"Apart from the fact that it is made out of soda cans," Miss Barch inquires in her high-pitched rasp, "does anyone have comments about this model of our solar system? Anyone? Anyone? ...Daria?"
Keeping her hand low is no protection, Daria knows.
"Well, they really should get rid of the can representing Pluto. It's much smaller than astronomers first thought, and its orbit is highly eccentric and also tilted far out of the ecliptic. It's abnormal enough that Isaac Asimov suggested demoting it to a 'mesoplanet' in 1988. And after astronomers found the Kuiper belt in 1992, the case could be made that it makes more sense to designate Pluto the largest Kuiper belt object instead of the smallest planet."
"Very imaginative, Daria."
The intercom crackles into life. "Will Daria and Quinn Morgendorffer both report to the principal's office, immediately."
"Uh-oh, sounds like you've angered the Plutonians," Jane whispers as Daria rises.
"Maybe Quinn has committed a crime against trans-Neptunian fashion."
Quinn and Daria meet in the hall. "Do you know what this is about?" Quinn asks.
"Haven't a clue."
They pass through the outer office and wait at Principal Li's door. Someone opens it from inside.
Mrs. Manson—the school shrink?!
"Daria, Quinn, please come in." Li's voice sounds like it is trying for gentleness with no practice in that regard to lean upon.
Their mother is standing between them and the principal's desk, in her power suit of the day, twisting a plain cloth handkerchief in her hands. She looks like a woman whose composure is about to crack. She faces her daughters.
"Your Daddy's dead," says Helen Morgendorffer.
Quinn rushes forward to wrap her arms around her mother. Daria finds that her feet cannot move. Instead, her vision turns gray, and all the voices in the room go far away.
* * *
The next thing that Daria remembers is sitting in her mother's SUV. Her mother is not in the driver's seat. Instead, her assistant Marianne is sitting there, twisted around to face Daria in the back seat. Quinn is beside Daria, holding her hand and speaking.
"Mom and Dad had been fighting," Quinn says. "Dad went out drinking. He did the right thing and called a cab to get home. Another car ran a red light and hit the cab. They say he... They say it would have been quick."
"Thank you for explaining," Daria says. She stares straight ahead. She says nothing else until the next day.
The house fills with people. Grandma Ruth, who has now outlived her son. Aunt Rebecca, never straying far from Ruth's side. Then the Barksdales, first Amy and then Rita. Daria watches Quinn run interference between them, making sure they are never setting each other off. Daria watches everything.
Jane tumbles through the door and clamps onto Daria. "I am so, so sorry," she says in a whisper fierce with intensity.
Trent puts a hand on Daria's shoulder. "We're here for you. I know that nothing feels like it can help right now, but we'll be here anyway."
And somehow Amanda Lane is with them, and when she puts her mind to it she is actually very good at making her own mother's fudge and divinities, and she has brought a handmade ceramic bowl of each.
"Thank you," Daria says, dully.
She fades out again after that. Not losing consciousness, just lacking the ability to do anything but let the crowd move around her.
Come evening, she sees her mother speaking with Quinn and Amy, and then Amy is on the phone making arrangements, and then both Amy and Quinn are raising their voices to the gentle-yet-insistent register, and the house starts to empty.
"We're packing most everybody off to a hotel," Aunt Amy tells her. "I'll stay here tonight. Your mother... doesn't want to sleep in the master bedroom. I think she'll be taking the couch in here."
"I could do that," Quinn's voice offers from somewhere.
"Whatever you think is best," Daria says.
* * *
Helen is wearing her nightdress. She sets a now-empty water glass on the bathroom counter. Seeing Daria in the mirror behind her, she says, "Talk fast. This tranquilizer is supposed to act quickly."
"Were you and Dad going to get divorced?"
"Trial separation was on the menu of possibilities, if couples' counseling didn't work. We wanted to wait until at least you were away at college."
"And was couples' counseling working?"
"I was very good at finding excuses to miss appointments," Helen says.
"And was Dad just as good at that?"
"Nil nisi bonum, Daria."
"If that's the rule everyone follows, then my own funeral service will be either very short or very insincere." She turns on her heel.
