We begin here: Mae was late. Not only to this particular appointment, but in a broader sense: lateness seemed a part of her. As she rushed up the front steps, tripping on a flagstone levered upward by a tree root, she was flooded with the sensation that for years, possibly for her whole life, she had been running to catch up in a race whose starting pistol she had not heard. She rang the bell, breathing hard as she tugged her skirt into place. In her left hand she clutched her resume and a tin of sweet rice cakes.

In hushed conversations, some called the woman “the Harvard Whisperer.” As the door opened, Mae was struck by the stark whiteness of her hair, her round, rosy cheeks, and the perfect point of her chin. She smiled warmly and ushered Mae inside, closing the door with a click. 

The house was furnished in desert shades, the plush carpet dampening sound. The pair sat down in overstuffed arm-chairs. Between them was a glass coffee table bearing a bowl of yellow candies. In the dry acoustic, Mae felt unnaturally close to the woman, suddenly aware of the small noises of her own mouth and body. The woman scanned Mae’s resume and her smile didn’t waver, but Mae saw a strange, burning glint in her eye. Whether it was pity or anger she could not say. 

“I wish you had come sooner,” the woman said.

Mae shifted in her seat. “I didn’t realize I needed to.” 

“You must understand that there’s not much I can do. You’re already a senior. You, in your present state, will be judged as you are. Sure, we can smooth the rough patches, tie a bow on it, but beyond that there is little to be done.”

Mae had thought the woman would say something along these lines, and she was undaunted. “But I haven’t done poorly, right? See my grades? My test scores?”

“Both are excellent.”

“Not excellent,” Mae contended. “Perfect.”

The woman still smiled. “But activities? Volunteering? I have students who’ve gotten referenda on the state ballot, who’ve researched cures for minor diseases. Perfect implies that such schools are impressed by a GPA or a test score. Those things only buy you admittance to play the game. And the game is the hardest part.”

“Are you saying the rest of my resume is insufficient?”

The woman knit her hands together. “You’ve worked hard in high school. I’m sure you make your parents so proud.”

Mae thought of her parents, who withheld that thing the woman referred to as pride until some future, unspecified date. 

“So, I’m not hopeless?” 

“No, you’re not hopeless,” the woman said. “Only as hopeless as anyone would be faced with a 3% acceptance rate.”

They were silent for a moment, and Mae averted her gaze. The afterimage of the woman’s face became abstract. A wave of white over two dots of red, a pale oval tapering to a fine nib. 

“But there are other things one might do to improve one’s odds,” Mae said in a soft voice. She thought of the strange tales she had heard. The growing whispers and rumors, all of which led up the tidy sidewalk to this house. 

The woman’s smile vanished, and she gave Mae a searching look. “Are you sure that’s what you want?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

The woman picked up the resume, and she read it with a fresh sense of discernment. She bit her lip.  

“You’re an artist?” she said.

Mae thought of the clumsy oil paintings lining her little space in the studio at school. The two years of AP art classes that had brought her no recognition. She nodded. 

“Can I see?”

Mae brought up on her phone the only two pictures she thought were presentable. One was a rustic scene, a woman in an alfalfa field. Another was an aviary, an etude of tropical birds on rhododendron trees. 

The woman stared through the paintings, lost in thought. “If you are willing,” she said. “I can help you.”

+

The following night, Mae stood in front of her bathroom mirror, which was actually three mirrors spread over the doors of a medicine cabinet. Her torso reflected back piecemeal, as if a person can divide herself so easily. She had taken implements from the studio at school, mostly from the pottery cabinet—calipers, needles, sgraffito tools, a well-worn sponge. What she held now was the scalpel. Her grip was resolute. Mae’s idea was to record the whole thing, and she had trained her phone from the vantage of a tripod. She did not know if she should be brave or wincing. She did not know if people preferred a hero or a victim. She considered her options. A finger or a toe would be quite easy, if ease was measured by the clarity of a task and the limits of its consequences. A knee could be interesting, as well as an elbow. She considered her shoulder, which she had always secretly admired, with its smooth skin, its timeless curvature. She ended up choosing what she had known she would choose: a small rectangle cut from her left side. She had dreamed it the previous night, and even as she fingered it in front of the mirror, it seemed ghostly, barren of sensation. Already made a gift. 

Of course it hurt. She cried, despite her valiant intentions. But what we must not underestimate about Mae is her sense of a vanishing horizon. Something that could only ever be reached by jettisoning all but the most essential parts.. 

+

Mae did not show the woman the thing itself, only the video. The woman watched without comment, and she gave Mae an odd stare when it was done. It said, I’m sorry for this thing I suggested you do, though it may bring you ultimate happiness. It said, I’m sorry that happiness is a naïve mirage, and it might even bring more misery than you carry now. It said, If you had opted for a finger, sacrificing not only flesh but the function and beauty of your body, you would have done yourself a greater service. The woman handed Mae a bill, which was not insubstantial, and which Mae paid in cash. 

+

When Mae received the letter that spring, the pollen so thick on the air that Mae stayed up nights sneezing, she returned to the woman. The woman read it with a frown. “Wait-listed,” she said. 

“Keep reading,” Mae said.

The letter said that the admissions committee found her application compelling, particularly her art supplement, which spoke highly of her resolve, aesthetic sensibility, and demonstration of interest. The letter implied that, at a lesser school, it would have been more than enough to get in. It even went so far as to say there was a real hope for Mae, though it made no promises. It did not return the little rectangle of flesh that Mae had removed from her abdomen. 

“It could be better,” the woman said. 

“It could be worse,” Mae said. 

+

There was a list that determined those who would wait, and all spring, wait Mae did. Every waking hour was waiting. Brushing her teeth, drifting between classes, watching game shows in the evening. It was all patient, hopeful waiting. She waited for the postman to walk by her home. He dropped his parcel of mail in the box: nothing for her. Even in her dreams she waited, although in those she sat in an emergency room, the sore in her side weeping a saline mixture. She received another letter. It said that they had admitted some more, and they had told others that their wait had been futile. It said that Mae was in neither camp and that her chance was strong, though not yet guaranteed. It was signed with the name of a dean, and at the bottom of the envelope nestled a lock of dark hair flecked with gray. Mae put a ribbon around it and kept it under her pillow at night. 

+

When Mae was finally accepted, she returned to the woman’s house. The woman no longer lived there, having died some years prior, and when Mae knocked, a young mother opened the door. Mae did not know this woman, but she wanted to celebrate her success with someone. “Look,” she said, brandishing the note. 

The letter began by apologizing, a long-winded, sentimental screed that made many excuses. It chastised itself for not appreciating talent at first glance, though it hinted that it had learned the error of its ways. The thought of Mae and her abdomen had grown ever-more present. The letter in places was tear stained and crumpled, with sentences crossed out and recrossed out. Mae loved these the most—the errata that she herself never would have made. She had accomplished much in the intervening years, and her many obligations foreclosed the possibility of attending in the fall. But she framed the letter, which her parents would visit often in admiration. And though the scar on her side had faded with the years, she thought back approvingly on her choice. Now, when she gazed in the mirror, the scar seemed like an appendage in its own right. Perhaps not some flappy, inherited thing, but an amendment signed in her own hand. One that she could never, and would never, excise. 

+++

Robbie Herbst is a writer and violinist based in Chicago. His work has been published at Gulf Coast, CRAFT, RHINO Poetry, and other publications. He is a member of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, and he enjoys the company of his dog, Reba, who is a very good girl. You can read more fiction at robbieherbst.com.