The Admissions (16 page)

“Want to sit down or something?” he said. “You can sit on the bed.” She breathed in the garden smell. It was starting to grow on her. No pun intended. “Or, or. The floor, or wherever you want.”

“Sure,” said Angela. “But I just have to go to the bathroom first.”

“Okay,” said Edmond. “I’m going to stretch out for just a sec.” He looked adorably sleepy. Angela, by contrast, was as alert as if she’d just popped an Adderall. She crept out of the room and toward the bathroom that she’d noticed before. The bathroom was very feminine, with fluffy pink towels and peach-colored soaps arranged in a semicircle on a square dish. She couldn’t picture Edmond using this bathroom. Maybe he used a different one, something with lots of navy blue or dark plaid.

On the way back she paused in front of one of the closed doors, then took a chance and opened it. Teresa’s room, obvi. The bed, a double, had a white quilt wrapped tightly around the mattress, and two oversized pillows in bright lavender. The surface of the white desk was empty, and there was a white bookshelf in which all manner of English novels were organized alphabetically. The bottom shelf was heavy on Woolf.

Angela meant only to observe, but next thing she knew she was entering the room, sitting for a moment at the desk, running her hands over its smooth white surface. Then she was opening the bottom drawer, where there were six or seven manila folders labeled in what must be Teresa’s neat hand. AP History. AP Calculus. AP English. And so forth.

She opened the AP English folder; inside were five neatly typed term papers, dated, stapled, graded. Two copies of each. Leave it to Teresa to make copies of everything.

One of them: “The Use of Free Indirect Discourse in
Mrs. Dalloway
and
To the Lighthouse.
”

Virginia Woolf.

Jackpot. It was too perfect. But
no.
Of course not. She wouldn’t. She wouldn’t dare; she would never. She closed the folder and returned it to its place in the drawer.

Geez.
God.
She stood, pushed the chair in, made her way back to Edmond’s room.

He was on his back, his arms flung out to either side as though he were trying to embrace something much bigger than he was. Sleeping!
Asleep.

Good job, Angela.
Way to knock him dead with your sexiness. She would never, ever, not in a million years, not even if someone offered her a trillion dollars to do it, tell Maria Ortiz that she had put Edmond Lopez to sleep. She wouldn’t even tell Henrietta. She wouldn’t tell anyone, not ever.

She walked over to the bed and considered Edmond. He was breathing deeply and evenly; he reminded Angela of the way Maya slept, with great abandon and innocence. She always envied Maya this. Angela tied herself up in the sheets from all of her thrashing around.

She reached out and touched him gently, a feather-light touch, on the cheek. Edmond’s cheek felt as soft as it looked. It was like touching silk. Or lambskin. Not that she’d ever touched lambskin. Edmond didn’t open his eyes, didn’t even move.

She returned to Teresa’s room and sat down again at the desk.

Was Angela really doing this?

She wasn’t.

She was.

There were two copies of everything; nobody would miss one. “Just in case,” she said out loud, although there was nobody there to hear her.

She opened the drawer.

4:30 a.m.

M—

Today I went to a closing for Arthur. Closings always leave me a little melancholy, which is the opposite of how I should feel. But I can’t help it. It’s like seeing a fat, jolly baby who doesn’t know what life has in store: you’re happy for the baby, but you’re also a little worried for when it finds out about all the crappy stuff that’s coming.

Do you know that’s why they use the sound of children laughing so much in horror movies? I learned that on NPR.

This was a good closing, full of positive vibes. A one-bedroom condo on Bush Street. A youngish pregnant couple was selling to a younger unmarried unpregnant couple. Everybody was happy: the buyers, the sellers, the escrow officers.

Once I had a closing where one of the sellers spent the whole time in the corner of the room, weeping into a potted plant.

So why did this one make me sad, when nobody else was crying?

I guess because I know things the other people involved don’t know yet.

I know that in this new home they’ll make love and fight and sometimes they’ll hate each other and other times they’ll love each other so completely that the thought of being apart for even an hour will be impossible to bear.

I know that in three years or five years this couple will be back, pregnant themselves, looking for a bigger place, bummed because to get what they want they’ll have to move farther and farther out of the city until they’re practically in Stockton.

I know that sometimes people buy a new home when what they really need is a new marriage or a new career or some deeper, more radical change that the real estate market can’t solve.

What’s that famous Confucius quote? Wherever you go, there you are.

Dinner with the Chens, old friends from long ago, when they all lived in the city. A reservation at the Slanted Door in the Ferry Building. In the olden days, they were neighbors in the same building in Noe Valley, at the beginning of gentrification. Now people called it Stroller Valley, but the Chens lived there still, sending their teenagers to private school, walking to their respective jobs.

Angela was eleven months older than the oldest Chen boy. Nora remembered putting Angela in the BabyBjörn and walking up Billy Goat Hill with Silvia on Saturday mornings.

The restaurant was lively, bustling, completely full, with a line. Waiters and waitresses zipped around the light wood tables, carrying bright drinks, gorgeous plates of grapefruit and jicama salad, chicken claypots, the signature cotton candy dessert.