"Daria?"
"See you tomorrow."
* * *
Jane sits on the edge of Daria's bed. "Buttered toast?" she offers.
It might be the only thing that Daria can imagine keeping down at present. She takes the plate from Jane and bites a tip off one of the triangular slices. After she chews and swallows, she nods her thanks.
Jane gets up and closes the bedroom door while Daria continues to eat. "When we started whatever weird thing we started this past summer," she says softly, "I didn't imagine that it would involve being your partner in a time like this. But now I can't think of anything more important for me to do."
"I hardly feel like I'm here," says Daria. "But when you're here, I do feel like I'm in the room with you. Please stay with me." She manages to look up from the last slice of toast, and then her eyes fall again.
Daria doesn't bother changing into her sleepwear. She just lets herself crumple sideways and collapse on top of the blankets. Jane removes her glasses, stows them safely on her desk, and unlaces her boots.
"Whatever being here for you means, I'll figure it out," Jane promises.
This is not the introduction to the limousine experience that Jane would have preferred.
"Why are the services even being held there?" she asks. "None of them believed, and they certainly didn't attend."
"Soonest available venue," Aunt Amy says. It's the sort of remark that Daria would have normally provided. Quinn's eyes roll. Daria, sitting beside Jane, still isn't talking much. Then Amy's voice softens a bit. "Ruth and Rebecca's sake."
Helen is in the next car and misses the whole exchange.
They step out at the church. Daria looks up at the pine tree growing out front. "Needles haven't fallen yet," she observes. "They'll make good mulch for the azaleas when they do."
Jane admits, "I keep thinking of all the times a funeral procession has gotten in my way on the road. Slow, holding up the living for the sake of the dead. And now that I've seen one from the inside... I feel the same damn way about it."
Daria is clutching a thick book to her chest, a book whose page edges have yellowed with age. "These rites are supposed to be for the living. The living never ask if they're actually doing the job, because that would be impolite. The dead could not be reached for comment."
Jane rests a hand on Daria's shoulder. "Kiss on the forehead?" she asks. Daria nods, and Jane provides. Then, looking over Daria's hair, she feels her stiffen. Jane turns.
"Is that—?" Jane begins. Daria nods again. Amy and Quinn look confused. "Wait here," Jane instructs them all.
She sprints across the parking lot. The new arrival is dressed for a funeral—same customary black, less skin.
"Alison," Jane says. She rounds the front of a sedan and slams the woman into the side of an SUV. "What in the name of fuck are you doing here?"
"Believe me, I just—" Alison's arms go wide, her palms open and out. "I just wanted to help."
Jane's hands are fists in Alison's jacket collar. "Consider your next words very carefully."
"The service was listed in the newspaper. I thought—I should offer my sympathies."
"I don't believe you're considering carefully enough." Jane's words are as cold as her eyes. "Try harder."
"I know I have a lot to make up to her," Alison says. "I know she needs all the support she can get right now. Maybe you can't believe me, but I care about her, really, and—"
"Yes, she's at her most vulnerable. How convenient for you. And you're right, I don't believe you. Not after—" Jane drops her voice to a hiss. "—You were about to fuck her when she was drunk and you were sober."
Alison's eyes are registering fright, and then something else. She is looking past Jane now. Jane turns her head, and sees Daria, her expression open and almost animated, her body taking a half-step towards them... and stopping.
Jane faces Alison again, shoves her once more against the SUV door. "Come near her again and I'll break your ribs," she states flatly. Then she turns and crosses the parking lot, returning to Daria without looking back.
* * *
Jane sits through the service in a haze of anger. She takes in nothing of the words that are said, until it's Daria's turn to speak and her mind clears.
Daria tells the assembled crowd, "This is a book my father used in college. He gave it to me when I was twelve, and he told me that he expected I would take it with me when I went to college myself." The volume creaks pleasantly as she opens it to the page she has bookmarked. She reads:
"You do look, my son, in a moved sort,
As if you were dismay'd: be cheerful, sir.
Our revels now are ended..."
