Small Admissions Page 10

  As she clicked along through Westchester County real estate pictures, Angela had a fantasy: she would be walking through one of these homes looking for Doug, calling out for him, and the house would be too large for him to hear her, her voice getting lost in a maze of hallways, vestibules, and maybe even a butler’s pantry. Fantasies aside, she accepted that moving would have to wait a few years. She loved Kate too much to resent her for it, but she hoped the day would come when her little sister would grow up and stand on her own two feet, so that Angela could focus more of her attention on her daughter. And on her husband. Doug liked a little attention, too.

  November

  “So, tell me,” I said coolly to my coffee date, “what made you decide to become a veterinarian, as opposed to being, say . . . I don’t know . . . a pediatrician?”

  “Are you asking why didn’t I go to medical school?”

  “Am I? Really I just mean—why animals?”

  “Large animals,” he said.

  “Oh?”

  “I work with large animals. Horses mostly. But llamas are in fashion these days. I’m becoming rather the llama specialist.”

  “Is that right?” I asked. “I read an article in the Times about llamas. Apparently they’re a lot like dogs.”

  “Not really.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’m building quite a name for myself among llama and sheep breeders in New York.”

  “I didn’t know people could breed llamas and sheep in the city.”

  “Not the city. I spend a lot of my time upstate, making house calls at farms anywhere from Millerton to Saratoga.”

  “Is that right?”

  “I’m finding I don’t like city life anymore. By the way, I don’t like children, either, so being a pediatrician really wasn’t an option for me anyway.”

  “Ah, I see.”

  “Veterinary school wasn’t exactly a walk in the park, you know.”

  “I’m sure it wasn’t.”

  “Do you like the country?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I answered, trying to imagine what Kate would say.

  “I’d like to move there. Live on a farm. Raise llamas. Live a quiet life.”

  “And no children on the farm?” I asked.

  “Just llamas. Some pygmy goats maybe. Alpacas if things go the way I’d like.”

  “I’ve really enjoyed talking to you.”

  “You’re leaving?” he asked.

  “Well, the thing is, I don’t think she’s ready to rule out kids in favor of goats.”

  “Good one. Wait, who?”

  “What?”

  “You said ‘she’—‘she doesn’t like goats.’ ”

  “I never said she doesn’t like goats, and by ‘she’ I meant me. I sometimes talk about myself in the third person, so I can see things happen from the outside. Develop a more impersonal opinion.”

  “You should talk to someone about that. I’m no people doctor, but that’s weird.”

  “Best of luck with your llamas.” I put on my coat and left the coffee shop, crossing Bachelor #1 off my list.

  Victoria justified her mad-hot outfit by pretending she was doing it for Kate. See what you lost? her tight leather skirt was saying. You were once part of my group, but we’ve cast you out.

  They were meeting on Sullivan Street in SoHo, at a chic little bar that had just opened. Victoria prided herself on being up-to-date on all things Manhattan, and it reflected well on her that she even knew this restaurant existed, a place too cool to have a sign. You just had to know.

  As she sat at the bar, some boy-hopeful came over. “Are you waiting for someone?” he said. “Or can I buy you a drink?”

  “Yes and no,” she said, turning her back on him.

  When the bartender came with the wine list, she went Californian, as a little fuck-you to France. These minor hostilities made her feel better about what she was doing, although what was she doing after all? Meeting a friend’s out-of-town cousin for a drink? So what? She’d known him longer than Kate, and it’s not like the Kate-Robert thing was some kind of match made in heaven anyway. It was a mistake. It was obvious, at least to Vicki, that they were completely ill-suited for each other, and Kate certainly should have picked up on that. It made no sense that she got so carried away.

  Vicki had avoided seeing them when they were dating; why subject herself to it? She and Chloe went out to dinner with them one time a few months before the breakup, and Kate wasn’t herself at all. While Vicki had always been critical of Kate for putting too much emphasis on work and not enough on play, now she’d gone and wildly overcorrected, swinging the balance completely off in the other direction. She didn’t talk at all about the details of the research she was doing at NYU. Instead she told stories about a smelly postdoc she worked with who twice a day would prop his bare feet up on the edge of a trash can in the middle of the lab and coat his toes with powdery antifungal foot spray. And she joked about another scientist named Sherman who spoke with a formal, Shakespearean flair and who ate homemade couscous out of Tupperware containers for lunch every day and always offered to share it with her. She was giggly and dumb, like she’d checked her brain along with her coat on her way into the restaurant, actually making a joke about missing an important submission deadline for a proceedings paper, angering the professor in charge of the project. At one point, she told them, she skipped an entire week of work when Robert was visiting. “Whatever,” Kate said with a smile when Vicki expressed concern about her burning bridges in academia. “I don’t even care. I’m so over it.”

  “What about graduate school?” Chloe asked.

  “Oh. I got in,” she said, sounding like she’d been inconvenienced.

  “What? Why didn’t you say anything?” Chloe asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said, shrugging. “I’m having second thoughts about it.”

  “What does that mean?” Vicki asked. “Second thoughts?”

  “I’m not sure I want to go anymore.”

  “Of course you do,” Chloe said.

