"Thank you," Mrs. Forestal said as she straightened and looked at the story—her daughter's—in her hands. The title was "Good Night."
Fathers
Mr. Dell did not understand what Dr. Byron had said except that it meant Astra would be off-limits to him; the radioactive rod to be sewn in her arm meant even to approach his daughter was dangerous. The nurses would attend to her masked. A rare cancer. Rare. Rare meant fatal, didn't it?
Mr. Dell missed his wife, and he resented the passing of time that took her further away from him. He wanted to look behind him and see her sitting on the edge of her chair but in no hurry to get up. Grace asking questions or telling little stories about her day. Walking tours, book clubs, social book clubs and church book clubs, Grace belonged, enrolled, was always a student. The way Grace laughed when she lifted off the pot lid and scared the cat with steam. "Serves you right!" Grace. To think of all the ways he missed her. The light adjustments she would make to his collar, his scarf, his tie, her hand's appraising caress as though she were attending to herself. The gift of this daughter, their only; after childless years, years of christenings and birthdays and the paper weight of someone else's child in his arms, the arrival of Astra did not surprise Grace. She simply took it as timely, a timely birth, but a birth she had nonetheless always expected. Her attitude was: We are graceful, handsome, philanthropic people of some small means, the Dells, and of course to us would come such a daughter.
Tomorrow that daughter would be off-limits. He could stand at Astra's door in a paper costume; he could look in; he could speak, but what could he say? Such suffering as hers could not be distracted except with drugs. Drugs on top of drugs. Wasn't his daughter too slight to withstand them? Morphine. Wouldn't it kill her?
Mr. Dell was a tall man with a kind face and little imagination, or so he looked to himself in the mirror of the window in his daughter's room. Most everyone he knew sometime got around to telling him that he was handsome, but he didn't see it. His eyebrows were too thick. And his interests? They were simple. He loved dogs and making breakfasts on Sundays. He rode horses. All of the Dells rode horses when they were on their farm in Virginia. They rode in Montana, too, and skied in Utah. Grace's legacy—a love of literature and decorative arts—was already in place in this girl of theirs. A lot of what he knew about art he knew from his wife; from his daughter he knew about modern dance. Last spring he had watched Astra alone onstage. He had seen her breastless dancer's body leap. She wore a tulle skirt in one dance, and in another she played in farmer's jeans. Whatever she wore, there was no way to hide her beauty. This was a fact he heard in the murmurs beside him. The point of her foot when extended, her ease and her arch and her surety, the prop of her red hair—a torch, a veil, a rag, a whip—contrastive accessories to the serenity of her wide-apart, beautiful face. By her bedside, befogged with so much feeling, unable to speak except to say good night, to pet what tomorrow he could not touch. He said, "Mommy is here," and then, because Grace would have liked it, they prayed, Astra and her father. He got up from his knees, a tall man, looking down at his daughter. "I'll be back in the morning," he said. "I can stand at the door. We'll sign to each other."
To see the girls moving broadly down the avenue laughing was to see girls in love, or that was what Wendell Bliss (father to the handsome Will) thought walking on the other side of Park with Marion's dog, Peanut. The girls looked familiar in their black short coats, black jeans, tottering boots. Where were they off to? Where were they all, the girls, all those girls Wendell Bliss had seen with his son at their apartment? Abundant hair and skinny feet. Where were they? And the girls he hadn't met who stayed at home on Saturdays. Were they baking cookies? That is what girls at home used to do, but this was New York. In New York a lot of girls found their way into his son's room. Marion Bliss asked that Will's door be kept open, but the door to his son's room was often shut. Home from boarding school, Will often squeaked past his parents' bedroom door in the predawn blue, and Will was not alone. Wendell Bliss never told his wife. He might tell her now if she were here or tell her how surprised he was to be old, but Marion was not here; she was still with her mother in Florida. She was in Florida and Will was on his way to Florida and he would follow without Peanut. ("Marion, the dog will upset your mother.") Marion's mother. This would surely be the last Thanksgiving in Palm Beach. Marion's mother had cancer. Cancer. Cancer everywhere you looked. Poor little girl, the one his son knew, the one in the play. There wasn't any question where that girl was tonight so close to Thanksgiving.
