All Souls

Fa La Lah

CHF

Car had tried to write it as a story, but it always came out an essay, a pushy essay full of complaint. "My father was using me to get his boyfriends" missed the real complications of Paris last spring. Walking arm in arm with her father through the lobby of Georges V had been fun. Was she mistress or daughter? He was purring corrections: "poissons de…not poisons de" and she was saying, "I am taking AP French, Dad. I ought to know."

Her father's frown was little; his skin was taut and cared for. "Oh, my daddy is a handsome man!" Fragrant and languorous, a man interested in pleasure, delights of all kinds. Museums and jazz. She could write this out, but it lacked what she saw when he walked away from her; she wasn't sure she could put it in words. She knew where he was in the dark recesses of a glassy bar, but she could not see his face. He came back eventually. On his own — he didn't need her — Car's father always fished up a beauty, a man, a man and a woman, a man and a woman and another man. He knew them from somewhere; he met them at the bar. Her father brought them all to the table, but Car was the one who entertained them, or so it seemed to her, answering questions about Siddons, talking Virgil and Sally Mann, Auden and Philip Larkin. Until it was late, midnight, a bit later, then her father took her back to the hotel and saw her to bed before he returned to the party.

Once at a café in an always dank, poor part of town, a yellow light over a table, a damp floor, once here, rushed to for shelter from the rain, breathless, cold, her father touched her. Her father was plucking her wet shirt away from her breasts. "Dad," she said. "Do you mind?" She was no mistress then; then she was his daughter.

"I'm sixteen," Car said to Madame de Ratignole at a cocktail party in honor of a well-known art critic. Car didn't know the art critic's name; she was in AP French lit. They were reading Le Père Goriot.

"Yes," said the hostess, who happened to be Dutch and knew six, seven, eight languages — something like that — enough to make Car feel embarrassed. Bumptious was a word she had learned from her father and should use to describe herself.

But was that party really such a good idea for a college essay?

Mothers

Surely Theta Kovack in the first week of November was the last parent to confer with the school's college adviser to decide on Marlene's college list. She sat in the cubby that passed for an office with its weary rah-rah wall of faded pennants; the office was humid — from crying? Theta sat in a saggy chair and scratched what she thought was a bite in the crook of her arm. The process, Mrs. Quirk was saying, was exciting. Think of every college applied to as a first choice. Marlene, who sat next to her mother, was pulling off the pills on her uniform skirt, and she did not look up when either woman spoke.

"Marlene," Theta said. "We're talking about you."

"Yes."

"Did you hear what Mrs. Quirk just said, then?"

"All the choices are first choices."

"So what are your firsts?" Mrs. Quirk asked.

Marlene, still worrying the skirt, said, "Wesleyan."

The adviser snorted. "A moon shot," she said. "What else?"

"Brown."

"Marlene, you and I have talked before," Mrs. Quirk said.

Theta was studying the map behind the adviser with the pushpins of where last year's class had landed. The largest constellation of pushpins was in New England, but a lone pin in Florida and another in Arizona suggested there were other girls without the numbers who had landed somewhere.

" Think," Theta said to her daughter.

The two women looked at each other, and then they looked at Marlene, who was scratching her leg with the sharp heel of her shoe, making scratch marks wide as a ruler up and down her leg.

"Marlene," Theta said with angrier insistence, "you've had months to consider. What have you been doing?"

"I've been taking notes for Astra Dell. I've been visiting her and reading to her. What college is she applying to?" Marlene's expression when she looked at the college adviser was all chin.

The college adviser smiled. "That's not to the point, Marlene, and an expedient use of Astra Dell. What schools are you applying to, that's the question on the table."

This from "Quirky," the woman Marlene had described as always out of the office when a girl needed her. Quirky forgot a girl's name and where it was she hoped to be next September. Quirk was all numbers. Fifty, 75, 95 percent chances hyphened against the names of colleges on a final list she okayed. The witch wrote letters about every senior; she was the one to broker deals, and she had her favorites. Mrs. Quirk's favorites were sassy, scrappy, outspoken girls with no moon shots. Ufia, Darnell, Krystle, Karen, Teenie — she called them the Sisterhood; Mrs. Quirk was entirely confident of where the Sisterhood would land.