  Robert took that moment to pull off his sweater, raising his arms up over his head and showing his abs. He looked up with his perfectly disheveled hair and said with his beautiful accent, “Why should she be confined? Kate eeez young and clever, and she can do whatever she likes, no? She shouldn’t be chained to somezing like a . . . like a dog.”

  “But I thought you wanted this,” Vicki reminded Kate. “You always said you wanted to study”—she waved her hand in circles trying to come up with the correct discipline—“evolutionary sociology—”

  “Biological anthropology,” Kate corrected.

  “—since freshman year.”

  “But I don’t know anymore,” Kate said. “It’s really boring. Sherman, the couscous guy? His whole life is spent determining the food selection of early hominins. Who even cares?”

  “Well,” Vicki said, trying to make sense of this enormous change, “if you’re so bored with anthropology, then what are you interested in?”

  “Who knows?” Kate said. “Maybe nothing,” and she laughed.

  Nothing? Hearing Kate talk stupid was a shock. It was as if she had been taken over by someone else, by a vapid girl lacking goals and seriousness of purpose. While it was true that Kate could be an insufferable know-it-all, Vicki counted on her to be someone who knew at least some-of-it-all. Ever since college, Vicki was sold on the idea of surrounding herself with bright, interesting, successful people. Like fabulous accessories. And the older she got, the higher her expectations of her peer group became.

  “What eeez so terrible with changing direction of what she wants to do with her life?” Robert had asked over Vicki and Chloe’s heated protests. “Life eeez too short to be wasted. She should follow her heart.”

  “But seriously, if you don’t go to grad school, what will you do instead?” Chloe asked.

  “Follow my heart, I guess,” Kate responded happily. “See where it takes me.”

  “Exa
ctly,” Robert said, rubbing her back. “I don’t see ze problem.”

  After the breakup Kate acted as though Robert had proposed to her or something, but Vicki knew better. She knew that Robert was one of those men who talked mushy and romantic but didn’t really mean it. He was a bit shallow, she remembered. Shallow and more than a little in love with himself. A man like that doesn’t monoga-mate easily.

  But she was very curious, sitting there, her legs crossed in black boots up to the knee, neckline plunging: what did he want from her? Surely he could do the bidding of his family business without bothering to see her. In fact, he had probably been to New York countless times in the past year, visiting a spa his mother was planning to imitate in Paris or checking on the progress of some commercial building his father had recently purchased. Why call her this time?

  And then she saw him walking in, his eyes scanning the bar to find her. For fuck’s sake, it was no wonder Kate had fallen so hard for him. What a face. A bit more rugged now than the last time she had seen him, and it suited him. All jawbone and stubble. His look didn’t just happen; it took thought and grooming. Not that his appeal would work on her anymore, but you can’t blame a girl for liking what she sees. And my God, she liked it.

  He spotted her and walked swiftly across the room, unwrapping a black cashmere scarf from around his neck. Just like when she first met him in Paris that summer in college, he was angular and dashing, wearing shoes no American man would be caught dead in. Girls noticed him as he walked by, elbowed each other and pointed. Victoria sat still on her barstool and held her breath, watching him own the room as he walked through it. He came up to her, squeezed her by the shoulders, and kissed her on both cheeks. Flinging off his coat, he sat down close to her, knees on either side of hers, and opened his mouth to say “Ça va?” when without any warning, she grabbed his face and French-kissed him all over the bar.

  “Eww. Kate’s boss asked her to go out to dinner,” Angela told Doug. It was only nine o’clock, but they were in bed, whispering to keep from waking Emily. “How disgusting is that?”

  “Disgusting?”

  “You know what I mean. Inappropriate. Plus he was wearing a wedding band. He didn’t strike me as a sleazebag when I met him.”

  “So what makes you think he wants to sleep with her now?”

  “I’ll bet you anything that’s why he hired her—he’s attracted to her.”

  Doug shrugged. “Maybe she’s doing a good job.”

  “I don’t want her to screw this up like always and get fired.”

  “ ‘Like always’?”

  “Like before. I can’t trust her. A stable person doesn’t do what she did.”

  “Seems like you’ve defined her as unstable based on that one episode.”

  She gasped. “You can’t simplify it like that. ‘One episode.’ ”

  “Shh.”

  “You can’t.”

  “Just support her.”

  “That’s so unfair. Seriously? After all the time I’ve spent nursing her back to life. I’m killing myself to support her. I’ve lent her money, got her a job; I call her almost every day. I think I’ve been more than supportive.”

  “Well, now you need to let go a little. Let her move on, make mistakes even. She’s a big girl. I think she can handle her own boss.”

  “You want her back on our couch? If she’d seen a psychiatrist like I asked her to, I might have more confidence in her recovery, but she never worked through any of what happened. If she falls apart again, it’ll all land on us, and I just don’t want to deal with it. So shoot me for caring so much about her.”

  “You just said two totally different things.”

  “What?” she asked.

  “Stop worrying about her.”

  “I will, just as soon as I get her back to where she was before Robert came into her life and wrecked it.”

  “I thought you didn’t want her to end up being an academic like your parents.”

