Christine Schutt - All Souls

"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?"

"Suki," 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.

Fathers

Wendell Bliss (of the weak heart and well-known son Will) found a cheerful salad — red and yellow peppers cut in cubes like confetti — left by the housekeeper on the counter. There was a lukewarm chicken breast dressed up with parsley and little potatoes that he could reheat in the microwave if he knew where to find it. Stumped again by the serene expanse of stainless steel. Only the hooded restaurant stove with its prominent grillwork over the burners was apparent to him, but Viking was a word that came with men in horned helmets, and Wendell Bliss wouldn't think to touch the stove. He ate his lukewarm food; he ate slowly. After a while Marion Bliss phoned from Florida to check on what had been left him for dinner. He told her, and then he told her about Will and how he had said yes to an advance on the boy's allowance. He told his wife about Astra Dell, too, because he knew she would want to know. His wife knew so many people — they knew so many people — and one of her chief pleasures was rooting out what connected them. She was fond of saying, "Six degrees of separation!" The discovery of parallel experience and pattern was satisfying to his wife, but the unfairness in the allocations of suffering was something to ponder, that was a lozenge to suck on and so fall to sleep.

CHF

Car Forestal made art out of what was on her plate.

"It isn't fattening," her mother said, but Car said the sauce was tasteless, and she pooled it in potatoes, which she never ate. "You know I don't."

Mrs. Forestal said she didn't know why she bothered with a cook, and Car said she didn't know why either. Mrs. Forestal said she tried to please, and Car said don't. Mrs. Forestal asked Car was she this way in school, and Car said which way? Mrs. Forestal said don't bother, and Car said she wouldn't. Nothing she did was right, Mrs. Forestal said, and Car said no, nothing she, Car, did was right.

"I can't talk to you."

"I can't talk to you either."

"Every night this."

"I can't please you, Mother. Nothing pleases you."

"That's not true."

"You're always on my case."

"I am not."

"Listen to yourself sometime; you are."

"Don't be smart, Carlotta."

"I'm not being."

"You're excused, then."

"But I'm not finished."

"You are. You're only playing with your food."

"Okay, if you want me out…"

"Don't run off to your father's."

"I'm not."

"I know you."

"No, you don't."

"I'm warning you."

"Yeah, what are you going to do?"

"Don't leave this house… Carlotta."

"I'm going out for a walk. Can I go out for a walk, Mother? My best friend is very sick, okay? I need to be by myself for a while, okay? I need to get out of this place."

Siddons

Dembroski, checking off attendance in senior-class meeting, was calling out, "Decrow? Has anyone seen Alex Decrow?"

"After ninth grade no one ever makes perfect attendance," Kitty Johnson said to Car. "What happens to us all in tenth grade?"

In tenth grade Mrs. Dell was killed in an accident, not so uncommon in the city: An out-of-control car drives onto a sidewalk. In Mrs. Dell's case, a taxi driver had a stroke and drove onto the sidewalk, injuring three and killing one, Grace Dell. The news flared in the papers, a photograph, and then hissed out.

Grace Dell, Dies at 44; October 4,1994. All those fours: four-four, four, four; four fours. "I bought into numerology for a while," Car said, then felt quick Quirk at the back of her neck wetly shushing: shush.

"I hope you know you're sitting at the Fat Table," Elizabeth F. said.

Greta Varislyvski seemed not to care or hear or even really see them but pulled her long self along the lunch bench until she was seated across from the two Elizabeths, Elizabeth F. and Elizabeth G.

Greta Varislyvski dully repeated, "Fat Table," as if she were answering the roll. Here was space to sit, and she had taken it. She was hungry. "I like to eat, too," she said. "All these girls counting calories. I'm not one of those."

The two Elizabeths were delighted then and told Greta she was welcome at the Fat Table anytime. The soy-cream sandwiches were under discussion. The Elizabeths knew that the soy-cream sandwiches they served in the cafeteria were disgusting, but they liked them, anyway. Elizabeth F. liked strawberry and Elizabeth G., raspberry cheesecake. Elizabeth G. insisted raspberry cheesecake was better. "It is, it is, it is," she said, and knocked against the other Elizabeth.

Greta Varislyvski made a face that might have been a laugh.

"Please," Elizabeth F. said, "don't yuck-yuck my yum-yum."