Marlene
Marlene Kovack was in Miss F's math class and going over the last test. Marlene had failed. Was she then a dummy? (Well, maybe in math.) But was she the dumbest in the dummy class? Was Marlene really a C student, or was she a C because of a ripe, damp quality she had? The pocket of skin beneath her eyes, a kind of blister, was discolored and sweaty as if the school air were tropical, and she, overheated from the exertion of changing classrooms and doodling in class. Marlene might not be a C if she were pretty and thin. She wouldn't be a C if she paid attention, surely, but Marlene stood up and walked out of Miss F's class—Marlene never asked permission but took advantage of her teacher's size and wore a certain malevolent expression she knew was a threat—and she dawdled in the hall. By the time Marlene returned, the problem was solved; the class was nearly over.
Now Marlene was lingering near the college office again, yawning in the face of yet another free and knocking around the hallway, showing herself to Mrs. Quirk. She asked the college counselor, "Mrs. Quirk, do you know who I am?"
Mrs. Quirk, a tall woman, tailored pants, pretended indignation. "Of course, I do," she said. "Aren't you..." and she laughed. "I'm kidding, Marlene."
Lisa Van de Ven went into Mrs. Quirk's office. Marlene had noticed Lisa was often stopping by Mrs. Quirk's office. Probably no teacher, Marlene thought, really knew who Lisa was, but Marlene did. She knew Lisa was not the nice girl she played at being with the teachers. Does Marlene own a brush, or did she forget how to wash her hair? Marlene remembered the Lisa Van de Ven of eighth grade, and that Lisa had not really changed.
Does she own a brush?
She always copies us.
Let's not befriends with her anymore.
She's overweight now. Sucks for her.
There's always one girl in your class that you hate.
Alex and Suki
"It's not as if we're the only ones," Suki said, but Mrs. Dembroski passed over this remark and wanted to know instead how Alex and Suki, both of whom lived within walking distance of the school, how they could be late for English, senior English, in this most important semester. An unexcused absence was a zero for the day in Mr. O'Brien's class, wasn't it? Didn't they know that?
"We know. We know, we know, we know. We're sorry. We're stressed. We can't keep up. Mr. O'Brien assigns so much. He expects us to remember everything."
"Okay. For now, it's just detention. Admissions needs help. After school on Friday, you can stuff envelopes."
The sound that whistled out of Alex as she left Mrs. Dembroski's office conveyed all her feelings, but did Dembroski really think stuffing envelopes was going to keep her from cutting O'Brien's first-period Monday class?
"I will never get into Brown," Suki said.
"You make me sick. There are practically buildings named after you there."
Siddons
Anna Mazur said, "Oh, to lose all that beautiful hair!" Anna's own sparse colorless hair sparked when she so much as touched it.
"Hair grows back," Miss Hodd said.
"Not that color," Anna Mazur said.
Miss Hodd said, "I let the nines write after morning meeting today. Nobody wanted to do grammar. Listen to what Camilla Berkey wrote: 'Helplessness scrubs us all clean of any hope we had of doing something, but the doctors are still dirty. They must not be touched with the sponge. No, they must not.'"
Mothers
Mr. Dell, who was not at the coffee, was mentioned by Mrs. Van de Ven as r
eading to his daughter. They had just started Mansfield Park.
And how did Mrs. Van de Ven know this? Mrs. Morton wondered.
"I asked," Mrs. Van de Ven replied.
The gathered fluttered and some of the mothers looked sad, but Mrs. Morton said, "That's Fanny Price, isn't it? It's a most unfortunate name." Mrs. Morton's deep, druggy, slow voice made several of the mothers laugh. The sound of Mrs. Morton was funny, as was the fact of how rich she was and well-read.