"I see you've got someone in Arizona," Theta said.

"The University of Arizona, yes, we have two girls there. You remember Mary Kate O'Neill, Marlene? She is very happy there."

"What about New York University?"

"What about it?"

Theta interrupted, "What about Wisconsin?"

"Now there you are," Mrs. Quirk said, with nods to Theta again and then eye to eye with Marlene. "You've a 75 percent chance of getting in, Marlene."

The Siddons School was all numbers, and Theta was adding them up. She was adding up six years of Siddons education. Here was math. Six years of her ex-husband saying, "Why not keep Marlene in public school? It was good enough for us." Six years of her own scramble. Loans and the interest on those loans. Theta was glad he wasn't here to hear what was good enough for Marlene. Marlene's choices were not the choices Theta had hoped — hoped perhaps unreasonably — to hear. If they had money, Marlene could afford to be a goof. But Theta was a receptionist at a dentist's office where retainers cost almost as much as she made in a month, and the privileged children with their crooked teeth kept losing them.

Oh! Last night's Chinese food was rising in Theta's throat; she would burp with her mouth shut and smile, but so many shames gusted in her: her cheap shoes, the floppy sack meant to pass for a purse, and other, more hurtful details — thin hair, no waist, tired hands. Middle class! She was ugly and average — not very smart. She reached over and covered Marlene's hand with hers. "We should look into Wisconsin." Theta said, "We should look into Syracuse. Daddy and I liked it there."

"Marlene should look," Mrs. Quirk corrected, and Theta felt slapped, and she burped.

Mrs. Forestal came into the head of school's office and saw that the school nurse and Car's English teacher, Miss Hodd, were also in attendance for this meeting that the head of school, Miss Brigham, had arranged.

"An emissary from the lower school was just here with news we have more rabbits," Miss Brigham said, and her expression, Mrs. Forestal noted, was kindly.

More puffy talk ensued.

Miss Brigham motioned they sit, which the three women did, in a circle around Miss Brigham's partner's desk. The desk was the only real antique in the room and had belonged to Miss Siddons herself. Miss Brigham now stood behind it. "We won't take up your time, Mrs. Forestal," Miss Brigham said. "We have some concerns about Carlotta."

"Thank you, Miss Brigham, for refraining from using her nickname." Mrs. Forestal said to the nurse, "Her father thought it up and sadly it's stuck."

"Miss Hodd?" Miss Brigham asked Carlotta's English teacher to begin, and she did, with a lot of background — Car, Folio, the honor, Car as editor — but eventually got to the important part about a recent submission. Car's own work. "I told Car I felt obliged to show this story to the nurse, and she said she understood. She really didn't seem to mind, which made me wonder: Maybe this is a fiction, but I didn't want to take a chance." Now Miss Hodd gave a copy of the story to Mrs. Forestal.

"Does Carlotta see much of her father?" Miss Brigham asked.

"She hopes to see him over spring break."

"So she does see him?"

"She saw him last spring break."

"Dr. D says Car is worried about going to Paris," Miss Hodd said.

"Please, Carlotta is always worried about something."

The women made signs of agreement or understanding, of course; but the nurse asked, "Does she seem more anxious than usual?"

" There's Astra Dell, but frankly we don't much talk about Astra because there isn't much to say, is there?"

The nurse bowed her head, but when she looked up, she asked, "Carlotta has some eating issues, too, doesn't she?"

"I think so, yes."

The nurse said, "We think we should act before it gets more serious, Mrs. Forestal."

Mrs. Forestal spoke absently. "Yes," she said.

The nurse was more emphatic. "We think it is serious enough to warrant intervention."

"You think so?" Mrs. Forestal winced at the sound of her own voice, a high, stupid sound. Then she said again, "Yes," the gentle word, and she took up the sleeve of her sable coat and smelled it, which was to smell herself, her own sweet, perfumed, rich self. Then she could look up. Mrs. Forestal looked up at these women — the nurse, the English teacher, and the head of school — i n wonder at their kindness. "I'm grateful you thought to call."

Miss Brigham said, "Of course. We love Car. There you go. I guess the nickname fits. We want the tomboy back."

