Free Expensive People by Joyce Carol Oates Page B

juniors.”
    Nada glanced over at me, warmly and kindly, as if I had already been granted a year in Greece.
    “Our record for scholarships, Mrs. Everett, is quite frankly the highest in the country with the exception of one school in New England, rather more heavily endowed than Johns Behemoth,” the good dean said. He was sitting on the edge of his glass-topped desk and smiling down into Nada's excited face. With a silver pen he tapped his knee and said, “I haven't yet had time to glance through Richard's application forms, and is his health report in?—it is?—and his recommendations are in, yes, one is right here on my desk I see. Fine, fine. Now today he will be taking the entrance examination, you know. You are all prepared, Richard, for our little tests?”
    He squinted at me as if, after Nada's brilliance, I was a kind of dark, dim light.
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Have you brought pen, pencil, and eraser?”
    “Yes, sir, and paper.”
    “We provide the paper,” he said a little softly, as if I had said something foolish. “Mrs. Everett, I do sincerely wish you and your son the very best luck, but I must remind you that our openings are extremely limited, and it is rare, rare indeed, that we accept a boy in the middle of the year.”
    “I understand perfectly, Dean Nash.”
    “I thought you would, yes, yes,” he said, smiling vaguely.
    Nada sat with her white-and-caramel coat open about her and her legs crossed, and for once I was glad of her being so beautiful; maybe it would help.
    “Our examinations are in five parts, Mrs. Everett, each consisting ofan hour section, and so … Should I explain the examination to you, Mrs. Everett, while Richard begins it?”
    I felt a sharp pang of disappointment. I wanted to hear about the exam myself.
    “Yes, that's an excellent idea,” Nada said. “Richard is very anxious to begin, Dean Nash. He's a perfectionist—I mean, he's very happy when he's doing exams, writing papers, reading. He's a very dedicated child … boy.”
    “I assume that you and your husband have provided him with the proper kind of cultural background, in that case,” Dean Nash said happily.
    “I hope so.”
    “You would be surprised, my dear Mrs. Everett, astonished at the irregularity of the cultural backgrounds of some of the boys who take our entrance exams! Boys from, need I say, homes in this immediate vicinity.” He stared at Nada for a moment in silence to let the profundity of this remark sink in. “But I must say, without keeping it back any longer, that I am not quite unfamiliar with you, Mrs. Everett, and … and here, so you see,” he said and reached around to pick off his cluttered desk Nada's first book, a novel published three years before. The blank white cover with its fluted red lettering startled me, as if it were a private, personal part of her suddenly given out to a stranger's hand.
    “Oh,” Nada said, leaning forward in surprise, letting her coat fall farther open about her. She touched her mouth with one gloved hand in a neat and exquisite and not at all spontaneous gesture I had seen her make many times before. “But how did you know—I mean, I write under my maiden name—”
    “I have always been interested in literature, passionately interested,” Dean Nash said with a grin. He called attention to his appearance by involuntarily glancing down at himself—impeccable heavy tweed suit, dark tie, polished dark shoes, everything perfect. For a big man he looked light on his feet. He smelled faintly of shaving cologne, as Nada did of perfume. “Eve made a few attempts at writing myself, but above all I am interested in contemporary American writers. I subscribe to four of the ‘little’ magazines, including
The Transamerican Review,
in which you've just had a story, right? And may I say I have quite a collection of our fellow contemporaries? A sizable collection you might be interested in seeing. I have your two books on the side of mylibrary devoted to