Just Like That

by Gary D. Schmidt

  Dr. MacKnockater said, “You must be disappointed.”

  Jennifer dabbed an eye.

  Meryl Lee almost threw up into the creamed onions.

  “But we’ll be in Austria together over Christmas,” she said.

  “That will be nice,” said Dr. MacKnockater.

  “We’ll be boating in gondolas,” said Jennifer.

  “Then you’ll be in Italy, too.”

  Jennifer looked confused.

  “Yes,” she guessed.

  “Perhaps you might pass the yams, Miss Kowalski,” said Dr. MacKnockater. “They’re a bit too sweet, but it’s Thanksgiving, after all. And do you like to travel as well, Miss Kowalski?”

  “I’ve been to Quebec City,” she said.

  The look from Jennifer. Such a dope.

  Dr. MacKnockater spooned some of the Jell-O mold onto her plate. “A lovely city, with a spiritually moving cathedral. But I understand a reluctance to travel, Miss Kowalski. When I was a girl your age, my parents took my brother and me on a tour of the great capitals of Europe. I suppose it was exciting. London, Paris, Madrid, Berlin. But when we got back, I realized that if I had seen one more cathedral—just one more cathedral—I would have turned atheist. All I wanted was to be home.”

  She ate a spoonful of the Jell-O mold.

  “I wonder,” said Meryl Lee, “if it’s sort of like in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.”

  That look from Jennifer again.

  “What do you mean?” said Dr. MacKnockater.

  Meryl Lee thought for a moment. “I mean, Dorothy walked all that way to the Emerald City, but in the end, she really didn’t need to go there at all. She just had to go back to a place she already knew.”

  Dr. MacKnockater put down her fork and took a sip of her dark wine. “Perhaps,” she said, “the greatest journey might be the journey inward.”

  Meryl Lee shivered, because just like that, she felt herself wondering what that greatest journey might be like. And when she looked across at Matt, who was looking at her, she thought he might be wondering too.

  “I think I may reread Mr. Baum’s classic,” said Mrs. MacKnockater. “There may be more to it than I have remembered. Perhaps in the spring. Spring seems the right time to read a fantasy, don’t you agree?”

  It was only later, after everyone had left, that Mrs. MacKnockater asked Matt about the hatchet.

  “It wasn’t anything,” he said.

  Twenty-Two

  The days after Thanksgiving were perfectly blue. High clouds, easy tides, a breeze shifting the tips of the pines, cold in the mornings but warm enough to let the wood stove go down to embers in the afternoon. Still, with all this, Mrs. MacKnockater was troubled. She could not help but think about Matthew rushing down the stairs with a hatchet—which, she had pointed out, he should keep outside and he promised he would, but she didn’t believe him. What would make a boy rush down the stairs with a hatchet? Was he protecting himself?

  Was he protecting her?

  And from what?

  She had wondered if the attack on him in September was isolated, something a lunatic had done out of malice. But was there more? And she wasn’t blind. She’d seen the policeman drive slowly by the house often enough. There were few enough cars that went by that she couldn’t miss him. Did Lieutenant Minot think there was more?

  And now, Matthew had taken to calling out in his sleep for Georgie. He called out loudly, as if in a panic. “Georgie.” Almost every night.

  Should she take the initiative to speak to the lieutenant?

  Should she ask Matthew who Georgie was?

  Captain Hurd was no help when she asked his advice. “There’s only two ways about it,” he said.

  “I suspect there are more than two, but which two are you suggesting?”

  “Tell him to go on his way and take his trouble with him.”

  “I would hardly do that. Neither would you, you old coot. What is the other way?”

  He looked at her. “What I’ve been telling you for years, Nora. Love him and all that comes with him.”

  “You are conflating two different things,” said Mrs. MacKnockater.

  Mrs. MacKnockater was very troubled. But she realized—as perhaps she had always known—that Willis Hurd was right. She knew what she had to do.

  Truth be told, Matt was very troubled too.

