora said. “I am forty-four years old. Can you
imagine
?” Her hand went involuntarily to her abdomen as if checking for signs of life, a heartbeat, a kick. God help us all. The baby’s eyes were following hers. She smiled at him and he considered her really quite seriously before breaking into a mammoth grin.

“Oooooh, Nora,” said Suzanne. “He likes you. He doesn’t smile that way at everyone.”

“Of course he does,” said Nora, feeling, despite herself, a little rush of pride. “Babies do.”

“No, really, he doesn’t. He’s
very
strict.”

“Oh, Nora,” said Lori Schneider. “Did you get in with that reading tutor for Maya?”

“Bob Huffman?” asked Nora.

“That’s the one—he did Craig a world of good. He really turned him around. He is just
flying
through Harry Potter now. I can’t keep enough books in the house!”

“No.” Nora sighed and looked into her coffee cup and thought about reaching out with one hand to pinch Lori Schneider.

“He’s really amazing, is what I heard,” said Melanie. “He’s the one you want.”

“I did not get in with Bob Huffman,” said Nora. She tried for a casual, devil-may-care laugh. “Because Bob Huffman is booked until the end of time. And beyond.”

“Oh,” said Lori. “That’s too bad.”

“Well,” said Melanie, “no surprise, I guess. He’s supposed to be almost magical.”

A respectful silence fell over the gathering, until Suzanne deemed that it was time to get back to business.

The more interesting part about the news report on the radio was that apparently a similar change came in the midforties; that accounted for the divorces in that age group. Look at the Kelleys from Maya’s class; look at George and Rebecca Nguyen, from Cecily’s Irish dance studio. All those brains and personalities, morphing into something their partners never expected them to be. Was something like that going on with Gabe lately? Because he’d been distracted and edgy. Going for more runs, working longer. Was he going to come home one day and put down his work satchel and announce that it was all over, that they’d been growing apart for a while now and it was time someone called a spade a spade?

They’d have such a complicated arrangement to work out with the three girls; the thought of it made her feel absolutely exhausted. And who would move out?

Not Nora. She didn’t want this divorce—she wasn’t moving an inch. Plus she had just organized her closet the way she wanted it.

“Someone’s phone is blowing up,” said Robin Fox, coming in from the kitchen.

Or probably it was just the Harvard application. Really, it was so (weirdly) important to Gabe that Angela get in. Gabe, who didn’t, truth be told, talk all that much about college, who didn’t keep in close touch with any of his college friends, who never even went to a
reunion,
was one hundred percent fixated on Angela’s application.

That must be what had him on edge. In fact Nora had heard him grilling Angela quite uncharacteristically harshly about her schoolwork and her application the other day: Was
this
thing done? Was
that
part in? What about the AP exams, when were they? Her alumnus interview, was it scheduled?

Nora had to say, “Whoa, easy, cowboy,” to get him to stop.

“Blue Coach bag? Nora?”

There were three missed calls from Lawrence. Oh boy. Easy enough to slip out. Everybody was caught up in an animated discussion about the band they were going to hire—last year’s had been dismal—and nobody really noticed her. Only the baby, Lucas, watched her, following her with his gigantic eyes that reminded her of Angela’s. Moon eyes.