All Souls

by Christine Schutt

  Numbers

  Siddons

  "Eighty-eight days of school until graduation!" This announcement, made by Suki and Alex at morning meeting, was greeted with a barbaric yawp from the class of 1997. So that was exciting, and after morning meeting the rumor that Astra Dell had been given an orange wig was confirmed by Marlene Kovack of all people.

  Alex asked Ny Song if she had considered Astra Dell in picking the commencement speaker. Was it a good idea really to have a cancer specialist?

  Ny Song said she had thought of Astra. She thought that to have Dr. Saperstein (because Verlyn Klinkenborg was unable to attend) would show people how the class has always confronted reality.

  "Oh please," Suki said.

  "His career is inspiring." Ny did not look at Suki but continued to address Alex. "We haven't forgotten Astra."

  "How could we? We're reminded all the time," Krystle said.

  Alex said to Ny, "If we're trying to show people how we confront reality, Dr. Saperstein should be Cum Laude speaker, not commencement." Alex smiled. "Cum Laude is reality; then you find out who is smart in the class. And you, Krystle, are not in the group."

  "You say awful things, Alex."

  "I just say what everyone else is thinking, Ny."

  Suki exhaled through her nose to get the smoke out fast. "You dope," she said in a smoker's tired voice, a deep voice that sounded much like her mother's. "Think of it: Saperstein, Abiola, and Song. Should I go on? Car's a sick A-type, and Kitty ... you don't get as many migraines as Kitty Johnson does for no reason. We've got a nerdy class. Saperstein, as she will happily tell you, got an eight hundred in math."

  "I hate that girl."

  "Don't forget Lisa Van de Ven..."

  Siddons

  The January Math Challenge had three parts:

  Part I: Express as many of the perfect squares less than

  1,000 as the sums of two or more consecutive

  integers as possible. Example: 9 = 4 + 5

  Part II: The sequence 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11 consists of all positive integers that are not perfect squares. What is the 500th term of the sequence?

  Part III: Find the largest positive integer such that each pair of consecutive digits forms a perfect square. Example: The number 364 is made up of the perfect squares 36 and 64.

  Saperstein and Song both said it was easy.

  "Then why don't you answer it and get a bag of M&M's?" Alex asked.

  "Because we helped make it up."

  CHF

  The trouble with writing at age seventeen was Car already knew her work was juvenilia. Nevertheless, she hoped to win the Selfridge this year. Of all the seniors, the prize for four years of excellence in English would surely go to her, wouldn't it? Astra was out of the running; she was sick, and Kitty Johnson was her only competition, but O'Brien might feel guilty promoting his pet. Also in Car's favor was Folio; she was editor of the upper-school literary magazine, and a poem of hers had appeared in an anthology, The Best from the High Schools, 1996. But what appeared in the anthology was juvenilia, wasn't it?

  At least Car wrote to Astra. She wrote letters and some of them she sent. She wrote sincerely; she considered how it felt to be unwell—and didn't she know unhappiness herself? Her mother in her sable coat on her way to some disappointment—wasn't her mother enough to be sad about? But it was a tawdry suffering compared to Astra's condition. What Astra had to be sad about also brought wisdom. For Astra, what to care about was clear and large. For Car, it was just this stupid problem:

  y + y + 3xy + 10x = 12

  dy + 2ydy + 3xdy + 3y + 10 = 0

  dxdxdx

  dy(l + 2y + 3x)5 -3y - 10 dx

  dy = -3y - 10

  dx(1 + 2y + 3x)

  Marlene

  Marlene asked, "Is it okay if I just sit here until she wakes up?" The nurse didn't see why not, so Marlene sat away from the bed with her feet tucked under her, doing math on her haunches. When she had finished the last problem, she stood and stretched and walked around Astra's room. She opened the closet door and touched the few clothes she had touched before. She studied the photograph of Astra's ruffled mother in pearls. "No sir"—from Marlene, talking to herself, looking through Astra's basket of mail for something new and finding old Car Forestal. Her tiny handwriting had an insect delicacy.

  ...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.

  Marlene put Car Forestal's letter in her backpack. She put away her math book, too, and began the noisy, effortful business of dressing for winter. Marlene looked at Astra. "Wake up," she dared. She wanted Astra to see her at the end of the bed: surprise! She was in Astra Dell's company as she had never been before. Before was only looking on and most often from a distance, glimpsed: the unexpected prettiness of Astra's bare feet braced against the ribs of the rowboat. Washington trip, eighth grade, years ago. Now the smallest, slenderest feet she had ever seen were covered. Her feet were covered, but her bald head was laid bare. The horrible wig on its stand was wrong, and Marlene-at-the-bedside was part of the wrongness in the room, yet she was here, wasn't she, the insistent visitor wisping smooth the folds and wrinkles in the sick girl's bed. How swollen and dark and dirty were Marlene's hands compared to the thin cake of soap that was Astra's hand outside the covers against her face turned away, body in the fetal position. How could such a face as Astra's be let to leave this earth and a criminal's allowed to stay?

