The Admissions (9 page)

“Several.” Gabe extended his hand to her and, like a parent to a child, said, “Come to bed, Nora-Bora. Come to bed with me.”

She took his hand and followed him, intertwining her fingers with his. He would forgive her, if she ever told him. Right? The only reason she’d never told him was because he’d been so adamant that she not go back to work so soon after Maya, and if she’d listened to him then maybe she would have been more care—

“I had the craziest dream,” said Gabe, climbing into bed and pulling the cover up to his chin. “Really crazy, and now I can’t remember anything about it, not one detail.”

“Then how do you know it was crazy?” Gabe didn’t answer—in the three seconds it had taken Nora to ask the question he’d fallen asleep. She switched off the light and lay in the darkness, eyes wide open.

Even Roland had given up the chase: no sounds from Cecily and Maya’s room. He must have curled up in his wood shavings and gone off to sleep. That sounded nice, sleeping in wood shavings, hiding from the world in your slumber.

But not Nora, no, no. Nora was wide awake; Nora might never sleep again.

October

“So,” Gabe said to Abby Freeman, “what is it you wanted to talk to me about?”

They were sitting at Barrique on a Thursday just past six o’clock. Abby had suggested five thirty, but to Gabe six seemed much more appropriate because by then many of his coworkers would be on their way home for the evening, if not already gone. He didn’t need any raised eyebrows.

More appropriate for what? For having a casual, one hundred percent innocent drink with the new intern? Yes. For that.

Not that any of it was appropriate. Mostly what was inappropriate was how extra-confident Abby Freeman was.

“Ah,” said Gabe, when Abby asked him, earlier that day, if she could pick his brain, somewhere outside of the office, without all the distractions. Gabe had never liked that expression.
Pick your brain.
Made him think of Hannibal Lecter. Also he found many more distractions outside the Elpis office than he did inside. So he said, “I’m not sure if…” He studied Abby Freeman’s smallish and close-together eyes, over which she wore a pair of reading glasses with flowered frames. She wore pumps and a dark skirt that fell just above her knees. He thought she would have tamed her wardrobe just a bit by now (other Elpis interns that Gabe could remember had all worn jeans), but if anything her attire had gotten fussier, more like what a middle-aged attorney might wear. Abby Freeman was like the anti-Kelsey; Kelsey, that day, had shown up with just the tips of her hair dyed a neon pink. It was possible, of course, that Abby’s fussy clothing was some sort of ironic statement on business attire that he was missing. It was all so exhausting, getting older, not knowing which statements were ironic and which were not. He let his sentence trail off and tapped at some papers on his desk: the printout from the new client meeting, which had gone fantastically well. They were almost there.

“Oh, it’s perfectly innocent,” said Abby Freeman, perhaps telepathically picking up on his concerns. “I just have some professional questions. I’m trying to figure out what direction to go in. My treat, of course. Just so you know there’s no funny business going on.”

She smiled. Abby had a nice, expensive-looking smile. It softened up the sharp features of her face quite a bit. She was actually pretty when she smiled.

But.
Funny business?
Gabe was forty-six years old and had been married for eighteen of them. He had never cheated on his wife. Never planned to. And
funny business
was such an old-fashioned phrase. Was that ironic too?

“How about Barrique?” she said. “It’s not far from here. They have a fabulous wine selection.” Who
was
this girl? Kids these days, in addition to being ironic, were so intimidating, and so sure of themselves. Probably that came from the generally accepted parenting tactic of allowing each kid to believe he or she was spectacularly brilliant and talented, even in cases where the opposite was true. Gabe was as guilty of that as anyone. (Angela, though, it should be noted,
was
very, very smart. No way would Gabe be pushing this Harvard thing if he didn’t think she stood an excellent chance. And not that he was pushing it. Not really. Right? She was pushing
herself,
she’d always had gallons of drive and ambition.)

“I know where Barrique is,” Gabe said, to show that he still had the upper hand. Truth be told, he hadn’t been to Barrique. It was newish, but that was no excuse. Actually it wasn’t that new anymore. When he and Nora were younger and lived in the city they made it a point to try a new restaurant or bar within two weeks of its opening. They were proper hipsters then.

Abby Freeman scarcely looked old enough to drink legally, though Gabe supposed that, if she had already graduated from Harvard, she was. When Gabe graduated from college he had never tasted wine in his life—he certainly wasn’t equipped to invite someone two decades his senior to a private-label wine bar.

