What’s the matter? Aren’t you thrilled?”
“I am, I am,” I said unconvincingly. In true paranoid fashion, I didn’t feel I could trust anyone. “It’s just that … I need to talk to him. Now I must go tend to the food. Happy Halloween.” I nipped back to the kitchenette, my mind reeling.
Heather sidled up while I was arranging the fruit. She straightened her thick pink glasses and whispered, “You didn’t tell Miss Ferrell how mad my mom was, did you?”
“No, no, no …” Why did these teenagers, first Brad and now Heather, seem to think I was the resident tattler? Perhaps paranoia is contagious. “Miss Ferrell had something else to tell me,” I told her.
“I heard about Julian’s scholarship. It’s supposed to be very hush-hush.” Heather gave me a quizzical look. “One of the kids said maybe it was you, but then the headmaster’s son said, Nah, you were poor.”
Audrey rescued me from commenting on this unto-ward assessment of my financial state by announcing that we had a big problem where we were supposed to be setting up. I was saved from asking her what it was when I heard the all too familiar sound of parents’ voices raised in heated dispute.
“Oh, come on, Hank. Nobody’s heard of Occidental.” Stan Marensky. “You must be joking!”
Audrey whispered to me, “I’ll bet Hank Dawson just heard of Occidental himself. He probably thinks it’s a Chinese restaurant. Or an insurance policy, maybe.”
I rubbed my forehead, trying to think what to do. The Dawsons, the Marenskys, and Macguire Perkins stood together near the signing table. The mothers ? short, crimson-suited Caroline and thinly elegant, fur-coated Rhoda ? were eyeing each other like two wild animals in a life-and-death standoff. The fathers ? lanky Stan and squat, beefy Hank ? stood stiffly, bristling. All were glaring, and the air around them crackled with hostility. Macguire, as usual, had his eyes half closed and was observing the verbal brickbats fly back and forth as if the conversation were some kind of sporting event.
“You just don’t know what you’re talking about,” Hank Dawson spat out. He clenched his fists at his sides; I was afraid he would raise them at any moment. “It’s on U.S. News & World Report’s list of the top twenty-five liberal arts colleges. Greer is extraordinarily gifted, in the top ten percent of her class. That’s more than you can say for Brad. What does he do, anyway? Besides play soccer, I mean.”
To my horror, Hank turned and winked at me, as if I somehow shared this assessment. I recoiled and looked around for Brad Marensky, whom I had not seen since our encounter in church. But when I caught the teenager’s eye, he turned away.
“You know, Stan,” Hank went on, rocking back and forth on his heels and looking up into Stan’s lean face with a smug grin, “you could always give the director of admissions at Stanford ‘a mink coat, but I think it’s too hot out there.”
“I’m getting so tired of this from you! We used to be friends! And really, you don’t know the first thing about colleges.” Stan was white with anger. “Jam for the Stanford rep! What a laugh!”
“Oh, yeah?” shrilled Hank. His face flushed the color of a cherry tomato. “Greer’s sixth-grade teacher said she tested out at the highest intelligence level they’d ever found.”
“Brad has been in gifted and talented programs since he was eight. And he’s an athlete, named all-state in soccer and basketball. Not just girls’ volleyball,” rasped Stan, his nostrils flaring. “You think you can improve Greer’s chances with this stupid campaign of yours? Does the world know that Hank Dawson flunked out of the University of Michigan? You don’t have a credential to your name.?
“Oh, shit,” muttered Macguire Perkins. “Oh, man,” he said, looking around for Brad, who had sunk into a nearby chair rather than witness the intensifying conflict.
“Honey, stop,” protested Caroline Dawson. But both men stood their ground. At any moment, someone was going to get punched in the nose. I tentatively offered my tray of biscotti to the little group. All ignored me Stan Marensky smiled largely. His tall body loomed over Hank Dawson’s. “You’re just jealous because you know Brad’s gotten better grades than Greer ? “
“Man, who cares?” interrupted Macguire Perkins.