"So do I." Mrs. Forestal began abruptly and only to Miss Brigham, saying, "I haven't read this story. My daughter doesn't share her work with me. She is a very neat girl at home. I don't go into her room."

"Of course."

"I understand," said the nurse.

Miss Brigham and Miss Hodd and the nurse, all three sat erect and ready. They wanted to work with Mrs. Forestal. They wanted to look out for Carlotta was all. And with Mrs. Forestal's help, they believed they could address whatever it was that was making it hard for Carlotta to sleep at home.

"She is doing as well as ever. Her teachers give her very good reports, but she often goes to the nurse with headaches."

"She comes up to sleep in her frees."

Sleeping or not sleeping, apparently, was part of the story.

Mrs. Forestal said, "I see Carlotta coming out of her bedroom every morning." Her voice washed out as if she weren't sure of this fact as she sat in a room, conspiratorially well-intentioned. "I've seen Carlotta eat dinner." She sniffed at her coat sleeve again and reconsidered. "Well, maybe it's just playing with dinner. She eats with her baby pusher and fork, I'm ashamed to say."

The nurse was making little sounds again.

"I'm thin," Mrs. Forestal said.

A generally uttered, quiet "Yes" from the nurse, the English teacher, the head of school, then Mrs. Forestal heard the rustle of her own slip against her wool suit, heard the shush of her arms as she drew up her sable. She was thankful to be rich. "Yes," she said, accepting recommendations, some telephone numbers.

"Thank you," Mrs. Forestal said as she straightened and looked at the story — her daughter's — in her hands. The title was "Good Night."

Fathers

Mr. Dell did not understand what Dr. Byron had said except that it meant Astra would be off-limits to him; the radioactive rod to be sewn in her arm meant even to approach his daughter was dangerous. The nurses would attend to her masked. A rare cancer. Rare. Rare meant fatal, didn't it?

Mr. Dell missed his wife, and he resented the passing of time that took her further away from him. He wanted to look behind him and see her sitting on the edge of her chair but in no hurry to get up. Grace asking questions or telling little stories about her day. Walking tours, book clubs, social book clubs and church book clubs, Grace belonged, enrolled, was always a student. The way Grace laughed when she lifted off the pot lid and scared the cat with steam. "Serves you right!" Grace. To think of all the ways he missed her. The light adjustments she would make to his collar, his scarf, his tie, her hand's appraising caress as though she were attending to herself. The gift of this daughter, their only; after childless years, years of christenings and birthdays and the paper weight of someone else's child in his arms, the arrival of Astra did not surprise Grace. She simply took it as timely, a timely birth, but a birth she had nonetheless always expected. Her attitude was: We are graceful, handsome, philanthropic people of some small means, the Dells, and of course to us would come such a daughter.

Tomorrow that daughter would be off-limits. He could stand at Astra's door in a paper costume; he could look in; he could speak, but what could he say? Such suffering as hers could not be distracted except with drugs. Drugs on top of drugs. Wasn't his daughter too slight to withstand them? Morphine. Wouldn't it kill her?

Mr. Dell was a tall man with a kind face and little imagination, or so he looked to himself in the mirror of the window in his daughter's room. Most everyone he knew sometime got around to telling him that he was handsome, but he didn't see it. His eyebrows were too thick. And his interests? They were simple. He loved dogs and making breakfasts on Sundays. He rode horses. All of the Dells rode horses when they were on their farm in Virginia. They rode in Montana, too, and skied in Utah. Grace's legacy — a love of literature and decorative arts — was already in place in this girl of theirs. A lot of what he knew about art he knew from his wife; from his daughter he knew about modern dance. Last spring he had watched Astra alone onstage. He had seen her breastless dancer's body leap. She wore a tulle skirt in one dance, and in another she played in farmer's jeans. Whatever she wore, there was no way to hide her beauty. This was a fact he heard in the murmurs beside him. The point of her foot when extended, her ease and her arch and her surety, the prop of her red hair — a torch, a veil, a rag, a whip — contrastive accessories to the serenity of her wide-apart, beautiful face. By her bedside, befogged with so much feeling, unable to speak except to say good night, to pet what tomorrow he could not touch. He said, "Mommy is here," and then, because Grace would have liked it, they prayed, Astra and her father. He got up from his knees, a tall man, looking down at his daughter. "I'll be back in the morning," he said. "I can stand at the door. We'll sign to each other."

