Tiny Imperfections

by Alli Frank, Asha Youmans

Genres: Family Life; Women's Fiction; Contemporary Romance; General Fiction

Synopsis

The Devil Wears Prada meets Class Mom in this delicious novel of love, money, and misbehaving parents.

One of The Daily Skimm’s Reads Pick for May 2020

One of Good Housekeeping's 20 Best New Fiction Books of 2020

Good Morning America Mother's Day in Quarantine Books to Buy

One of New York Post’s Best Books of the Week in May 2020

PopSugar's Most Exciting Books for May 2020

One of SheReads' Most Anticipated Books of 2020

"Delightful.... Hilarious, cringe-worthy, and all too relevant. I ate this book up like a box of candy; you will too." (Tara Conklin, author of The Last Romantics)

All's fair in love and kindergarten admissions.

At 39, Josie Bordelon's modeling career as the "it" black beauty of the '90s is far behind her. Now director of admissions at San Francisco's most sought after private school, she's chic, single, and determined to keep her 17-year-old daughter, Etta, from making the same mistakes she did.

But Etta has plans of her own—and their beloved matriarch, Aunt Viv, has Etta's back. If only Josie could manage Etta's future as well as she manages the shenanigans of the over-anxious, over-eager parents at school—or her best friend's attempts to coax Josie out of her sex sabbatical and back onto the dating scene.

As admissions season heats up, Josie discovers that when it comes to matters of the heart—and the office—the biggest surprises lie closest to home.

Release date: May 5, 2020

Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons

Print pages: 320

Sample

One

 

From: Meredith Lawton

 

Date: September 24, 2018

 

Subject: Introduction to our son, Harrison Rutherford Lawton

 

To: Josephine Bordelon

 

Dear Josephine,

 

I'm Meredith Lawton, close friend of Beatrice Pembrook, who I'm sure you know is a past board chair of Fairchild Country Day School and fourth generation Fairchild alum. It was so good of Beatrice to honor her parents, Ginger and Alfred, after their untimely death by building the school a state-of-the-art black box theatre and a rooftop Olympic swimming pool. Beatrice is such a gem and she should be reaching out to you shortly on behalf of our son, Harrison.

 

I know admissions season just opened, but last spring we worked on our essays with a Stanford writing coach and have spent the summer perfecting them with our editor from Golden Gate Books so we may be the first to submit our application on the WeeScholars website. I would particularly like to draw your attention to paragraph #4

of essay question #5. I believe it to be a wonderful representation of how worldly and culturally competent Harrison already is at four years, ten months:

 

"At almost five years of age Harrison has glamped in huts in the Indian Himalayas, cruised down the Mekong in Laos, ridden on a Sherpa's shoulders to Paro Taktsang (the Tiger's Nest Monastery) in Bhutan, been recognized as a reincarnated lama in Nepal, and fed exotic fish all over the world from Mexico to the Great Barrier Reef (thank goodness Harrison got to experience THE REEF before it died completely from environmental hazard-terrible tragedy)."

 

We will be seeing a lot of each other this year and I

look forward to meeting you on our school tour in the beginning of October. If there is anything you would like to learn about Harrison and our family beforehand please do not hesitate to e-mail or call (just not before 10:30 a.m. as I am most likely in yoga, Barry's Boot Camp, or at my weekly cryotherapy appointment).

 

With much gratitude,

 

Meredith Lawton

 

P.S. I couldn't resist sending this adorable picture of Harrison celebrating Chinese New Year in Shanghai. Christopher had to be there for work so OF COURSE we brought Harrison along; one is never too young to be exposed to Mandarin!

 

I finish reading globe-trotting-mom's e-mail, shift my weight onto one leg at my standing desk-an ergonomic no-no-and look up to a God I'm not 100 percent sure exists because if She did, She certainly wouldn't let people like Meredith Lawton procreate. Or do yoga. Nothing worse than a karmic salutation that screams, I've found mind body bliss and I'm now superior to you in this life and in the next.

 

"Tiger moms are so 2011," I say to a silent, still-empty school campus, except for my own seventeen-year-old daughter, Etta, stretching her enviably smooth mocha, I-can-eat-Slim-Jims-and-Flamin'-Hot-Cheetos-for-lunch, ballerina body on the other side of my office. She doesn't bother to acknowledge my deeply profound thought, her sound-canceling headphones to blame.

 

PRIVATE SCHOOL ADMISSIONS ARE NOW OPEN. Subtext: Let the freaking out, sucking up, buying in, overstating, underlistening, overselling, calling in of favors, pushing boundaries, and, in general, appalling parental antics begin. There should be a torch I light every Monday after Labor Day that stays lit until March 15-since urban private school admissions really are the Olympics of parenting. Instead, I've created a tasteful banner at the top of the Fairchild Country Day School website announcing: NOW ACCEPTING APPLICATIONS. With a single click on the link, parents are invited to learn more about Fairchild admissions and embrace the truth that their upcoming year will be lost to an abyss of essays, interviews, veiled dinner party conversation, stressful pillow talk, and heavy self-medication, all in the name of kindergarten.

