All Souls Read online

  "I'm growing more disappointed every day," Lisa said.

  "And why is that?"

  "I am sure Suki Morton does not have the grades or the numbers, but she will get into Brown. She's not very smart, but she has a lot, a lot of money. So there's one reason to be bummed."

  "Any other?"

  Lisa had to pause over this question. "Health. Health guarantees. I expect to stay healthy because I eat cautiously, and I exercise and I don't smoke—well, now and then I have a puff—but then I look at Astra Dell, who has led a pure existence, and she is sick." Lisa said, "She's been a vegetarian for three years!"

  Miss Wilkes rose abruptly and said, "I'll be back." In the bathroom she ran cold water over her wrists. Her face in the mirror seemed to waver, and she did not want to go back to the booth. Not because of you: What had Lisa Van de Ven meant by that remark? They had been spending a part of every school day together, but this was the first time they had ever gone anywhere together outside of school. She did not want to open her mouth—too many teeth—but she did when she saw Lisa smiling at her return. Miss Wilkes had never perfected a closed-mouth kind of smile; besides, she was too big a woman for that. "We should get the check," Miss Wilkes said, and she gestured to the waiter.

  "I'm all right," Miss Wilkes said. "Don't worry. Hospitals upset me."

  "Yes."

  "No," she said, and she put her hand over Lisa's to stop her from sliding over money. Her hand over Lisa's looked large, and she kept the girl's hand under. Was the girl embarrassed? The salt and pepper, the cup of sugars, the poster, the booth—what else was there to look at? She looked at her hand over Lisa's, and Lisa, she saw, looked at her, and the girl made no effort to turn away, and so this was how it demonstratively started, although Miss Wilkes was not sure she wanted it started. She should never have suggested they visit Astra together, should never have prolonged the afternoon. But here they were in the coffee shop without words—of course!—with a gesture, followed by another, a caressing thumb. Her large, chewed-up thumb over Lisa's smaller, chewed-up thumb. "You're wearing polish," Miss Wilkes said.

  "My mother says it looks cheap."

  "I don't know about that."

  "It does," the girl said, "but I like it."

  The salt and pepper, the poster again—what else was there to look at? Now Miss Wilkes was embarrassed or more embarrassed than when they had begun this, for this was a beginning for them. This was what happened at beginnings. Tentative, self-conscious, clumsy, clumsily affectionate starts. I, I, I, the stuttered confessions. She might say, I'm not very good with words, but Lisa was lifting her hand out from under, she was squeezing the older woman's hand, she was laughing a little and patting Miss Wilkes's hand, saying, "What big teeth you have, Grandma," saying, "Let's go, it's late, you can walk me home," saying, "Don't be disingenuous, Janet. You knew I was a take-charge person."

  Miss Wilkes—Janet Wilkes—was at least ten years older than Lisa Van de Ven, but in this moment she felt as if she were the student.

  Mothers

  Car Forestal's name did not come up at the senior parents coffee, although Astra's did. A number of mothers could have told stories about girls from other schools, but only Mrs. Cohen recounted to the group what she had heard was happening at St. Catherine's and Norris-Willet. "The pipes are rusty from girls being sick." Several mothers bemoaned their helplessness. The college counselor said it wasn't happening at Siddons.

  "It—what isn't happening?" Mrs. Van de Ven asked, and Mrs. Cohen explained the acidic effects of throwing up. Mrs. Cohen said, "You and I don't have to worry about that problem."

  "What does that mean?" Mrs. Van de Ven asked.

  Car Forestal was the unnamed girl Mrs. Van de Ven described as a latchkey kid. Some latchkey was what Mrs. Cohen thought. Latchkeys, more like it. The father had some three or four homes, didn't he? And just where was Mrs. Forestal now? Why wasn't she at the coffee?

  "Poor little rich girl."

  "Poor little poor girl."

  "Precocious."

  "Depressed."

  "Unwell."

  CHF

  Car Forestal lay on her bed smoking, swishing her feet, and feeling with the toes of one the smooth, polished toes of the other. No classes until after lunch, and she never went to school for lunch; except for advisory meetings with Dr. D, she never even sat in the lunchroom. The oily-gravy odors made her sick.

