Christine Schutt - All Souls

"Here," she said, and she took out of her bag a silver-plated personalized bar to hold open books and, tasseled as it was, to serve as a bookmark. She had had his initials and the school year engraved on one side. (For a time she debated something else, his initials and her own initials, her first name?)

"Annie," he said. "How nice of you! But this wasn't necessary." He hugged her. He said, "I am going to miss you next year."

Really? she silently asked, and the voice she heard was Gillian Warring's saying, Do you miss us? Do you like the present sixes better than you liked us?

It was so easy to flatter a teacher. I hope I have you next year.

Anna Mazur and Tim Weeks stood downwind of a poignant scent — was it verbena? "I'm going to miss you," she said. "This year has been very eventful, what with Astra Dell and all, and you've made it a heck of a lot easier. You listened to me about my brother and my mother and the English department, Hodd and O'Brien — all of that." So Anna Mazur was professing love to a man who had yet to kiss her with any romantic intention. "I'm really grateful," she said. Her tongue stuck in her mouth.

"Oh" — his response—"I was glad to listen." He said he had learned a lot about Jane Eyre that he never knew. Mr. Rochester in disguise was far more dangerous than ever Tim Weeks suspected. Tim said, "We've had fun," and he turned his body in a way that was welcoming but in a forward direction, not toward her, but continuing along the path. "Walk with me," he said, when what she heard was This is why I can't. The story he went on to tell had to do with his home, and a hometown girl, and their being rumored into romance — one of the reasons he decided to strike out on his own in New York. "I don't want to be in a position of making anyone unhappy," he said.

Unattached

"That's all he said, Mother."

Once Tim Weeks had thought to join the ministry, but he had majored in history instead. He was a sixth-grade history teacher at the Miss Siddons School. Some years he had taught eighth-grade history. Astra Dell had been his student. She reminded her mother of just who Astra Dell was, but her mother cut in.

"I know," her mother said. "The sick girl."

Anna Mazur hugged a cushion. "I'm depressed, Mother, is what it is." Beyond the cloudy window, the river insinuated itself, seeming scaly as a snake and the same dirty brown. This, whatever this was, whatever she had known with Tim Weeks while Astra Dell was sick, was a flirtation. Tim Weeks was as serious about Anna as he was about Gillian Warring. Tim Weeks was the school's bachelor. There were actually three of them that she knew of, but Tim Weeks was nearer her age and so very cute. She was a type, too, common as a robin, a Miss forever in a Miss Siddons School. In Miss Brigham's office was a portrait photograph of Margaret Witt Siddons, founder, 1921: a barefaced woman from an old-fashioned time. Everything, the picture seemed to say, is gone, everything but the desk and the modern version of Miss Siddons, a head of school who was not above wearing a pantsuit in cold weather.

Marlene

Marlene Kovack was working backstage in costumes for social service hours when she overheard someone — too loud — a middle schooler, say, "You know when people are gay, don't you?" Mr. Weeks was nearby, with props, and she wondered, as she wondered about many of the unattached faculty in school, but why were the middle schoolers always so out of control? Marlene helped only the lower schoolers in the play. The lower schoolers were delicate and shy; they made peeping sounds as Marlene dressed them, the King of Siam's littlest children.

Francesca Fratini swung into the room and cooed over the King of Siam's two littlest children. "Oh, don't you look pretty. I love your headdresses." Then to Marlene, "Remember when we were this size?"

The little girls had hands as small as starfish. "How old are you again?" Marlene asked, and the little girls answered: first grade. Marlene said, "I was never this small in first grade."

Francesca said to Marlene, "You should come to the interschool Macbeth. I'm one of the witches. Our director is crazy. I have to lick Macbeth's face like a dog."

The King of Siam's littlest children turned in their seats to look at Francesca Fratini. "Am I scaring you?" she said. "That's the kind of thing you get to do in high school. I'm a senior." Francesca said, "What do you think of that?"

Little shrugs from the little rouged girls, who stepped away lightly as if their feet were bound.

"You scared them," Marlene said.

"Look, Marlene," and Francesca turned around, and there was a bumper sticker on her butt: Property of the King of Siam. "Prank night," she said. "When we all bow and our hoop skirts flip up, this is what the King and Anna will see!"

Marlene stayed for the cast party and ate cake and went downtown with Francesca Fratini and Gillian Warring, who were doing their imitations of Dr. Bell. They called him the stress doctor and said he came to Siddons twice a week to get the kinks out. Their story was Dr. Bell had an office in the basement at school and that only the nurse had a key. "She takes us downstairs and lets us in," Francesca said.

"He helps you with all the ways you're backward," Gillian said. "I can't believe you don't know this. I know this, and I am in eighth grade!"

Marlene said, "It's an extra, probably, like tutoring."

"No," Francesca said, "you just have to reverse your letters to be in the club."

Dr. Bell had a mustache, and when he spoke, spit caught on the bristles of his mustache and it was gross. It was a mustard color, too — dirty mustard. "It makes me sick," Gillian said. "He has terrible breath, and he sits too close and watches you read for speed, and he keeps his pencil near when you write, and he corrects you as you go along, and you get all confused and of course you seem dumb to him. You're dumb to yourself. The man makes you dumb." Gillian took up Francesca's hands and danced with her the way the King did with Anna. "God! I hate him! Dr. Bell…" After a few turns, Gillian stopped short and confided to Marlene, "Can you tell I've been drinking?" One of the beauties of school was in its bringing like minds together briefly and intensely in these moments outside of school. Now in the Village outside a bar that blinked at fake IDs, Marlene held Gillian's hair while she puked into the street. Francesca went back in the bar to buy the drunk girl a Coke.

A Daughter

"I've just been here too long," Lisa Van de Ven said to Miss Wilkes. "I can't get interested in a single subject. I don't like anyone in my class. Nothing. The other day three of the nine seniors in AP French showed up." Lisa Van de Ven said, "I can't wait to get out of here." Then she said college as if she were making a wish, and she shut her eyes. "That's what I'm passionate about, if you want to know. Leaving. I can't wait."

Youth in its sullen husk, dry, shrunk, ugly as a cornstalk, prematurely autumnal, an awful, rasping wastefulness, Lisa Van de Ven tamped her bloody thumb with a napkin and talked about how alienated she felt from all of her classmates. "Ever since the Dance Concert," Lisa said to her, and said again, "I can't wait to get out of here." She did not look up at Miss Wilkes until the end of recess, and for a moment it seemed to the woman that the girl's face signaled something other than complaint. Was Lisa embarrassed, for Miss Wilkes was certainly embarrassed. However could she have cared so much about this tough girl, but she had; she hoped Lisa Van de Ven would stop chewing her thumb long enough to look up again and see the expression on her teacher's face, an expression that felt easy and dispassionate in its perfect insincerity. "Soon enough you'll be gone," Miss Wilkes said, "but you'll be missed. You must promise to come back and visit us."