The Admissions (8 page)

Nora looked eagerly into Amanda’s face. She felt like hugging her (a whole hug, none of this half nonsense), or dragging her into a private corner of the ballroom to have a genuine chat. Seeing Amanda again served as a reminder of the fleeting days of Cecily’s toddlerhood, of those endless mornings when they were looking to fill the time instead of acquire more of it. Everybody had been so young then! Cecily still had luscious rolls of fat along the backs of her thighs. Life was simpler. It might have seemed hard then, but in retrospect, it was easy.

“Funny you should ask,” said Amanda. She smiled her odd, tight, unfamiliar smile again. Was it funny? Nora couldn’t stop staring at Amanda’s altered mouth. (Had she had those collagen shots that made your lips look fuller?)

“Because in fact,” continued Amanda, “they’re having some issues.”

“Doesn’t surprise me
at all,
” said Nora. She took a big sip of wine. “I always found her a little trying. Right? I figured he’d snap one day.” This was the sort of thing she and Amanda would have talked endlessly about in the old days. Juicy marital gossip about virtual strangers over a latte.

But then she noticed something: Amanda wasn’t gossiping back. She was looking quizzically at Nora. “Not those kinds of problems,” she said finally. “Actually I’m pretty friendly with Loretta.”

“Oh,” said Nora quietly. She looked around for Gabe but he was still engrossed in conversation. She heard the words
St. Andrews
and
royal and ancient.
She looked around for Cathy too—any port in a storm—but she had been waylaid on her way back to the table with the wine. It might be years before she returned.

“Problems with the house,” said Amanda. “With their expansion plans.”

Nora said, “
Expansion
plans?” She had never heard about any expansion plans. The Millers’ house was gigantic, already renovated, and the Millers had no children. What was there to expand? She looked one more time into Amanda’s eyes, searching for something, but her expression was sphinxlike, unreadable, and at last Nora understood why her smile looked odd. Not because it had been surgically altered or puffed up or trimmed down, but because it simply wasn’t the same smile Nora remembered. It wasn’t sincere.

The auctioneer returned not too long after that, but when Nora looked back on the conversation it seemed like it had been hours, because Amanda spoke slowly and deliberately, and (Nora thought) a touch condescendingly, explaining the situation. It was simple, yet potentially devastating. The Millers wanted to build a guesthouse. (In the old days, Nora would have said, “What do they need a
guesthouse
for?” and Amanda would have said,
“Riiiiiight?”
and one of the toddlers would have tripped on something or spilled a juice box and she and Amanda would have collapsed in caffeine-fueled giggles.) But Amanda now seemed to think it was perfectly reasonable for the Millers to want a guesthouse, an additional two bedrooms and a bath, a kitchenette. The problem, she explained, was that a landscaper they had called in had let them know that a couple of properties in the neighborhood had a rare species of a plant called the Marin dwarf flax. And theirs was one.

“Not just rare,” whispered Amanda.
“Endangered.”

“Oh, God,” said Nora. She was beginning to remember something. She was beginning to feel sick to her stomach.

“And they seem to think,” said Amanda, “that this should have been disclosed. Before they bought.”

“But—” said Nora.

“I know,” said Amanda. She patted Nora’s knee companionably, the way you might pat an elderly dog who could no longer make it up the stairs. “I’m sure you didn’t know.”

The room whipped around Nora. The problem, of course, was that she did know. She
had
known. She just hadn’t taken it seriously. She remembered now that one of the sellers, Mrs. Cantrell (she remembered the name because she always mixed it up with the word
chanterelle,
and funnily enough there was something mushroomy about Mrs. Cantrell’s face), had mentioned something about a neighbor finding an endangered plant on the property that abutted theirs, and how it had become a whole thing when they went to get approval from the town for some upgrade. And how the neighbor had seen what
looked like
the same plant in the Cantrells’ yard. And Nora had said—what? Probably something hurried and idiotic, like,
We should look into that.
Before she had promptly forgotten all about it, before the mention had floated away on a wave of laundry and lunch boxes and homework and Frankie’s visits to the veterinarian. They had never disclosed it because they’d never really looked into it. For the love of God, it was a
plant.
Maya was starting kindergarten that year, Gabe was working overtime at Elpis, Angela was worrying over the SATs, and Nora needed that sale to close on time. A plant.

