Astra occurred to her and how weird it was that she, Car, who smoked and drank, was healthy while her best friend was sick. Good could be wrung from dwelling on Astra. Comparatives were meaningful.
Now Car was sad, and she thought she should call her father. Astra he would understand. She would call him if she knew where he was.
Marlene
Marlene let her red pen trail to the center of the lined page to draw circle over circle over circle, petal, petal, stem. One flower, two, in smears of them, second-period math class. The old crowding in of the big terms: free will or fate. Underneath the gobby flowers, she drew an enormous, ornamental, biblical A. Astra Dell's dying: What did it mean to them all in this overheated room? Check-plus, best girl, A, Astra, Astra Dell. Marlene Kovack wrote Astra Dell in her notebook; she wrote over and over the letters to the sick girl's name; she fattened each into a cartoon.
"Marlene?" Miss F scolded in questions. Death adrift, an odorless gas in the room, Marlene Kovack felt its woozy effects and was glad when the bell rang and she could leave off math and numbers.
Out of school, she felt prettier — Marlene sat out recess and her next two frees in her apartment in the bathroom some twelve blocks away, and here she thought about Astra Dell again and Astra Dell's father and Astra Dell's mother, who was dead. When Marlene was ten, the only mother with a face had been her own mother, Theta Kovack, even then droopy, beaked, a slot for a mouth, and thin hair fluttered to balding — an embarrassment. Marlene saw her mother as she was, and Marlene had seen Mrs. Dell as she was, too. Mrs. Dell had given school tours. Right up to her violent end, Mrs. Dell was giving tours; she had stood just behind the visitors in the doorway to Miss Hodd's English class and smiled at her daughter. Marlene had seen Mrs. Dell's face — eyes, nose, mouth matched up in small perfection, very pretty. A softer Astra, orange hair not red. Why couldn't Mrs. Dell have been her mother? Traitorous thought.
One day Astra Dell's enormous hair clip snapped off (that's how heavy Astra's hair was), and Marlene had found the hair clip and kept it. The clip was tortoise-shell and greasy from Marlene's rubbing it. She rubbed it now and looked under the ledge of the bathroom sink, junked up with soap and dismal.
Siddons
Impossible in the face of impossible, implausible, some of them imminent, defining decisions on the way: early apps. Early applications.
"One thing you have to say about our class," the two Elizabeths said, "we don't talk college."
"I leave that to my mother," Lisa said.
None of the girls — save for Ufia, Saperstein, Song, and Elizabeth G., who were applying for early admission — wore college sweatshirts, but that didn't mean the rest of the class hadn't picked up shirts and caps from their own first-choice colleges and wore these souvenirs at home. Kitty Johnson hoped to go to Williams and wore purple scrunchies; Alex Decrow hoped to go to the Rhode Island School of Design; Suki Morton, Brown; Lisa Van de Ven, Brown; the other Elizabeth, Brown; Edie, Penn; Car, Harvard or Columbia—I'm allowed to have two favorites; and Astra? Where did Astra want to go to school?
Marlene Kovack said… didn't say really, mumbled.
Alex and Suki
"Bite me," Suki said.
"I know," Alex said, and they shoved closer together on the red block, smoking, and talked about Astra Dell, how the day after her mother's funeral, Astra Dell had come back to school, and that was typical of Astra, wasn't it? "She's perfect."
On this damp day, Alex and Suki saw so many mothers with and without babies passing the red block on their way to the expensive coffee shop with its sea-coast cottage interior. There they all were, the young women in oversize barn coats and tight pants and narrow sling-backs they wore sockless. Such were the signs of ease. Wrist-size ankles, bones, bones, blushed faces, woodsy hair. Pedigreed dogs, rare breeds. See the chocolate Sussex spaniel in his puddled leash outside the store? "Woof to you!" Suki said to the midmorning mothers, and Suki wiggled — she always did this in passing — she flitted a little ass in her rolled-up uniform skirt on her way back to school, recess over. In the hallways the worn-away mothers were giving parent tours.
Siddons
Miss F, after lunch, on the elevator, kept herself aloof in the corner to avoid any sudden moves of the dangerous seniors stooped by the weighty, sharp weaponry of books they carried on their backs. "Watch, watch," Miss F said, making her way out. Four from the class of '97. They seemed happy enough though her own students protested their despair. Unhappiness weighs more, of course, not that Miss F had known it. Now this, this wonderful girl, Astra Dell, was sick. For the class of '97, the year would be marked by this event and its outcome. Pray heaven, the girl lives.
Alex and Suki
Alex Decrow bought a box of cards and left one on quick Quirk's desk: a duck with the message, "You quack me up." Alex had drawn a line through the word Valentine and written above in bold caps QUIRK.
"Alliteration. That ought to help your cause with our college counselor," Suki said.
"I just want to get it straight with her who I am and where I want to go to college."
Mothers
Mrs. Van de Ven, whenever she gave a school tour, knew at least some of what was happening on that day. "And a lot happens," she explained to the couple as they stood in the lunchroom. Middle-school soccer, council, upper-school morning meeting, JV volleyball vs. Norris-Willet, varsity volleyball vs. Norris-Willet, Diversity Book Club. The Dance Concert was already in the making, and ahead were the spring musical, Gilbert and Sullivan, and the class-eight play with the Alford boys. Mrs. Van de Ven gave the couple copies of the Quill and Folio, the middle- and upper-school literary magazines. "Award winning," she said. Other publications included the school newspaper, the Siddons Observer, and the yearbook. Lots of clubs, a Rainbow Coalition — gender issues, Mrs. Van de Ven said, dropping gender issues into the soup of the tour as with a slotted spoon, carefully. Gospel Choir, Knitting Club, Save Tibet. Community service obliged girls to work outside the school at soup kitchens, hospitals, nursing homes, schools. Sixty hours needed to graduate. Mrs. Van de Ven said that yes, hard to believe, this was her last year as a Siddons parent. "Next year I'm a past parent. It makes me kind of sad. I feel as if I'm graduating myself, and in a way, I am."
CHF
The skipped lunch entitled Car to a Tasti D-Lite, and it wasn't too cold for a Tasti D-Lite, but it also meant that after the cone she would have to run the reservoir. Dinner was never really a problem. Her mother usually said okay to most of what Car did. Okay from her mother with a hurt expression. Last night, the night before, any night with her mother was dangerous. The way they sat, each at her end — a centerpiece, a mound of acid greens and champagne grapes, antiqued hydrangeas as from another century, was pushed back a little. "The better to see," her mother said, and her expression at the other end of the table was skeptical or indifferent. Her mother sat erect with her wrists against the edge of the table, hands prayered, nails red. No plate at her mother's place. Her mother wasn't hungry. Oh, all this about her mother! Car had forgotten her mission, and she walked back up the street again, passing classmates carrying frothy coffees. With Astra sick, Car was on her own. This was what it would feel like in France with her father in the spring: tromping in oversize boots through rooms that echoed.