Miss Wilkes was forgiving. She said she liked Greek coffee shops. Posters over every booth — white, hilly villages, crags to the sea. Behind the glass door in the refrigerated case the usual desserts, thickly frosted cakes, rice pudding, liquidy fruit.
Wet water glasses were swiftly set before them and then the heavy coffee-shop crockery, coffee for Miss Wilkes, hot water and a tea bag for Lisa, who sighed out how unfair it was, Astra Dell, how awful, how confusing, how messed up it was, and it was! No one ever said the world made sense, but Lisa had expected that hard work and earnest intentions would pay off to some degree. Maybe the school reward system was the problem. "We need a much more arbitrary system," Lisa said. "Grades should be picked from a hat." No more elections and auditions. The fateful nature of the world was what should be taught because outside of school that was how it was. Money, scarce among the teachers and rarely talked of and then as an evil, was undervalued in school when, in fact, it decided so much. Lisa said that Suki Morton would end up at Brown because of it.
"Who are the Mortons?" Miss Wilkes wanted to know.
"They're the soup people."
Miss Wilkes said, "I'm ignorant of high-end experience, so I don't feel the lack."
"I don't either," Lisa said, "at least not until the girls come back from spring vacation blonder and tan. Then I'm jealous." She shrewdly shoved aside her parents' summer home on the Jersey shore.
Miss Wilkes remembered a senior with high style whose disc player blew up in Dr. Meltzer's class. There were sparks, or that's what everyone said. Dr. Meltzer screamed at the girl, "Who do you think you are?" One of the drawbacks of the fourth floor: Dr. Meltzer was there, throwing chalk. "I hear him screaming a lot."
"Dr. Beltzer," Lisa said.
"So he said, 'Who do you think you are?' and she said, 'A Du Pont.'"
There were, in Lisa's opinion, so many ways to be disappointed in school. "Prize Day, if you want to know. Prize Day is a reason to give up. I lose sleep, friends, and hair, so I can sit through an eternity of the 'Everything Lisa can't do' show. I have to pay attention because my mother will want to know names so she can torture me with them."
"But you've won prizes."
"The nice-girl prize, yes, twice. I had them fooled."
"You're not a nice girl?"
"No," Lisa said, pulling at the skin on her thumbs, "I'm not a nice girl."
"I have that habit, too."
Lisa said, "I know." She said, "Graduation seems so far away," and she sighed theatrically. Lisa said, "I don't really want to talk to anyone at school anymore. Not because of you. Just because there is no reason to make an effort. It's not real at Siddons." Margaret Schilling and Jennifer Mann, stupid, glossy, social girls, not long out of Siddons, were on the gossip shows now. Margaret Schilling had recently posed in an emerald dress with a pug in her arms for one of those horsey magazines. "My mother buys Town and Country." Lisa thought many of the girls in her class were simply making themselves into the perfect corporate wives of tomorrow. "I heard, swear to god, word for word, Alex Decrow say, 'All I want is to smoke and party and marry a rich guy.'" Lisa thought that the importance of money should be taught; at least then girls would be prepared and might go through life less bitter.
"Are you bitter?" Miss Wilkes asked.
"I'm growing more disappointed every day," Lisa said.
"And why is that?"
"I am sure Suki Morton does not have the grades or the numbers, but she will get into Brown. She's not very smart, but she has a lot, a lot of money. So there's one reason to be bummed."
"Any other?"
Lisa had to pause over this question. "Health. Health guarantees. I expect to stay healthy because I eat cautiously, and I exercise and I don't smoke — well, now and then I have a puff — but then I look at Astra Dell, who has led a pure existence, and she is sick." Lisa said, "She's been a vegetarian for three years!"
Miss Wilkes rose abruptly and said, "I'll be back." In the bathroom she ran cold water over her wrists. Her face in the mirror seemed to waver, and she did not want to go back to the booth. Not because of you: What had Lisa Van de Ven meant by that remark? They had been spending a part of every school day together, but this was the first time they had ever gone anywhere together outside of school. She did not want to open her mouth — too many teeth — but she did when she saw Lisa smiling at her return. Miss Wilkes had never perfected a closed-mouth kind of smile; besides, she was too big a woman for that. "We should get the check," Miss Wilkes said, and she gestured to the waiter.
"I'm all right," Miss Wilkes said. "Don't worry. Hospitals upset me."
"Yes."
"No," she said, and she put her hand over Lisa's to stop her from sliding over money. Her hand over Lisa's looked large, and she kept the girl's hand under. Was the girl embarrassed? The salt and pepper, the cup of sugars, the poster, the booth — what else was there to look at? She looked at her hand over Lisa's, and Lisa, she saw, looked at her, and the girl made no effort to turn away, and so this was how it demonstratively started, although Miss Wilkes was not sure she wanted it started. She should never have suggested they visit Astra together, should never have prolonged the afternoon. But here they were in the coffee shop without words — of course! — with a gesture, followed by another, a caressing thumb. Her large, chewed-up thumb over Lisa's smaller, chewed-up thumb. "You're wearing polish," Miss Wilkes said.
"My mother says it looks cheap."
"I don't know about that."
"It does," the girl said, "but I like it."
The salt and pepper, the poster again — what else was there to look at? Now Miss Wilkes was embarrassed or more embarrassed than when they had begun this, for this was a beginning for them. This was what happened at beginnings. Tentative, self-conscious, clumsy, clumsily affectionate starts. I, I, I, the stuttered confessions. She might say, I'm not very good with words, but Lisa was lifting her hand out from under, she was squeezing the older woman's hand, she was laughing a little and patting Miss Wilkes's hand, saying, "What big teeth you have, Grandma," saying, "Let's go, it's late, you can walk me home," saying, "Don't be disingenuous, Janet. You knew I was a take-charge person."
Miss Wilkes — Janet Wilkes — was at least ten years older than Lisa Van de Ven, but in this moment she felt as if she were the student.
Mothers
Car Forestal's name did not come up at the senior parents coffee, although Astra's did. A number of mothers could have told stories about girls from other schools, but only Mrs. Cohen recounted to the group what she had heard was happening at St. Catherine's and Norris-Willet. "The pipes are rusty from girls being sick." Several mothers bemoaned their helplessness. The college counselor said it wasn't happening at Siddons.
"It—what isn't happening?" Mrs. Van de Ven asked, and Mrs. Cohen explained the acidic effects of throwing up. Mrs. Cohen said, "You and I don't have to worry about that problem."
"What does that mean?" Mrs. Van de Ven asked.
Car Forestal was the unnamed girl Mrs. Van de Ven described as a latchkey kid. Some latchkey was what Mrs. Cohen thought. Latchkeys, more like it. The father had some three or four homes, didn't he? And just where was Mrs. Forestal now? Why wasn't she at the coffee?
"Poor little rich girl."
"Poor little poor girl."
"Precocious."
"Depressed."
"Unwell."
CHF
Car Forestal lay on her bed smoking, swishing her feet, and feeling with the toes of one the smooth, polished toes of the other. No classes until after lunch, and she never went to school for lunch; except for advisory meetings with Dr. D, she never even sat in the lunchroom. The oily-gravy odors made her sick.