Siddons
Edie Cohen explained right speech involved abstinence from "lying, telling tales, harsh language, and frivolous talk." In the first skit at morning meeting, three girls were talking, and as a fourth approached, one girl said to the others, "Don't let her join our group." In the second skit, four girls were talking and after one of them had left, the others spoke behind her back: "She is a drag. I wish she wouldn't follow us."
In the third skit, four girls were talking and then one of them walked to a pile of book bags and took something that was clearly not hers. When later she had the opportunity to confess, she lied: "I didn't take anything."
Marlene played the student who said, "Don't let her join our group," a line she had heard: Lisa Van de Ven, eighth grade, middle school. The jittery disconnect and suddenness of middle schooclass="underline" breasts and stinks. Rumors, boys, dances. The boys froze some fatty's bra and waved it like a flag in Frost Valley.
Unattached
Anna Mazur did not like Tim Weeks's apartment as much as she liked her own. Hers had a view of the East River. Every time she opened the front door to her apartment, she walked toward the restlessness, the choppy, mostly dun-colored or black shivering river as seen from the picture window, a view that powerfully affirmed the rightness of her relocation from Michigan. Hers was a postwar building, and the windows were modern with wide panes — she needed to get them washed — and the rent for her apartment was a matter of its view and the floor, the twelfth floor, a junior one-bedroom, which meant not quite a studio, not quite a one-bedroom, but five hundred square feet of living space for a large chunk of what she made every month. Her mother had asked more than once, "How much can you save living in a city like New York?" Money for Anna, at age twenty-eight, was not the point; she had wanted sophistication and experience. The private school in Michigan where she first taught had a B reputation, or so said her cousin, the lawyer — and who better than the lawyer to know? In Anna's eighth-grade classroom at Siddons, early in the teaching year, she had one day come into class and started the lessons — always, always, she forgot to take roll — while two of her students hid under her desk. They would have seen the entire class through from this perspective except that their delight in the prank, and their classmates' laughter, gave them away. Other missteps included her constantly confusing the names of two black girls—"Do we all look alike, Miss Mazur?" The problem was the girls did look alike.
She remembered other embarrassments. The class trip to the cheese factory where she stepped in something that stank up the bus. Those moments — all too many of them — when pride overrode discretion, and she let loose her voice in a communal song; she let her florid soprano flail upward and over the ordinary sound produced by those gathered at the start of the new school year. Her voice, a fat girl's vanity, drew too much attention in a school setting, and only in church could she freely sing. However had she managed to get through the first year at Siddons? Anna suspected it was finally her friend's good word, Sharon Feeney, the darling Miss F, who had known Anna at the university and had written on her behalf. The darling Miss F—"I can't carry a tune!" — was a favorite among the administrators. To be favored, a favorite, that was Anna's ambition, but she was not so confident of this happening as to decorate her apartment with the view of longstanding employment. This was her third year of teaching at Siddons.
Tim Weeks was thirty-three years old and had been at Siddons for six years. His apartment was darker and had no river view, but there was permanence in the oak shelves and books and photographs. Anna had no photographs; her personal history shamed her for being as ordinary as mud. Her mother had worked in a nursing home and her father on assembly at the GM plant. Their house was split-level in a ditched development, no water in sight, stunted trees, and culs-de-sac. Her father once in the car saying, "Oh lordy, Annie, it's just a fancy word for dead end."
Marlene
On clubs afternoons when Marlene was free — she wasn't a joiner — she walked to the hospital and sat with Astra Dell. If others were there or arrived, she cut the visit short and only left off whatever she had brought to read to her because Astra had said she loved being read to, so that is what Marlene did. She read stories from Dog Fancy's "Therapy on Four Legs." She brought in stories about heroes and miracles that might make Astra feel good, and they did because she smiled when Marlene read them. Astra said, "Marlene, you're weird," but she smiled when she said this. Astra always thanked her, and she thanked Marlene in a genuine way. Her smile seemed to Marlene entirely sincere; even on those afternoons when she was in pain and noddy with medicine, when her voice broke and she only waved good-bye, Astra seemed glad to have seen Marlene, and so Marlene came to the hospital on other days, not just clubs afternoons. She would have visited on the weekends except the weekends were Mr. Dell's. On this day, as on so many days, Marlene Kovack left school and her last name — the nasal sound of it when said at school — she left behind, and she walked along the East River down the broad avenue to the hospital.
The spired entrance was marbled and churchlike in its serious human traffic, and Marlene was an old parishioner, a woman in black on her way to prayers. She didn't have to ask where, she knew. The back banks of elevators, the higher floor, the long corridor, turn left, and another five rooms down, and she was there, Astra's room, the door ajar and sometimes other visitors but most often not, most often on clubs afternoons it was only Marlene. Once when Miss Mazur and Mr. Weeks had come, Marlene had stayed on. She wanted to know teachers the way Astra knew teachers, and Marlene liked Mr. Weeks. Marlene did not know Miss Mazur, but it was her opinion — and she shared it later with Astra Dell — that Mr. Weeks felt sorry for Miss Mazur, which was why he was with her. Miss Mazur's face was wildly askew. Every feature went its own way, and her nose was a large distraction. Most clubs afternoons Marlene had Astra Dell to herself. Astra sometimes slept; she opened her eyes sometimes only just long enough to say, I'm not feeling very well. Astra wasn't feeling well on this clubs afternoon, so Marlene did not stay but left a note on the bedside table for her signed love. And for this, Marlene thought better of herself, and once home she was a sharpened arrow thrummed from the bow and hitting its target. Steadfast, selfless, purposed to comfort her friend, her only and her best. Couldn't she say that? Yes, Marlene thought, however unacknowledged, she was Astra's best friend.
A Daughter
The nurse informed them that Astra wasn't feeling very well today. "We won't stay long," Lisa said. Miss Wilkes in a louder voice to Astra, "We just wanted to say hello." Lisa moved away from Miss Wilkes so that Astra could see her and she could see Astra, but the sight of Astra weakly propped against the pillows surprised Lisa, who had not visited before and had had no idea of how worn away her friend would be, how see-through thin.
Lisa and Miss Wilkes, uncertain in the semi-dark of Astra's room, whispered to each other, was Astra asleep?
"I'm not asleep," Astra said.
"'How are you' seems like such a stupid thing to ask," Lisa said, "but how are you?" One stupid question after another followed. And afterward in the booth at the coffee shop, Lisa said she was stunned. Astra seemed to have shrunk already. Lisa said, "Obviously, I didn't know what to say."