The two boys on either side of Adam looked at him.
Adam looked at the other two boys.
“We don’t really dance,” he said.
The other two nodded.
“You came to a dance but you don’t dance?”
They all three nodded, then stretched their kilts over their knees again.
Heidi smiled and leaned close in to him. “Adam,” she said, “are you afraid of me?”
Adam’s eyes got big—because he probably was.
“No,” he said, shaking his head.
“Then prove it,” said Heidi.
The other two boys looked at Adam.
He looked back at them.
Heidi turned to St. Giles’s Boy #2. “Are you afraid of me too?” she said.
Adam stood up. He was really tall. Heidi’s eyes were level with his Adam’s apple.
Heidi took Adam’s hand and together they walked out onto the dance floor.
Bing Crosby began to sing about a white Christmas.
One of the other boys stood. His eyes were pretty big too. He held out his hand and Marian took it. They walked out onto the dance floor.
Meryl Lee looked at the other boy.
He shrugged, and stood. “Is this how you always get guys to dance?” he asked.
And then, as if a buoy had sounded behind her, Meryl Lee turned to the door into the hall and saw it open.
She almost expected Holling to walk in. She really almost expected that.
But it wasn’t Holling.
Matt.
He was wearing a white shirt that fit with some sort of frilly stuff at his throat. Jeans. Black sneakers.
He pulled at the frilly stuff as if it were going to choke him and looked around.
“Excuse me,” said Meryl Lee to the boy.
And while Bing Crosby was wishing that all of Meryl Lee’s Christmases would be white, she walked across the hall and up to Matt, who looked at her, still pulling at the frilly stuff.
“I like the shirt,” she said.
“I hate the shirt.”
“It is kind of frilly.”
“Good job noticing,” he said. “You should go into detective work.”
“So why wear it?”
“Because Mrs. MacKnockater tried to get me to wear a skirt and this was the compromise.” He pulled at the frilly stuff again. “It’s a kilt. The guys from St. Giles’s are all wearing them.”
“Yeah. Some party.”
“It’s a soiree.”
“Okay.”
“And you just saved me from having to dance with that boy over there.” She pointed to the boy, who still stood, watching her. “He didn’t really want to dance with me.”
“Then he’s an idiot,” said Matt.
Meryl Lee looked at him. She thought that might have been one of the nicest things that anyone had said to her since Holling had . . .
“So, do you want something to eat?” he said.
“I think I’m okay.”
“Me too.” Then, “I’m glad you didn’t dance with that guy.”
And Meryl Lee thought, Oh, Holling. Oh, Holling, I hope you don’t mind.
“I guess we should try,” said Matt.
“I’m not very good at it,” said Meryl Lee.
“And I don’t know how to dance at all,” said Matt.
She wasn’t, and he didn’t, but who cared? In the light of the flickering candles, Dr. MacKnockater watched them first hold hands, then come closer, then reach around each other, and it was as if she were watching herself and that old coot, a hundred years ago, and she felt herself beginning to cry, and she left Greater Hoxne to finish some end-of-the-semester paperwork, wondering if it was wise to go to Edinburgh after all, and filled with irresolution.
Meryl Lee did not see her go. She was dancing, dancing with this boy she hardly knew, and she was dancing with him, not just remembering Holling, but dancing with him. Matt Coffin.
And the Blank was behind her.
A long way behind her.
Then Matt was looking past her, over her left shoulder, and Meryl Lee felt a hand on her arm, and she turned.
Four boys.
They were looking at Matt.
She felt Greater Hoxne Hall suddenly get cold.
“It’s Shack Guy,” said the boy holding her arm, nodding toward Matt. “Listen, I don’t even know you, but girls from St. Elene’s shouldn’t be dancing with guys like Shack Guy. He’s crazy.”
Matt didn’t say anything.
“You still living out in the woods, Shack Guy? I’m surprised they even let you in here. It’s, like, letting a dog come in or something.” He sniffed the air. “Smells like it too.”
“Stop it,” said Meryl Lee.
“We’re just having a little fun. He doesn’t mind, do you, Shack Guy?”
“Take your hand off my arm,” said Meryl Lee.
“In a minute,” said the boy.
Meryl Lee’s free palm came up flat against his nose, which drove his head back, so when Matt’s right arm came at him like an arrow, Matt could grab the boy’s neck above the frills. The boy’s eyes grew wide, and he reached for Matt but couldn’t pull his arm away. And just as Bing Crosby was hoping that everyone’s days would be merry and bright, Matt pushed the St. Giles’s boy backwards across the dance floor and out the door of Greater Hoxne Hall.