  “Well, maybe I was wrong about that. I don’t know.”

  “Huh,” Doug said, “that’s interesting.”

  Angela turned away from him and checked her phone.

  “Now you’re mad?” Doug asked.

  “My back hurts. I’m more comfortable lying on my side,” she said. “And it’s not your fault that you aren’t someone’s big sister and can’t understand what my role is.”

  “I think maybe you don’t understand what your role is,” Doug mumbled.

  “That’s odd,” Angela said, sitting back up with her phone. “I got an email from Vicki.”

  “Who’s she?”

  “You know, Vicki. Kate’s friend. The beautiful one?”

  “They’re all pretty. They blend together.”

  “Vicki’s the glamorous one. I don’t understand what this means: ‘Angela, can we meet for a drink this week?’ ”

  “How can you not understand what that means?”

  “Does she mean with Kate? Why would she want to have a drink with just me?”

  “For fun?”

  “I wonder if something’s wrong. Maybe she knows something about the boss,” she said and gasped suddenly.

  “How would Vicki know Kate’s boss?”

  Angela looked at him. “You do this on purpose.”

  “What?”

  “I’m saying maybe Vicki’s concerned, too.”

  “Who’s Vicki?”

  “Oh my God. College friend. The one who went with me to pick Kate up after Paris. Chloe felt too guilty to go with us.”

  “What a complete and total asshole.”

  “I know! Chloe is such a bitch.”

  “I was talking about Robert.”

  Kate sat in her chair, looking at the girl across from her. For a child, she sure was intimidating, and Kate realized that this student’s outfit was one Kate would kill to wear herself: short suede skirt, tights, riding boots, and a sweater that looked very expensive. New York City kids were ridiculous. This girl sat right on the edge of her chair with her hands gripping the armrests. Ready to go.

  “I like your boots,” Kate said.

  “Thank you. I got them when I turned ten.”

  “Nice. When I turned ten, I got a yo-yo.”

  The girl didn’t say anything. She looked at Kate like she felt sorry for her. Kate looked at the file that was open on her lap. Annie Allsworth. Likes horseback riding. Skis in Switzerland. What a little bitch. Miss All-That, Kate wrote on her paper.

  “So, Annie, how’s school?”

  “I love school. I look forward to it every single day.”

  “Any classes that you particularly like?”

  “I like math and science the most this year,” she said. “Some students don’t like math, but if you think about it, we use math all the time. And science is so exciting. I like to learn how things work and what properties substances have.”

  Lines so rehearsed, Kate could practically see them written on the page. She scribbled, Big bullshitter? “What do you mean?”

  “We finished a unit on water this week. We did experiments involving evaporation, freezing, even water displacement. It was very easy. And interesting.”

  Not. “Do you read books?”

  “I love reading.”

  “Like what?”

  Annie looked up at the ceiling. “Fantasy mostly. Like the Carcassonne Castle series.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “I read all twelve of them. They take place in France.”

  “Really?” Kate said, mildly impressed since she hadn’t managed to finish Madame Bovary, which she’d started two years ago and stopped reading for obvious reasons. “Are they long?”

  “Not really. They’re like,” and Annie used her fingers to show the thickness of the books. She’d recently gotten a manicure. “They’re very exciting books that transport you to a different place and time in your imagination.”

  Rote answers, very overprepared. Yuck.

  “I love reading about Franc
e,” she went on.

  “France, hmm?” Fucking France, Kate wrote.

  “We have a house there, so we go there a lot.”

  “Do you.”

  “Yes. Every summer.”

  “Hm. They teach French here, just so you know.”

  “I wouldn’t take French since I speak it fluently already. I’d like to learn Mandarin.”

  “We don’t have that.”

  “What do you have?”

  “French, Spanish, and Latin.”

  “Spanish, then. I love to travel. Have you been to France?”

  “Not exactly,” Kate said.

  “You should go.”

  “I don’t think so. India maybe. Or Darfur. But not France.”

  “What’s wrong with France?”

  “Nothing.”

  “France is my very favorite place in the whole world,” she explained. “My parents like the Mediterranean coast, but I’m all about Paris. The cafés, the shops, the museums.”

  “Seriously? How old are you?”

  “My parents say I’m mature for my age.” She adjusted her headband, which held her hair tightly off of her face. It wasn’t a good look for her because she had a big, protruding forehead that Kate found slightly grotesque. She wanted to recommend heavy bangs to cover it up, but oh well.

  “I’ve always been immature for mine,” Kate said, “and I’m supposed to be living in Paris, if you must know.”

  “Then why aren’t you?”

  “I don’t want to burden you.”

  “Okay.”

  “But since you asked, I got dumped. I gave up my apartment, turned down a spot in a graduate program at CUNY, got a passport, and next thing I know he’s saying maybe we better ‘slow things down.’ ”

  “Who?”

  “My boyfriend. ‘Slow things down’! Can you imagine? How am I supposed to slow things down when my friends have thrown a good-bye party for me, and I’m standing there with all of my suitcases in Charles de Gaulle, for Christ’s sake? Slow things down? Slow things down?” Kate shook her head. “What does that even mean?”