Mrs. Cohen took Mrs. Van de Ven aside and spoke softly, " Think of it this way: When Nanda Morton wakes up each morning, she has made more money than most of us will make in a year." Mrs. Cohen said, "And you know what that means, don't you?"
"I know what that means," Mrs. Van de Ven said. "It means Suki Morton is going to Brown."
"Oh please!" said loudly and in exasperation from another part of the room.
Theta Kovack had heard it all before and had juggled to come in late to work for this acidic coffee and reckless talk.
"Look at them, a class of forty girls," said Mrs. Quirk, the college adviser, "and all of them will find a college. The job is to make the right fit." Mrs. Quirk said it was important to encourage daughters to finish their essays before Christmas break!
Mrs. Saperstein and Mrs. Song wore wise, relieved expressions as their daughters had applied for early admission. These mothers didn't have to worry about essays anymore. "Thank god!" was what they said.
That poor Astra Dell. She was losing all that hair now, wasn't she? How, Theta Kovack wondered, had Astra Dell entered the conversation happening just behind her; but the girl had, thanks to Mrs. Van de Ven, who seemed absorbed by the subjects of Astra Dell and the girls making themselves sick at Norris-Willet.
CHF
Car pushed and smoothed and rearranged the food; she made patterns.
"Look, Carlotta, if you're not going to eat it—" Mrs. Forestal began, but all the air she had to argue with hissed out of her, and she sat quietly, seeming very small and vacant at the other end of the table.
Mothers
What were other people drinking over the Thanksgiving weekend? Miss Wilkes was drinking amber ale, and Lisa Van de Ven took a sip. ("I shouldn't but how else can I get inspired to write my essay?") Alex and Suki were drinking skim-milk lattes. Mrs. Van de Ven ordered pinot grigio for lunch with Mr. Dell. "He looks so thin!" she told her husband at the Post House for dinner. She explained that the doctor was willing to take a risk, "a combination of surgery, internal radiation, external radiation, a couple of chemo...," but Mr. Van de Ven cut her off. They were eating, for heaven's sake, weren't they? "You may be," she said, "but I am drinking."
At the senior parents coffee, Mrs. Van de Ven said she was becoming an alcoholic!
The senior parents coffee had been very well attended. The college adviser, Mrs. Quirk, was at the coffee to answer any last questions about applications and what parents might expect for the next few months. Although the questions and advice seemed much the same as those of two weeks before, the mothers attended to what sounded rewound and repeated. Car Forestal's name did not come up. (It never did!) A number of mothers could have told stories about Carlotta Forestal or about other girls from different schools, but only Mrs. Cohen recounted to the group whatever horror she had heard was happening at St. Catherine's and Norris-Willet, and again several mothers bemoaned their helplessness.
A Daughter
Lisa Van de Ven sat in the kitchen in the best chair. "What the hell is this?"
"I don't know," her mother said. "Leave it if you want. I don't care."
"Oh, Mother."
"'Oh, Mother' what?"
"I know what you're thinking."
"Do you?"
"I do."
"I wonder."
Unattached
Anna Mazur came to the disappointed part of the Tim Weeks story and said, "I'm not pretty, Mother."
Her mother was silent on the phone.
"We're more like brother and sister than anything else." Anna sighed and asked her mother, "What do you think?"
Her mother thought that only baked or handmade gifts should be exchanged between staff and students at Christmas.
Anna said, "That's the rule, but people break it all the time."
" That's right," her mother said. "You got that ugly scarf last year."
"Yes, Mother. That ugly scarf from Hermès."
"It had stirrups all over it."
Anna said, "I don't know what to think about Tim."
"I'll tell you what," her mother said. "Don't think about him."
Siddons
The news on December 15 was bad—Astra still off-limits; and good—early admits to Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, and Trinity, all confirmed. Four girls were in college! School was over for them.
Kitty Johnson, who was waiting to confer with Mrs. Quirk about colleges, said to Car, "If you thought Sarah Saperstein was insufferable before Harvard, imagine what she'll be like now."
"Ny Song, too."
