Read Online All Souls by Christine Schutt - Free Book Online

internal radiation, external radiation, a couple of chemo . . . ,” but Mr. Van de Ven cut her off. They were eating, for

heaven’s sake, weren’t they? “You may be,” she said, “but I am drinking.”
    Â 
    At the senior parents coffee, Mrs. Van de Ven said she was becoming an alcoholic!
    The senior parents coffee had been very well attended. The college adviser, Mrs. Quirk, was at the coffee to answer any last questions about applications and what parents might expect for the next few months. Although the questions and advice seemed much the same as those of two weeks before, the mothers attended to what sounded rewound and repeated. Car Forestal’s name did not come up. (It never did!) A number of mothers could have told stories about Carlotta Forestal or about other girls from different schools, but only Mrs. Cohen recounted to the group whatever horror she had heard was happening at St. Catherine’s and Norris-Willet, and again several mothers bemoaned their helplessness.
A Daughter
    Lisa Van de Ven sat in the kitchen in the best chair. “What the hell is this?”
    â€œI don’t know,” her mother said. “Leave it if you want. I don’t care.”
    â€œOh, Mother.”
    â€œâ€˜Oh, Mother’ what?”
    â€œI know what you’re thinking.”
    â€œDo you?”
    â€œI do.”
    â€œI wonder.”
Unattached
    Anna Mazur came to the disappointed part of the Tim Weeks story and said, “I’m not pretty, Mother.”
    Her mother was silent on the phone.
    â€œWe’re more like brother and sister than anything else.” Anna sighed and asked her mother, “What do you think?”
    Her mother thought that only baked or handmade gifts should be exchanged between staff and students at Christmas.
    Anna said, “That’s the rule, but people break it all the time.”
    â€œThat’s right,” her mother said. “You got that ugly scarf last year.”
    â€œYes, Mother. That ugly scarf from Hermès.”
    â€œIt had stirrups all over it.”
    Anna said, “I don’t know what to think about Tim.”
    â€œI’ll tell you what,” her mother said. “Don’t think about him.”
Siddons
    The news on December 15 was bad—Astra still off-limits; and good—early admits to Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, and Trinity, all confirmed. Four girls were in college! School was over for them.
    Kitty Johnson, who was waiting to confer with Mrs. Quirk about colleges, said to Car, “If you thought Sarah Saperstein was insufferable before Harvard, imagine what she’ll be like now.”
    â€œNy Song, too.”
    Kitty lowered her voice to confide in Car the decision she had made to avoid her adviser’s elective. “I’m not taking O’Brien’s course.”
    â€œGood idea.”
    â€œI’m taking Hodd’s Families in Distress,” Kitty said.
    Â 
    Miss Hodd, in another classroom, slid her battered
Warriner’s
to the corner of her desk and launched herself into the middle of the classroom in her castered chair, one leg up on the seat, chin on her knee, all the better to listen to how the seniors in her English class felt about the news that Astra Dell was sicker.
    â€œA whole group of crying juniors passed me in the hall. They didn’t even look like the kind of people who would be her friends.”
    â€œThey weren’t Astra Dell’s friends.”
    â€œA lot of people aren’t really crying for her; they’re putting on an act.”
Marlene
    Marlene’s head was at a whistling boil when she waved good-bye from behind the window to Astra’s room—and Marlene was wearing paper shoes, cap, and gown—so what did the nurses wear? she wondered. Someone had to go into that room. Marlene waved good-bye, mouthed, “Merry Christmas,” then shuffled away in those paper shoes, relieved to be well and