Small Admissions Read online

  This is a spunky kid, but he didn’t strike me as particularly Hudsony. The structure would possibly be very hard for him. But then again, maybe structure is exactly what a boy like this needs. I hope the school reports will shed some light on this when we get them. If his teachers think he’s great, then I think this is possibly a yes. If it turns out they don’t, then probably not.

  A week later, she received a handwritten note in the mail:

  Dear Ms. Pearson,

  Thank you for talking to me at your scool. I liked meeting you and taking to you at your scool I wuld really like to go to Husdon next year.

  Sinceseerley,

  Dillon B.

  She read it again and put it in Dillon’s file.

  Westchester County. A four-bedroom house, three-and-a-half bath, basement rec room, and a fenced backyard. Train station close by, a forty-minute ride to Manhattan. Good public schools, a nice neighborhood. Trees. And what was that? A bay window in the kitchen? Nice. There were reports of cars getting broken into at night, but why leave your car outside when you have a garage? This was Angela’s idea of porn: surfing the Internet for pretty suburban houses. She always spent part of her lunch break trying to imagine herself as a homeowner, a person who carried big garbage cans out to the curb at the crack of dawn. A person who complained about things like lawn care and leaky roofs and drank a beer in her own backyard.

  At some point they would move because they couldn’t afford to raise two children in the city, not with tuitions over $42,000 per year and rising. Times two. Their city neighborhood had an excellent public school that could certainly do the trick through fifth grade, but then what? After the innocence of elementary school came those risky, pubescent, scary years of middle school, and Angela had heard stories of gateway drugs, sex in stairwells, and bullying. To counter those images, she conjured visions of suburbia, with all its clean air and simplicity.

  Since moving was an inevitability, Doug felt it was better to shove off now and get settled in a house. Give them all some space and a chance to do wholesome things like ride bikes and splash around in a plastic baby pool. Doug was ready to go; Angela wasn’t, and this had become a source of conflict. Like him, she longed for a house, for a real kitchen, for an upstairs and a bathtub that didn’t have toys in it. But the reality was—she needed to stay near Kate, who clearly wasn’t able to manage life on her own. She was employed, yes, but who knew how long this job would last? Kate had displayed epically bad judgment, she was financially irresponsible, and she was lonely, so she relied on Angela for guidance, money, and company.

  It was hard to erase the memory of Kate after Paris and impossible to minimize the amount of stress her breakdown had on Angela. When she was a new mom, Angela wasn’t exactly laid-back, but she had her reasons. Emily was a colicky baby from the start, and by the time she was six months she was prone to catch every virus living in Manhattan. She had recurrent ear infections, periodic asthma, and a chronic, crusty case of pinkeye. It was a long, crappy first winter.

  But when summer finally came, Angela had hoped that warmer weather would bring better health. She was mistaken. In the first week of June, on the big day that Kate was taking her transatlantic flight bound for her new life in France, Emily spiked a fever of 104 degrees. Angela and Doug rushed her to the emergency room where a young doctor babbled words like “bacterial meningitis,” “brain damage,” and “lumbar puncture,” terrifying the young parents. To handle the fear, Angela asked the doctor dozens of intelligent questions while Doug froze up and couldn’t think up anything to say other than “But she’s going to be okay, right?”

  Somewhere in the height of this crisis, as Angela sat in the little triage area in the middle of the night, holding her fretful daughter and listening to the beeping of a hundred different medical devices from all around the room, Kate called from Paris, stunned and weepy.

  “I don’t understand what happened,” she kept repeating over and over.

  Doug, without even being asked, went out to the waiting room with his phone and bought Kate a one-way ticket back to New York.

  Several hours later the test results came back normal; Emily broke out in a rash and was diagnosed with roseola, yet another virus to add to the list in her baby book. Angela took a brief moment to enjoy the relief before she left Doug at the hospital and got in a cab. She picked up Vicki, and they went to JFK together, waiting until Kate came out of customs, wearing the same clothes she’d put on the day before, and bawling.