Kitty lowered her voice to confide in Car the decision she had made to avoid her adviser's elective. "I'm not taking O'Brien's course."
"Good idea."
"I'm taking Hodd's Families in Distress," Kitty said.
Miss Hodd, in another classroom, slid her battered Warriner's to the corner of her desk and launched herself into the middle of the classroom in her castered chair, one leg up on the seat, chin on her knee, all the better to listen to how the seniors in her English class felt about the news that Astra Dell was sicker.
"A whole group of crying juniors passed me in the hall. They didn't even look like the kind of people who would be her friends."
"They weren't Astra Dell's friends."
"A lot of people aren't really crying for her; they're putting on an act."
Marlene
Marlene's head was at a whistling boil when she waved good-bye from behind the window to Astra's room—and Marlene was wearing paper shoes, cap, and gown—so what did the nurses wear? she wondered. Someone had to go into that room. Marlene waved good-bye, mouthed, "Merry Christmas," then shuffled away in those paper shoes, relieved to be well and leaving the sleepy, balding creature in a pom-pom hat Kitty Johnson had knit the sick girl when it went out at school that Astra was losing her hair. First lines to college essays occurred to Marlene: "Walking along the hospital corridor to see my sick friend was an unsettling experience." Possible, but there was her dad essay, the one she had started: "My father looked me in the eyes and asked, 'Are you ready?' 'No,' I replied, and he pushed me overboard, and I sank deeper and deeper into a cold, enchanted realm." Her father had pushed her into China Lakes, but Marlene had always wanted to go scuba diving, and who was to say she had not?
Siddons
Five of the graduates from the class of '96, home from college, came to see the last day of school and the Christmas spectacle when 536 girls from grades k through twelve gathered in the auditorium, the seats retracted for the occasion, and in the middle of the room, the fake Christmas tree with its paper-chain decoration. The fifth, sixth, and seventh graders gathered in the balcony with their teachers while the other grades filed in: big sisters and little sisters, starting with the seniors and their kindergarten charges, hand in hand, an endless coil of girls wearing red and green accessories, candy-cane tights, and tinsel in their hair—"I'm one big present, just for you!" Gillian Warring mouthed to Mr. Weeks in the balcony. Around and around, the elevens with the first grade, the tens with the second, on and on, the students came while most of their teachers sat on the stage of the auditorium. A few of the old favorite Christmas and Hanukkah songs to begin—"You would surely say it glows, like a lightbulb!"—and then Miss Brigham in a Santa's hat, front and center on the stage, read from The Polar Express. Then some more songs until everyone's favorite moment: "The Twelve Days of Christmas," when the first grade began, "On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me," and the kindergarten girls, no bigger than feathers, were held up by their seni
or sisters to squeak, "Fa la lah." The dreaded moment, of course, was "Five golden rings," when the fifth-grade girls leaned over the balcony with their wagging hands outstretched and shrilly pitched the song. The sixth and seventh graders tried to outshout each other, and the teachers, predictably, frowned, but "Five golden rings!" always put the song on high, and there it stayed with some slight mumbled diminishment in the upper grades as the ninth grade mimed nine maids a-milking until, the moment anticipated, and the seniors stood, some of them already crying, and began their own Christmas medley—playful digs at teachers and Quirk, of course, and college horrors. The girls were often off tune and uncertain of the lyrics so recently composed. "Jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle bell rock, you might just think our essay's a crock..."
January
CHF
What could she write to Astra in the moment that would not be wrong?
Dear A,
Maybe you feel like it has been a waste to have spent your life practicing for what turns out to be nothing. But you are lucky in some ways because you will know what it is like to die, and the rest of us will spend our lives wondering. I know that this isn't comforting at all, but I'm sure you'll be getting enough of that from others, and soon it will stop meaning anything. So I want to talk to you about your dying. I know you have envisioned your own funeral before. People missing you. People make the most impact on the lives of others by being absent.
Car had faltered over other letters, but this one she sent.
All Souls Page 5
