Where'd You Go, Bernadette

Letter from Hillary Loundes,

director of studies at Choate

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Branch,

Congratulations on Bee’s acceptance to Choate Rosemary. As you know better than anyone, Bee is an extraordinary young woman. So extraordinary, in fact, that I am recommending she skip third form (ninth grade) and enter Choate Rosemary in the fourth form (tenth grade).

This year, Choate Rosemary will accept one in ten applicants. Almost without exception, each candidate, like Bee, has excellent SSAT scores and near perfect GPAs. You may wonder how we wade through this sea of academic sameness consisting of grade and recommendation inflation to find students who will truly thrive at Choate Rosemary.

Since the late 1990s, our admissions department has been working with Yale’s PACE (Psychology of Abilities, Competencies, and Expertise) Center to develop a hard measure of the soft skills required to adjust to the academic and social challenges of boarding school. The result of this work is something unique to the admissions process at Choate Rosemary, the Choate Self-Assessment.

It was on her CSA that Bee truly separated herself from the pack. In this new vocabulary of success, there are two words we like to use when describing our ideal student. Those words are “grit” and “poise.” Your daughter tested off the charts for both.

As we all know, the worst thing that can happen to a gifted child is for her to grow bored. Therefore, we think it is in Bee’s best interest to enter the fourth form.

Boarding tuition is $47,260. To guarantee Bee’s place, please submit the enrollment contract and deposit by January 3.

I look forward to discussing this further. Above all, welcome to Choate Rosemary!

Sincerely,

Hillary Loundes

From: Bernadette Fox

To: Manjula Kapoor

Do you hear the weeping all the way in India? Bee was accepted to Choate! Truly, I blame Elgie and myself, for regaling Bee with our boarding school adventures. Elgie went to Exeter; I went to Choate. It was nothing but brilliant kids, Grateful Dead concerts, and innovative ways to prevent your dorm room from reeking of bong water: what wasn’t to like? A gigantic part of me does want my daughter sprung from the dreary provinciality of Seattle. And Bee is dying to go. So I have no choice but to cowboy up and not make this all about me.

Elgie is composing a letter about not wanting Bee to skip a grade. But that’s not your concern. Please pay the deposit from our joint account. Any word on the seasickness medicine? I’m kind of freaking out.

More later, but I’m late picking up Bee and I can’t find the dog.

“OK,” Mom said that day, as soon as I got in the car, “we have a problem. Ice Cream got into my closet, the door shut behind her, and I can’t open it. She’s stuck.”

If that sounds weird, it isn’t. Our house is old. All day and night it cracks and groans, like it’s trying to get comfortable but can’t, which I’m sure has everything to do with the huge amount of water it absorbs any time it rains. It’s happened before that a door all of a sudden won’t open because the house has settled around it. This was the first time Ice Cream was involved.

Mom and I raced home and I flew upstairs calling, “Ice Cream, Ice Cream.” In Mom and Dad’s bedroom, there’s a row of confessionals they use as closets. The doors are rounded and pointy at the top. Behind a door, Ice Cream was barking, not a scared whimpering bark, but a playful bark. Trust me, she was laughing at us.

There were tools all over the floor and also some two-by-fours, which are always on hand in case we need to secure tarps to the roof. I pulled the door handle, and there was no give whatsoever.

“I tried everything,” Mom said. “The fascia is totally rotted. See there? How the beam is sagging?” I knew Mom fixed up houses before I was born, but she was talking as if she were a whole different person. I didn’t like it. “I tried to raise the doorframe with a jack,” she said, “but I couldn’t get enough leverage.”

“Can’t we just kick it in?” I said.

“The door opens out…” Mom drifted off in thought, then had an idea. “You’re right. We’ll have to kick it open, from the inside. Let’s climb up the house and go in through the window.” Now, that sounded fun.

