Meryl Lee would tell the jury that for almost three weeks, she had been researching and writing her oral report on the Empress Joséphine, born Marie Josèphe Rose Tascher de La Pagerie, which she was to present with Ashley.
For the same almost three weeks, Ashley had sat in her room—or Meryl Lee’s room—doing her nails and sighing over Jennifer’s kilted Alden.
Meryl Lee would tell the jury that when she asked Ashley how she wanted to divide up the work for the project, Ashley said, “Oh, let’s just both give our impressions.”
Meryl Lee would tell them that when she finally finished her report and put it together in a bright yellow plastic binder, she had left it on the corner of her desk, underneath the dried rose, until class on Monday.
She would tell them she had been ready when Mrs. Saunders called on them in class on Monday, but Ashley got up to read her report first.
Then Meryl Lee would read to the jury—who would be hanging, aghast, on her every word—she would read the opening of her report on the Empress Joséphine, born Marie Josèphe Rose Tascher de La Pagerie:
When the Empress Joséphine was still very young, she met a fortuneteller who said to her, “Listen: you will be married soon: that union will not be happy; you will become a widow, and then—then you will be Queen of France! Some happy years will be yours; but you will die in an hospital, amid civil commotion.”
Then she would tell them she thought that was a pretty good opening, and the jury would nod, their mouths open in agreement, agog at Meryl Lee’s startling prose and clever handling of a quotation from a primary source.
Then Meryl Lee would tell them that Ashley obviously liked her opening as well, because here’s what Ashley read aloud in Mrs. Saunders’s class before Meryl Lee stood up:
When the Empress Joséphine was still very young, she met a fortuneteller who said to her, “Listen: you will be married soon: that union will not be happy; you will become a widow, and then—then you will be Queen of France! Some happy years will be yours; but you will die in an hospital, amid civil commotion.”
And the jury’s faces would turn to ashen fury and they would cry to heaven for vengeance. Or something like that. Because after Ashley had finished giving Meryl Lee’s whole report, there was nothing left for Meryl Lee to say. Not a single thing. So when she stood up for her turn, she sounded as if she was making everything up on the spot.
Because she was.
“Empress Joséphine, born Marie Josèphe Rose Tascher de La Pagerie,” Meryl Lee had said, “was someone who, uh, had a really long name. It would have taken her servants a long time to announce that she was coming into a room. Because she had a really long name.” Meryl Lee had paused. She grasped again. Maybe something about The Wonderful Wizard of Oz? Probably not. She took a deep breath. “Part of her name sounds, uh, like a flower,” said Meryl Lee. “And the first syllable of Josèphe rhymes with rose, which may be why her parents named her Josèphe—which is a long name just by itself.”
And, agonizingly, more like that until she sat down—wondering whether Ashley had stolen her report herself or if Jennifer had given it to her.
Either way, the jury would say it was definitely justifiable homicide, and Meryl Lee would walk.
Mrs. Saunders, who was obviously not on the jury, asked her to stay after class.
When all the reports were finished, Mrs. Saunders announced that since most of the girls had done so well—especially Miss Koertge’s report on Eleanor of Aquitaine, which showed both discernment and eloquence—she was going to assign a second oral report on more of history’s famous women. “This one will be a little longer and you will be preparing the reports in pairs again. But for a challenge, I would like several girls to volunteer to do individual reports. Each of these girls will receive extra credit. Do I have any volunteers?”
When Meryl Lee raised her hand, Mrs. Saunders said, “I was hoping some of our stronger students would volunteer to work alone.”
Ashley Higginson raised her hand.
Despite the furious protests of the jury, Mrs. Saunders picked her.
She assigned famous women of history to all the girls until only Meryl Lee and Marian Elders were left. Marian was holding her pinky and looking apprehensive. Mrs. Saunders was looking apprehensive too. Meryl Lee understood why. Marian Elders might like high drama, but she hadn’t exactly won Most Promising Orator of 1968 with her report, which she had delivered in a voice so quiet, only angels could have heard it.
