"Middle school," Tim Weeks said in a voice that sounded like a lover's. Rough expressions he had heard could be beautiful. What do you look like on the inside without any clothes?
Siddons
"Are you still in a snit about the white dresses?" Miss Hodd wanted to know.
"Edith Wharton would not approve," Mr. O'Brien said. "Poor Edith! She was left to learn at home with a governess, you'll recall, and the really good books were forbidden her in her father's library…"
Mr. Gates, Mrs. Archibald, Mr. Quinn and Mr. Santiago and Mr. Johnston, Mrs. Riley, Dr. Meltzer, Jade, who taught dance, Mr. Principia, Rose, Denny, and Jorge, from the cooking staff, Mariana Papadakios, who costumed plays, and Miss Barns, who directed them, the math team, Phil and Judy, the librarians, Lucy Caldwater and Helena Miser and Mrs. Cohen, the entire physical education department, swimming downstream, en masse, Bilba, from the music department, and Peter Hoy, who ran technology, were some of the guests on their way to the fancy faculty luncheon. Mr. Carson, Señora Valdez, and Anna Mazur were one group walking up Madison Avenue. Tim Weeks had told Anna Mazur he would be there just as soon as he was finished signing yearbooks.
Mrs. Van de Ven explained she had come early for a back-row seat where she would not be seen by the girls marching in, and there she had discreetly sat through Prize Day. She had come not because Lisa was winning a prize — Lisa was not, Mrs. Van de Ven knew it or she would have been called — but Mrs. Van de Ven had come to applaud the entire senior class and their teachers for their efforts and accomplishments. "And your daughter," Mrs. Van de Ven said to Mr. Dell, "your daughter is here. That's wonderful."
Her wonderful sounded hollow to him, though Mr. Dell could appreciate the sound of disappointment: how to explain Lisa's empty arms on June 11, 1997? Lisa was graduating, was going to… where was she going to? Astra hadn't said and Mrs. Van de Ven did not say, which seemed to Mr. Dell unlike Lettie Van de Ven, but he thanked her for her solicitous inquiries about his daughter. Astra was well; they were in holding mode, but she was well. She would be walking with her class.
"Yes, of course," Mrs. Van de Ven said, "I know." Mrs. Van de Ven was a class rep, so she knew; she knew a lot that was happening at school. Certainly, she knew about Astra. "Does she ever wear that wig you bought her?"
"She may have," he said. "I don't know."
Mrs. Van de Ven said, "There's so much we don't know about our children, isn't there?" These were the last days, weren't they? Never again high school, this school. Yes to the campaigns and annual funds, yes to the ten-year reunions, but never again this daily abrasion: the wonder it was possible to feel so much. Didn't Mr. Dell think that was so? Her own daughter had ruined her thumbnails with nervous sucking. "Some nights I thought to myself, she's just a baby." Then there was the club scene after spring vacation, the slacking off — the terrible slacking off — the smell of cigarettes in the clothes tossed about the room. Messy stacks of homework for weeks unmoved, untouched, and new books, novels from the spring electives — Families in Distress (poor choice) — their spines unbroken. "It's been hard," Mrs. Van de Ven said. "Honestly, I haven't known what to do, and Bill hasn't been any help. He flees to the office and stays late. We haven't had a dinner together, the three of us, in months it feels like. Not since the new year." Mrs. Van de Ven stood with Mr. Dell, who could have left her — she didn't have him in a corner — but he stayed to console her because she had started to cry.
"Tears of joy!" she insisted. "I'm going to miss my little girl."
CHF
That day was the last day I lived in my body. I retreated above the neck, and I've lived inside the "fire" in my head ever since. This was not the first time Car recognized herself in a play, although it was the first time she heard her own feelings expressed in the same images she had used all winter to describe the fever that was hardly purgatorial but a low-grade, constant wearing away. Nobody wakes up in the morning trying to burn.
Car walked Astra to her building, where they talked on the corner out from under the stage light of the iron-and-glass marquee. The play had been Astra's idea, but Car had known what it was about: a girl and her uncle in a car. What is it about uncles and fathers, Car wanted to know. "Have you ever loved somebody so intensely that you wanted to be inside them — literally, you wanted to slide down their throat? Something out of sci-fi, I know, but I'm serious, I've felt this way about my father. I've felt it for him and he's felt it for me, I'm sure, but then last spring. And now I haven't seen him in over a year. He comes to New York when I'm away with Mother. I went to his apartment the other day. I still have the key. I'd left the place a mess. I thought, let it look lived-in, let him see I've been here, but the other day — and I know he's got help — the place had been cleaned up, and there were no signs of me, but there were signs of him. I know. I know him. I know he was in New York." Car let herself be embraced, although it was easier to cry outside of someone's arms, and she did want to cry a little more. "It feels good to cry," she said. "There was a time last year when I thought I'd run out of the power to cry."
"I know," Astra said, "but you haven't."
"Oh, Astra," Car said. "I know I go on and on about my own problems, but I do love you, and I'm so glad we're just standing here." She saw the moment in Astra: the new green that glowed in the border along the staunch building. "You better promise to visit next year."
"Car."
"I was the one, you know," Car said. "He didn't do anything really. He wouldn't. I mean, you know my father when he's had too much to drink." If she could only describe the way his body strained its casing. "Do you remember years ago that sleepover I had when he came home and stepped on Kitty Johnson?"
"Oh my."
"That's the way he is. He gets very sad, goes out and drinks, and comes home walloped and stumbles around until he finds something soft to lie on."
"It's been a long time since I've seen your father," Astra said. "Mom's funeral, I think."
"Astra…"
"No, it's all right. I'm fine. I talk to Mom all the time, and I know she hears me. That sounds silly, but it's true. Sometimes when I was sick, I was sure she was sitting on my bed."
"It's not silly."
"I know you, Car," then, "Mom says hi. She says, 'Embrace the world.'" Astra took her friend's arm, said, "Come on. It's okay."
"That was a heavy-duty play tonight."
"Yes, it was. Come on," Astra said. "I'll walk you." This, their habit from whenever it was they were first allowed to walk home alone or together. Car would walk Astra to her apartment building, then Astra would turn and walk Car back to hers just to keep talking, but they had never before fallen into quite such a silence. It felt like what Car imagined was marriage.
Fathers
This year two trends in the tulip plantings along Park Avenue: Either the tulips were tight and fringed, or else they were sloppy, enormous, the size of soup bowls in very bright yellows and oranges; on the streets, red. The plantings along the buildings on Fifth Avenue in the Nineties had more interest for Wendell Bliss. These plantings he saw as a response to the park on the other side; they were done up in a woodsy way, oak-leaf hydrangea, hellebores, and bulbs — grape hyacinth, daffodils, and proportionate white tulips. The borders at night looked watered and cool, and Mr. Bliss watched Peanut for signs, but tonight the little dog seemed happy only to be out, and she minced along just ahead. Her "mother" was home now that Marion Bliss was home. Marion was home, and her mother and the long ordeal of winter were past. Poor Marion. I keep on expecting my mother to call.