 

Let's call private school admissions what it is, an obsession for all those families who desperately want a spot on the private school crazy train. In San Francisco, it's a bit different than the famed stories of cutthroat manipulation and desperation that define the Upper East Side of New York City. Don't get me wrong, San Francisco has its overabundance of the rich and anxious, too, but here they're well concealed behind a dirty SUV with a surfboard on top, HOKA running shoes, retro T-shirts, ripped jeans, flip-flops, and a shitload of stock options. The more Bay Area parents feign "It's all good, everything will work out," my stats show what a higher pain-in-the-ass quotient they are.

 

I actually welcome the occasional New York transplant family who comes into parent interviews owning their perceived superiority in head-to-toe Prada and gray banker suits attempting to establish their dominance through the traditional where they went to school, what they do, and where they work (usually someplace with three last names) introduction. With upfront elitism you immediately know with whom you're dealing and where you stand. When elitism hides behind a white ribbed tank top, aviator sunglasses, and a messy bun it's much more difficult to figure out from where an ambush may come. That's why you can't be fooled by the San Francisco mom in her 24/7 painted-on yoga pants who looks like your best friend or the 100 percent organic lady right out of Goop's weekly online newsletter. Sometimes she's as sweet and detoxed as she looks, but just as often behind that barre-class bod is a momster so determined to get her child into the best school she would toss you off the Golden Gate Bridge while sipping her green juice if she thought your kid was in direct kindergarten competition with hers.

 

Over the years I've learned the cultural subtlety of West Coast admissions. The first lesson came early in my career when my baby, Etta, was in first grade at Fairchild and I was in my second year as an admissions assistant. I made my first and only mistake of slipping from business English into what Aunt Viv calls "home speak" and getting a little too chummy with an applicant mom who was sweatin' it because her son was channeling mini-Mussolini meets Donald Trump during his kindergarten visit.

 

"I know how you feel, Charlotte, I'm a mama, too, and sometimes our babies can bring us to our knees." I gave her a big smile in motherly solidarity, but thinking back on it I probably showed too much tooth as this hundred-pound Barbie popped back, "Why you shore is, honey!" and patted my forearm to seal our new "sistahood." Since that moment, I've had to endure Charlotte's ridiculous banter as her son has moved through the grades at Fairchild and her warped sense of our friendship has grown. Luckily, I'm a quick study and I've never slipped into anything resembling black speak again without being related to my audience. Well, except for Lola. I also never told my aunt Viv about my early career slip. She would have skinned me alive.

 

"Can we go yet? I'll freak if I'm late," Etta yells, to hear herself above her headphones as she rolls her upper torso up from the hideous, stained maroon industrial carpet, her legs split east to west. My office is budgeted for a remodel next year.

 

I glance at Etta over the top of my computer. After seventeen years it still shocks me that I birthed a child who goes apoplectic if she's not ten minutes early to everything. I didn't even notice when my period was six weeks late eighteen years ago. Time and I have a very loose relationship. "Two Josie minutes," I yell back, holding up a peace sign. Etta's trained to know that means "ten real-time minutes."

 

From: Josephine Bordelon-

[email protected]

 

Date: September 24, 2018

 

Cc:

 

Bcc:

 

Subject: RE: Introduction to our son, Harrison Rutherford Lawton

 

To: Meredith Lawton

 

CONGRATULATIONS, Meredith! You indeed were the first family to submit your application for this coming fall with a post time of twenty-eight seconds after the WeeScholars common application website opened. Our 110-year-old bylaws state that ruthless competitiveness, punctuality, and lama reincarnation are three of the four criteria to qualify Harrison for the golden ticket (YAY! Envision

24K gold confetti raining down, the confetti being compostable, of course), which means he's automatically accepted into the Fairchild Country Day School class of 20-and-who-fucking-cares. No need to tour, attend an open house, or show up for the admissions visit date and parent interview. In fact, you don't even have to wait until March 15 to find out Harrison's elementary school fate like all the other die-hard parents out there.

 

Fairchild has been waiting years for a family as touched by perfection as yours to attend our school. Please let me know how I can best serve what I can only imagine will be endless, relentless needs and wants every step of Harrison's educational path.

 

With complete ambivalence that you know Beatrice,

 

Josie Bordelon

 

Director of Admissions

Fairchild Country Day School

 

"I've never worked in a school, but I'm pretty sure you'll get fired if you swear in a work e-mail." I didn't even notice Etta hop off the carpet to come snoop over my shoulder. "And you should have a comma after . . ."