  Astra occurred to her and how weird it was that she, Car, who smoked and drank, was healthy while her best friend was sick. Good could be wrung from dwelling on Astra. Comparatives were meaningful.

  Now Car was sad, and she thought she should call her father. Astra he would understand. She would call him if she knew where he was.

  Marlene

  Marlene let her red pen trail to the center of the lined page to draw circle over circle over circle, petal, petal, stem. One flower, two, in smears of them, second-period math class. The old crowding in of the big terms: free will or fate. Underneath the gobby flowers, she drew an enormous, ornamental, biblical A. Astra Dell's dying: What did it mean to them all in this overheated room? Check-plus, best girl, A, Astra, Astra Dell. Marlene Kovack wrote Astra Dell in her notebook; she wrote over and over the letters to the sick girl's name; she fattened each into a cartoon.

  "Marlene?" Miss F scolded in questions. Death adrift, an odorless gas in the room, Marlene Kovack felt its woozy effects and was glad when the bell rang and she could leave off math and numbers.

  Out of school, she felt prettier—Marlene sat out recess and her next two frees in her apartment in the bathroom some twelve blocks away, and here she thought about Astra Dell again and Astra Dell's father and Astra Dell's mother, who was dead. When Marlene was ten, the only mother with a face had been her own mother, Theta Kovack, even then droopy, beaked, a slot for a mouth, and thin hair fluttered to balding—an embarrassment. Marlene saw her mother as she was, and Marlene had seen Mrs. Dell as she was, too. Mrs. Dell had given school tours. Right up to her violent end, Mrs. Dell was giving tours; she had stood just behind the visitors in the doorway to Miss Hodd's English class and smiled at her daughter. Marlene had seen Mrs. Dell's face—eyes, nose, mouth matched up in small perfection, very pretty. A softer Astra, orange hair not red. Why couldn't Mrs. Dell have been her mother? Traitorous thought.

  One day Astra Dell's enormous hair clip snapped off (that's how heavy Astra's hair was), and Marlene had found the hair clip and kept it. The clip was tortoise-shell and greasy from Marlene's rubbing it. She rubbed it now and looked under the ledge of the bathroom sink, junked up with soap and dismal.

  Siddons

  Impossible in the face of impossible, implausible, some of them imminent, defining decisions on the way: early apps. Early applications.

  "One thing you have to say about our class," the two Elizabeths said, "we don't talk college."

  "I leave that to my mother," Lisa said.

  None of the girls—save for Ufia, Saperstein, Song, and Elizabeth G., who were applying for early admission—wore college sweatshirts, but that didn't mean the rest of the class hadn't picked up shirts and caps from their own first-choice colleges and wore these souvenirs at home. Kitty Johnson hoped to go to Williams and wore purple scrunchies; Alex Decrow hoped to go to the Rhode Island School of Design; Suki Morton, Brown; Lisa Van de Ven, Brown; the other Elizabeth, Brown; Edie, Penn; Car, Harvard or Columbia—I'm allowed to have two favorites; and Astra? Where did Astra want to go to school?

  Marlene Kovack said ... didn't say really, mumbled.

  Alex and Suki

  "Bite me," Suki said.

  "I know," Alex said, and they shoved closer together on the red block, smoking, and talked about Astra Dell, how the day after her mother's funeral, Astra Dell had come back to school, and that was typical of Astra, wasn't it? "She's perfect."

  On this damp day, Alex and Suki saw so many mothers with and without babies passing the red block on their way to the expensive coffee shop with its sea-coast cottage in
terior. There they all were, the young women in oversize barn coats and tight pants and narrow sling-backs they wore sockless. Such were the signs of ease. Wrist-size ankles, bones, bones, blushed faces, woodsy hair. Pedigreed dogs, rare breeds. See the chocolate Sussex spaniel in his puddled leash outside the store? "Woof to you!" Suki said to the midmorning mothers, and Suki wiggled—she always did this in passing—she flitted a little ass in her rolled-up uniform skirt on her way back to school, recess over. In the hallways the worn-away mothers were giving parent tours.

  Siddons

  Miss F, after lunch, on the elevator, kept herself aloof in the corner to avoid any sudden moves of the dangerous seniors stooped by the weighty, sharp weaponry of books they carried on their backs. "Watch, watch," Miss F said, making her way out. Four from the class of '97. They seemed happy enough though her own students protested their despair. Unhappiness weighs more, of course, not that Miss F had known it. Now this, this wonderful girl, Astra Dell, was sick. For the class of '97, the year would be marked by this event and its outcome. Pray heaven, the girl lives.

