Jane Austen in Scarsdale Read online

  PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF

  PAULA MARANTZ COHEN

  Jane Austen in Scarsdale

  “For every frazzled student applying to college, for all anxious parents trying to get a student into college, for all teachers besieged by requests for higher grades and glowing letters of recommendation, this book is for you. I am persuaded that Cohen, like Jane Austen, knows how to work things out for her heroine—neatly and satisfactorily. I loved it.”

  —Anne B. Ross, author of Miss Julia’s School of Beauty

  “Paula Marantz Cohen has done it again! Jane Austen in Scarsdale is laugh-out-loud funny, literate, wise—and best of all, a satirical mirror of our times. She has become our own Jane Austen.”

  —Diane Ravitch, author of The Language Police

  “Cohen offers astute social commentary on the college admissions process, specifically the wooing strategies that occur between high-school seniors and the college of their choice.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Superb writing and the appeal of Anne and Ben’s relationship . . . make this a fulfilling read.”

  —Library Journal

  “It is as if the author sifted through the thoughts of this reviewer and her contemporaries as they and their progeny navigated the halls of the ivy-covered educational edifices. Every observation and detail . . . is a bull’s-eye. . . . Cohen has captured the essential core of life here.”

  —Westchester.com

  Much Ado About Jessie Kaplan

  “A brightly comic book . . . [that explores] the redemptive capacity of the literary imagination. . . . Highly literate light fiction.”

  —Times Literary Supplement

  “Unabashedly entertaining reading. . . . The result is touching and not a little wise.”

  —Philadelphia Inquirer

  “Humorous for those with no Shakespearean background, hilarious for those who have one, and insightful for all.”

  —-Jerusalem Post

  “Kept me laughing from beginning to end. Paula Marantz Cohen’s Much Ado About Jessie Kaplan is a comic tour-de-force . . . as fresh and pungent as an apple cake. The novel also proves that literary fiction doesn’t have to be elegiac in tone to be successful.”

  —The Hudson Review

  Jane Austen in Boca

  “Utterly charming . . . Think Pride and Prejudice, but with better weather.”

  — Vanity Fair

  “Clever, warm-hearted . . . Cohen’s wit is sharp, smart, and satirical, and her characterizations are vividly on target.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  “Page-turner of the week . . . Austen never schmoozed by the pool with a pack of bronzed yentas, but her Pride plot proves as durable as ever . . . in this witty romp. What’s not to like?”

  —People Magazine

  “Don’t think these modern Austenites are any less fun to read about than their nineteenth-century counterparts just because they’re wearing golf pants instead of Empire dresses.”

  —Newsday

  “While the novel works as a clever remake of Pride and Prejudice, it has equal merit as contemporary social commentary. . . . [Cohen] has found new resonances between Austen’s circumscribed world and the closed society of a contemporary community.”

  —Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal

  ALSO BY PAULA MARANTZ COHEN

  FICTION

  Much Ado About Jessie Kaplan

  Jane Austen in Boca

  NONFICTION

  Silent Film and the Triumph of the American Myth

  The Daughter as Reader: Encounters Between Literature and Life

  Alfred Hitchcock: The Legacy of Victorianism

  The Daughter’s Dilemma: Family Process and the Nineteenth-

  Century Domestic Novel

  This is a work of fiction. There is a Scarsdale, of course, but no Fenimore High School, and any resemblance between characters in the novel and actual people is unintentional.

  JANE AUSTEN IN SCARSDALE. Copyright © 2006 by Paula Marantz Cohen. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any mariner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.stmartins.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Cohen, Paula Marantz, 1953—

  Jane Austen in Scarsdale : or love, death, and the SATs / Paula Marantz Cohen.

  p. cm.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-312-36657-5

  ISBN-10: 0-312-36657-4

  1. Student counselors—Fiction. 2. Scarsdale (N.Y.)—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3603.O372J37 2006

  81354—dc22

  2005053668

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3

  In memory of my mother,

  one of the great high-school teachers

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I want to thank those who read and responded to earlier versions of this manuscript: Rosetta Marantz Cohen, Anne Hart-man, Alan S. Penziner, Gertrude Penziner, and Gail Rosen. Additional thanks go to those who supplied anecdotes and information on college admission, guidance counseling, high-school life, Westchester geography, Manhattan real estate, and assorted other matters: Fred and Rosemary Abbate, Vicki and Simeon Amon, Marianne Beauregard, Rebecca Bowlby, Catherine Campbell-Perna, Barbara Coleman, Albert DiBar-tolomeo, Alice Gaines, Mark and Vivian Greenberg, Cheryl Jones-Holaday, Barbara Kutscher, Kimberly Lewis, Susan Lip-kin, Liz Margolin, Marilyn Piety, Lori Rizzi, Sam Scheer, and Patricia Tamborello. Thanks go as well to my agent, Felicia Eth, and my superb editor, Hope Dellon.

