34. Baby ’Breds
Revisit Day Lunch
SALADS
Caesar with sourdough croutons
Roasted asparagus with lemon shallot vinaigrette
ENTRéES
Wood-fired pizza
(Choice of: Margherita; garlic shrimp and scallops; classic pepperoni; “Big Mac” with ground beef, pickles, special sauce, toasted sesame)
Italian sub panini: ham, salami, mortadella, provolone, roasted red peppers, marinated artichokes, olive paste
DESSERT
Chocolate cupcakes with chocolate pudding center
Strawberry slab pie with vanilla custard ice cream
Because Madison J. is away at Cornell for pre-orientation, Taylor is put in charge of Revisit Day. This is when all of Tiffin’s newly accepted students show up for their first real Tiffin experience.
In theory, Revisit Day is supposed to be just like any other Friday at school.
Soon-to-be Tiffin parents drop their students off at school half an hour before A-period, and everyone gathers under the welcome tent on the front yard of the Manse, where the Baby ’Breds (as they’re affectionately known) each pair up with a current Tiffin student.
Taylor is in charge of the matchmaking. In some cases, she goes the predictable route.
Hakeem, for example, is paired with Parrish Matthews, who is Coach Bosworth’s top recruit for the football team (Hakeem insisted on this).
Dub asked to be paired with an LGBTQ+ kid, so Taylor assigns him the only nonbinary student matriculating next year, whose name is Sam Young.
In other cases, Taylor goes rogue. She gives Royce Stringfellow a surfer dude from Coronado, California, named Leo, and Davi a girl named Evelyn who is six feet tall and obsessed with global warming.
Taylor pairs Charley with a girl named Sheradin from Eau Claire, Wisconsin, who is apparently really good at the clarinet?
Taylor gives East a super brainiac named Fallon who not only has a 4.
0 but also a perfect score on his SSAT (Taylor knows this because Mrs. Spooner gave her access to the incoming students’ vital statistics).
Fallon shows up wearing a Rise Against T-shirt, which blatantly breaks dress code.
East immediately bonds with the kid because he loves Rise Against and because Fallon has started his own tax preparation business for teens, and East likes his entrepreneurial spirit.
Taylor’s own Baby ’Bred is the daughter of a famous movie director—a nepo Baby ’Bred!
—named Arrington Berger, who shows up dressed in head-to-toe Out of Office.
Although she doesn’t mention Davi by name, it’s likely that Davi is the reason Arrington applied to Tiffin, and so at lunch, Taylor introduces them.
A flurry of selfies ensues. When Taylor checks, she sees that Arrington has nearly two hundred thousand followers on Insta and a hundred thousand on TikTok.
During her free period, Taylor takes Arrington to the beach at Jewel Pond. It’s a balmy spring day, the dogwoods are in full, cottony bloom; Tiffin is at its brochure-worthy best.
“So what’s your favorite thing about this place?” Arrington asks, as they settle at one of the picnic tables. “Other than that you have your own little beach.”
Where does Taylor begin? She could talk about how, at her very first Move-In Day cookout, Hakeem threw a grape at the back of her head—he’d been aiming for Dub—and when Taylor turned around and saw Hakeem smiling, she fell in love.
Would Taylor leave it at that, or would she delve into the drama of last year—her extremely intense, extremely forbidden crush on Dub?
Everything Taylor knows about love and desire, guilt and forgiveness, she has learned here at Tiffin.
She could tell Arrington about her friendly rivalry with Cinnamon Peters and how it made Taylor care about hard work and productivity.
Then she would explain how Cinnamon’s death taught Taylor—and everyone else—about the fragility of human life, about prioritizing mental health, about how you never, ever know what’s going on in someone else’s heart and mind, that no matter how smooth and filtered things look on the outside, they can still be messy on the inside.
Finally, Taylor could tell Arrington about the biggest mistake of her life: getting pregnant.
Arrington is older than the rest of the Baby ’Breds—she’s already fifteen—and so Taylor considers describing how conflicted she was about her choice as she rode to the clinic with Dub in East’s truck (and at the same time how grateful she was for use of the truck, for a friend like Dub, and that she had a choice).
But Arrington doesn’t need to know any of Taylor’s secrets. She’ll have the next four years to create her own secrets.
“My favorite thing?” Taylor says. “Your friends here, and even people who aren’t your friends, honestly, turn into your family.
” She tears her gaze away from the sparkling surface of the pond and looks directly at Arrington.
“Don’t waste a single second of your time.
If I had one wish, it would be to do it all again. ”
Audre sees the Baby ’Breds around campus—they look so young!
—and feels a piercing sense of… loss, she supposes she would call it.
She won’t be here next September when these kids move in, so although she did give a brief address in the Teddy’s auditorium (“You’re about to embark on the next chapter not only of your education, but of your life…
”), she hasn’t met any of the Baby ’Breds personally.
What would be the point?
That afternoon, there’s a knock on Audre’s office door. Audre suspects it’s Rhode with a last-minute entreaty on his own behalf. The decision about the new Head will be made in the next few days. (Audre wants Cordelia, plain and simple, but Jesse and the rest of the committee may have other ideas.)
“Come in!” Audre says.
Coop pokes his head around the door. “Do you have a minute, my darling?”
Audre smiles. She loves that Coop respects her time, her space, her position. Another man might come barging in. “For you, always and forever.”
Coop takes the seat opposite Audre’s desk, and Audre is tempted to sink into his lap. She is such a teenager. “What’s up, my love?”
Coop frowns. “You know I don’t like this phrase, but I’m afraid there’s a ‘red flag’ where hiring Yardley is concerned.”