Tom calls first, which Jane appreciates. They consider pizza but end up sharing a bag of nacho-flavored chips while sitting on the trunk of his alleged car, parked in front of the Lane house.
"She's not home now?" Tom crunches a chip.
"She's up at that health spa that Helen's firm uses for their retreats, talking with some shrink that she apparently had a good rapport with before." Jane shrugs eloquently. "It'll be good for her."
They nosh without talking for a minute.
"Y'know, funny thing," Jane says, "your parents would probably approve of her more now. She's dropping out of school."
"What?!"
"No more imitation Fielding Prep, just more wild oats that young Master Thomas is entitled to sow with the town girls."
"I mean, why?"
"Can't handle the crowds, can't handle the candy-ass fake sympathy, can't handle Mr. O'Neill's blubbering." Can barely sleep. "I mean, she's getting her equivalency and is gonna take roughly all the AP exams. She's still Daria."
Tom dwells on this. "She was right about things. I wasn't able to tell her." Jane waits for him to continue. "She thinks of relationships as forever. She doesn't look it, but she's a romantic... by her lights. I can see a pretty girl at a club and just want to have a good time and see where it goes... and I guess you can, too. But by the time she's warmed up to someone, her heart's in it, I think. Her instinct is to see the long haul. So of course she was measuring herself up against the obligations of a Sloane wife, and she could tell she'd never meet them."
"And now, she's thinking about herself and... and me. For the long haul. Jesus Kee-ryest, it's a lot to handle at my age."
When they finish the bag of chips, Tom says, "Tell her I said hello. If you think that'll be good for her, I mean."
* * *
Jane has carefully avoided mentioning that Daria is actually living at Quiet Ivy now. Ironically, since the law firm is footing the bill—best to keep any potential family troubles within the family, so to speak—Daria appreciates it for keeping her away from Helen.
Jane gets an unwholesome but undeniable kick from showing up in the Tank.
Dr. Millepieds meets them at the front steps. "Hey, Doc," says Trent.
The shrink is all professionalism and easy-on-the-ears accent as he welcomes them. "Daria is reading in the garden. I'm sure she will be grateful to see you both."
"No change to her prescription?" Jane asks.
"No change. Only the same mild sedative that she can take once every 24 hours if she chooses, to prevent the anxiety spiral from keeping her awake."
Can't sleep because she's upset that she can't sleep....
"And no trouble with bringing her cookies?" Jane holds up the tin. It's red and gold and green like Christmastime.
"Not as long as she brushes her teeth. Go on inside."
Daria perks up when she sees them. Well, to the extent that Daria had ever perked.
They share the cookies and debate new names for Mystik Spiral. Monique has left the Harpies to take her solo act on the road. Jane thinks the Harpies' new lead singer, Lyra, is a bit sweet on Trent. He blushes at this, very faintly.
"Trent," Daria says eventually, "could you give us some girl time?"
He returns to the Tank and practices chords while Daria and Jane find a spot behind a thick holly hedge and kiss madly.
There, in the shadows, Jane is finally able to ask, in a whisper, "You would have gone back to her, wouldn't you?"
Daria's tears fall.
"She wasn't lying... when she said she cared about me. If I didn't have you to... hold onto and... keep me aware... She could ask, and I'd follow. I'm as weak dead sober now as I was when I was trashed then. And she'd get off on that just as much. And I'd cling to that, to being able to make anyone feel good at all. I'd become her depraved little poet girl. I'd lose myself in what she wants me to be, because being me is..."
"I know, Daria, I know."
Daria whispers, "You're the one who makes me believe I can write about joy again one day."
Jane carries that in her heart all the way back to Lawndale.
Daria finds it amusing that, now she is living under psychiatric care, she does not sleep in a room with padded walls. Today, she is reading at her desk when visiting hours roll around.
Dr. Millepieds opens the door and lets Helen step inside. "Half an hour," he reminds them both, and politely steps back.
"Is your promotion to partner official?" asks Daria.
"It will be announced at the all-hands meeting on Wednesday."
Daria closes the book she is reading and makes sure the title is angled so that Helen can see it. The Hite Report: A Nationwide Study on Female Sexuality. A cheap shot, but with access to a psych library, why not?