  They brought her to Angela’s apartment and settled her in on the sofa with the remote control and a sleeping pill.

  “I can’t just leave her here,” Angela whispered.

  “It’s fine, go,” Vicki told her. “She’s just going to pass out anyway.”

  “Can you stay with her?” Angela asked. “I’ll send Doug back in a few hours.”

  “I guess so,” she said, “but I’ll have to cancel my date.”

  “That would be great, thanks.”

  “He bought tickets to a show, but whatever.”

  The next day they came home from the hospital. Strung out and weary, Angela and Doug didn’t know what to do next. Their baby was fragile, they were emotionally exhausted and sleep-deprived, and their apartment, like most in Manhattan, was small and cramped, squelching any hospitable impulses. With Kate planted on the couch, the living room became off-limits when she was sleeping or crying, which was all the time. Her bulky suitcases, containing literally everything she owned, were stacked up by the door, and her clothes were in tall, tippy piles on the coffee table. They were all sharing the one and only bathroom. The babysitter arrived the following morning as Angela and Doug were going back to work, saw the mess, and whispered, “If your sister is here all day, where are Emily and I supposed to be?” Angela didn’t like thinking of Kate as an imposition, but oh my God, she really was.

  By the time she had her bimonthly Skype date with her mother a week later, Angela was completely desperate.

  “Darling girl!” her mother said. “How are things in the land of the free and the home of the brave?” She was tanned, and her gray hair had gone wild. “We’re having a ball.”

  “Where are you?” Angela asked. “I need you to come home now.”

  “What’s wrong, love? Come closer to the screen; you look haggard.”

  Angela began with an accounting of her daughter’s terrible illness and recovery—the sickening height of her temperature and the equally vast breadth of Angela’s worry.

  “You didn’t breastfeed her long enough,” her mother said. “Did you read the article I sent you about the mothers in Bangladesh?”

  “Please don’t blame me.”

  “Any reflection on one’s mothering always leads to blame and guilt.”

  “Good, then let me update you on Kate’s life.”

  Angela gave her all the details, including a description of the heaps of snotty tissues on the floor and the very audible sobbing at all hours of the day and night.

  “She’s heartbroken, totally lost, and I really have no idea how to help her,” Angela said. “I don’t know what to do.”

  Her mother listened to the whole sad story and inserted occasional truisms and platitudes that Angela found completely useless: Live and learn, and Life’s a bitch. Twist of fate, and Get back on that horse. She threw in quotations: Love does not alter when it alteration finds . . . That which does not kill us . . . When one door closes . . .

  “Sure, Mom, and I get knocked down, but I get up again. So what?”

  “I was just reading this book,” her mother said suddenly, jumping up so that her head vanished and only her torso appeared on-screen, “about methods of redefining one’s self after trauma. The author applies her theories to amputee veterans coming home from war-torn nations. It’s very apropos. Hang on,” she said, tipping her head sideways to the computer camera, “I’ll go find it.”

  “Please, Mom,” Angela called out. “Sit down. I don’t need an abstract analysi
s.”

  Her mother came back in view, saying, “I don’t know how else to help.”

  “I want some kind of concrete solution, so just tell me what to do.”

  Her mom thought for a moment and presented one suggestion, an idea that Angela found appalling and appealing at the same time: she proposed that Kate stay for a spell in the New Jersey house, until she was back on her feet. Sure, there were three visiting anthropologists in residence, but not to worry, there was plenty of room. They would be happy to have Kate “crash” with them for few weeks or months even. She would call them and arrange it right away.

  Angela agreed, and that weekend she and Doug got a Zipcar to drive Kate through the Holland Tunnel to the house.

  “It’s like dropping a puppy off at the pound,” Doug whispered as they carried her suitcases up to the front door.