  He wanted to stay. He did. But how long could he? So Shug hadn’t sent someone on Thanksgiving Day. So what? He could come any day. If he’d found Matt on the streets of New Bedford, he could find him anywhere.

  And Matt really could go wherever he wanted. He had most of the money that had been in the pillowcase. He could go to China if he wanted. Australia. Edinburgh. Anywhere.

  But even as he imagined boarding the ship that would take him to Anywhere, he couldn’t imagine leaving Here.

  He spent these blue days reading The Old Man and the Sea and studying the presidency of FDR and reading some of Darwin because Captain Hurd’s friend Buckminster had been partial to Darwin and the Captain thought his book on coral islands was worth a read—even though Matt thought it was hard and kind of dull and the pictures were terrible. He hated the arithmetic lessons Mrs. MacKnockater left him just because Mrs. MacKnockater believed he couldn’t spend his life counting on his fingers—which he probably could. But he sort of liked the geography lessons Captain Hurd left him: plotting out a route to Easter Island and Madagascar and Hong Kong and Sydney. They beat out arithmetic every time.

  Still, Matt Coffin was very troubled.

  Meryl Lee was very troubled too.

  After Thanksgiving dinner, she had walked back to Netley with Jennifer Hartley Truro, and Jennifer had talked of nothing but the boy. If it wasn’t for Alden, she said, she might be interested in him. She’d have to clean him up and teach him how to look away from his mashed potatoes now and then—he ate like it was the last meal he was ever going to get—and she’d have to teach him how to talk since he obviously didn’t even know how to be polite, and of course that was because he didn’t have the kind of breeding that had been in Alden’s family for generations. But his eyes were cute and if he got a good haircut he’d look . . . And so on.

  His eyes.

  That was it, thought Meryl Lee. It’s what she saw in his eyes.

  She was sure of it now.

  He’d seen the Blank too. She could tell. He knew.

  Matt had seen the Blank.

  * * *

  That’s what she was thinking about when, at dinner on the Monday after Thanksgiving break, Mrs. Mott announced the annual St. Elene’s Upper School Christmas Soiree. Meryl Lee did not know what a soiree was, but according to Mrs. Mott, they’d be soiree-ing three weeks from now, and they would be hosting students from St. Giles’s Preparatory Academy for Boys for an evening of Yuletide cheer.

  General applause and exclamations of joy and delight.

  Then Dr. MacKnockater stood to announce what Meryl Lee was sure would be announced every day right up until the fateful night—that the girls of St. Elene’s upper school were expected to be young ladies of polite society, that they must not giggle or flirt or act in any way unbecoming to the traditions of St. Elene’s, that there must be at least a handbreadth of hem beneath their knees and a handbreadth of air between them and their dancing partners.

  And there was the Blank, suddenly and unexpectedly, as large and consuming as ever. It was as if Absence had moved into the room and taken up all the air.

  * * *

  And it wasn’t just Meryl Lee who acted as if all the air had been evacuated.

  By Wednesday of that week, everyone at Mrs. Saunders’s table had had to rise and consult Funk and Wagnalls several times; Meryl Lee had to consult Funk and Wagnalls for distracted and woolgathering [colloquial]. In Life Sciences, Mrs. Bellamy handed out freshly inked dittos and told them to fill in the work sheets on one-celled creatures and since filling in work sheets did not require talking, she expected silence. Absolute Silence. In Famous Women of
History, Mrs. Saunders promised pop quizzes on every chapter every day that week because she was sure her students were not reading their history text attentively enough. And in domestic economy, Mrs. Wyss was cranky about wasting cake flour. “St. Elene’s has to pay for these supplies,” she said. “Don’t repay generosity with waste.”

  By Friday, Meryl Lee thought it had been a very long week.

  But on Friday, she figured out why all the teachers were the way they were.