To see the girls moving broadly down the avenue laughing was to see girls in love, or that was what Wendell Bliss (father to the handsome Will) thought walking on the other side of Park with Marion's dog, Peanut. The girls looked familiar in their black short coats, black jeans, tottering boots. Where were they off to? Where were they all, the girls, all those girls Wendell Bliss had seen with his son at their apartment? Abundant hair and skinny feet. Where were they? And the girls he hadn't met who stayed at home on Saturdays. Were they baking cookies? That is what girls at home used to do, but this was New York. In New York a lot of girls found their way into his son's room. Marion Bliss asked that Will's door be kept open, but the door to his son's room was often shut. Home from boarding school, Will often squeaked past his parents' bedroom door in the predawn blue, and Will was not alone. Wendell Bliss never told his wife. He might tell her now if she were here or tell her how surprised he was to be old, but Marion was not here; she was still with her mother in Florida. She was in Florida and Will was on his way to Florida and he would follow without Peanut. ("Marion, the dog will upset your mother.") Marion's mother. This would surely be the last Thanksgiving in Palm Beach. Marion's mother had cancer. Cancer. Cancer everywhere you looked. Poor little girl, the one his son knew, the one in the play. There wasn't any question where that girl was tonight so close to Thanksgiving.

Marlene

Marlene Kovack was in Miss F's math class and going over the last test. Marlene had failed. Was she then a dummy? (Well, maybe in math.) But was she the dumbest in the dummy class? Was Marlene really a C student, or was she a C because of a ripe, damp quality she had? The pocket of skin beneath her eyes, a kind of blister, was discolored and sweaty as if the school air were tropical, and she, overheated from the exertion of changing classrooms and doodling in class. Marlene might not be a C if she were pretty and thin. She wouldn't be a C if she paid attention, surely, but Marlene stood up and walked out of Miss F's class — Marlene never asked permission but took advantage of her teacher's size and wore a certain malevolent expression she knew was a threat — and she dawdled in the hall. By the time Marlene returned, the problem was solved; the class was nearly over.

Now Marlene was lingering near the college office again, yawning in the face of yet another free and knocking around the hallway, showing herself to Mrs. Quirk. She asked the college counselor, "Mrs. Quirk, do you know who I am?"

Mrs. Quirk, a tall woman, tailored pants, pretended indignation. "Of course, I do," she said. "Aren't you…" and she laughed. "I'm kidding, Marlene."

Lisa Van de Ven went into Mrs. Quirk's office. Marlene had noticed Lisa was often stopping by Mrs. Quirk's office. Probably no teacher, Marlene thought, really knew who Lisa was, but Marlene did. She knew Lisa was not the nice girl she played at being with the teachers. Does Marlene own a brush, or did she forget how to wash her hair? Marlene remembered the Lisa Van de Ven of eighth grade, and that Lisa had not really changed.

Does she own a brush?

She always copies us.

Let's not befriends with her anymore.

She's overweight now. Sucks for her.

There's always one girl in your class that you hate.

Alex and Suki

"It's not as if we're the only ones," Suki said, but Mrs. Dembroski passed over this remark and wanted to know instead how Alex and Suki, both of whom lived within walking distance of the school, how they could be late for English, senior English, in this most important semester. An unexcused absence was a zero for the day in Mr. O'Brien's class, wasn't it? Didn't they know that?

"We know. We know, we know, we know. We're sorry. We're stressed. We can't keep up. Mr. O'Brien assigns so much. He expects us to remember everything."

"Okay. For now, it's just detention. Admissions needs help. After school on Friday, you can stuff envelopes."

The sound that whistled out of Alex as she left Mrs. Dembroski's office conveyed all her feelings, but did Dembroski really think stuffing envelopes was going to keep her from cutting O'Brien's first-period Monday class?

"I will never get into Brown," Suki said.

"You make me sick. There are practically buildings named after you there."

Siddons

Anna Mazur said, "Oh, to lose all that beautiful hair!" Anna's own sparse colorless hair sparked when she so much as touched it.