He squinted at Abby Freeman and imagined Angela as an intern. He imagined her dressed up in work clothes and asking for advice. He imagined Angela knowing which place had a fabulous wine selection and which did not.

It scared him, to think that in just five years Angela would be the same age this girl was now, with a job and maybe even a professional-looking blouse. He’d want someone like him to be nice to Angela, right? Of course he would.

“That sounds great,” he told Abby. “I’m happy to help. That’s what internships are for, right?” He tapped again at his pile of papers and glanced at the screen of his computer to see if any vital emails had come in while he was setting up a platonic date with the intern.

“Right,” she said.

At Barrique they claimed a table for two. The seats were tall and futuristic orange, and Abby, perched atop one of them, studied the wine menu intently, running her finger up and down the list; she made Gabe think of his daughter Maya, still struggling to read in the second grade. Poor Maya. When she was one, she used to sleep on her stomach with her little butt raised in the air and her cheek pressed into the crib mattress. It killed Gabe every time, that she could sleep like that. It was so goddamn adorable. She’d wake up flushed and warm, like she’d just come from the gym. He hated to think about her struggling with her reading. He hated to think about her struggling with
anything.
Apparently somebody at school had made fun of her. He wanted to punch that kid. Could a forty-six-year-old punch a second grader?

Probably not.

Abby shook herself out of her coat and laid it carefully across her lap. She pushed her glasses up on her nose and said, “The barrel cellar is the way to go. If you haven’t been here before. I’m going to have the Sangiovese. You should have that too. It’s really good. My dad is part owner of a winery in Sonoma. I’ve known about good wine since I was ten.”

Abby Freeman had put down her menu and was looking at Gabe in a manner that he couldn’t exactly read. Was she looking at him in a
sexual
way? Lord, he hoped not. He wasn’t exactly sure what constituted a sexual look from someone of that generation, but he hoped it wasn’t this: Abby’s lips were parted slightly and she wasn’t so much meeting his eyes as she was looking just past him and nodding slightly, as though Gabe had said something worth considering.

Occasionally, at home, Nora roped Gabe into watching a few episodes of
Girls,
which, if he were to be honest with himself, he’d have to say that he quite enjoyed, except for two things.
Girls
served the dual purpose of terrifying him at the thought of unleashing his three innocent daughters into the world, and also of letting him know that the sexual mores of females in America had changed rather dramatically since he was in his twenties. Girls now seemed to be so forthright about sex, about how little it meant or could mean, about their desires and how to meet them and how
not
to meet them and what body hair to remove and what body hair to keep as it was.

To prove that he was the adult in the conversation, Gabe said, “How do you like Elpis?” See? Nothing sexual here. Just business talk.

“I love it, so far. It’s so
exciting.
”

“Yes,” he said platonically. “It’s a great firm.”

When the wine arrived Abby tipped her glass toward his and said
Cheers!
in a way that—he wished he would stop thinking like this—again reminded him of his daughters, dressed up for a tea party, or clinking glasses of nonalcoholic cider at Christmastime. Of course, it had been some time since Angela had participated in a tea party. But Cecily and Maya sometimes partook still; they used a tea set that Gabe had brought back years ago from a work trip to China. Occasionally they roped him into sitting cross-legged on the living room floor with them while they placed goldfish crackers on the tiny saucers and passed them around. Maya was very strict about how many goldfish each person got.

“Do you like the Sangiovese?”

Gabe whipped himself back to the present. “I do,” he said. “Great choice.” He should, as the adult, have asked
her
how
she
liked the wine. But she had beaten him to it.

Outside, the traffic on Pacific Avenue zipped along. There was lots of horn honking and the intermittent squeal of brakes or tires. “Now,” he said (paternally), “what sorts of questions do you have? I’m happy to help anyone just starting out. I was in your shoes once.”

Abby folded her hands on the table in a formal way. Her posture was perfect; her nails, like Angela’s, were bitten down to the quick. Interesting. She looked at him in a way that he might, if asked, describe as appraising. “I want to go for my MBA in two years, so I need to make the most of the time between now and then. I was hoping you could help me figure out the best path. At Elpis. To get me there. I’m thinking Sloan, or HBS. Business school is
so
competitive.”

Gabe nodded affably. Business conversations he could do. He took a big sip (a gulp, really) of his wine and said, “Smart to start at a place like Elpis. We’re small enough that you can see a lot of different facets of the business. If you went to, say, a McKinsey or a Bain as an intern, they’d stick you in a corner somewhere and put you on data entry. Or they’d put you on
research,
but it wouldn’t be necessary research, not like you’ll be doing for us. It would be busy work.”