  Fathers

  Mr. Dell left his desk with not so much as a paper clip on its surface. He was a carefully groomed man and a long, loose stroller; he did not seem rushed even when he said he was rushed. "I'm late," he said to no one in particular as he scanned the kiosk's magazines. The headlines blurred. "My daughter's going to wonder where I am." He looked at the candy selection, too, until the number six uptown came through. On the subway he stood and watched two teenage parents, a heavy girl and a slight boy, and their child in an inflated snowsuit. The boy was offering orange chips to the child, who licked off the color and sucked each chip. The child's mouth was unnaturally orange, which did not wash away when the boy spilled Coke into the child's mouth. The boy was clumsy but happy to be feeding his family. He smiled. He offered Coke to the girl, but she refused. "With all that slobber on the can?" she said. The be mused boy and his sullen girl and their child—sexless in a snowsuit—did not get off the train with Mr. Dell but went on traveling north.

  On the street again the quiet snowfall was growing noisy. This was the storm they had predicted, and those readied for inclemency hucked open their umbrellas, and he ducked, he weaved, he dodged umbrellas. He had to get there fast through the arc of the hospital entrance-way, past the purposeful, the dumbstruck and adrift. He used his long legs. Corridor C, elevator three to the fourteenth floor and sick children. Corner bedroom, view of the river.

  He slid his hand along the railing of his sleeping daughter's bed as he walked toward the window and saw the agitated river below. He was still in his topcoat, he was dressed for the weather, and the weather was exciting. The snow, at a hard angle, was falling fast; parked cars, railings, sidewalks, street trees were all on their way to being beautiful.

  Astra was asking, "Is it cold in here, Daddy?"

  Ever since the red-hot rod treatment had ended, Astra was almost always cold.

  He couldn't tell if it was warm or cold in the room. He wasn't melting anymore, but he was damp. He said, "It's snowing outside." He said, "A big storm is on the way. They're talking over a foot."

  Astra was unimpressed; she was falling asleep again. "Marlene Kovack steals my mail."

  "What?" But when he turned back to look at her, he saw the sleep that veiled the drugged was drawn across her face. Now he could tell himself she wa
s in for the night; Astra was home. Home: a shoe box of cards, letters, plants, stuffed toys, and photographs framed or pasted on construction paper. Many of the same girls who came to visit at the hospital were in the photographs with Astra. Car, Suki and Alex, the same girls he once found hiding with Astra under the dining table.

  An only child pranks her parents alone. He had said this to Grace—why? His was a depressed view, wasn't it? Wasn't it—look at the picture of the girls, all mischief, in collusion with his daughter to break her out of this place.

  Survivors. Twelve years together at school. The girls had taken the survivor picture for the yearbook in Astra's room and sent her a copy with attached commentary. Remember: Kum Bah Yah in D.C., Suki's chicken walk, donut holes...

  He didn't like the photograph: all those fleshy faces—even Car looked fat pressed next to Astra's bantam skull.

  Car had made it to the hospital for the photo session; her second visit since Astra had taken ill. (What was the matter with that girl? But Astra had kept her beatific smile; she never betrayed Car's secret, whatever it was, though Mr. Dell suspected it had to do with Car's father.)

  Mr. Dell draped his coat and scarf over the back of a chair and sat at the foot of his daughter's bed. He reached for Austen on the window ledge and thumbed to a worn spot.

  The hateful Mrs. Norris, sponging pheasant's eggs, was traveling back to Mansfield Park with parcels from the day—a cream cheese, a pretty heath—from Mrs. Rushworth's estate.

  The nurses on the floor were kind.

  One of them, he saw, had put an extra blanket on Astra's bed. Astra must have asked.

  "Astra?"

  He pushed up his reading glasses. He wanted to say, "Wait until the troubling part in Portsmouth," but he shut the book on his finger and moved to sit across from where Astra slept, a hillock in the snowscape of her bed. He spoke into her ear. "Wake up, sweetheart. I'm only here for a little while," and that is when he noticed how hot she was, and then he called the nurses and then his daughter began to shake violently. He watched; he stood by, stood aside as others—a blur of nurses, an intern, a doctor?—moved around her bed, and her fever spiked to 107 degrees; it spiked and lasted for quite some time. There was the code chart as proof, and all the while Astra was making delirious jokes in the strong arms of her nurses, saying, "I'm going to spend my life shaking in a rocking chair." An allergic reaction someone was saying. Mixed donor platelets. None of what they were saying made much sense, and Mr. Dell was shaking himself to see his daughter so silly in her pink delirium; it made him cry to hear her cackling, crazy jokes: "I'm rocking!" She sounded like her mother, like her mother's mother and all those sly beauties with their corn-crackle laughs and drawling voices: "A good attitude is like kudzu, darlin', it spreads."

  Dance

  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 l
et 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?"