“Well,” said Mrs. Saunders, “there is nothing else to do, I suppose.”
She assigned them Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots.
After class, Mrs. Saunders told Meryl Lee she should resolve to put more Effort into her work if she was going to become an Accomplished student at St. Elene’s Preparatory Academy for Girls. Mrs. Saunders was willing to excuse this one disaster because Meryl Lee had spent her early education accustomed to the standards of a public school and so deserved some accommodation.
Meryl Lee, who was feeling some high drama rising in her, too, said, “Accommodation?”
“Do you need to consult Funk and Wagnalls?”
“No, Mrs. Saunders.”
“Do you understand that you have used up your one pass?” said Mrs. Saunders.
“I understand,” said Meryl Lee.
“I certainly hope so,” said Mrs. Saunders. “Marian Elders has fine research and writing skills, but she is very quiet. I am hoping that some of your . . . energy may rub off on her.”
Meryl Lee nodded.
“And Miss Kowalski,” said Mrs. Saunders, “Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, is an important figure in English history. I would expect a proper report on her Accomplishments.”
“I understand,” said Meryl Lee again.
Justifiable homicide, she thought, all the way back to Netley Dormitory. Definitely justifiable homicide. With a wrench. Or a candlestick. Or a rope.
But when she got back to Netley, no one was in her room.
A good thing.
* * *
Jennifer did not seem to notice that Meryl Lee was purposefully ignoring her and her pearls at dinner that afternoon.
Jennifer was too excited to notice, because her birthday was a week from Saturday and guess who was coming to visit her from his Scottish manor house? Alden! Yes, Alden! Kilt and all. He was taking her to the Parker House hotel in Boston for an early supper and then to the Boston Symphony and then afterward to a secret place that he wouldn’t reveal just yet. Alden!
Meryl Lee played with the small crème brûlée that Bettye had placed on her dessert plate.
She didn’t tell anyone at the table what she had suddenly discovered.
She and Jennifer had the same birthday. Two weeks from Saturday.
No one at the table knew that she and Jennifer had the same birthday.
There are thirty eighth-grade girls living in Margaret B. Netley Dormitory, she thought. Thirty. And not a single one knows that we have the same birthday.
If Holling were coming, he . . . and there was the Blank. She hadn’t seen it for a few days, but there it was again, blocking everything out, starting to lean into a long hole, starting to . . .
She pushed it back, almost crying, but the Blank followed her out of the dining hall and past her empty mailbox and alongside Newell Chapel.
Still, when the hour chimes struck, they sounded so sweetly that Meryl Lee stopped and looked back toward the chapel, and to Greater Hoxne beyond it, and she saw Bettye just coming out, a bag of garbage in each hand, lugging them to a waiting small truck. She slung them in, one at a time, and the first landed fine but the second must have been heavier. The bag hit the top of the pickup bed and it ripped, and the lousy remnants of dinner—potato peels and carrot greens and chicken carcasses and leftover crème brûlée—slopped down the pickup’s side and onto the asphalt.
The driver of the pickup stood over Bettye while she scooped it all up with her hands.
Meryl Lee almost went to help her—until s
he saw Mrs. Connolly walk out onto the commons.
When the pickup drove off, Bettye stood, looking at the lovely ivied buildings of St. Elene’s, and Meryl Lee fled behind Newell Chapel, hoping Bettye hadn’t seen her.
* * *
After Domestic Economy, Meryl Lee went to Putnam, where Mrs. Hibbard said that she looked awfully morose and was she feeling well? And Meryl Lee said she was fine and where could she find books about Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots? And Mrs. Hibbard, who was tiny, with a tiny nose, and tiny ears, and tiny hands and feet, and a tiny smile and a tiny voice that you had to listen to carefully, held her by the arm and said, “My dear, aren’t you still reading The Grapes of Wrath?”