“That’s what I figured,” said Abby. She was so eager; she was like that hamster Cecily had brought home from school recently. How lucky Gabe felt not to be in Abby Freeman’s position. The world had become altogether more competitive since he was young and hungry. He didn’t truly envy any of the young, not the interns, not his daughters. By the time Maya was old enough to apply to college she’d need a 6.0 GPA and a sizable bank account to attend a state school.

“Everybody at Elpis has been so nice,” said Abby. “But you seem like—the most approachable of the partners. The kindest.”

Gabe was flattered. He didn’t always feel kind. He often felt tired and short-tempered, especially this year, especially with Angela applying to college, especially with Angela applying to
Harvard.
He didn’t want it to rattle him as much as it did. And yet! It was, just at the moment, the single most important thing in the world to him, that she get accepted. Was he proud of this fact? No. Would he ever admit this to anyone, ever? No. But there it was, as certain and undeniable as the red wine stain on Abby Freeman’s white teeth.

He turned his attention back to Abby and said, “Ask away.”

“Joe Stone in HR told me that you’re from Wyoming. That sounds so exotic.”

“It does?” He took a few seconds to wonder why Abby Freeman and Joe Stone from HR had been talking about him at all.

“Yeah. I’ve never met anyone from Wyoming.”

“Exotic,” he said, “is not usually how people describe my background. Although my wife does sometimes call me the Rhinestone Cowboy.”

Abby looked at him blankly.

He tapped his fingers on the table and sang,
“Riding out on a horse in a star-spangled rodeo…”

She smiled and giggled. Was he making her nervous? Maybe he was acting like the weird uncle at the family Christmas party, the one who shows up in sideburns and a vintage suit coat, drunk.

“Never mind,” he said. “You’re too young for that song.
I’m
practically too young for that song. Anyway.”

Abby took another sip from her wineglass. She closed her eyes and tipped her head back at a certain angle when she swallowed, like a real connoisseur, and she took her time before speaking again. “Believe me, it sounds exotic to someone from here. Everyone in the world is from the Bay Area. I mean, not everyone. Obviously. But it’s so totally
not
exotic. Lots of people at Harvard were from around here. I bet that wasn’t the case with Wyoming.”

Gabe tightened his hold on the stem of his glass, looked into Abby Freeman’s small eyes, and released a carefully calibrated chuckle. “No. No, it wasn’t. I don’t think too many people in my class knew how to vaccinate a calf.”

“How do you?”

“How do you vaccinate a calf?”

Abby nodded.

“Not much to it, really, you just get the needle in them right away, soon as you get your hands on them. Trick is to make sure they’re tied down nice and tight to the table. And you don’t look into their eyes.” Gabe felt his ranch voice returning to him—a slight twang, a careless lengthening of the multisyllable words—and he tried his best to tamp it down. Usually the ranch voice came out only when he was around his brothers.

“Huh,” said Abby. “I’ll keep that in mind.” He tried to imagine her seated at the head of a table in a conference room someday, barking out orders. It was uncomfortably easy to imagine.

“You never know when it might come in handy,” he added. Had they moved from business talk to witty banter? Seemed too soon for that. He hadn’t given her any advice yet.

“My dad wants me to go to med school,” said Abby. “Like my sister. She’s an anesthesiologist in Manhattan.”

“Do you want to go to med school?”

“No.”

Gabe took another long drink of the Sangiovese. “Then you shouldn’t. If you want to go to business school, you should go to business school.” It was so easy to dispense advice to other people’s children, when you had no vested interest in the outcome.

“My sister is miserable half the time,” said Abby. “Actually it used to be half the time. Now’s she’s pregnant and working seventy hours a week, so she’s miserable all the time.”

“Well,” said Gabe, “it’s a difficult time, pregnancy.” When Nora was pregnant with Angela she cried for twenty minutes every afternoon. For several weeks in the middle of the pregnancy she’d been unable to host her own open houses; Arthur Sutton had to step in for her.

Gabe let his eyes roam around the bar, which was beginning to fill with a sophisticated after-work financial-district crowd, plus a considerable smattering of hipsters. Gabe remembered (sort of) what it was like to live in the city, to go out for a drink after work without having to worry about traffic on the way home, family dinner.