"Hair grows back," Miss Hodd said.

"Not that color," Anna Mazur said.

Miss Hodd said, "I let the nines write after morning meeting today. Nobody wanted to do grammar. Listen to what Camilla Berkey wrote: 'Helplessness scrubs us all clean of any hope we had of doing something, but the doctors are still dirty. They must not be touched with the sponge. No, they must not.'"

Mothers

Mr. Dell, who was not at the coffee, was mentioned by Mrs. Van de Ven as reading to his daughter. They had just started Mansfield Park.

And how did Mrs. Van de Ven know this? Mrs. Morton wondered.

"I asked," Mrs. Van de Ven replied.

The gathered fluttered and some of the mothers looked sad, but Mrs. Morton said, "That's Fanny Price, isn't it? It's a most unfortunate name." Mrs. Morton's deep, druggy, slow voice made several of the mothers laugh. The sound of Mrs. Morton was funny, as was the fact of how rich she was and well-read.

Mrs. Cohen took Mrs. Van de Ven aside and spoke softly, " Think of it this way: When Nanda Morton wakes up each morning, she has made more money than most of us will make in a year." Mrs. Cohen said, "And you know what that means, don't you?"

"I know what that means," Mrs. Van de Ven said. "It means Suki Morton is going to Brown."

"Oh please!" said loudly and in exasperation from another part of the room.

Theta Kovack had heard it all before and had juggled to come in late to work for this acidic coffee and reckless talk.

"Look at them, a class of forty girls," said Mrs. Quirk, the college adviser, "and all of them will find a college. The job is to make the right fit." Mrs. Quirk said it was important to encourage daughters to finish their essays before Christmas break!

Mrs. Saperstein and Mrs. Song wore wise, relieved expressions as their daughters had applied for early admission. These mothers didn't have to worry about essays anymore. "Thank god!" was what they said.

That poor Astra Dell. She was losing all that hair now, wasn't she? How, Theta Kovack wondered, had Astra Dell entered the conversation happening just behind her; but the girl had, thanks to Mrs. Van de Ven, who seemed absorbed by the subjects of Astra Dell and the girls making themselves sick at Norris-Willet.

CHF

Car pushed and smoothed and rearranged the food; she made patterns.

"Look, Carlotta, if you're not going to eat it—" Mrs. Forestal began, but all the air she had to argue with hissed out of her, and she sat quietly, seeming very small and vacant at the other end of the table.

Mothers

What were other people drinking over the Thanksgiving weekend? Miss Wilkes was drinking amber ale, and Lisa Van de Ven took a sip. ("I shouldn't but how else can I get inspired to write my essay?") Alex and Suki were drinking skim-milk lattes. Mrs. Van de Ven ordered pinot grigio for lunch with Mr. Dell. "He looks so thin!" she told her husband at the Post House for dinner. She explained that the doctor was willing to take a risk, "a combination of surgery, internal radiation, external radiation, a couple of chemo…," but Mr. Van de Ven cut her off. They were eating, for heaven's sake, weren't they? "You may be," she said, "but I am drinking."

At the senior parents coffee, Mrs. Van de Ven said she was becoming an alcoholic!

The senior parents coffee had been very well attended. The college adviser, Mrs. Quirk, was at the coffee to answer any last questions about applications and what parents might expect for the next few months. Although the questions and advice seemed much the same as those of two weeks before, the mothers attended to what sounded rewound and repeated. Car Forestal's name did not come up. (It never did!) A number of mothers could have told stories about Carlotta Forestal or about other girls from different schools, but only Mrs. Cohen recounted to the group whatever horror she had heard was happening at St. Catherine's and Norris-Willet, and again several mothers bemoaned their helplessness.

A Daughter

Lisa Van de Ven sat in the kitchen in the best chair. "What the hell is this?"

"I don't know," her mother said. "Leave it if you want. I don't care."

"Oh, Mother."

"'Oh, Mother' what?"

"I know what you're thinking."

"Do you?"

"I do."

"I wonder."

Unattached

Anna Mazur came to the disappointed part of the Tim Weeks story and said, "I'm not pretty, Mother."

Her mother was silent on the phone.

"We're more like brother and sister than anything else." Anna sighed and asked her mother, "What do you think?"

