Meryl Lee decided to go to Putnam. But the whole time there, she couldn’t stop thinking about Dr. MacKnockater.
Then on Thursday—still drizzling, still dreary, as if it might always be drizzling and dreary, forever and ever—Meryl Lee and Marian Elders presented their report on Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots. They had been practicing swinging an executioner’s axe (really a shovel, but if they hid it until the last second, they figured no one would notice), and they were ready to perform the great execution scene. Here’s what Marian Elders as Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, was supposed to say with panache:
As a sinner, I am truly conscious of having often offended my Creator and I beg Him to forgive me, but as a Queen and Sovereign, I am aware of no fault or offence for which I have to render account to anyone here below.
It was not exactly what Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, said right before she died, but Meryl Lee thought it would be dramatic and heart-rending—which anyone should appreciate when panache is shouting at you like that.
Then Marian was supposed to kneel and bare her neck and Meryl Lee was supposed to raise the shovel and hack away. Twice.
Except when Marian was supposed to say the lines—and they’d practiced a million times, and she really did have panache—Ashley raised her hand and said out loud, “So, Mary Stuart had acne all over her face? Is that true, Mrs. Saunders?”
Complete silence, and everyone looked at Marian Elders—who did have acne all over her face—and then everyone except Meryl Lee started to laugh, and Marian turned red and redder, and so everyone laughed more and more, until Mrs. Saunders said the class had to come back to order and she told Marian to continue, please.
But Marian couldn’t. She put her hands over her face and Mrs. Saunders said, “Miss Elders, please continue,” and then, “Miss Elders, you really must continue now,” but Marian kept her hands over her face and finally Mrs. Saunders said she and Meryl Lee had already given sufficient information and “You may both take your seats,” and they did.
But Marian kept her hands over her face the rest of the hour.
And Meryl Lee thought, I am truly conscious of having often wished to grind Ashley into the muddiest patch of our hockey field and it would be no fault or offense for which I have to render account to anyone here below.
* * *
That afternoon, as October thought about lugging its drizzly, dreary self into November, Jennifer got another letter from Alden, and she was still not willing to share any of dear Alden’s secrets, except that every letter he sent she held to her heart and she told Ashley and Charlotte from Charlotte that Alden said he adored her and he was so looking forward to Thanksgiving and then Christmas by the Scottish loch and then spring when she could come to Brussels and he knew the best cafés in Brussels since he’d spent so much time in Brussels and like many of the aristocracy he had a mole shaped like a fleur-de-lis (What is a fleur-de-lis? Meryl Lee wondered) and it was on a special place on him. Then Jennifer started to giggle and she said he showed her once and she couldn’t tell anybody about it but he was wearing a kilt when he showed her, and then Ashley and Charlotte from Charlotte giggled so hard they had to hold pillows over their mouths.
Meryl Lee wished Jennifer would stop not sharing their secrets.
It was said of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, that “her charms of beauty and genius, that made her such a fascinating woman, unfitted her for the throne of a rude nation.” Meryl Lee thought she knew how Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, felt.
* * *
The beginning of November was still drizzle and drear, but a few days in, the drear was all wiped away and the sky was a polished blue without a single streak. Not a cloud anywhere. The sun strong and warm, and the trees, even though they had lost their leaves and were dark with the wet, leaned into the light and stretched.
Meryl Lee could hardly wait for the afternoon.
Past Newell Chapel and past the commons, past the three white barns and the sheds and the shady maples and the rows of painted fences. Then steeply down the footpath and through the birches and firs.
Then, just as suddenly as before, the shore.
She didn’t expect the boy to be there. After all, she didn’t even know his name—or where he lived—or anything except that he liked skipping stones.
So she was surprised when she went down to the shore and found him, wrapped tightly in a pea jacket.
Sitting on the cold rocks.
Crying like the whole world was wrong.
Crying . . . as if he saw the Blank too.