  At Evening Meal, Dr. MacKnockater stood up to address the students of St. Elene’s Preparatory Academy for Girls. The Awful Dignity folded her arms across her chest, and her eyes glittered behind round glasses. She looked around, the searching gaze as fearsome as always. Then she began. Letters of complaint had been sent to the board of trustees of St. Elene’s, she said, opposing her public support of Hubert H. Humphrey during the recent presidential campaign. She said she believed that the foundation of democracy was everyone’s right to hold freely and to voice freely his own opinion, but members of the board apparently did not believe that the freedoms promised in our Constitution’s Bill of Rights should be extended to headmistresses. So, after three decades of active service as headmistress of St. Elene’s, she would be relinquishing that role. Hers had been a long and happy tenure, she said, and now she looked forward to new opportunities.

  And then, Dr. MacKnockater lobbed the devastating bombshell: as Mrs. Mott had declined the opportunity to advance to the role of headmistress due to her own impending retirement, the trustees had chosen Mrs. Agatha Connolly to become the new headmistress of St. Elene’s Preparatory Academy for Girls effective July 1, 1969. Dr. MacKnockater wanted to express her personal gratitude to Mrs. Connolly for taking up this burden and to thank the faculty for their support over these many years.

  Meryl Lee looked around. All the other teachers were staring down at their tables, as if they were the ones about to take on burdens. Mrs. Saunders looked as if she wanted someone to stand up and consult Funk and Wagnalls but she didn’t have the right word to assign.

  “I am glad my successor is a colleague who will guide the students of St. Elene’s in the traditions and ways that have always been a part of the school,” said Dr. MacKnockater, “and I hope every student will continue to develop her gifts into real Accomplishments.”

  Then she sat down.

  Not a single teacher’s face moved at all.

  * * *

  On Sunday afternoon, Meryl Lee felt the restlessness of the salt sea. It was almost as if she could hear the sounding waves in Netley 204. So she left Jennifer in her light blue blouse and cream cashmere sweater and found Marian and then Heidi, and together—sort of quietly—they walked down to the shore.

  They found Bettye sitting on the rocks.

  She was not in her black dress and white apron.

  She was in jeans and a gray sweatshirt and boots and a heavy brown jacket—“my brother Jonathan’s,” she said. Her hair was down and blowing all around, and her face was red in the stiff wind, and she moved easily and surely around the rocks, as if she had known them all her life. As if they were dear friends.

  It was very cold, and the water was gray. Even the fir trees seemed to be shivering. But they skipped some stones into the troughs—Bettye reached six—and Bettye showed them where the crabs scuttled, and where the clams dug into the mud flats, and where the seagulls dropped the mussel shells, and then, just before they left, Bettye asked, “So, Dr. MacKnockater won’t be headmistress next year?”

  “I guess not,” said Marian.

  “And Mrs. Connolly will be?”

  Meryl Lee nodded.

  “Then that’s it,” said Bettye.

  “What do you mean?” said Marian.

  “If Mrs. Connolly becomes headmistress, I’ll be fired.”

  Heidi standing up, brandishing her arms as if slashing with the field hockey stick.

  “Are you sure?” said Meryl Lee.

  “Pretty sure.”

  “What can we do?” said Marian.

  Then Heidi, with Marian and Bettye, looked at Meryl Lee. “What are we going to do?” said Heidi.

  Meryl Lee felt the rush of the wind.

  “We’re going to watch for ways to change the world,” she said. “And then we’ll see what happens next.”

  She felt full.

  * * *

  That week, Meryl Lee wondered what she was going to do about Bettye and Dr. MacKnockater as she studied quadratic equations for Mr. Wheelock’s final exam.

  Meryl Lee wondered what she was going to do about Bettye and Dr. MacKnockater as she studied the life of Florence Nightingale for Mrs. Saunders’s final exam.

  And as she studied her dittos on one-celled animals for Mrs. Bellamy’s final exam.

  And as she memorized the patterns for fixed form poems for Mrs. Connolly’s final exam.

  And as Coach Rowlandson had her girls run wind sprints across the field hockey field in temperatures that absolutely should not be associated with wind sprints.

  On Friday, Meryl Lee still didn’t know what she was going to do about Bettye and Dr. MacKnockater.