  I want to thank my husband, Alan S. Penziner, my most trusted reader and critic, and my children, Sam and Kate Penziner, whose humor informs everything I write. Finally, I owe a debt of gratitude and love to my father, Murray S. Cohen, and my late mother, Ruth Marantz Cohen. They were my first and best teachers.

  PROLOGUE

  “SO YOU WANT YOUR KID TO GO TO HARVARD? OR MAYBE IT’S Duke or Stanford? WELL, I’M GONNA TELL YOU HOW TO DO IT!”

  The speaker, a young man in black jeans, a black turtleneck, and a ponytail, addressed the parents who sat huddled in the Fenimore High School auditorium. You could hear a pin drop. Everyone was hoping that the mystery of college admission was about to be resolved and they would finally get a good night’s sleep.

  The speaker paused for a few beats, then continued in a clipped, authoritative tone:

  “The cornerstones of any successful college application are the two P’s: ‘Push’ and ‘Package.’

  ‘Push’ means you do what it takes to make your kid crack the books. You nag, you bully, you threaten. Enough with the ‘Sweetie, wouldn’t it be nice if you did your homework?’ You gotta say: ‘Do your homework, buster, or you’re never going to get season tickets to the play-offs or own a Porsche.’

  “And don’t be afraid to raise your voice!” instructed the speaker sternly. “These kids can’t hear the normal speaking voice. You gotta be forceful, or they’ll turn you off the way they always do.

  “The second P is ‘Package,’ “ the speaker proceeded. “Here’s where you make the colleges sit up and pay attention. I once took a kid who never got off the couch and got him into Haverford. Gave him a political spin and turned him into the Westchester Gandhi.

  “I won’t pretend that packaging is easy, especially if the kid isn’t Albert Einstein or the Olsen twins. But lucky for you, there are people around who know how to do it!”

  These remarks were delivered with staccato rapidity, like a machine-gun blast, so that the audience looked initially stunned. Soon, how
ever, hands flew up.

  “Isn’t there such a thing as pushing too hard?” asked a normally timid woman, who had nonetheless resorted to hand-waving.

  “No,” pronounced the speaker firmly. “These kids are lazy; they’ll never do anything if you don’t push them.”

  “Can you talk a bit more about packaging?” asked an intense-looking woman, formerly a successful accountant, who had quit her job to devote herself full-time to getting her son into Yale.

  “Sure.” The speaker nodded. “I’ll give you an example. Let’s say your kid happens to excel at music. Let’s say he’s a freaking music genius. Do you think that’s going to do him any good?”

  He waited, so that the former accountant, who was typing her notes on a laptop, nodded tentatively.

  “Well, you’d be WRONG!” pronounced the speaker exultantly. “Music geniuses are a dime a dozen. There are music geniuses growing on every tree. A music genius applies to a college and the admissions people say, ‘Not another freaking music genius!’ So what do you do?”

  The former high-powered accountant shook her head in mystification.

  “You package the kid so they say, ‘This kid fits our music niche; we can’t afford to pass him up!’ You’re probably wondering how to do that.”

  The hush of anticipation in the room was deafening.

  “The key,” declared the speaker, “is cluster assets. Take our music genius. Let’s say the kid makes all-state orchestra. Fine— but every kid who doesn’t have a tin ear makes all-state orchestra. You need to build on that: have him get involved with a regional wind ensemble or a rock band that opens for Springsteen or Simon; get him to tutor underprivileged children in music appreciation or write a music column for the school paper that gets picked up by Salon or Slate. You get the idea. You’d be surprised what you can dig up, even for the poor shlubs who aren’t music geniuses. It just takes some imagination and leg-work; it’s like growing a pearl from a grain of sand.”

  “But I thought the colleges wanted well-rounded applicants,” protested a haggard-looking woman, who appeared to have stayed up nights worrying about what the colleges wanted.

  “Yes and no,” said the speaker smugly. “A range of activities and courses are important, but schools like kids with purpose and direction.”

  Everyone pondered how to get purpose and direction out of sixteen-year-olds who mostly wanted to go to the mall and play video games.

  “That’s why you have to ‘Push.’ “ The consultant returned to his former keynote. “Which would you rather have: a mentally healthy loser or a winner who’s a little neurotic?”

  The answer here seemed incontrovertible: neurosis was a small price to pay for the lifelong happiness guaranteed to ensue from getting into a good college.