When he saw Meryl Lee, the boy didn’t say anything. Nothing at all. He just stood, wiped his face, and scrambled up the shore ridge.
Meryl Lee watched him, then turned and headed back to St. Elene’s, trying to figure out why she felt as if she’d just been kicked in the stomach.
Seventeen
1966–67
When Meryl Lee climbed down to the shore that early November afternoon, Matt was remembering his year in Portland.
He was remembering walking out of the bus station late that first night, alone, and being passed by all the other passengers who had been on the bus and who were now laughing and holding hands with the people who had been waiting for them, and he came out onto a street he’d never seen before and headed in a direction that led to he had no idea where.
That fall, that winter, that spring, he did exactly what Leonidas Shug had trained him to do. Even though he had the stuffed pillowcase, he did it to stupid tourists and filthy drunk lobstermen and gift shop owners from away and even once to a reporter working on a story about the homeless in Portland. He lived in doorways and small abandoned mills and in a junior high over Christmas break and in the public library on Sundays because they always left that one basement window unlocked. Usually he was alone, but sometimes he huddled with others against the cold—and when he went out for food, they were always surprised at how much he brought back along with the sweatshirts and scarves and hats and gloves that he said he’d lifted.
Until a late spring night when that cop started walking after him, then running after him, then sprinting after him, and Matt—carrying the pillowcase, since he’d been looking for a new spot—headed downhill since fat guys couldn’t run downhill and he dodged into thin streets toward the water. Already every shop was pretty much closed, with shop owners locking their doors and getting ready to head home. Matt turned down Commercial Street and found a chowder house that was about to lock up too, and the owner didn’t look too pleased to see a kid come in just before closing. But Matt sat down with his back to the window and the owner served up a plate of fish and chips with a bowl of chowder thrown in—since the chowder wouldn’t be any good in the morning anyway, he said—and he watched the kid eat as if he were in a race.
“You can slow down,” he said. “I’ll stay open till you’re done.”
Matt nodded and kept on.
“You from around here?” the owner said.
Matt looked up at him.
“I’m just asking, kid. It’s not like I’m a cop or anything.”
Matt wasn’t worried about him being a cop.
“Okay. You don’t have to tell me. It’s none of my business anyway.”
“I’m from New Bedford,” Matt said.
The owner smiled and gave a low laugh. “Sure you are. Listen, you wipe down the tables and help me do up the dishes, and we’ll call it even.”
“I can pay,” said Matt.
“No one said you couldn’t.”
That night, Matt wiped down the tables and helped do up the dishes—of which there were plenty—and he carried the garbage out past the waiting seagulls, and he helped set all the chairs up on the tables and swept the floor, and when they were finished, the owner, whose name was Mr. Tush—“Really?” Matt said, and “Shut up, kid. You don’t know how many people got broken noses making a joke about my name”—said, “I’ve got an apartment upstairs. That’s where I sleep. There’s a rollaway in the storeroom down here if you
want it, and maybe a job as kitchen boy starting tomorrow morning if you want that.”
Matt did. Both of them.
“It depends on if the Myrnas like you, though.”
“The Myrnas?” Matt said.
“Myrna One’s the real cook around here. Do what she says, don’t mess with her knives, keep things clean without her asking, and she’ll give you a pass. But, kiddo, mess with her knives, and you’ll be lucky you don’t get one stuck in your rear.”
“And Myrna Two?”
“She’ll come down to check you out when she feels like it.” Then Mr. Tush turned out most of the lights and went back into the kitchen. Matt could hear him take the stairs, and then he heard every creak of the wide floorboards above him as Mr. Tush settled into his apartment.
Matt waited for Myrna Two for a while, wondering, and then he pulled out the rollaway and stuffed his pillowcase at the back of the storeroom behind sacks that looked like they hadn’t been moved in a very long time. He pushed the bed in front of the sacks and below the window, which was open to the harbor. Through it, he could hear the low moaning of the tide, the bumping of boats against the tires strung along the docks, the straining of ropes, the quiet plashing of sluggish waves against hulls.