 

DE-LEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-TE.

 

Grammar show-off.

 

Etta certainly did not get her punctuality from me, but her sarcasm-100 percent Bordelon.

 

As director of admissions this has become my free therapy to keep all the over-the-top parents from chipping away at my sanity. I say my piece and I erase. Then I move on.

 

"I'm having a hard time rallying for the ridiculousness of the entitled this year. I just want to find some old-school families who parent like it's 1986: roof, food, clothes, water, manners, and if you don't get good grades your ass will get whooped 'cause you gotta earn your keep. I'm looking for black-to-basics parenting." That's my knee-jerk reaction. When I grow weary of the rich, I fall back on my Nawlins Ninth Ward background. Or really Aunt Viv's, since I can only kinda claim my Southern black Baptist roots.

 

"You're not helping the cause with that e-mail." Etta points to my now-empty screen.

 

"Yeah, I know, but sometimes it feels good to type the conversation that's going on in my head instead of official director of admissions missives. If only once I could push send on my real thoughts, maybe I could save a privileged child from a life of indulgence and complete cluelessness about the other 99.9 percent of the world. It could be my own act of social justice-to help a rich kid lead a normal life. It's got potential, don't you think?"

 

"Nope, not at all."

 

"I'd give my firstborn for the chance to point out to one parent, any parent, when they're in the early stages of ruining their child."

 

"I'm your firstborn."

 

"Right, and if I give you away before next August someone else can pay your college tuition." I blow Etta a kiss with a wink. She knows I'd never abandon her; we'd be lost without each other.

 

"Tell me again why you work in a school? Seems to me at forty you should like what you do. Especially since I'll be gone next year and the only reason you'll have to come to Fairchild is to work hard and watch Headmistress Gooding take all the credit." Etta raises her eyebrows at me.

 

"Clearly I work here for the fame, money, close relationship with my boss, and, of course, the lice. And because I'll still have to feed you in college-it's called a meal plan. And I do like what I do, sort of, mostly, kind of." Etta turns and pretends to barf in my wastebasket. "And I'm not forty."

 

"Yet."

 

Daughters are the worst.

 

With one Josie minute to spare to get Etta to ballet, I chop out the e-mail that will allow me to pay the bills and keep my kid in leotards.

 

From: Josephine Bordelon-

[email protected]

 

Date: September 24, 2018

 

Cc:

 

Bcc:

 

Subject: RE: Introduction to our son, Harrison Rutherford Lawton

 

To: Meredith Lawton

 

Dear Meredith,

 

Thank you so much for applying your son, Harrison, to Fairchild Country Day School. We look forward to seeing your family at the first tour.

 

Warm regards,

 

Josie Bordelon

 

Director of Admissions

Fairchild Country Day School

 

Send.

 

"Good job playing nice, Mama. Now, come oooooon, we gotta go. I'm begging you, don't make me late," Etta stresses, stuffing her headphones in her dance bag, her booty in my face. I know that booty and those endless legs. That was my body eighteen years and twenty pounds ago, strutting down the runway in Tokyo in nothing but a thong, pasties, and an open Jean Paul Gaultier kimono with Japanese characters hand painted on the back. If I had known then what I would know a few short weeks later when I couldn't button my jeans, the characters on that kimono should have read baby on board.

 

"Mama, just send me to ballet in a Lyft. You know how you are the minute admissions opens up-it's like a car crash, you can't stop rubbernecking, or, for you, reading e-mail." Etta huffs at me, a side effect of being artsy and a teenager. I toss her the car keys only because she's not entirely wrong; I do completely lose myself during admissions season.

 

"I don't have my license yet." Etta says as she deftly snatches my keys out of the air.

 

"What are all those classes I've been paying for the last three months?"

 

"Driver's Ed. And it doesn't end until next month. Then I take my driving test."

 

"Well, I'm not paying for a Lyft when I have a perfectly good car, and I still have the handicap placard from when I sprained my ankle, so drive carefully and park for free. Just don't get caught and text me when you get there." I'm not sweating Etta driving, but I still want to know she's arrived in one piece.

 

"You're a terrible parent," Etta reprimands, turning to head out of my office. For an on-time ride she's willing to turn a blind eye to the law and drive, but I know she won't use the parking placard; that's playing outside her moral boundaries.

 

"Nope, I'm just black-to-basics."

 

 

I start working on kindergarten tour and visit dates for the school year, even as I repeatedly check for a text from Etta. My phone finally pings, stopping me from wondering if I should call the San Francisco County missing persons hotline.

 

Of course she made it.

 

I turn back to my computer. Even after thirteen years of kindergarten tours and visits I still find myself eager to show off Fairchild to potential families. The ohhhs and ahhhs from moms, dads, and grandparents remind me of how lucky I felt when I was a student at Fairchild.