Christine Schutt - All Souls

Fathers

She should have died that night, but David Dell shook harder than even his daughter — in confusion and rage and fear. He shook, he stood, he sat, he knelt near enough to his daughter's bedside and prayed, and the girl went on living. His own hair, he was sure of it, had grayed, whereas Astra's was just showing itself; she wore a bandanna.

She was up; she was out of bed; she was home. An outpatient! After great suffering and burning of the body, a quiet descended, remission, a word to be whispered, perhaps not yet used; besides, someday, years from now, sudden and cruel, it always came back, didn't it? Cancer, blunt, done in a matter of weeks, months — never more than a year; the second time around it came fast. David Dell had heard the histories at the funerals before. In ironic, doomsday voices, the closest friends were glad to recount when the big C struck finally. He was planning their vacation when his arm began to hurt… That was six weeks ago; now he is dead. How it happened: this healthy man or that strong woman, and who would have guessed? Who could have known? That time we went fishing was our last… or… Not so long ago we were at her daughter's wedding.

And how did Astra Dell look? She was very thin; she wore dark clothes; she often whispered when she talked. She said, "I still get tired very easily."

Her father said he had known all along she would get well. He said what he thought Grace would have said, that he had always been sure of Astra's recovery, convinced of it from the beginning, as who could imagine such a girl as this to be extinguished so young? No, he insisted he had always believed she would get well. In truth, he had mostly expected her death to arrive as her mother's had, mercilessly. Nothing he could do, nothing he could do, and he would offer up his life for Astra's; he was ready to take on her disease, whatever it was. He had never fully understood Dr. Byron. To stand in almost any corridor of the hospital was to stand in a cleaned-out closet with a lot of unused metal hangers jangling. That's what it had felt like to him, and all of the flowers and imported decorations, posters, teddy bears and photographs, the schoolbooks and books for pleasure, a deck of cards, a game of Scrabble, a computer — nothing could change the room where his daughter had slept for half a year. Penitential furniture, hose down, easy to clean. Mr. Dell had rarely sat in Astra's room but stood leaning against the window even when he read to her. Reading to Astra had been a pleasure he was sure to miss, but he would not miss Dr. Byron's dull blows—"She is young; her vitality works against her; the cells thrive." Dr. Byron's dour view of his daughter's future: no guarantees, no guarantees. For now Mr. Dell was saying, "My daughter is at home." Whose business was it, besides, to know more? "My daughter is at home, thank you," Mr. Dell said to all the well-wishers, and there were many.

Marlene

The changes in Marlene Kovack had happened slowly over several months, so that her mother didn't notice until after Christmas that Marlene was in perfect uniform. (All those detentions of tenth grade over the Goth look Marlene had perfected.) Now the white shirt was white and very girlish, round collared, soft. Now Marlene wore dark tights, and her shoes were simple and thin heeled, no longer threatening. Alone of all the seniors, Marlene was taking notes in near-perfect uniform, eschewing a second-semester senior's freedom to come to school every day out of uniform. Why? "It's easier," she said whenever asked. Marlene had reviewed for exams with Astra and had done well. Marlene was not dumb after all; she had only been lazy, as some of her teachers had always suspected.

(She hadn't thought of herself as lazy, only bored and alone.)

Was she as smart as Astra? This was a question Marlene asked herself, and though her answer was no, she was not as smart, Marlene nevertheless felt she was like Astra, growing ever more like Astra. Astra had faith; miracles were possible. On her near death, the crazy fever that might have caused brain damage, Astra said, "All I know is that the cancer cells were either cooked or my immune system finally recognized what it had to do. The scans before the fever showed new growth and after showed nothing.

"I don't want to fall behind." Astra said, "I've had to give up on AP calculus."

She sat up straighter and shook her head. After the hivey heat and hurt of chemo, she believed she was getting better. Clean of cancer, she believed. Faith and love and her mother's watching over her. "She was there."

Astra said, "I had a community of faith," and by this she meant Walden and the wider Unitarian Universalist communities and its congregants who prayed for her and with her father. She wrote in her college essay, "The leaps of faith that we take as a community or as individuals do not necessarily lead us away from suffering or strife, and they often lead us toward hard work, but they are the risks that enable us to grow, to heal, and to struggle for something better." Was she quoting some one when she wrote, "Just as long as I have breath, I must answer, 'Yes,' to life"? Saintly girl.

The tooth? That happened. Chemotherapy patients often lost or broke teeth. She smiled at Marlene and said, "See? All fixed." Then she said, "You're completely weird, Marlene. Now that you don't have to be in uniform, you're in uniform."

Marlene came forward and bent to the ball of her forehead and kissed Astra and touched the top of her head, Astra in her Joan of Arc hair. Would she let her hair grow as long as before?

"I don't know," Astra said. "Short's awfully easy."

"I am really, really glad you are home and feeling better."

"Best ever," Astra said, and she frowned a little. "Only I get tired," and she shut her eyes, and by the time Marlene reached the door, Astra had fallen back against the pillows of her plump and quilted girlish bed. Marlene could tell by the way Astra was breathing just how deep a sleep it was, and when she turned back to look into the room again, Astra opened her eyes and said… What did she say? "Lucky I was sick." Was she talking in her sleep? Did she say, "Don't take my mail, Marlene"?

Marlene walked uncertainly out of Astra's lobby and bumped into others and must have seemed a tourist or a stroller or a stupid, fucked teenager. Sick, sicko, fucked teenager. She was fucked; she felt fucked. She wanted to walk into oncoming traffic.

Siddons

Kitty Johnson said she was glad not to be in Mr. O'Brien's elective but that Mrs. Godwin's Families in Distress class was grimmer than she had expected. King Lear was not in the course description. "It's a bummer to start the day with somebody scooping somebody else's eyes out with a spoon or however the guy did it. And the quizzes. I hate to think how many of mine are on the wall of shame in the senior lounge. Besides, we're seniors. Isn't this supposed to be the slack-off, fun part of high school?"

Ufia said, "Some of us want intellectual engagement."

"Wait until you get to Harvard, Ufia. You'll see a lot of engagement then."

"What a dirty mind you have, Alex," Krystle said.

"Rub my back." Suki sat herself between Alex and Krystle, and bumped against Alex, saying, "Would you please rub my back? I'm so sore." And Alex stopped looking at Krystle and pounded Suki's back until the girl said, "Not so hard."

Jade, the dance coach, said, "It's too late now to think of cutting." Instead Jade's finale included each girl giving herself a window.

"What does that mean?"

"If you'd come to rehearsals," Krystle said.

"Bite me."

"Nothing should happen on the extension," Jade was saying to Lisa. "And if you have trouble with the lean and lunging, well… Terry will clean up on Monday." Jade looked at the seniors. "If you feel uncomfortable, see me, but I'm not spending hours on any one dance. Those days are gone." Then she circled the room in address. "Every choreographer," Jade said, "you're now a dancer. Hand your dance to your people. Amen. I love you guys."