Matt lay down; he took off his shirt but nothing else since Myrna Two might come in at any moment—even though the sounds from the creaking floorboards above had stilled. He waited, and waited, and the sea’s moaning was so quiet and calm, and far away a buoy sounded and sounded and sounded with the coming in of the tide, and then something jumped up on Matt’s legs and he screeched and pulled them up and when he looked down, there was a tabby, sitting at the end of the rollaway, licking her left paw and watching him as if she had been there the whole time.
“Myrna Two?” said Matt.
She put her paw down. She waited a moment, then stood, held her tail straight up, and walked onto Matt’s chest. She lay down and stretched her nails into him a little bit, like cats do. Then she held her head up, waiting to be scratched—which Matt did until she’d had enough, and she closed her eyes and fell asleep on him.
Matt didn’t want her to leave.
He didn’t move the whole night.
* * *
In the morning, Matt woke when someone kicked the end of the rollaway.
“Your bed is blocking my way to the flour,” she said.
Matt sat up, blinking. “Huh?”
She looked at him.
“Lay back down,” she said. She went toward the kitchen and came back with a small red bottle and a wet towel. “You never know where Myrna Two’s been,” she said, “and if you don’t get something on those scratches, they could get infected.” She took the stopper out of the red bottle and approached.
“Wait a minute,” said Matt. “Isn’t that going to—”
It did: it stung like anything. But Myrna One told him to stop being a baby and so he stopped but every time she dropped the iodine onto his chest, he squirmed more than a little. And when she was done, she threw him the wet towel—which was cold—and told him to get washed up and they had the chairs to take down and the tables to wipe and set and the menus to put out and when did he plan to move that dang bed so she could get to the flour?
“When the sun comes up,” said Matt.
Myrna One looked at her watch. “It’s up over the Azores, so let’s get going. Breakfast crowd doesn’t like to wait.”
That morning, while Myrna Two patrolled around the legs of the breakfast crowd, Matt washed and dried more dishes than he had used in his whole life, and when he wasn’t washing dishes, he was hauling them in from the dining area and wiping down tables and sometimes, when Mr. Tush couldn’t keep up or when he had to cook the hash—which only he could do right, according to the breakfast crowd—Matt even took orders:
“Scrape three, kid.”
“Huh?”
“Scrape three”—spoken more slowly.
“Um—”
“Just tell Myrna One that Darryl wants his regular.”
“Okay.”
And after the breakfast crowd there was the brunch crowd—which Myrna One didn’t like much. Neither did Myrna Two. They were mostly tourists who wore the bright shirts and stupid hats they’d just bought in gift shops and they were loud and eager and liked to order cinnamon buns, which Myrna One didn’t think were real food. After the brunch crowd was the lunch crowd, who were still mostly tourists and who ordered mostly hamburgers even though it’s the freaking Chowder House!—as Myrna One pointed out to Matt. And then there was a break until the supper crowd, a lot of whom were the same as the breakfast crowd, who had been out fishing and lobstering all day and who needed some good thick chowder to stick to their ribs.
Myrna One loved these guys. She called every one by name when they came in.
Myrna Two loved them too—maybe because they let her jump up on the table and lick their chowder spoons and sometimes the bowls.
Mr. Tush joked around with the supper crowd like he’d been a fisherman himself—which, Matt found out later, he had been—and they pointed at the scrawny kid helping him and told him they could use that guy for bait and Mr. Tush said they couldn’t have him and Matt hoped they really were only joking.
That night, Myrna One told Matt he’d done all right for a scrawny kid, and then she said, “Let’s get some more iodine on those scratches.”
“I can do it,” said Matt.
“I know you can do it,” said Myrna One. “The question is whether you will.”
“Promise,” said Matt.