While Nora admired the chicken claypots she engaged in a little bit of recreational worrying. There were so very many things to worry about. But mostly the Marin dwarf flax. She’d been sitting with the information for more than a month now and couldn’t figure out what to do. She hadn’t told Gabe about it. She hadn’t told Arthur Sutton. After the Watkins fiasco, she couldn’t afford another misstep.

“How’s life on the upper end of the Marin real estate market?” Andrew asked Nora once they were all settled.

“Oh,” said Nora. “Not bad. It’s a slow time of year.”

“You won’t believe this one,” said Gabe. “Gorgeous home in Belvedere—what was it, Nora? Seven something?”

“Eight point five,” she whispered.

“Jesus
Christ,
” said Andrew, whistling softly.

“I mean, that was the asking price,” said Nora, suddenly embarrassed, as though she herself had come up with the original number, as though she’d
sanctioned
it. She’d never thought it should be listed that high! “The accepted offer actually came in lower.”

“Anyway,” said Gabe, taking a generous sip of his rum punch. “So they’re having the inspection, and the buyer notices something about the French doors, these little pits that you and I would never in a hundred thousand years notice, and they freaked out.”

“Freaked right out,” confirmed Nora. “Like nothing I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot of freak-outs.”

“Wanted the whole row of doors replaced to the tune of—what was it, Nora? Fifty thousand?”

“Forty,” she said. “Forty thousand dollars. And the sellers wouldn’t budge an inch. So the deal fell through. Just like that. The buyers walked.”

“Man oh man,” said Andrew, and agreeably Silvia said, “Can you imagine.”

“You should see this place, though,” said Gabe. “What’s it have, eight bathrooms?”

“Six,” said Nora. “And a half.”

“Close enough. And a view of the bridge like you wouldn’t believe. Really incredible.”

Small talk, large talk. Nora had caramelized Gulf shrimp. The Chen boys were on the tennis team at their private school. (“Tennis,” said Andrew. “I’m the son of Chinese immigrants who never saw a racket in their lives, and my sons are wearing tennis whites. I don’t know whether to be proud or ashamed.”)

“So he confuses us all and vacillates,” said Silvia fondly.

Some time later, when the Hawthornes and the Chens were mauling the big swirl of cotton candy the waitress delivered, Nora looked up and noticed a young woman heading toward their table. A
tall
young woman. Strange, but it almost looked as though she was heading for Gabe. No, that couldn’t be right. She had a fierce, moving-in-for-the-kill look on her face. She wore glasses and had hair that was cut neatly at her chin. Long ago Angela had had that haircut. Nora adored that haircut on little girls.

She was! She was heading for Gabe. Nora watched Gabe notice the young woman, and she watched a look of panic cross Gabe’s face. That was odd, wasn’t it? Why did Gabe look so panicked?

The young woman said,
“Gabe?”

Gabe turned his head toward her and coughed into his napkin. He spent a while on the cough and when he was finished he lifted his head and smiled at the woman and said, “Abby! What a pleasure.” He then turned to his dinner companions, gestured toward the young woman, and said, “This is Abby Freeman.”

Introductions, smiles, handshakes. Abby Freeman’s handshake, Nora noted, was suitably firm. Almost too firm. Andrew rose halfway out of his seat when he was introduced, which Nora thought was very gentlemanly of him.

“I work with Gabe,” said Abby. And she smiled. (Perfect teeth. A little mousy in the features, with the smallish eyes. But perfect teeth.) And Nora couldn’t help being a little envious of the height. She’d always wanted to be tall.

“She’s an intern,” said Gabe. There was a dram of color on each of his cheeks that Nora didn’t think had been there a few minutes ago. That was definitely odd; her husband wasn’t a blusher.

Nora looked at her husband as if he were someone she’d never seen before. Was he having an
affair
?

No.

It was out of the question. It was ludicrous!

Was it? He was still very good-looking. No gray in his hair (unfair) and good skin. Maybe slightly sun-damaged from all of the years on the ranch, but that was perfectly acceptable if you were a man. He ran three times a week (although, admittedly, more lately…) and lifted weights in the gym at Elpis on opposite days. He had great triceps, and better-than-average abs.

“Just until December,” said Abby.

Aside from the idle wondering in which every married woman engaged from time to time, Nora had never suspected Gabe of an affair, or anyway not an
actual
affair with an
actual
person. Their sex life was okay, right? Even great, sometimes. Maybe it didn’t happen as often as it did when they first met, but really, did it for anyone who had been married for such a long time? Blanca Barnett on the Spring Fling committee claimed five times a week with
her
husband but honestly nobody believed her.

“Abby’s father owns a winery in Sonoma,” said Gabe. Was he sweating?

It wasn’t a real possibility, an affair. Until now. Abby wore perfectly fitted jeans and a chunky bracelet. No earrings, no makeup. Much easier to pull off that look in your twenties than in your forties. Also, when you were tall.

“Oh, he’s just a part owner,” said Abby, waving one thin arm as if to indicate that anyone with half a brain could partially own a winery. The chunky bracelet slid up and back down again.