  Alex and Suki

  Alex Decrow bought a box of cards and left one on quick Quirk's desk: a duck with the message, "You quack me up." Alex had drawn a line through the word Valentine and written above in bold caps QUIRK.

  "Alliteration. That ought to help your cause with our college counselor," Suki said.

  "I just want to get it straight with her who I am and where I want to go to college."

  Mothers

  Mrs. Van de Ven, whenever she gave a school tour, knew at least some of what was happening on that day. "And a lot happens," she explained to the couple as they stood in the lunchroom. Middle-school soccer, council, upper-school morning meeting, JV volleyball vs. Norris-Willet, varsity volleyball vs. Norris-Willet, Diversity Book Club. The Dance Concert was already in the making, and ahead were the spring musical, Gilbert and Sullivan, and the class-eight play with the Alford boys. Mrs. Van de Ven gave the couple copies of the Quill and Folio, the middle- and upper-school literary magazines. "Award winning," she said. Other publications included the school newspaper, the Siddons Observer, and the yearbook. Lots of clubs, a Rainbow Coalition—gender issues, Mrs. Van de Ven said, dropping gender issues into the soup of the tour as with a slotted spoon, carefully. Gospel Choir, Knitting Club, Save Tibet. Community service obliged girls to work outside the school at soup kitchens, hospitals, nursing homes, schools. Sixty hours needed to graduate. Mrs. Van de Ven said that yes, hard to believe, this was her last year as a Siddons parent. "Next year I'm a past parent. It makes me kind of sad. I feel as if I'm graduating myself, and in a way, I am."

  CHF

  The skipped lunch entitled Car to a Tasti D-Lite, and it wasn't too cold for a Tasti D-Lite, but it also meant that after the cone she would have to run the reservoir. Dinner was never really a problem. Her mother usually said okay to most of what Car did. Okay from her mother with a hurt expression. Last night, the night before, any night with her mother was dangerous. The way they sat, each at her end—a centerpiece, a mound of acid greens and champagne grapes, antiqued hydrangeas as from another century, was pushed back a little. "The better to see," her mother said, and her expression at the other end of the table was skeptical or indifferent. Her mother sat erect with her wrists against the edge of the table, hands prayered, nails red. No plate at her mother's place. Her mother wasn't hungry. Oh, all this about her mother! Car had forgotten her mission, and she walked back up the street again, passing classmates carrying frothy coffees. With Astra sick, Car was on her own. This was what it would feel like in France with her father in the spring: tromping in oversize boots through rooms that echoed.

  So another letter in her head started to Astra, another explanation, but then what? Talking, talking, talking about herself. Originality was hard to come by on Fifth Avenue, walking north, park side, under the dark overhang of trees in an odd and balmy patch of late October. Noon now, lunch now, and Car on a walk. What could she say to Astra in the moment that would not be wrong? How could she write to Astra about the clean out-of-doors and how rarely happy she was in it?

  Fathers

  As Dr. Byron had explained, Astra was still growing. The environment for the nasty cells was as nourishing as school. Dr. Byron had assured Mr. Dell that they could talk anytime. Where was Grace to take notes? Anaplastic high-grade fibrosarcoma, a rare connective tissue cancer: What was he to make of these words, he, a lawyer? "Fuck," he said, "Goddamned, mother fuck," and he went on cursing on the street. Mr. Dell was not a man to swear. He moved to hail a cab, then decided he would walk the forty blocks he had to home.

  Unattached

  Anna Mazur said the teachers' lounge smelled of the movies, and Tim Weeks agreed and asked did she want to take a walk? The day was blue; the trees were in a flap. Fall color, October.

  "Davidenja!" Tim Weeks said to one of the cleaning women as he and Anna Mazur passed an open door along the hall on their way out. Then Tim Weeks was smiling and looking only at her again, saying, "That's the only expression I know. I think it means 'good night.'"

  Tim Weeks smiled at her; nonetheless, Anna Mazur continued to talk about her brother. His cancer—also rare. "My mother put her hands on his face, and that was the beginning of the end," Anna Mazur said then, "Why am I talking like this on such a beautiful day?"