  “My daughter writes for the school paper, runs track, and volunteers at a battered women’s shelter,” proffered a concerned man toward the back. “We thought she had a good shot at Cornell, my alma mater. Are we being overly optimistic?”

  “Being a Cornell alumnus is a plus.” The speaker nodded, as though giving the father credit for helping his daughter. “But you can’t put too much confidence in the legacy factor anymore. I’ve seen third-generation alums who donated a million to the college whose kids didn’t get in. That’s why I tell people: never assume; never presume; make the case bulletproof. Your daughter has some nice activities, but they sound diffuse. Do some clustering. Maybe she could write a series for the school paper on the battered women or organize a mini-marathon to raise money for the shelter—enough to win presidential recognition or at least an award on the state level. That’s turning disparate assets into cluster assets that can build on the legacy factor.”

  “My son plays ice hockey,” submitted another parent. “Is that going to help him?”

  “It could,” said the speaker doubtfully, “if he’s really, really good. But how many schools have ice hockey? We’re not in Canada. It’s too late with this one, but if you have a younger kid, steer him to lacrosse—it’s really hot with the top schools right now.”

  “You spoke about honors and awards. What if my child hasn’t won any?”

  “Then get on the stick and make sure he does,” barked the speaker. “Do some research on the Internet. Find the contests in those literary magazines no one reads. Dig up the kid’s old papers and submit them. If nothing else, you’ll get a certificate of recognition that you can put down on the application. Admissions officers don’t read these things too closely. If you’re lucky, they’ll think the kid won.”

  “What about test scores? Can activities compensate for weaker scores?”

  “No,” said the speaker, “they can’t.”

  “And grades? What if they fell off one year?”

  “A few B’s during freshman year can be overlooked,” conceded the speaker, “but after that, there better be a good reason: a death in the family, serious abuse, alcoholism—that sort of thing.”

  “How often should a student take the SATs?”

  “As many times as it takes to get really high scores.”

  “What about APs? Do you recommend a certain number?”

  “As many as possible. Have them take every one that’s offered in the school. And a few more if you can find the courses at a local college. It shows initiative. And extra APs can really boost the GPA.”

  “What about application essays? Do they matter?”

  “Absolutely The essay tells a college: This kid may not have perfect scores or grades, but he writes like Ernest Hemingway and has one hell of a heart.”

  “What makes a good essay?”

  “Originality without controversy. The key is to make the college feel they’re getting a unique voice but not someone who will blow up the school. It’s a fine line.”

  “Do you recommend humor?”

  “No. One person’s joke is another’s insult.”

  “Political statements?”

  “No, too risky.”

  “What sorts of topics?”

  “Personal sob stories are best. A dead parent works well, or a brother or sister who’s a druggie or a prostitute; those are pretty solid. If they need material, look into the new teen tours to impoverished locales. Maybe they can irrigate the desert or defuse land mines. It’s best if it’s on a world scale and connects with current events. ‘Save the whales’ isn’t going to cut it anymore. Other than that, it’s hard to say.”

  A sort of pall had settled in the Fenimore High School auditorium. Some parents appeared to be considering whether it might be worthwhile to murder a spouse in the interests of their child’s college application.

  “The key is to be creative,” concluded the speaker. “For most people, it’s over their heads. Which is why they hire me.”

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY
-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  CHAPTER ONE

  “GREAT SPEAKER LAST NIGHT, RIGHT?” VINCE FLOCKHART, FENIMORE’S principal, looked hopefully down at Anne Ehrlich, head of guidance, as she ate her grilled cheese sandwich in the faculty cafeteria. Report had it that the parents had been impressed by the speaker—though half had left in tears and the other half had been digging in the bottom of their bags for Valium.

  “He was very high energy,” conceded Anne.

  “You didn’t like him!” declared Vince, peering more closely at Anne’s face. He liked to look at that face—it had a sweetness and unconventional beauty that was undeniably appealing—but he was also attuned to its judgment, which he had learned to ignore at his peril.

  “My only concern,” acknowledged Anne carefully, “is that he may have upset some of our more high-strung parents.”

  Vince swallowed queasily. The idea of Fenimore parents, jumpy under normal circumstances, whipped into a frenzy by the speaker made him reach in his pocket for an antacid.

  “Don’t worry,” Anne reassured him, “I’m sure they’ll be no worse than usual.” This, admittedly, was small consolation— “usual” for Fenimore parents was very bad. “Besides, we just have to get through the next few months. It’s downhill after that.”

  Her tone was encouraging, but she was not without her own sense of dread. If Vince as principal was the last line of defense against Fenimore parents, Anne as head of guidance was the first.