Nora found that she was nearly bursting with horror but that an exactly equal part of her was filled with a definite exhilaration—the kind that’s brought on by the possibility of something truly dramatic happening. Right here at the Slanted Door, in front of half of San Francisco. She shivered. A scene!

“December?” Nora said. “Then your internship ends?”

What would Nora do, once this affair was confirmed? Would they get a divorce? Would she get the house? What about the kids? She definitely wanted the kids. Especially Cecily. No, you weren’t allowed to think things like that. You weren’t allowed to pick just one. She wanted all the kids, of course.

“I’m hoping to get a full-time job at Elpis,” said Abby Freeman.

Gabe was definitely sweating. Nora passed her napkin to him under the table, but he ignored it.

“Good for you!” said Nora brightly. If this young thing thought she was going to climb the Elpis ladder by sleeping with her husband she had another think coming. Under the table, she grasped Gabe’s hand.

“Well,” said Gabe. “It was nice to see you, Abby. See you at work on Monday.”

“That’s right,” said Abby. “See you Monday.”

Nora kept her eyes on Abby’s face as she departed. There was no long, lingering look that passed between her and Gabe. No secret code. No tiny folded note that said
Meet me for sex in the ladies’ room at the end of the Ferry Building.

“She was…a little bit odd,” said Nora. “Right?” She looked to Silvia for confirmation. “Gabe? What was that all about? You’re turning pink. You never turn pink.”

“Nothing,” he said. “Just that I hate mixing work with social occasions.”

“Ohhhhh. Bizzvara,” said Nora. “Is that it?”

Silvia looked confused. “What kind of a name is Bizzvara?”

“High-tech,” said Nora. “They’ve run out of real words to use, so now they just make them up.”

“Well,” said Gabe. “Not exactly.”

“Isn’t that right, though? That’s what you told me.”

“I guess so. Sure, sort of. Anyway, this is a company that used to be in the e-commerce space but is now moving sort of radically into managed services and they’re looking for a consulting company to—”

“That’s okay,” said Nora. “You lost us at managed services. We don’t need to go into the whole thing.” She smiled at Silvia, smiled at Andrew, and said, “Bizzvara is a nutcase client.”

That’s all that was going on here; the intern reminded Gabe of Bizzvara, and the last thing he wanted to do at the Slanted Door, where the line for a table was now well out the door, was think about Bizzvara.

She and Gabe had had sex two nights ago, and it had been lovely. Well, sort of lovely. Maybe Nora had been a little rushed and distracted. Maybe the dwarf flax had appeared in her mind during an
inconvenient
moment. Maybe she had sneaked a glance at the clock on her nightstand to calculate how much sleep she could get if they finished up on the sooner side. But still! If he was having an affair with a twentysomething, surely he wouldn’t have bothered with her forty-four-year-old body.

Right?

And the Catalan Farm spicy broccoli at the Slanted Door
did
live up to its name. And Gabe had eaten a lot of it. Surely that accounted for the sweating.

Right?

Divorce, splitting up the kids. Ugh.

Nora would get custody, of course, but they would go to Gabe once a month. One complication with that would be that she would move back to Rhode Island in a heartbeat, to be closer to her mother and to her sister, and then they’d have to fly the kids back and forth. Very expensive.

But it was unthinkable, the whole thing. That young woman wasn’t Gabe’s type at all, not at all. He would never go for someone with such small, scary eyes.

Would he?

“Shall we get another cotton candy?” asked Silvia.

“And more drinks!” said Nora. She felt light-headed.

“Gabe?” she said later, when they were in bed. “Is there something you’re not telling me?”

A deep and abiding silence. Maybe he was asleep…

“Gabe?”

The sheets shifted. Awake.

“Did you hear me?”

“I heard you.”

“Well, is there?” She steeled herself.

“I
hate
Abby Freeman.”

“You what?” They had always taught the girls not to use the word
hate
when they were young. They were supposed to say,
I don’t care for asparagus
or
Spelling is not my favorite subject.

“I’m sorry. I just—I sort of do.”

Quickly Nora cataloged five things she loved about her husband. Just in case this was the end. (Could this be the end?) He made a fabulous apple pie. He looked good in a gray T-shirt. He was an honest-to-God cowboy. When his mother was alive he never forgot to call her on her birthday. He gave a good foot massage. He was funny!

That was more than five—and she could keep going. See? They were fine. She could name fifty.

In a tiny voice, the tiniest of all voices, she asked the Question. “Do you hate her because you tried to have an affair with her and she rejected you?”

“
What?
Nora, no. Of course not.”

(Did she believe him? There were times when Gabe hadn’t been one hundred percent honest. He and his brother Michael no longer spoke, all because of what had happened with Michael’s high school girlfriend. That was pretty dishonest.

But that was a long time ago. And the girlfriend had seduced Gabe. Was Gabe really to be blamed for that? She bet he was extremely seducible, back in the day. Ranch boys were, Nora guessed. All that fresh air and manual labor resulted in voracious appetites, sexual and otherwise.)

When Cecily’s goldfish had died two years ago Gabe had taken the morning off from work and brought the
carcass
to the pet store to pick out an
exact match
before Cecily got home from school.

Nora wouldn’t have done that. It wouldn’t even have occurred to her.