Meryl Lee nodded.
“I’m so glad,” said Mrs. Hibbard. “It is my very favorite novel.”
“Really?” said Meryl Lee. “What about the lewd parts?”
“Are there any?” she said.
“I think so,” Meryl Lee said.
“Let me know when you find them,” Mrs. Hibbard said, and she smiled—Meryl Lee smiled too—and she took tiny steps away toward the 900s and came back with three books about Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots.
Meryl Lee wanted to kiss her.
She sat beside one of the green-shaded lamps and opened all three books.
In her portrait—the same one in the front of each of the books—Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, looked like she used hot rollers in her hair—which is something that Jennifer did all the time. But unlike Jennifer, Meryl Lee read, Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, “wrote and spoke Latin with great ease and elegance, and had a taste for poetry. She played well on several instruments, danced gracefully, and managed a horse with dexterity: she also spent much time in needlework.”
Now, that is Accomplished, thought Meryl Lee.
She figured she had better get busy if she was going to be Accomplished too.
She waited for Resolution to fill her.
She waited some more for Resolution to fill her.
It didn’t.
* * *
When Meryl Lee got to her room with the three books, Jennifer was stretched out on her duvet. She had—no kidding—hot rollers in her blond hair. Meryl Lee wondered if Jennifer ever missed an opportunity to put hot rollers in her hair. If atomic bombs fell and all western civilization was destroyed, Jennifer would be okay as long as there were hot hair rollers beside her in the underground bunker.
Meryl Lee put the books on her desk.
“If you’re going to study,” said Jennifer, “do you think you could find someplace else? I’d like to take a nap.”
“I’m just reading,” said Meryl Lee.
“And I’d like to take a nap,” said Jennifer.
“You can’t take a nap while I’m reading?” said Meryl Lee.
Jennifer raised herself slowly on one elbow. “No, I can’t.”
Meryl Lee left the three books about Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, on her desk. She had barely enough time to get down to the shore and back before the light was gone, and so she hurried past the gate and along the fence and down the footpath by the birches and the firs and then out onto the rocks—almost crying again.
“Geez,” said a voice.
A boy. His left arm in a sling.
“What?” she said.
“So, is the whole world coming down here now?” he said.
And Meryl Lee had sort of had it. It had been that sort of day.
“Yup,” she said, “the whole world is coming down here now. There are three and a half billion people lined up behind me.”
He looked back to the water and threw a stone.
“What are you doing?” she said.
“Practicing.”
“For what?”
“The Olympics. Look, I don’t mean to be a jerk or anything, but I used to be able to come down here and be by myself.”
Meryl Lee walked down toward the water and picked up a stone. She threw it out as far as she could. “It must be tough, having to share a whole beach with another person.”
The boy picked up a handful of stones. “You know what? I know an old lady who can throw better than that.”
“You know what else? You are a jerk.”
The boy paused for a moment, and then he threw one of the stones, and Meryl Lee watched it skip, and skip, and skip, and skip, and then shimmy into a whole lot of tiny skips until it nuzzled itself into a wave.
“Okay,” said Meryl Lee. “That was kind of amazing. But you’re still a jerk.”
The boy looked out to the water. Already it was starting to get dark, and the outlines of the islands were merging into the waves.
“Sorry,” the boy said.
“What?” said Meryl Lee.
The boy walked across the rocks to her. “Sorry. My best friend used to tell me I was a jerk all the time.”
“He was right.”
“Here.” He handed her a flat stone. “Throw it like this.”
Meryl Lee took it and threw.
“Try again. Keep your arm lower.”
She did try again, and she kept her arm lower.
It was a terrible throw, but the boy didn’t say anything. He handed her another stone.
“You throw it.”
He did. Three skips.
“That’s not bad,” she said.
He turned to look at her. “It’s pathetic,” he said.
“What happened to your arm?”