“I just didn’t want you to get blindsided,” said Amanda softly. “My understanding is that if their plans get shot down, ultimately this could be your responsibility…”

Indeed it could. If Nora had known about and failed to disclose the existence of an endangered species on the property to the buyers, the buyers could sue her. If Nora’s errors and omissions insurance didn’t cover the sale price of the home, Nora could be forced to cover the entire cost herself. That meant the Hawthornes would have to sell
their
home, the home her children had been babies in, had toddled around in, bare-chested, wearing only diapers. The home where they’d lost their first teeth, said their first words, written their name for the first time in those stilted, crooked, adorable mostly backward letters that all kids started with.

Her fault.

Nora closed her eyes and tipped her head back.

When she opened them she could see Amanda making her way back across the room, and in her place at Nora’s table were two new bottles of wine. She could see Cathy Moynihan, who was once again leaning in toward Nora and studying her with a look of consternation and concern.

“Nora?” said Cathy. “You’re white as a sheet. Whiter. Here, let me get you some water.” Cathy reached for the pitcher, which was sweating almost as profusely as the auctioneer had been. A little of the water sloshed over the lip of the pitcher and onto the rose-colored tablecloth and Cathy said,
“Whoopsie,”
and giggled. “
Some
body’s had a lot to drink.”

“Wine,” whispered Nora, sitting up. “Not water.”

“You sure?” said Cathy. “You don’t look—”

“Definitely wine,” said Nora, pushing her glass toward Cathy. Her instinct was to reach for Gabe—her rock, her anchor, her Wyoming cowboy—but she wasn’t ready yet to tell him this potentially ruinous bit of news. She needed to find out, first, how bad this could get. So she steadied herself by pressing her hands flat on the seat of the chair and sitting up as straight as she could, concentrating on the auctioneer, who had definitely changed his shirt and looked rejuvenated, like an athlete recently emerged from a locker room shower after the big game.

“Oh,
good
!” said Cathy, clapping her hands together girlishly. “Next after this one is the Adirondack chairs. I simply cannot
wait
to see what these go for.” She reached out a manicured hand and grasped at Nora’s forearm—a gesture that, on any other day, would have irritated Nora to no end, but that currently she hardly noticed.

“Neeeeext up,” cried the auctioneer with renewed vim and vigor. Perhaps he had showered in the men’s locker room, all dark wood and gleaming gold. He looked like a new man. “The foooooourth-grade class projects!” Cathy Moynihan squeezed Nora’s forearm ever more tightly. Nora was too weak to protest, too undone to remind Cathy how sensitive her Irish skin was, how easily she bruised. Cathy’s fingerprints might be imprinted on Nora’s arm for days to come. With her free hand Nora lifted her wineglass to her mouth and took a long and extravagant swallow. Better. More. A photograph of twelve Adirondack chairs flashed on the screen. Cathy inhaled sharply. “They look
gorgeous,
” she said. “Right, Nora? Gorgeous.”

Marin dwarf flax,
thought Nora.
I cannot believe I’m going to be undone by something with that idiotic name.

“We have twelve hundred. Do I hear
fourteen
hundred?” cried the auctioneer. “Fourteen hundred, do I hear
sixteen
?”

Dear Marianne,
thought Nora.
You are not going to believe what I found out at the auction.

Roland the hamster began his cardio workout around midnight.

Great,
thought Nora.
Perfect.
Cecily had begged to have Roland’s cage in her room, on top of her dresser. Cecily and Maya’s room was just down the hall from Nora and Gabe’s, but Roland seemed to have woken nobody else in the house but Nora. Go figure.

