"When did you? Why did you? Oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god" — Alex, in the middle of the empty hallway, hopped as if she had water in her ear. She was making goofy expressions and Suki was laughing. "I mean it. I don't know what I'm doing half of the time. What am I doing? Where's my camcorder?"
Dr. Meltzer, looking down the hall at Suki and Alex, said, "Why haven't the two of you been shot yet?"
They stood on the landing to the fifth floor and discussed what distinguished them, Alex and Suki, from people like Lisa, from most of their classmates really. They were, both of them, naturally thin. Thin to begin with. "Absolutely no cellulite, Alex." They were distinguished by their slender bodies and their disregard for their bodies, their purebred bone structure, their incongruously elegant good looks, also their money, their snobbery, their wayward society swagger. They pushed their names together saying, "SukiandAlex, Alexand-Suki, we're perfect. That's why Meltzer can't stand us."
Suki and Alex were late to class meeting.
"I thought we did this in October," Suki said when she saw they were nominating speakers for commencement.
"We did," whispered from the floor. "She canceled."
Alex made the same suggestion she had made in October. Why not Al Pacino? Somebody had to know him.
"Great!" from the room. The same response made in October.
Suki said, "He'd be so great!"
Ny Song said, "Who we pick says a lot about us."
"Yeah," Alex said. "It says we like sexy actors, older men."
"Yeah."
"Al Pacino is hot."
Other suggestions were Sarah Saperstein's uncle, who happened to be a very important doctor at Sloan-Kettering, and Patricia Friebourg, an art historian at NYU, best friend of Edie Cohen's mother, and part owner of the Friebourg-Johannasan Gallery on Mercer. Someone called out, "Brad Pitt!" and there were other suggestions for anyone with only one name. Miss Brigham wanted the seniors to know the school had connections with Verlyn Klinkenborg, and he might agree to speak at commencement. "Great," Alex stage whispered, "but who the fuck is he?" Sarah Saperstein knew just who Verlyn Klinkenborg was; in fact, several of the girls knew who he was. Ufia pronounced, mock grandly, that his prose was pellucid.
"Will you turn the camcorder off?" Ny yelled at Alex.
"She's right."
"Get serious."
"I thought a reminder of who we were, the fat-headed class of 1997, would amuse Astra Dell."
Sarah Saperstein was counting raised hands. Verlyn Klinkenborg was elected.
"Over Al Pacino! Unreal."
"What did you expect?" Suki asked Alex. "We've got a lot of nerds in our class."
"Oh god! I hate my class."
"A little something on meatballs or snow, that's what some guy named Klinkenborg will talk about."
"I just thought of Astra." Astra Dell had not been mentioned in the class meeting. Astra Dell was very sick. The rumors of blazing radioactive rods being sewn into arms persisted. The futureless future their friend faced was horrible, so it wasn't any wonder Astra Dell was a nighttime topic and rarely mentioned in class, not this day, when the class elected its graduation speaker, or in the days that followed when yearbook ads were due.
Mothers
Theta Kovack watched over the island of her station as Max Fuise fought the young woman who had brought Max to his appointment. The young woman repeated that Max was to come home with her. He could not visit his friend. They were loud, and Theta made a hushing gesture toward Max and his sitter and also toward the twins, the brothers Beller, who seemed to have the same crooked teeth and menacing hilarity. To the brothers Theta said, "This is an office, boys, not a playground." Theta called out to them, and they shrugged at her voice: So what? All day Theta answered the phone and looked up records and sent out reminders. Forget your teeth and they will go away. From time to time, she reprimanded the rowdier children in the waiting room. Often she felt sorry for them, saw the children hopped up on sweets and overloaded with lessons. Their mouths looked sore; but at least they were young mouths, red and wet and young. An old mouth was death. Her own dingy mouth she hoped to keep shut, and Theta never looked directly at Mr. Scott when he came in. How could she? He was at least thirty. He looked like the kind of young man who should have experienced braces and private school, but when he opened his mouth, his family's economies were evident.
Wasn't he ashamed to have braces now? she wondered.
Theta was fifty; she had never needed braces — a blessing — but her daughter, Marlene, had needed them, so that Theta's job was a blessing when just the everyday expenses were wearing. Theta answered the phone and looked up records and sent out reminders and in this way kept up her own modest home and made payments on the money she was borrowing for Marlene's tuition.
Theta made some mistakes in the afternoon; a woman with an expensive camel-colored feed bag on her shoulder questioned the cost of a procedure. Theta was right, but she addressed the woman rudely. Theta penciled in a wrong date, then said it aloud, but a hooded sweatshirt with a mouth brace corrected her. Theta broke her pencil in a passing fury, one of the small rages out of nowhere that beset her; she misplaced a statement; she did not have lunch. Her biggest mistake of the day was when she walked through Bloomingdale's to get to the subway. Weaving through the mezzanine's bazaar could be cathartic and airy, especially in the summer, but in January, clobbered by the weight of her wet winter coat, the perfume halls were oppressively bright; every surface was a mirror, and her skin, she glimpsed, looked patchy and chapped; she felt dirty. Then on the subway, there was only one seat left between her and a young man. She said, "I've been sitting all day," and it seemed he didn't doubt her because he took the seat. She was surprised at his alacrity, and hurt. Someone at the Food Emporium took her place in line, but she was too tired to argue and went down another aisle sure that some product would beckon. She bought midget Brillos and Bounce fabric softener.
Theta's evening at home grew worse.
"Your manners!" Theta said to Marlene when she discovered her daughter had mauled the ice cream she meant to have for dessert.
Dessert already? After the grocery shopping, after the hazardous whump of the burners igniting came dinner, but she had no memory of dinner. What did they eat? Had they talked? Theta remembered what she had wanted for dessert was ice cream. After Bloomingdale's came the butter pecan. But what was butter pecan ice cream when all the pecans were missing?
"You've gouged out all the nuts and left a mush."
"I'm sorry."
"I mean really. Your spoon's been all over this. Who's going to want to eat it now?"
"I said I'm sorry."
"But this is a habit of yours, Marlene."
"I'll stop."
"I was looking forward to butter pecan ice cream. I think more than anything else, I wanted butter pecan ice cream tonight."
"Oh, for heaven's sake, Mother" — Marlene pushed away from the table—"get a grip," and she pushed the swinging door open and set it swinging back and forth.
Theta did not move from the table; she stirred the ice cream to milk shake consistency and sipped it to soothe all that was sore. Now she remembered they had talked at dinner about Astra Dell's tooth, how it broke apart and powdered like a clay pot when Astra merely smiled. The kiln of chemotherapy had brittled every part, and she was fragile and feverish. All day Theta saw red, wet, young mouths, rawed by braces and retainers and bands, mouths tirelessly open in the way of good health. She did not want to think of a sick mouth, and she numbed her lips with ice cream and forgot the sick girl.