Helen is not one to prevaricate. "Daria, I am well aware that if we follow the cause-and-effect chains back from your father's death, at least one goes through me. I hurt over that every day."
"I lost my father," Daria says. "Who did you lose?"
"The great love of my life."
Daria watches her.
Helen says, "Very well, the man who had been the great love of my life. The father of my daughters. The man I still cared for." She sighs. "The doctors say that your therapy is going well."
"My sessions with Dr. Millepieds are now mostly him timing me while I practice five-paragraph essays for the AP US History exam. It's what we agreed that I need the most."
"Really?"
"Yes. AP Bio, I'm pretty sure I can just wing. And Mr. DeMartino has been remarkably dedicated to sending me old history exams to drill on."
"I mean, is that really what you think is the best use of your therapy time? Writing, not talking? Are you running away from your problems?"
"My problems are with the living, not the dead." She stands, gestures down at herself, turns on one sock-clad foot. "Look. No Thorazine shuffle. I'll be back in town soon. I'll stay out of your hair. I can live at Jane's if you don't want me under your roof."
"Daria, I know why you must hate me right now. And I'll give you the time you need to heal from that. I just wish I knew why you think I hate you."
Daria crosses her arms. "One obvious guess is that I'm a queer freak," she says in a voice of dry ice. "One would have thought that your commune years would have broadened your mind, but you've put that time well past you, and it seems a reasonable option on the table, doesn't it? And then there's the fact that you and my father fought about me. How much do you blame me for his drinking? Believe me, I spent a lot of energy recently wondering how much I hurt your marriage just by being myself, but when I got a clearer head I realized those fights were a long time ago, and if that resentment still lingered a dozen years later or you had fights that you hid better from me, isn't that a cause-and-effect chain that passes through you before me? Do you hate me because you're transferring blame from yourself? Stop me if I'm getting warm, because I'm curious here."
Helen tightens her lips. "Good-bye, Daria."
Jane is in Trent's room, trying to find where her sketchbook wandered off to, when the duck phone starts quacking. Trent is out with Lyra. Jane answers the duck.
"Casa Lane."
"Jane? It's Amy. I wanted to ask if... if Daria is settling in there."
"Well, she tried skipping her tranquilizer last night to see if she could sleep without it, and that didn't work, so she stayed up until half an hour ago, when she finally zonked on the sofa while watching Reading Rainbow on PBS. But you don't have to take my word for it."
Daria has curled herself around a pillow, mumbling things in her sleep like "it's not about you" and "she doesn't want to fit in" and "why can't you understand that".
Amy manages an arid chuckle. "Is your family doing anything for Thanksgiving?"
"I don't think they celebrate Thanksgiving in Kyzyl, Tuva."
"So, it's just you and Daria and Trent?"
"Maybe Lyra—Trent's new main squeeze—I get the feeling she might be estranged from her parents, too."
"Too?" Amy echoes.
"Well, aren't they basically at that point?"
A sigh travels down the line. "Maybe. Helen isn't... She's just going to work through the holiday. Removes the issue of an empty chair at the table... or two. And let me guess, you and Trent aren't the type to spend all day cooking, are you?"
"If we felt like celebrating, that might make a difference."
"Jane, nothing's going to be open, so you'll need to plan in advance anyway... How about we take a swing at making a new memory for her?"
* * *
Quinn mutters as they wait on the Lane front porch. "Can't believe you made me carry the waffle maker. Hard frickin' labor."
"Mine is heavier," Amy points out.
Trent opens the door with a "Whoa."
Amy hefts the food-grade plastic tub. "Chicken and waffles," she announces. "It's what I'm best at making in giant batches."
Jane elbows Trent out of the way. "Do, do come in."
"I've had the chicken brining," Amy says on her way to the kitchen, "I'll get the dredge station set up, and you can keep the waffle maker when we're done. There are a few more bags in the trunk, if you could—"
* * *
Daria eats with the best appetite Jane has seen her display in weeks. She notices Jane noticing this and shrugs a little. "It's chicken and waffles. I'm only human."