  He was right. Leaving Kate at the dingy little house, which now hosted a rice cooker and three Japanese postdocs, was the most depressing event Angela had ever taken part in. The tenants welcomed Kate, asking her, please, to take her shoes off at the door. Why? To keep the carpet clean? What a joke. That wall-to-wall hideousness had never experienced more cleaning than a “go over” with an ancient Hoover that had no suction. Taking your shoes off only meant getting your socks dirty.

  Kate was pretty much catatonic at that point, and Angela couldn’t even tell if the sight of the neglected, outmoded house was making her feel comforted or flat-out suicidal. Either way, she settled in, and for the whole summer Kate lolled around in the company of the world’s most productive academic researchers, surrounded by hundreds of books and journals, constant reminders of the life she’d abandoned.

  After Kate had been there for two weeks, Angela went to visit and found her unclogging the downstairs powder room toilet, wearing her mother’s house shoes and a graduation robe, belted with a bungee. Her hair smelled like the carpet, and it was clear she hadn’t left the house since she’d been dropped off.

  “Let’s get you showered,” Angela said.

  “Why?”

  “Because I want you to go out and take a walk with me. Get some fresh air.”

  “I don’t want to,” Kate said. “I’m too tired.”

  “Come on, let’s try to get going here.”

  “I can’t.”

  Angela took Kate back to their father’s study, which was serving as her younger sister’s bedroom for the time being, and saw that Kate was still living out of her suitcases. “You haven’t unpacked?”

  “I didn’t know I was supposed to.”

  Kate found a T-shirt and a pair of unwashed sweatpants on the floor and put them on, while Angela started gathering dirty laundry into a pile. “Can you at least go wash your face and brush your teeth?” Angela asked. “It’ll make you feel better.”

  “I can’t find my toothbrush. It’s gone.”

  The sleeper sofa was opened up, but there were no sheets on the mattress. “What happened to the bedding?”

  “How should I know?” Kate said.

  “Well, you sleep here, don’t you?”

  Kate looked around the room, and from under the bed she pulled out a ball of sheets that were linty and disgusting.

  “How in the world did that happen?” Angela asked.

  “You’re asking so many questions.”

  “Have you been to the store yet? Are you eating?”

  “Stop,” Kate said and stuck her fingers in her ears.

  Angela was distressed. She sat down at her dad’s desk to make a list of solutions to the problems that were presenting themselves everywhere she looked. The desk was cluttered with books, papers, and empty beer bottles, and Angela tried to straighten it up, feeling a need to create one clean surface. She unearthed Kate’s laptop under the debris and found a postcard with a photograph of the Little Mermaid perched on a rock, looking forlorn. She turned it over and read:

  Dearest daughter,

  Is this København card too fitting? I’m at a loss. Your situation brings to mind that of Phineas Gage, does it not? Iron rod right through the frontal lobe, blood everywhere, impossible to remedy. And what happens next? He becomes a new person—belligerent and carousing maybe—much to the surprise of those who knew him. So why not go a little wild? Become an unlikely and surprising version of your very own self?

  Meanwhile, behave badly if you feel the need. In Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing, Henry says of heartache, “I believe in mess, tears, pain, self-abasement, loss of self-respect, nakedness.” I wish you recovery, Kate, in whatever form it takes.

  Your father

  The fuck? Even in English these people made no sense. And whatever it meant, Angela thought it sounded like lousy advice.

  She found a working pen and used the back of an empty envelope to write:

  Toothbrush, toothpaste, shampoo, HAIR BRUSH

  Food

  Cleaning supplies

  Weekly laundry service for sheets and towels

  Find psychiatrist (meds?)

  She hoped that Kate was simply in a transition and only needed time to pull herself together, but as the weeks went by there were no signs of improvement, in spite of Angela’s efforts. She invited Kate into the city for the Fourth of July, but Kate wouldn’t come. She asked her to come along with them on an outing to Coney Island, but Kate refused. She wouldn’t make plans or talk about her future.