She handed him the bottle. “If you don’t take care of those, then they’ll start to ooze and pus and you’ll die an agonizing death and it’ll be your own stupid fault.”
“I said I’d do it.”
“I’ll check in the morning. And, kiddo, in case you die from infection overnight, you should know you didn’t do so bad today.” She patted him on the cheek. “See you tomorrow.” She pointed at the iodine. “Take care of those scratches”—and Matt watched her go out the door.
Later, when the tables were wiped and the chairs put up on them and the floor swept and all the dishes done, Mr. Tush said, “The Myrnas like you.”
Matt reached down and picked up Myrna Two. He held her against his chest and stroked her gray fur as she purred and purred.
“I guess you can stay, if you want,” said Mr. Tush, and he headed upstairs.
That’s pretty much how every day went that whole summer—breakfast crowd, brunch crowd, lunch crowd, supper crowd again—except for Sundays, when Mr. Tush closed the Chowder House and took Matt and Myrna One and Myrna Two out in his trawler, Iodine. (“Guess where that name comes from,” said Mr. Tush, and Myrna One hit him.) They chugged out beyond the pilings and along the coast and around the islands, stopping in the calm to fish and lay a string of lobster traps—just one string, since Mr. Tush didn’t have a license and technically shouldn’t have been laying any traps at all. He taught Matt how to tie a buoy hitch, and how to be careful laying the line since the sea could pull the last traps down, and how to handle the lobsters—“Stroke them right here, underneath, and they’ll be calm as clams”—and how to band their claws. He taught Matt when to lay in the troughs and when to head the bow into the waves and when to speed up in the rougher water so as to give Myrna One a scare. Mr. Tush showed Matt how to read the sea but to remember that the sea was as changeable as a cat—“Present company excluded”—and could betray you when she felt like it and maybe that’s why he loved her so much.
Dang, thought Matt, Georgie would have loved this.
How he would have.
It turned out that there were a bunch of kitchen boys on Commercial Street—Davey from the Brothers’ Fish and Chips, Lew from the Green Apple, Donny from the Clam Shack, Chad from the Lobster Company, Jesse from Shrimp ’n Stuff—and they all came in one afternoon and Mr. Tush threw them some root beers and told them to take the scrawny kid down to the harbor. They did—and after that they al
l met up down there on their two o’clock breaks. They showed Matt the best place to dive in and how to do a flip, the safest place to skinny-dip, the boat that the girl lived on that Chad was going to marry someday (and they waited for her to come on deck but she never did), the back door to the Biggest Dip (with an owner who gave free cones to local kitchen boys—but only single scoops), the alley where they could run bases, the best place on the shore to find flat rocks that they could skip out into the harbor (Davey was the best one at that), the orchard where Mr. McBride grew his sweet apples (he didn’t care if local kids picked them). It was the first time Matt had been with a group of boys he didn’t have to fight.
The two o’clock break hours would go by like lightning.
So did August.
And when August was almost at an end, Mr. Tush and Myrna One began to ask the questions Matt knew they would ask. And he hated like anything to tell them he had an aunt down to New Bedford and she’d wanted him to have an adventure and so she’d given him a ticket to Portland to let him make his own way for the summer and how his school back home didn’t start until the end of September and maybe it was even the beginning of October and it was a vocational school for boys who wanted to learn how to man a fishing boat and maybe he could stay a while beyond the end of September or the beginning of October and do, like, a vocational sort of program with Mr. Tush.
Mr. Tush would look at him.
Myrna One would look at him.
“How much of that malarkey is true?” Mr. Tush would say. Matt would shrug.
“So what’s the name of the school?”
“New Bedford Junior High.”
“What’s the name of your aunt?”
“Helen.”
“What’s her last name?”
“I don’t remember.”
“You don’t remember your aunt’s last name?”
“We never use it.”
“It’s not Coffin?”
Just Like That Page 12