Amy has brought two pumpkin pies from Payday and a chocolate pie that she baked herself. Jane uses the opportunity of retrieving them from the fridge to sequester Amy momentarily. "You're the Helen expert," Jane says. "What is her deal? What does she blame Daria for, when her father wasn't even the one driving? And, I hate to say it like this, but if she had fallen out of love with him, what's been pushing her so hard?"
"Helen expert is a relative term," says Amy. "I think she's angry at losing what might have been. With Jake gone, there's no chance they can fix things."
"Death of hope," Jane says.
"And maybe if Jake had been the one behind the wheel, Helen would have exploded instead of... putting her feelings into whatever bottle she's made for herself. I don't know if that would have been better or worse, but dollars to donuts it would have been different."
"I see. I think." Jane bites her lip, rubs her cheekbone. "I still don't know why she's been a... a pain in the ass to Daria about it. Is she having trouble with Quinn, too?"
"Not that Quinn has told me. It's not like this, certainly, from what I can see. Come on, they're waiting on the pies."
They are midway into their first pie slices when the doorbell rings. Trent is closest to the door.
"Good EVEning," says the new arrival. "I HOPE this is not a BREACH of the proPRIeties, but I was rather PLEASED with how my CRANberry sauce turned out, and I wondered if DARia would benefit."
Daria looks up with a dawning understanding.
Daria stands and walks to the open door. She takes the Mason jar of cranberry sauce from his hands into hers. "Thank you. You were drinking with my father, weren't you?"
The friends and family behind her inhale.
The cranberry sauce is richly red, lumpy with cooked berries. A card with the recipe is attached with twine.
"Not on the last night," Mr. DeMartino says. "On many of the nights beFORE."
"Bonding over military school," says Daria. He nods. "His father."
"And my MOTHer."
"And he told you about everything that military school and his father tried to beat out of him."
DeMartino nods.
"And how it all came up again."
"It was... one NIGHT when a young WOman came to call at your house."
"When Monique came for Trent?"
"He did not SAY her name. But he began to WONder. About..."
"About whether one or more of his daughters was less than perfectly straight." She turns to Quinn. "I mean, you're the normal one, and you just used guys to get gifts and to one-up Sandi, and you didn't even slow-dance before the fifth date. And I..." She trails off as though the rest is too obvious for words. Then she faces Anthony DeMartino again. "I remember their big fight when I was a child. He was the one who saw his own childhood in mine. He must have wondered if part of what made me an outcast in high school were the same feelings that he had never been able to understand." Her laugh is nightfall in the desert. "My father, the bisexual." She looks up at the ceiling, seeing nothing that is before her. "Oh, they must have argued about that every which way. How he had been lying to her. How it meant he couldn't be faithful." The words come out now in a sob that is almost a giggle. Jane leaps up to catch her as she weaves. "And now... she can't... even see me... without all of that... all of that coming back..."
Jane brushes Daria's hair as she leads Daria to a soft cushion to sink down upon. "This is a very odd situation to say this," Jane comments, "but thanks, Mr. D. You've been... imagining the dice rolls yourself, haven't you? If you'd gone with him that night, he might have left earlier—"
"Or LATer, or we would have SPLIT a cab and taken a DIFFerent street. Rolls of the DICE, as you say, Miss Lane."
* * *
On her air mattress on the floor of Jane's room, Daria sobs.
Jane sits beside her until words form.
"I never needed to talk with him more than I do now." Then, after shuddering and clenching her eyes shut and opening them to let more tears escape: "What we have, you and I, it's good. I could have offered him... hope. Told him that there's room for love in all the confusion."
"I know, Sunflower, I know."
Daria swallows and clears her throat and lifts her head. "Sunflower?" she asks, weakly.
"Work in progress," Jane says.