Nora tiptoed to the younger girls’ room and looked at her middle daughter, who slept on, oblivious. She had thrown the covers into a tangle at the bottom of the bed; beneath her T-shirt Nora could see her ribs moving. Nora stood for some time in the doorway until Roland hopped off his wheel and nosed his way to the side of the cage. Nora could see his outline because of the nightlight in the hall. She put her face close to the bars of the cage and whispered, “Okay, guy. We get it. You’re super-fit. Now go to sleep.” Roland twitched his nose at her. Had Cecily fed and watered him? What else was required of the Hawthornes during Roland’s sojourn? What if he got sick? Or escaped. What if he—horror of horrors—
died
while in their care? It could happen. Goldfish seemed to drop dead for no reason whatsoever, why not a hamster? Nora breathed in deeply and tried hard not to feel the weight of another living creature who required something from her. “Just don’t need too much, okay?” she told Roland. “I’m sort of at my limit…”

Maybe Roland didn’t nod, not exactly, but something about his face signaled a gentle acquiescence, and Nora appreciated that. He did look a little bit like Frankie.

Back in her own bed she poked softly at Gabe’s back, which was turned away from her. Nothing. The drinks at the auction, of course. Though any happy alcohol effects had dissipated for her. She wanted to tell Gabe about the Marin dwarf flax. She wanted to and she didn’t want to. She didn’t want to stress
him
out—Lord knew he already seemed stressed out enough. Freaking Bizzvara. But she’d want
him
to tell
her
if he were in a bad way. She didn’t want to keep secrets from Gabe. She never kept secrets from Gabe.

Except the one. But that was such a long time ago.

Nora’s heart was beating to wake the dead. She didn’t even know what Marin dwarf flax looked like. But she had to be prepared.
By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.
Who had said that? Mussolini? Ben Franklin? Well, either way. She got out of bed again and made her way to the kitchen, where she kept her laptop on the built-in desk. She sat down, opened the laptop. She felt like a dirty porn addict, feeding her habit in the middle of the night, while her husband and children and the school hamster slept.

And then, into Google, where we type our deepest desires and our most wretched fears and everything in between, went three words: Marin. Dwarf. Flax.

Deep breath. Scientific name:
Hesperolinon congestum.
Rank: Species. (Whatever that meant.) Higher classification:
Hesperolinon.
An annual herb, which is known to occur only in San Mateo, San Francisco, and Marin County, California.

“Aww,” said Nora, despite herself, in the voice you might use to respond to a baby bunny on display at an agricultural fair. The Marin dwarf flax was quite pretty. The picture showed a small white flower surrounded by a couple of light pink buds. It was really
very
innocuous looking. Nobody could sue anybody over this.

Nora felt suddenly lighthearted; she imagined herself telling the story one evening at a dinner party.
Oh, and then I couldn’t sleep, but that was partly because the school hamster was keeping me awake—you know they work out like little fiends, those things, wish I had the energy! So I looked it up, and you wouldn’t believe it, there was nothing to it, it was just a little flowering weed. Can you imagine that I let myself get so worked up about it? That I thought I could lose my job over a weed?

She read on, and ever so slowly the lighthearted feeling began to dissipate.

Unfortunately, its traditional range from Marin to San Mateo has seen enormous population growth over the last century, and many of the serpentine habitats, never very abundant, have been destroyed or degraded.

Shit. Well, that was quite the conundrum. Nobody liked population growth more than realtors. And yet that very same population growth had destroyed a species that Nora had failed to disclose to the buyers.

In for a penny, in for a pound, as her mother liked to say. Her fingers typed the next search term while her brain somehow detached itself and floated somewhere close to the ceiling. How many times had she wanted to Google this sordid little topic in the past year? Too many to count, and yet somehow she’d stopped herself each time. Because she hadn’t really wanted to know.

There went her fingers, typing away, spitting out the letters.
Early head trauma,
her fingers typed. And:
Reading difficulties in childhood.

Deep breath, the deepest of all breaths. Ready, set, enter.

Nora felt Gabe before she saw him. Or maybe she saw his reflection in the window but didn’t quite register it. She slammed down the lid of her laptop. Gabe looked perplexed and rumpled, like a child just roused from a nap. “I woke up and you were gone,” he said. “I got worried.”

“Hey,” Nora said, swallowing the shaking in her voice. “No need to worry. I was just—I couldn’t sleep. Just doing a little bit of work, while I was thinking about it.”

He rubbed his face and said, “Goddamn Skip Moynihan and that bourbon. I feel like I died and went straight to hell.”

“You don’t look so good,” she said agreeably. “Did you take some Advil?”