  Siddons

  Lisa stood to address them and said that Astra Dell was devoted to dance and was a senior and a survivor—Lisa was not—but that some of the other seniors in Dance Club, Kitty Johnson and Ufia Abiola, were survivors. They had known Astra from the beginning. Alex Decrow and Suki Morton were survivors, too, though they were outside at the red block, smoking. Edie Cohen, who came to Siddons in seventh grade, and Kitty and Ufia sat on the floor, arranging themselves into blown-out, solemn flowers, and sounded assent that something nicer than flowers should be sent. Something done but what?

  "I've got some ideas," Lisa said.

  I can't believe it: the chorus in the senior lounge, Dance Club members packing up for home. Some stories were told, and one in particular because it had happened to so many of them. Eighth grade, the Shakespeare play with the boys from Alford. Francesca Fratini was Helena—in heels, almost six feet tall, using Will Bliss as a shield—she was very funny, but Francesca was always funny.

  Will Bliss was another story. Talk about conceit.

  Will Bliss, eighth grade, even then a boy of lovely shape and wavy hair he wore behind his ears. Will Bliss! Preposterous name!

  "Everyone had a crush on him!"

  "Had?" Alex said. "Speak for yourself!"

  Will Bliss and Astra Dell broke up because of Car.

  "I don't understand that relationship," Lisa said.

  "Astra is loyal."

  "Have you seen her senior page?" from one of the Elizabeths.

  "She did it already?"

  "She said she's always known what she wanted to do," from the other Elizabeth.

  "So what did she do?"

  "She designed a page where she's looking over her shoulder at rows and rows of postage-stamp-size pictures of everyone she has ever loved. Miss Hodd and her cats and her horse and Car. A lot of teachers. Mr. Weeks."

  "That hottie!"

  "Gillian Warring wants to marry him."

  "He knows how handsome he is."

  How many times had Mr. Weeks been seen observing himself in the mirrors of evening windows? How many times seen making a face that he must have thought handsome?

  Ufia, who rarely spoke unwisely, said, "Come to school in the dark and go home in it, and both ways take Madison Avenue—a person can't see the merchandise for her face."

  Lisa said, "Once Astra told me the longest day of the year made her cry because every day after would be shorter."

  "Don't even think it," from Ufia. "Astra Dell is not going to die. So stop crying!"

  Girls were picking through the senior lounge and one of them was saying, "You think that's bad?"

  "Su
ki," Alex said. "Did you hear me? I'm going to make this video for Astra. It's going to be funny."

  "That'll be hard," Suki said.

  "God!" Lisa said when Alex brushed past. "Air yourself out, girl."

  The sound of Astra Dell's voice—impossible to call it up—but the inflection learned from her mother, her poor dead mother, that was the thing. Hearing Astra Dell hack around singing some twangy country girl's song, that was what Ufia said she missed, and the girls still in the lounge, all of them, agreed.

  "I wish she were here."

  A Daughter

  "That's what I sent." Lisa's mother, calling from Sucre, was describing for her daughter a bouquet, mostly stargazer lilies, she had sent to Astra Dell. "Her father told me that Astra loved the stargazers."

  "I would have done something," Lisa said.

  "But you didn't."

  "Oh, blank that."

  "Watch it."

  "I was going to do something."

  "Oh."

  "I hate you, Mother!"

  "Astra Dell can have visitors at any time, you know."

  "Whose friend is she, anyway?" Lisa said.

  "I'll talk to you—" Mrs. Van de Ven began, but her daughter clicked off, mum on the visit she had made with Miss Wilkes to see Astra.

  At the upper-school morning meeting, Miss Brigham had announced that Sarah Saperstein and Ny Song had been named National Merit Finalists; Ufia Abiola was honored by the National Achievement Program that recognizes black students; Karen Sanchez and Julia Alonzo were Scholars in the National Hispanic Recognition Program. Karen and Julia were among the top 2 percent of all students who self-identified as Hispanic on the PSAT. Lisa remembered the numbers and was pretty sure her mother had the news as well; her mother had been at school in the morning giving a parent tour. Her mother knew all about the top 2 percent, which explained her mother sending more flowers to Astra Dell—a sick girl was less a disappointment probably.