Read Online Opening Belle by Maureen Sherry - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Maureen Sherry
Ads: Link
rock stars who arenât aging well, three adopted girls from China who live on 5th Avenue, and the two African American students of the school: one has a dad who is the CEO of a media company and one is the son of another studentâs chauffeur.
Every Thursday, as I did with Kevin and now do with Brigid and Owen, I commit my skirt-suited bottom to a piece of floor in the back of the room with the rest of the misfits. We are happy there.
How the McElroy family ever ended up in such a fancy school, being neither blue-blooded, famous, nor rich in New York City terms, is another story. The old adage that it is easier to gain admission to Harvard than to an elite Manhattan preschool is weirdly true.
If your child is to be accepted to a Manhattan private preschool, an application has to materialize first. There is one day of the entire year that this can happen, provided you have access to multiple phone lines and at least one decent secretary, because you have to call and request one of a limited number of applications. I had an able intern work the phones that first Monday after Labor Day, and after seven hours of dialing, he produced nine applications for the McElroy family. This little exercise is just for the new people. Should your uncle Winston or grandma Hitchcock be a legacy, youâre in. Our school gives out three hundred applications for thirty-four spots each year; 90 percent are sibling or legacy spots, leaving about three or four openings to compete for about a 1 percent acceptance rate.
Fifth Avenue Preschool is know as the most difficult to get into. We applied, and given I had no connections, I put zero effort into an impossible situation. On the way to the interview, we got caught in traffic moving at the rate of sludge. I jumped out of the cab, ran the remaining twenty blocks, arrived sweaty, panting, and slightly late. Bruce brought up the rear carrying Kevin piggyback. The director made no eye contact with my cute-as-hell Kevin, my non-billionaire husband, or me. Instead she seemed fixated on the V of sweat that was forming at the top of my breasts and showing itself magnificently through the silk of my blouse. In her eyes, I felt we were the urban version of trailer trash and we were shown the door in fifteen minutes. In my haughty, defensive, and naïve way, Not a problem , I thought, Kevin will go to our local YMCA preschool.
When we received exquisitely worded rejection letters for not only that preschool but also the other eight that Kevin applied to, including the Y, Bruce and I felt like terrible parents. I had panicked ideas about quitting my job and homeschooling my kids but Bruce pointed out that first, we would have very little income, and second, it is a tad early to throw in the towel on the whole education game when a three-year-old gets rejected.
I revisited all the materials and pored over lists of board members at each school. Surely I knew someone in this town. And I did. The president of that fancy-pants Fifth Avenue Preschool board was none other than Henry Thomas Wilkins III. My ex-fiancé, Henry. The guy who left me on the street. I didnât dare call him. No way. I had made a vow never to speak with him again. No way. Well, maybe.
After seven years of being madly in love, we parted and never spoke another word to each other. I never trolled his name on the Internet; I unsubscribed to my college alumni magazine and broke up with all our mutual friends. When I want to clean my slates, I do it with bleach. The months and months in a black pool of hurt seemed long ago nowâburied in some cavern of the heart that modern medicine could never find. Had enough time finally passed for me to pick up the phone?
I talked this over with Bruce, the guy who had made me laugh after Henry was gone. Surely he would agree I should never call regardless of what it meant for preschool admission.
âCall him,â he said. Bruce had thought of his answer for five
Every Thursday, as I did with Kevin and now do with Brigid and Owen, I commit my skirt-suited bottom to a piece of floor in the back of the room with the rest of the misfits. We are happy there.
How the McElroy family ever ended up in such a fancy school, being neither blue-blooded, famous, nor rich in New York City terms, is another story. The old adage that it is easier to gain admission to Harvard than to an elite Manhattan preschool is weirdly true.
If your child is to be accepted to a Manhattan private preschool, an application has to materialize first. There is one day of the entire year that this can happen, provided you have access to multiple phone lines and at least one decent secretary, because you have to call and request one of a limited number of applications. I had an able intern work the phones that first Monday after Labor Day, and after seven hours of dialing, he produced nine applications for the McElroy family. This little exercise is just for the new people. Should your uncle Winston or grandma Hitchcock be a legacy, youâre in. Our school gives out three hundred applications for thirty-four spots each year; 90 percent are sibling or legacy spots, leaving about three or four openings to compete for about a 1 percent acceptance rate.
Fifth Avenue Preschool is know as the most difficult to get into. We applied, and given I had no connections, I put zero effort into an impossible situation. On the way to the interview, we got caught in traffic moving at the rate of sludge. I jumped out of the cab, ran the remaining twenty blocks, arrived sweaty, panting, and slightly late. Bruce brought up the rear carrying Kevin piggyback. The director made no eye contact with my cute-as-hell Kevin, my non-billionaire husband, or me. Instead she seemed fixated on the V of sweat that was forming at the top of my breasts and showing itself magnificently through the silk of my blouse. In her eyes, I felt we were the urban version of trailer trash and we were shown the door in fifteen minutes. In my haughty, defensive, and naïve way, Not a problem , I thought, Kevin will go to our local YMCA preschool.
When we received exquisitely worded rejection letters for not only that preschool but also the other eight that Kevin applied to, including the Y, Bruce and I felt like terrible parents. I had panicked ideas about quitting my job and homeschooling my kids but Bruce pointed out that first, we would have very little income, and second, it is a tad early to throw in the towel on the whole education game when a three-year-old gets rejected.
I revisited all the materials and pored over lists of board members at each school. Surely I knew someone in this town. And I did. The president of that fancy-pants Fifth Avenue Preschool board was none other than Henry Thomas Wilkins III. My ex-fiancé, Henry. The guy who left me on the street. I didnât dare call him. No way. I had made a vow never to speak with him again. No way. Well, maybe.
After seven years of being madly in love, we parted and never spoke another word to each other. I never trolled his name on the Internet; I unsubscribed to my college alumni magazine and broke up with all our mutual friends. When I want to clean my slates, I do it with bleach. The months and months in a black pool of hurt seemed long ago nowâburied in some cavern of the heart that modern medicine could never find. Had enough time finally passed for me to pick up the phone?
I talked this over with Bruce, the guy who had made me laugh after Henry was gone. Surely he would agree I should never call regardless of what it meant for preschool admission.
âCall him,â he said. Bruce had thought of his answer for five
Similar Books
