Car Forestal twisted utensils through food she had mashed to look like war salvage, drought gruel, rancid scraps from boarding school. She was at the orphanage and eating with her baby "pusher," the tiny silver spade from her godmother. Car pushed and smoothed and rearranged the food; she made patterns.
"Look, Carlotta, if you're not going to eat it, at least stop this baby business. Not everything on your plate has to be mashed." Mrs. Forestal said she simply could not sit for hours and play the warden, and she pronounced Car's manners repugnant and left the table. Car excused herself elaborately—"May I please" — and made answer, "Why of course, my dear," and the girl left her plate of food that no longer looked like food and went to her room and drank water.
Sarah Saperstein and her father were talking about global warming, and Edie Cohen — Dewdrop to her father — was listening to her father talk about her older brother, Jake, the pride of the family, a sophomore at MIT who was making computer programs for Intel or Extel or Ontel, some techno-sounding company that had a tel to it. Edie Cohen's brother was one of the reasons she worked so hard; she had his career to live up to no matter what her parents said. Her parents said they didn't care what grades she got as long as Dewdrop could say she had given her all.
Ufia, the black princess, was eating chickpeas and telling her mother she didn't think Mr. O'Brien saw the racist significance of the Dickinson poem, at least not the way she did. "Just think of the term," she said. "'White Election.' Could anything be more obvious?"
Kitty Johnson had come home after seven from advisory with Mr. O'Brien, and her head ached. Kitty said it was a migraine-order headache, and she told the housekeeper she was going to bed. "I'm not going to be 'up to nothing' in my room, as you say. I won't be phoning anyone. I don't do that, anyway. I just don't want any dinner."
***
What other conversations were there? Was there still talk of the Dells, Astra Dell especially? Was the subject of her cancer old, or simply avoided because it diminished all the other griefs a healthy person felt? Here was a body dangerously sick: Astra Dell, that pale girl from the senior class, the dancer with all the hair, the red hair, knotted or braided or let to fall to her waist, a fever, and she consumed.
CHF
The sofa Car sat on was smooth as a mushroom and so plumply overstuffed that no indented evidence of her remained when she stood up; in fact, there was no evidence of anyone's passing through her father's apartment, and she could only imagine the swaying enormity of the cleaning lady, who was so thorough in her work that the slats of light through the blinds seemed dust-less. Here all was sealed, unscented, unused, unmarked, yet the clock was wound and keeping time. Her father's drawers were empty; his closet, locked. Car had a key to her father's apartment, and this, she supposed, was enough, was a lot really, and meant she could wander and phone as she would, as she had and did last week, this week, any week, and because her father's number was unlisted and her mother didn't know it, Car was inaccessible. That man! was all her mother said. That man, Car's father, impeccably pressed and pleated, was surely in handsome company. Dearest girl. He wrote the occasional postcard that took weeks to get across the ocean. Dearest wren. Today in the Galleria Borghese, William stood in front of the Bernini and wept. You know the statue. Daphne breaking into branches. Her father was a character in a Henry James novel. Car lit up another cigarette and ashed it on the table.
Marlene
Marlene picked her nose and sent what she found in it flying across her room. She was a dirty girl, she knew that much, and whatever the girls in school suspected her of — stealing, farting, lying — was true. The slut part was not true, although she wished it were, but all the dirty parts — yes, she was that girl. Look at her messy room, the unresolve of such disorder. She had no ambition but to dizzy herself into absence. Smoking cigarettes helped. The nights when her mother came home and went straight to bed saying her feet were swollen, those nights Marlene often shamed herself into high feeling. She flashed her ass in the bright windows of the living room; she pulled her cheeks apart; she said, Kiss my a-hole; she said, Eat me. Ugly expressions she used as she would spit, and she picked at herself and made worse scabs. But who could see this now in the soft light of her bedroom? She wrote to Astra Dell and chewed her nails to a bloody quick she blotted on the draft of her letter… Dear Astra. She meant what she wrote, the dear part. Of all the girls in her class, only Astra Dell had ever been genuinely kind to her and was, yes, was dear to her, and now Marlene was in a position to help Astra. To help Astra Dell! To be her friend as no other. I have never shared more than a hello nod or a smile with you, but the one time I saw you cry, I wanted to share those tears with you. I am thinking of you, which was purely the truth. Marlene was thinking of Astra and rumors of scorching treatments being used to cure her. Marlene wrote three pages, single-spaced, telling Astra about stupid things, school, Miss F. She either just sits there and waits for you to have some trigonometric moment or tells you that she cannot believe that you don't know it. Marlene's letters were filled with whatever she had overheard in the senior lounge, for she had found a place there for herself in the lounge. Alex began laughing hysterically over nothing in chemistry, and Dr. Meltzer kicked her out of the class. Marlene often sat in the corner of the lounge leaned up against the lockers, and from there she listened in, took notes, copied stories, scribbled, drew flowers. Alex was making a video of the senior experience, but Marlene was writing it all down for the sick girl.
Marlene wrote to Astra about her yearbook page. Marlene Kovack, Last Heard Saying: Nothing. Who wrote that? Marlene had some ideas — Suki Morton and Alex Decrow. Some joke.
But there's always got to be one person to hate in every class, right? Marlene wrote to Astra: Expect to see Alex's movie. She's shoving her camera into everyone's face. Even Marlene's, of course. Marlene had been asked to look into the camera and say something to Astra. Marlene, watching from her corner, had said, "Catch me in action," and then held as still as she could, hardly seeming to breathe. Alex filmed some girls from below because, as Alex said, the angle was so fucking freaky, possibly original; the way a little kid sees the world is mostly oily, prickly legs. Marlene believed Alex wanted everyone to look ugly. That was school for Marlene, an ugly ongoing movie, but now suffering had another meaning, real suffering led to real death. Dear Astra, I hope to see you even before you get this letter, and she did hope to see Astra; this was the truth.
Siddons
Dembroski was checking off attendance in senior class meeting.
Alex Decrow?
Edie Cohen — sick.
Marlene Kovack—
Suki Morton?
Later Mrs. Dembroski wondered at the suspended notation for Marlene Kovack; she couldn't account for her own indecision on the matter. Where was Marlene on Wednesday?
Unattached