“Never play checkers,” he said. “It’s way too dangerous.”
It was exactly what Holling would have said.
Exactly.
Meryl Lee got up to seven skips that afternoon—not counting the one that went into the wave, which he wouldn’t give her, no matter what she said. And for the first time that day, and maybe for the first time in many days, Meryl Lee did not feel the Blank behind her. All she wanted was to be thinking of nothing else except throwing flat stones into the waves with this boy, to count the skips, to imagine the stones slowly sliding through the cold water to the bottom and resting.
And something familiar came to her, as if she could remember how it felt to have her heart inside her chest.
Thirteen
1959–66
The night after he met Meryl Lee, Matt Coffin lay on his bed and thought about the only photograph he had had of his family.
He didn’t have it anymore, and probably by now it would have been folded into oblivion anyway. But he had had it during the years with Leonidas Shug.
It was black and white, of course. They were on a beach. On a blanket. A toy shovel and bucket beside him. He was, maybe, four years old. He sat between his mother and father, though most of his father was beyond the frame. Matt was reaching past the edge of the blanket toward the sand. His hand was open, his fingers splayed out. He was smiling, and his mother was smiling, and probably his father was smiling too. Behind them was the ocean, calm and quiet, only a ripple of a wave showing. Seagulls above, just barely in the picture—like his father.
He had kept that picture in his back pocket, and at night he would take it out and stare at it. He would wonder what their names were. He would wonder which beach it was. What had happened to the toy shovel? Where did that blanket get to?
He would stare at that picture and try to summon up more memories—what happened at that beach, the sound of his father’s voice, the feel of his mother’s hand, where they might have lived. He would try to remember something that he had once owned beyond the shovel and blanket, and sometimes there would be a hint of a memory—and then it would dissolve.
He remembered being alone. He didn’t know why he was alone, but he was.
He remembered walking past buildings.
He remembered he was cold.
He remembered he turned into that Alley to get out of the wind, and when he had turned, it was suddenly very still and quiet.
He remembered the group of men, the quick looks, the Small Guy who had scampered away, the Big Guy who had strolled past him.
The man lying on the ground.
Then Leonidas Shug.
Shug, who had come up and loomed over him. “And who are you, little man?”
“I’m lost,” he had said.
Shug had reached out a long arm and put his hand on Matt’s shivering shoulder. “Do you want to come with me?” he said. “It will be okay.”
Matt had nodded.
“Bingo,” said Shug.
After that, nothing was ever okay again.
There had been a bunch of boys, all of them much bigger than he was. They kept moving, and sometimes they were all in one room, sometimes two. Since he was the smallest, the boys made him sleep closest to the window—if there was a window—when it was cold. He quickly learned to fight for what he ate, or he wouldn’t eat. And since he was the smallest, he didn’t eat much for a while. Finally he got so hungry that he didn’t care if he got hurt or not—he’d fight like crazy until the other kid did care.
All this Leonidas Shug watched as if he might eat them.
And Matt Coffin was a quick learner. Once you didn’t care, everything else was easy. You didn’t care about the drunk whose pockets you emptied. You didn’t care about the lady whose purse you stole—anyway, she’d been carrying it like she wanted to have it stolen. You didn’t care about the addict you cheated, about the jerk Shug bumped into so you could slip his wallet, about the drug runs, about the store owners you collected from because they were too frightened to report on Shug and his boys, or about the houses you broke into because you were the smallest and could scamper through an open window like it was a door wide enough for a parade.
You cared only about making the other kid care enough so you could eat.
And you never, never asked what went on in that Alley.
And you never let yourself wonder about . . . stuff.
And so Matt Coffin turned six, seven, then eight, then nine, and ten and eleven—though he couldn’t say exactly when his birthday was. The summer? And even though he figured that someday he might disappear with Shug down that Alley too—like some of the boys had—he stayed, because where else was he supposed to go?
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