  But she was watching.

  * * *

  “Edinburgh,” said Mrs. MacKnockater.

  “Edinburgh?”

  “It’s where my people are from.”

  “Across the wide ocean,” said Matt in a whisper.

  “Yes,” said Mrs. MacKnockater.

  “In Australia, right?”

  “Scotland, Matthew,” said Mrs. MacKnockater.

  “You’re going to Scotland?”

  “We could go to Scotland. We could live there.”

  “The three of us?”

  “Yes,” said Captain Hurd.

  “That’s still to be decided,” said Mrs. MacKnockater.

  “And—”

  Mrs. MacKnockater folded her arms across her chest. “And whoever is after you, Matthew, will never find us.”

  “Who said someone was after—”

  Mrs. MacKnockater held up her hand. “They would never find us,” she said slowly. “Never.”

  * * *

  The Christmas Soiree was Friday night—the fall semester’s final day. Meryl Lee wasn’t sure she was going to attend. But a soiree was a soiree, and she had never been to one, and her parents weren’t coming until Saturday afternoon, and Heidi and Marian were both going, and so that evening, a little late, the three of them walked into Greater Hoxne Hall, after all.

  And Hoxne Hall was beautiful. On the tree, red glass bulbs sparkled and green glass bulbs glowed. Holly and fir boughs hung around the hall, and their crisp smell mixed with the waxy scent of the red and gold candles, which were flickering brightly. Music to dance to, and the floor cleared of most of its furniture. A table with a green cloth for the punch, three tables with frosted cookies and frosted éclairs and glass vases filled with peppermint sticks and plates with small square pastries decorated like Christmas presents and a chocolate cake and a white cake almost as big as the table. Another table with small meatballs steaming in a silver warmer and sweet breads and cherry tarts and apricot tarts and strawberry tarts and lemon tarts—all sprinkled with powdered sugar.

  Across the hall, most of the pale boys imported from St. Giles’s sat on chairs, talking a little to one another, holding their kilts down around their knees—really, they were all wearing kilts. It was pretty clear not a single one of them wanted to be there.

  Or to be wearing a kilt.

  Except maybe for the four guys surrounding Ashley and Charlotte from Charlotte and sad-eyed Jennifer, who seemed to be refusing to dance, probably since dear, dear Alden would be brooding alone in his cold Scottish manor by the loch, and she couldn’t betray him by dancing with another boy. And Ashley and Charlotte from Charlotte were also looking sad-eyed, probably because they wouldn’t want to cause Jennifer pain and suffering by dancing and having a good time themselves. So they were all standing with their sad arms crossed, their sad faces downcast, brooding like Mar
y Stuart, Queen of Scots, before her execution. But the music was playing and the decorations were glittering and the silver star atop the tree gleamed and the four boys were wearing kilts and frilly white shirts and the tassels on the high stockings were so cute and even as Meryl Lee watched, Jennifer gave in oh so reluctantly and one of the boys took her hand and led her out to the dance floor where there probably was not a handbreadth of air between them.

  Ashley and Charlotte from Charlotte followed with two of the boys, and there probably was not a handbreadth between them, either.

  The fourth boy stood holding the glasses of punch—which wasn’t easy, considering how many he was holding.

  Heidi took Meryl Lee and Marian by the arms and said, “Sticks down.”

  Marian said, “What are we going to do?”

  Heidi said, “I don’t know yet.”

  “Do we have to—” Marian began.

  “Yes,” said Heidi.

  They walked across the open floor—Meryl Lee and Marian a little behind Heidi, who kept looking back to make sure they were coming—to the imported St. Giles’s boys sitting together. The imported boys stretched their kilts over their knees a little more and watched them approach. They looked scared.

  Then Heidi stood in front of one.

  “What’s your name?” she said.

  His eyes widened.

  “What’s your name?” she said again.

  “Adam,” he said.

  “Adam,” said Heidi, “you are going to ask me to dance right now.”

  Meryl Lee thought she heard Marian beside her whimper a little.