Christine Schutt - All Souls

Alex whispered to Suki, "I got up at seven to make this class only to be informed there is no fucking heaven." Alex was circling a circle in the center of her notebook, a vacancy, a black hole that grew larger as she spoke. "I mean, this is swell. Nothing to look forward to. I should have guessed."

Nothingness again, that odorless gas again; Marlene, in the back row, felt sick. She wasn't reading this poem with Astra. This poem would be an assignment Astra could do with someone else. Let someone else, let Car explain it, for Astra would insist — did insist, asked for whatever was said and done in class — because she planned to graduate with her class. "My minister visits. He keeps my spirits up," so Astra had said to Marlene, and who was she to suggest a darker outcome?

CHF

Dear Astra,

Maybe I am being morbid, but I'm not going to lie. So you won't go to college or have a family, but wouldn't you get tired of that? There are songs about people like you, making you heroic just because you're young but near the end. You can't stop this.

All you can do is pretend to be sad that you are leaving and smoke your medicine and hide your skill as if you are ashamed, but I know that you are happy this way. The only thing you have to excel at now is leaving, because you only get to once.

Another letter Car suspected she should keep in her drawer, but she didn't.

"Carlotta, are you going to eat that or not?"

"I'm cutting it, aren't I?"

"Have you talked to your father about spring vacation?"

"I don't know why you ask me these things when you already know the answer, Mother."

"Why would I know the answer?"

Mrs. Forestal crossed her arms and caressed herself and was soothed by how thin she was. St. John Knits were made for thin women; their close-fitting jackets showed off long arms. Car had the same long arms, although her mouth suggested she could be a larger woman. Was it any wonder then her daughter would cut and cut and cut her meat until not much of it seemed left?

"Don't bother," she said as if speaking to herself.

"'Don't bother' what, Mother? What are you talking about?"

"I'm going to St. Bart's, and you're welcome to join me."

"Thanks."

"We can eat mangoes and sit in the sun and read and swim." All the time she was talking, Mrs. Forestal felt of her arms, put her face against her arms and smelled — Norell was still a wonderful fragrance, wasn't it? — and she felt slightly comforted. She liked her wrists, too, and the prominence of the bone and the color of her skin.

"When are you going out tonight?" Car asked.

"It's an eight o'clock curtain," Mrs. Forestal said.

"And you're seeing?"

"I don't know. Your grandmother bought the tickets.

"Do you like this color?" Mrs. Forestal asked. She meant her St. John Knit. "Is it too much like one of Nana's colors?"

Suki and Alex

A tooth just simply fell out. Cracked, fell out. One of the big grown-up teeth, a fat one in the back, gone — like that.

"Oh my god," said Suki, who did and did not like to hear terrible news, but this kind of next-to-death terrible news about Astra was really, really, really horrible.

"I think she is…," said Alex.

"If she does…"

Alex and Suki, pre-exams. Stressed, really stressed now, but at least it was snowing, and they were walking past Will Bliss's apartment, the Bliss they seemed destined never to see, Will Bliss who had surely not missed any holiday, who was spending this one in Alta. Alta?

"One of those places."

"Why don't I ever know these things?" Alex asked.

CHF

Car Forestal called Astra from her father's apartment on the kitchen phone. She had been making a mess in the kitchen for a couple of days. A shallow sushi container, Starbucks cups, Starbucks napkins, biscotti. "I'm having a meltdown," she said. "I'm eating cookies. I'm ordering anything Annie's or Patrick's has to deliver. No one knows I'm living here. The staff's got off. Mom and Nana are in Bermuda. Mom thinks I'm at home with Arlette, and Daddy thinks I'm with whomever, and you know Arlette. She loves me; she would never tell Mother on me — besides, she thinks I'm visiting you most of the time. That's what I tell her, and I would come, Astra. I'd come to the hospital except you're still off-limits, aren't you?"

"Why are you talking so fast?"

"Starbucks, I don't know."

"I haven't been off-limits since Christmas. Marlene comes a lot."

"You can tell I don't see anybody," Car said. "I have Folio and that's it. Since when did you and Marlene become friends?"

"I was never not her friend."

"You never socialized with her."

"She keeps me up-to-date and reads goofy animal stories. Nothing sad. Not like your letters, thanks."

"Astra."

"It's good. You keep a person on her toes, Car."

"I can't bullshit you, A."

"No, keep the letters coming. Marlene likes them."

"Marlene."

"She means well. My little friend Teddy from across the hall sometimes comes over to hear Marlene read to me. She brings me my homework. I help her with math."

"Could you help me with mine?"

The sad part for Astra was that she didn't always know Marlene was in the room. The nurses had to tell her it happened. "I'm so often asleep. Watch. Later I'll forget we even had this talk."

Car said, "Oh, why do you have to be sick?" She mushed wasabi into soy sauce with her finger. "I know it's trivial in comparison, but I really, really, really need to get permanently away from my mother."

"That's what happened?"

"Of course, that's what happened."

"What this time?"

Car told a mother-daughter story she had told before. This time sweaters, purses, pushers, spoons, but as before, there wasn't much drama in it. The setting was entirely indoors. "My christening spoon — Jesus — what do you make of that?"

The clock on the wall chimed four while Car's watch read something else.

Time for Astra's visitors. She got them almost every afternoon and who would you expect? "You'll never guess," Astra said. "No. It's not. It's Mr. Weeks. Miss Mazur is here, too."

Unattached

Tim Weeks thought what was happening to Astra Dell was private. What business did he have in her hospital room? He didn't talk very much; instead he looked out the window at the river. He remarked on the view, then the current's roil, and the oily-colored scarring on her arms reminded him of what he had heard about rods and radioactivity, but he did not ask Astra what had happened. Tim Weeks asked nothing but looked around the room and out the window again at the river and the bridges and the islands beyond the bridges.

Astra was saying that when she saw the little children who were sick, then she really felt sad. Hearing this, Tim Weeks had to look at her again, and what he saw made him sad, for what was Astra Dell but a child, a child who had learned no other way to behave than gallantly, a child whose benevolent spirit seemed to swell even as she steadily grew smaller. To look at the sharp knobs of her shoulder bones, her wrist bones, her flimsy bones was to look at mortality, the grotesquely insubstantial self. The netting of blue under her throat and along and up her jaw was visible and seemed to pulse when Astra spoke, and she didn't speak a lot but she got thirsty. She drifted off.

"Sorry," she said.

"Why should you be sorry?"

"I'm making friends here. Next time I'll introduce you."

"We've overstayed."

"Oh, no. I'm so glad you came. I miss school. I miss my teachers."

"We'll come again."

Mr. Weeks smiled, but once outside he said, "I think I shouldn't see her this way."

But when Tim Weeks spoke about Astra, his voice didn't sound woeful but romantic; moreover, Anna Mazur could see why the woman walking toward them on long legs would distract him, but to shove into life so soon after visiting a sick girl on a blasphemous ward was unattractive even in this most attractive man.