The Marriage Plot - Jeffrey Eugenides [60]
It was the letter from Yale, torn, and enclosed in a plastic USPS envelope bearing a printed notice: “This article of mail was damaged en route to the recipient. We apologize for the delay.”
She opened the heat-sealed plastic and gingerly pulled out the paper envelope, trying not to tear it further. It had been caught in a sorting machine. The postmark read “April 1, 1982.”
The Faunce House post office knew all about acceptance letters. Yearly, they poured in, from medical schools, from law schools, from graduate programs. Students had knelt before these boxes just as she was now doing to pull out letters that transformed them instantly into Rhodes Scholars, senatorial aides, fledgling reporters, Wharton matriculants. As Madeleine opened the envelope, it occurred to her that it wasn’t very heavy.
Dear Ms. Hanna,
This letter is to inform you that the Yale Graduate Program in English will not be able to offer you admission in the coming academic year, 1982–1983. We receive many qualified applicants each year and regret that we cannot always
She made no sound. She betrayed no sign of disappointment. Gently, she closed her P.O. box, spinning the dials, and, rising to full height, walked with good posture across the post office. Near the door, finishing the work the USPS processing center had started, she tore the letter in two, pitching the pieces into the recycling bin.
Students A, B, C, and D have applied to Yale graduate school. If A is the editor of The Harvard Crimson; B a Rhodes scholar who published a monograph on Paradise Lost in the Milton Quarterly; C a nineteen-year-old prodigy from England who speaks Russian and French and is related to Prime Minister Thatcher; and D an English major whose submission contained a so-so paper on the linking words in Pearl plus a score on the logic portion of the GRE of 520, which student doesn’t stand an ice cube’s chance in hell of getting accepted?
She’d been rejected way back in April, two months ago. Her fate had been sealed before she’d even broken up with Leonard, which meant that the one thing she’d been counting on to lift her spirits these last three weeks had been an illusion. Another crucial bit of information withheld from her.
There were shouts on the green. With resignation, Madeleine set the mortarboard on her head like a dunce cap. She left the post office, climbing up the steps to the green.
In the open verdant space, families were waiting for the procession to begin. Three little girls had climbed into the bronze lap of the Henry Moore sculpture, smiling and giggling, while their father knelt in the grass to take photographs. Squads of alumni were staggering about, celebrating reunions, wearing straw boaters or Brown baseball caps emblazoned with their year.
In front of Sayles Hall people began to cheer. Madeleine looked as a Paleolithic graduate, a bog person of an alumnus enfolded in a striped blazer, was pushed into view by a retinue of blond grandchildren or great-grandchildren. From the arms of his wheelchair a raft of helium balloons rose into the spring air, each red balloon painted with a brown “Class of ’09.” The old man had his hand up to accept the applause. He was grinning with long, ghoulish teeth, his face lit with satisfaction beneath the Beefeater’s hat on his head.
Madeleine watched the happy old man pass by. At that moment, the band launched into the processional music, and the commencement march began. The university’s CEO-like president, wearing striped velvet academic robes and a floppy Florentine cap, led the march, holding a medieval lance. Following him were plutocratic trustees, and the red-haired, macrocephalic living members of the Brown family, and assorted provosts and deans. Seniors, walking two abreast, streamed up from Wayland Arch and across the green. The parade headed past University Hall in the direction of the Van Wickel gates, where parents