Her mother thought that only baked or handmade gifts should be exchanged between staff and students at Christmas.

Anna said, "That's the rule, but people break it all the time."

" That's right," her mother said. "You got that ugly scarf last year."

"Yes, Mother. That ugly scarf from Hermès."

"It had stirrups all over it."

Anna said, "I don't know what to think about Tim."

"I'll tell you what," her mother said. "Don't think about him."

Siddons

The news on December 15 was bad — Astra still off-limits; and good — early admits to Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, and Trinity, all confirmed. Four girls were in college! School was over for them.

Kitty Johnson, who was waiting to confer with Mrs. Quirk about colleges, said to Car, "If you thought Sarah Saperstein was insufferable before Harvard, imagine what she'll be like now."

"Ny Song, too."

Kitty lowered her voice to confide in Car the decision she had made to avoid her adviser's elective. "I'm not taking O'Brien's course."

"Good idea."

"I'm taking Hodd's Families in Distress," Kitty said.

Miss Hodd, in another classroom, slid her battered Warriner's to the corner of her desk and launched herself into the middle of the classroom in her castered chair, one leg up on the seat, chin on her knee, all the better to listen to how the seniors in her English class felt about the news that Astra Dell was sicker.

"A whole group of crying juniors passed me in the hall. They didn't even look like the kind of people who would be her friends."

"They weren't Astra Dell's friends."

"A lot of people aren't really crying for her; they're putting on an act."

Marlene

Marlene's head was at a whistling boil when she waved good-bye from behind the window to Astra's room — and Marlene was wearing paper shoes, cap, and gown — so what did the nurses wear? she wondered. Someone had to go into that room. Marlene waved good-bye, mouthed, "Merry Christmas," then shuffled away in those paper shoes, relieved to be well and leaving the sleepy, balding creature in a pom-pom hat Kitty Johnson had knit the sick girl when it went out at school that Astra was losing her hair. First lines to college essays occurred to Marlene: "Walking along the hospital corridor to see my sick friend was an unsettling experience." Possible, but there was her dad essay, the one she had started: "My father looked me in the eyes and asked, 'Are you ready?' 'No,' I replied, and he pushed me overboard, and I sank deeper and deeper into a cold, enchanted realm." Her father had pushed her into China Lakes, but Marlene had always wanted to go scuba diving, and who was to say she had not?

Siddons

Five of the graduates from the class of '96, home from college, came to see the last day of school and the Christmas spectacle when 536 girls from grades k through twelve gathered in the auditorium, the seats retracted for the occasion, and in the middle of the room, the fake Christmas tree with its paper-chain decoration. The fifth, sixth, and seventh graders gathered in the balcony with their teachers while the other grades filed in: big sisters and little sisters, starting with the seniors and their kindergarten charges, hand in hand, an endless coil of girls wearing red and green accessories, candy-cane tights, and tinsel in their hair—"I'm one big present, just for you!" Gillian Warring mouthed to Mr. Weeks in the balcony. Around and around, the elevens with the first grade, the tens with the second, on and on, the students came while most of their teachers sat on the stage of the auditorium. A few of the old favorite Christmas and Hanukkah songs to begin—"You would surely say it glows, like a lightbulb!" — and then Miss Brigham in a Santa's hat, front and center on the stage, read from The Polar Express. Then some more songs until everyone's favorite moment: "The Twelve Days of Christmas," when the first grade began, "On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me," and the kindergarten girls, no bigger than feathers, were held up by their senior sisters to squeak, "Fa la lah." The dreaded moment, of course, was "Five golden rings," when the fifth-grade girls leaned over the balcony with their wagging hands outstretched and shrilly pitched the song. The sixth and seventh graders tried to outshout each other, and the teachers, predictably, frowned, but "Five golden rings!" always put the song on high, and there it stayed with some slight mumbled diminishment in the upper grades as the ninth grade mimed nine maids a-milking until, the moment anticipated, and the seniors stood, some of them already crying, and began their own Christmas medley — playful digs at teachers and Quirk, of course, and college horrors. The girls were often off tune and uncertain of the lyrics so recently composed. "Jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle bell rock, you might just think our essay's a crock…"