Oh shit, Audre thinks. Yardley Edmonds is their top choice to replace Coop.
She’s presently a humanities teacher at Stuyvesant High School in New York.
She’s eminently qualified and has agreed to coach girls’ field hockey.
Audre is aware that Yardley and Rhode are “friends”; they met this past summer in the city.
Is this why Coop is concerned? Audre will remind him that what happens here after they leave is none of their business.
They’ll be strolling Coop’s twin grandbabies through City Park and brunching at Atchafalaya.
“Which is…?” Audre says.
“She doesn’t want to serve as dorm parent,” Coop says. “I’m not sure she’s flat-out refused, but she indicated it could be a deal-breaker.”
Audre sinks back in her chair. Seriously?
Being a dorm parent was part of the posted job description!
If Yardley didn’t want to do it, she should have said that from the get-go.
Audre can’t ask Ruth Wully to do another year; she’s already done Audre the world’s biggest favor by taking over for Simone Bergeron this year.
At that moment, Coop’s phone starts buzzing.
“It’s Loredonna,” he says.
“Take it,” Audre says. Coop’s daughter, Loredonna, is a typical millennial: She hates talking on the phone. So this must be something urgent. Audre’s mind goes worst-case-scenario: Is something happening with the pregnancy?
“Hey, sweetie,” Coop says. “Everything okay?”
Audre can hear Loredonna’s voice on the other end but not what she’s saying, so Audre focuses on Coop’s face. He listens for a while, then his eyebrows shoot up. He locks eyes with Audre, his mouth falls open. “Really?” There’s a long pause, and Audre thinks, Really, what?
Before the day of their final interviews, Rhode waits for Cordelia by the water fountain in the fitness center.
He says, “I’ve heard Amanda Maverick is now also in the running.”
Cordelia’s heart rate is elevated from the treadmill, but this news makes it beat even faster. “Where did you hear this?”
“I can’t say.”
Cordelia scowls. This is why no one likes Rhode; he’s a complete tool.
“Did Mav tell you?”
Rhode shrugs. “He said he and Amanda are getting back together.”
Cordelia knows she should express happiness at this; after all, Mav and Amanda have twin boys in the third-form.
Cordelia is in a romantic frame of mind herself.
She and Honey have been texting every day, both of them optimistic about a future where Cordelia is Head of School and Honey takes Cordelia’s job as head of admissions.
The rumor about Amanda Maverick is therefore very unwelcome. But it makes perfect sense. If Mav and Amanda are reconciling, they would want to work at the same school. Mav has been replaced at Colbert, so it only makes sense that Amanda would come to Tiffin, where there’s an opening at Head.
Amanda Maverick will get the job, Cordelia thinks. She’s the only one of the three candidates who has actual experience.
Cordelia and Rhode lock eyes, newly united. Their civil war has suddenly become a foreign one.
Cordelia is in her office, texting Honey about the unsettling Amanda Maverick rumor, when Audre enters, closing the door behind her.
Cordelia sets down her phone. “Hey, boss,” she says, trying for nonchalance, though she obviously knows what’s coming. “What’s up?”
“I have some news,” Audre says. “I wanted you to hear it from me first.”
Cordelia casts her gaze into her lap. She doesn’t want to work for Amanda Maverick, she won’t work for Amanda Maverick.
Or, for that matter, Rhode Rivera. If Cordelia doesn’t get the job as Head, she’ll move down to Florida to be with Honey.
It may even be a welcome change: She’ll wear SPF 70; she’ll take a marine safety course and learn how to captain a boat.
“I appreciate that,” Cordelia says.
“I’m staying at Tiffin,” Audre says.
Wait, what? Cordelia thinks. “You’re… staying?”
Yes: Audre is staying and Coop is staying.
Audre explains that the director of football operations for the New England Patriots has decided to retire when his contract runs out next year—and the Patriots want Loredonna Coopersmith to take over. It’s a huge promotion.
The Patriots want to relocate Loredonna immediately in order for her to learn the organization before she gives birth.
By the time she takes the job, the twins will be six months old.
The Patriots are known for their excellent family leave policies, and the team has an affiliate day care—although Loredonna’s salary will be such that she can afford a private nanny.
“There’s no longer any reason to move to New Orleans,” Audre says. “We’re staying here. Coop may spend a few weekends in Boston, and we’ll both go for holidays and vacations.”
“I can’t believe this!” Cordelia says. She thought she’d be crushed—there goes her chance at serving as Head of School—but instead, she’s elated. “I’m so happy you’re staying.”
“That makes two of us,” Audre says. “I’m staying, Coop is staying, Jesse Eastman is staying, Chef Haz is staying. The only person leaving is Mav.”
Cordelia hops up from her chair. “What?”
“He and Amanda are getting back together.” Audre winks at Cordelia. “I can’t believe I heard that before you did.”
“I heard it earlier this morning,” Cordelia says. “But I thought Amanda had her sights set on the Head job here.”
“Nope. Mav is going back to Colbert,” Audre says. “Apparently, the young woman they hired to take his place went oh-for-twelve with the Ivy League and caught so much flak from the Colbert parents that she gave her notice.”
Cordelia meets Audre’s eye. “So we’re looking for a college counselor, then?”
“We are, yes. But, Cordelia—”
“Honey wants to come back.” Cordelia anticipates Audre’s skeptical expression. Honey did make a mistake with Simone Bergeron, but no charges were pressed, Honey resigned of her own volition. She did her penance: a year in Boca with her mother. “Will you at least consider it?”
Audre lets half a smile slip. “Yes, my friend,” she says. “I’ll consider it.”