Daria is at Casa Lane, immersed in her new huge writing project, when Ms. Li snaps and attacks the new vending machines with a fire ax. The local news sends three vans to the scene, and one of the crews interviews Quinn, photogenic from both sides and guilelessly willing to recount everything that the students knew, everything that Daria and Jane had figured out in two years of misadventures, and suddenly the story of getting the football team to chug cola for extra credit becomes part of the story of athletes getting freebies on their exams, and DeMartino has run out of fucks to give and spills what he knows, and the sleazy funding of the soda advertising deal is now part of the shady accounting of that casino fundraiser, and the district has to send a temporary principal....
Jane lets the chatter flow around her.
"Did you hear? It's not just the track coach. Mrs. Manson is getting reassigned, too." "Who?" "That crone of a counselor. Something about a 'pattern of substandard care'." "Fuck are those, some kind of PSTAT words?" "They were saying in homeroom that some actual doctor at, like, a mental hospital wrote a report saying she was 'professionally incompetent'...."
It's no paradise still, but Lawndale High feels unusual, and hey, she'll take it.
As December locks down, Jane shoots a video for Mystic Spiral. The gazebo out behind Casa Lane is rickety and a hazard to sit on anyway, so Lyra and Daria destroy it with sledgehammers. Even a tiny girl like Daria can do a number on old wood, it turns out, when she puts her whole body into the swing. When the job is done, Lyra turns to Jane. "What do you think? Will we be the new 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' cheerleaders?"
Daria interposes: "She's not exactly an impartial observer."
"My libido, yeah," says Jane.
* * *
It turns out that an alum of one of the schools on Daria's list is local and does in-person interviews for their admissions department. He is silver-haired and tweedy. Until retirement, he had been an engineer and a patron of the Lawndale art museum.
He and Daria sit across from each other in deep leather armchairs, amid a library with a windowsill garden.
"Your situation is... interesting," he says. "And not just because you're getting a GED after years of blowing the grade curve out of the water and racking up what are basically perfect scores on... every standardized test they've invented, I think. You're applying to the, well, as the movies say, the most prestigious technical institute in the whole bleeping world, and you say you want to major in writing? I know a couple professors in that department. It's a good department. But it's where students go to fill out their electives and maybe get a minor. Could you fill me in on your thought process here?"
"On the grand level," Daria begins, "I don't really believe in the separation of science and 'the humanities'. It's always all just been learning to me. The writing department at a science school fits my own peculiar way of thinking. More specifically, I hope the institutional affiliation will help me get my monograph published. It's an examination of all the ways that literature critics have made the science in Thomas Pynchon harder than it needs to be, starting with Pynchon's treatment of calculus in "The Secret Integration" and The Crying of Lot 49. And, beyond that, I want as many options near Boston as possible, because the girl I'm going to marry someday hopes to go to Boston Fine Arts College."
"Well," he says after a moment, turning the pages of the manuscript in Daria's folder, "I don't know how much time you'll have for writing this in your first year..."
* * *
Jane is strolling Dega Street when she happens to notice somebody putting up a sign for a holiday special in the window of Axl's Piercing Parlor. The idea of the special is enough to draw her in closer. The woman—tumble-down blonde hair, rings starting at her eyebrows and progressing from there—must be Axl's new apprentice that Trent had mentioned.
Jane sees the triskelion tat on the apprentice's collarbone.
"Hey," Jane says, "this might be odd, but I could use some advice."
"Piercings cost, advice is free," the woman replies.
* * *
Jane has a good sense of materials. She's used rope in a sculpture before.
They put the Eroica on the stereo in Jane's bedroom.
For today, just Daria's hands, tied in front of her. Only that. Nothing to silence her, nothing out of her sight.
Daria blinks rapidly. Jane watches her test her muscles against the rope.
"You like?" asks Jane.
"I like," Daria tells her. "It's... focusing." After a few minutes, her eyes close. "This is odd. I think my body just... stopped fighting the restraints. Getting very... calm."
"Sleepy?" Jane wonders.
"Mmm, no, more like... my last worry has just gone. You know? Like now I really believe I can do this much and still feel safe."
"Kiss?"
Daria nods eagerly, curious on a deep physical level what that will feel like on top of this.
Jane obliges.
"Love you, Sunflower," she whispers.
Daria whispers back, "That's hélianthe, I think. Should we stick with that?"
"Why don't we see as we go?"