  Finally in August, Angela went to visit again one weekend and noticed that Kate seemed a tiny bit better, in that, for starters, she wasn’t in bed. She was sitting in the living room in the dark, wearing the same sweatpants she’d put on when Angela had forced her to get dressed weeks earlier; fortunately, the sweatpants appeared to have been washed at least once since then, and Kate’s hair looked as if it might possibly be clean as well. Moreover, she had made herself a sandwich, and she had her computer open in her lap.

  “Gosh, you look so industrious!” Angela said, turning on a lamp and sitting across from her. “What are you working on?”

  “I’m answering an email from Sherman, a guy I worked with at NYU. He asked me how things are going.”

  “That’s wonderful! I didn’t know you were in touch with anyone from the lab.”

  “Just Sherman.”

  “So,” Angela asked, “how are things going?”

  “Everything’s fine.”

  “Is that what you told him?”

  “Yeah. ‘Hey, Sherman, Nice to hear from you. Paris is awesome. I’m sitting at a café that has become my usual morning hangout. From my flat, it’s a lovely, sunny walk across the bridge to get here, and I am in a spot where I can choose which museum I want to visit, depending on my mood. I never knew it was possible to be this happy. How are things there? I can’t say I miss New York because life in Paris is divine.’ ” She continued typing.

  “Oh God, Kate.”

  “I still have to tell him about the excursion I’m taking this weekend to visit Mom and Dad in Helsinki. I may make a stop in Berlin.”

  Angela shook her head. “Kate, this house isn’t good for you.”

  “Why?”

  “We have to get you out of here. Immediately. What was I thinking?” Angela went back to the comfort of list making. “I need to find you a new place,” she said, “and it needs to be much closer to me; it’s crucial actually.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “And I think you need to start meeting with a counselor on a regular basis. And you need friends around you and activities . . . sports or crafts or something that will give your days some structure.”

  “You just described day camp.”

  “We’ll make you a schedule, maybe yoga three times a week. Maybe, I don’t know, maybe a creative writing class at the 92nd Street Y. But this?” she said, gesturing to indicate everything around her. “This situation here? No, this is not working.” She got up and pulled open the ugly, pea-green curtains. Kate turned her face away from the onslaught of sunlight. “Wait, I’m so confused. What time is it?”

>   “Two o’clock.”

  “In the afternoon?”

  That visit was the final straw. Angela went on a mission to find some kind, any kind, of cheap, furnished sublet close to her, or at least in Lower Manhattan, and she quickly succeeded—an East Village studio with a cat. The tenant was away getting his master’s in library science at Chapel Hill, and he would be gone for at least another year, possibly more. Angela grabbed the place sight unseen. It was a tiny apartment with decent furniture and a “half kitchen,” which meant it had a sink, a toaster oven, and a mini fridge. It would do for the time being. Angela paid first, last, and deposit and helped Kate move in. The dog walking jobs came next, also thanks to Angela, who kept an eye on TaskRabbit, looking for something reasonable to keep Kate occupied and to bring in a few dollars here and there. Dog walking meant getting outside, taking responsibility for someone other than herself, and being cheered by a herd of lively animals. Bit by bit, Angela was piecing Kate’s life back together.

  Once Kate moved into the sublet, she became slightly more functional. But then she plateaued. Angela thought it was obvious that she needed to see a psychiatrist to work through what had happened, discover why she’d let herself be so manipulated, and begin to set appropriate goals for her future, but she wouldn’t go. She said flat out that she didn’t want to talk about any of that. Instead she settled into her new role as a subpar dog walker as if that were it for her. She never showed a glimmer of ambition; she was low and lazy, unreliable and lethargic, and she showed no sign of coming out of her funk.

  Landing the admissions job was a major step forward, to be sure, and Angela was frankly amazed that Kate was getting herself up and out the door to work every morning. And at the same time she was worried. Would she keep it up? Could she be trusted to use this job as a springboard into the life of an independent, stable adult and a return to something even more intellectually demanding? Or would she wake up one day and decide to quit out of the blue, to take off with some new guy to Barcelona or Marrakesh? Angela was not optimistic and wanted to stay close by to ward off whatever rash decision Kate made next.