“Shut up!” both fathers cried simultaneously to the headmaster’s son.
Macguire raised his palms. “Whoa! I’m outta here.” He slunk off. Brad Marensky slumped miserably and put his head in his hands.
Hank squinted up at Stan Marensky. He was breathing hard. Instead of addressing the jealousy question, he used Stan’s own mocking tone to respond. “Six generations of Dawsons have attended the University of Michigan. That’s more than you can say for the royal Russian Marenskys, I’m sure.”
Stan Marensky grunted in disgust. His fists clenched.
I had resolved not to get involved in this, of course, but perhaps I could get us out of this.
“Please, men,” I said amicably, wafting biscotti under their noses ? I’m a great believer in the peace-making abilities of good food. “The kids will get the wrong idea of what college is all about if you don’t quit arguing. You’re both winners. I mean, remember the time when the Broncos ? “
“Who asked you?” bellowed Hank Dawson as if I had unexpectedly betrayed him. He certainly was not in the mood for Bronco talk. Well, hey! I was just doing my referee imitation. I whisked off to set down the tray. Audrey and I had food to set out, conflict or no.
In catering weddings, I had discovered that there is absolutely no time to become overly involved in arguments between clients while you are trying to serve. To my great relief, and in the manner of wedding receptions, the Marenskys and the Dawsons now settled on opposite sides of the meeting area. More students and parents joined us. Audrey and I kept the trays filled and tended to the glasses. Miss Ferrell, who had watched the bitter exchange between the two sets of parents but sagely declined to interfere, pointed Julian out to me when he sauntered up the stairs to the third floor. I handed my tray to Audrey and rushed over to him.
“Congratulations,” I gushed. “I heard. This is so ? “
But the hard look in his eyes stopped me short. His face was cold with defiance.
“What is it?” I stammered. “I thought you’d be ecstatic.”
He raised one eyebrow. “Even in the catering business, you know there’s no free lunch.”
“I’m happy for you anyway,” I said lamely. The initial doubts I’d had about the scholarship loomed.
Julian nodded grimly and walked over to join the chatting students and parents. Several members of the crowd took their seats in response to Headmaster Perkins’ agitated appearance at the table where the evening’s speaker, a young fellow with wire-rimmed glasses and slicked-down blond hair, had just settled himself next to an enormous pile of books.
“I think we should have a moment’s silence for our” ? Headmaster Perkins gushed into the microphone ? ?our classmate and friend, Keith Andrews.” There was shuffling and rearranging of chairs. Along with the noise from the customers on other floors, it was not exactly silence.
Miss Ferrell stood to introduce the author. Now, I would have thought that a Halloween speaker would at least have had a few lighthearted things to say about how scary the college-application process was, or something along those lines. But when the blond fellow regaled us with no jokes, and instead began with a fluttering hand gesture and the line, “When I was at Harvard…” I knew we were in trouble.
There would be no more serving until the man had finished his spiel and the question-and-answer period was over, so I slipped around to the back of the room and found Audrey.
“Any way I can get out of here without creating a fuss?”
“You can’t go by the main staircase, they’d all see you. Where do you want to go?”
“Cookbooks?” Any port in a storm.
She led me around to the back of the third floor and then circled the room through another maze of bookshelves. Eventually we made our way to the other side of the main carpeted staircase from the speaker. Audrey stopped in front of a door taped with a photo of Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter.
I said, “Not a cookbook by this guy.”
“We’re in Crime, silly,” Audrey said quietly so as not to disturb the stultifyingly boring speaker, who was declaiming, “College is an investment, like real estate. Location, location, location!”
Audrey whispered to me, “Go down two flights and you’ll come out in cookbooks.”
“What’s on that window, a poster of Julia Child?”
“They just do it up as a refrigerator door.” She glanced over at the speaker. “I’ll handle things. Better not be gone more than thirty minutes, though.”
I thanked her for being such a great assistant and pushed through the Silence of the Lambs door. It closed