We ran down the stairs and got a ladder from the shed and dragged it across the squishy lawn to the side of the house. Mom put down some plywood as a base for the ladder. “OK,” she said, “you hold it. I’ll climb up.”

“She’s my dog,” I said. “You hold the ladder.”

“Absolutely not, Bala. It’s too dangerous.”

Mom took off her scarf and wrapped it around her right hand, then began her ascent. It was funny seeing her in her Belgian shoes and Capri pants climbing up the paint-splattered ladder. She punched the stained glass with her protected hand and unlatched the window, then climbed in. An eternity passed.

“Mom!” I kept calling. The rotter didn’t even stick her head out. I was so drenched and annoyed that I didn’t care. I put my foot on the ladder. It was totally secure. I scrambled up superquick because what would have made me lose my balance was Mom catching me halfway up and yelling. I took me about eight seconds and I climbed in the window without slipping.

Ice Cream had no reaction when she saw me. She was more interested in Mom, who was karate-kicking the door, and karate-kicking the door, and karate-kicking the door. “Gaaah,” Mom cried with each kick. Finally, the door skidded open.

“Nice job,” I said.

Mom jumped. “Bee!” She was furious, and got furiouser when there was a loud crash outside. The ladder had fallen away from the house and was lying across the lawn.

“Whoops,” I said. I gave Ice Cream a huge hug and breathed in her musty scent for as long as I could without passing out. “You are the worst dog ever.”

“This came for you.” Mom handed me a letter. The return address was the Choate seal. “Congratulations.”

Mom had dinner delivered early and we drove out to celebrate with Dad. As we zoomed across the floating bridge over Lake Washington, my mind was wild with images of Choate. It was so vast and clean, and the buildings so majestic, red brick with ivy on the sides. It’s what I imagined England would look like. Dad and I had visited in the spring when the tree branches were heavy with flowers and ducklings glided across sparkling ponds. I’d never seen a place so picturesque except for jigsaw puzzles.

Mom turned to me. “You’re allowed to be happy about going away, you know.”

“It’s just weird.”

I love Microsoft. It’s where I went to day care, and when the sun was out they’d load us into big red wagons and pull us around to visit our parents. Dad made a treasure machine. I still don’t understand how it worked, but when it was time to get picked up, you got to put in a coin and out would drop a treasure, matched perfectly to you. A boy who liked cars would get a Hot Wheels. Not just any Hot Wheels, but one he didn’t already have. And if a girl was into baby dolls, she would get a bottle for her baby doll. The treasure machine is now on display in the Visitor Center because it’s an early example of facial recognition technology, which is what Dad was doing in L.A. when Microsoft bought him out.

We parked illegally, and Mom swanned across the Commons carrying the take-out bags, with me at her heels. We entered Dad’s building. Looming above the receptionist was a jumbo digital clock that counted down:

119 DAYS

2 HOURS

44 MINUTES

33 SECONDS

“That’s what they call a ship clock,” Mom explained. “It’s how long until Samantha 2 ships. They put it up as motivation. No comment.”

The same clock was in the elevator, the hallways, and even the bathrooms. It ticked down that whole meal in Dad’s office, where we sat on the inflatable balls he uses instead of chairs, our take-out containers wobbling precariously on our knees. I was telling them about all the different kinds of penguins we were going to see on the trip.

“You want to know the coolest part?” Mom chimed in. “There isn’t assigned seating at the dining room, and they have tables for four. That means the three of us can sit down and if we pile the extra chair with our gloves and hats, nobody can sit with us!”

Dad and I looked at each other, like, Is she joking?

“And penguins,” Mom quickly added. “I’m wildly excited about all those penguins.”

Dad must have told everyone we were coming, because people kept walking by and peeking through the glass, but acting like they weren’t, which is what it must feel like to be famous.

“I wish this was more of a celebration,” Dad said, glancing at his email. “But I have a video conference with Taipei.”

“That’s OK, Dad,” I said. “You’re busy.”