After a moment, the other three boys sprinted across and followed them out.
So did the headmaster of St. Giles’s, along with two of the chaperoning teachers.
* * *
Some Christmas soirees are remembered for their food, some for their music, some for their decorated trees. But at St. Elene’s Preparatory Academy for Girls, the Christmas Soiree of 1968 was remembered in later years for the remarkable amount of blood left behind on the tiled floor of Greater Hoxne Hall’s lobby, the blood having flowed from the broken noses of the four boys from St. Giles’s Preparatory Academy for Boys, one of whom would spend much of his Christmas holiday having dental work done. In the lobby of Greater Hoxne Hall, the tile grout would never be the same color.
At St. Giles’s the Christmas Soiree of 1968 was remembered for the initiation of a boxing program in physical education, the headmaster having decided that personal defense was a remarkably understudied discipline.
In the apartment of Mrs. Connolly, the Christmas Soiree of 1968 was remembered as a social disaster—and likely the last time that boys from St. Giles’s would visit—and when she was finally headmistress, things like this would never happen.
In the home of Dr. MacKnockater, downstairs, the Christmas Soiree of 1968 was remembered as the single most exciting Christmas soiree that St. Elene’s had ever hosted, and Dr. MacKnockater could not help but smile at the image of the distraught St. Giles’s headmaster.
Upstairs, in a bedroom in the MacKnockater home, the Christmas Soiree of 1968 would be remembered as the evening that Matt wept, because he had done for Meryl Lee what he had not been able to do for Georgie—but it wasn’t enough.
And in Netley 204, while Jennifer prattled on about Peter Vaughn and how he was so funny and so sweet and so cute and so honorable and how he ran to rescue his friend from that wild boy, Meryl Lee knew she would remember the Christmas Soiree of 1968 as the beginning of something.
* * *
On Saturday, waiting for her parents to come pick her up for Christmas vacation, Meryl Lee wondered what she was going to say if her mother said, “So what have you become Accomplished in this semester?” because she wasn’t sure she was even close to becoming Accomplished in anything and she still wasn’t sure she could even imagine what it was she might become Accomplished in.
The second quarter evaluations did not help much. “Meryl Lee is both an attentive and eager student who shows promise in her scientific endeavors,” wrote Mrs. Bellamy. “Meryl Lee seems utterly unable to grasp the meaning and purpose of a semicolon,” wrote Mrs. Connolly. “Meryl Lee is the powdered sugar of Domestic Economy,” wrote
Mrs. Wyss.
The second quarter evaluations painted a sort of confused portrait, Meryl Lee decided.
While she waited, Meryl Lee watched St. Elene’s Preparatory Academy for Girls empty out.
Jennifer had left first thing in the morning so she would be sure not to miss a minute of Venice—or Vienna—or wherever she would be with Alden. Meryl Lee helped her drag her two huge suitcases down to Netley’s lobby, and when the limousine drove up and Charles got out—really, his name was Charles—Jennifer sparkled, “Hello, Charles!” and he held open the door for her and she got in slowly and then sidled over to the window while Charles loaded her luggage into the trunk and she looked back at Meryl Lee and smiled.
The yellow taxi came while Charles was still loading. Limo-less Charlotte from Charlotte was mortified—but Jennifer smiled even wider. The taxi driver told Charlotte from Charlotte and Ashley to put their own luggage in the trunk—“I got a bum back,” he said—and when he asked where they were headed, Ashley said pretty loudly, “The airport,” but Charlotte from Charlotte said just as loudly, “But first we have to stop at the Greyhound bus terminal for Ashley.” Then she smiled at Meryl Lee, and at Ashley, who did not smile back.
Meryl Lee figured that her parents were still at least an hour away, so she went back to Netley, where she found Bettye starting to mop the hallway for the holiday break.
She was crying.
When Bettye saw Meryl Lee, she tried to stop, but she couldn’t—and Meryl Lee embraced her, gripping hard.
“It’s Alethea’s brother.” Bettye took a deep breath. “She heard last night. He was out on patrol and . . . oh, Meryl Lee, he’s dead.”
They walked out through the cold and spitting snow. They walked down to the wall, where the last brown poison ivy leaves caught in the vines rustled with infection. Bettye was quiet now, but when Meryl Lee looked over, she was still crying.
“And we haven’t heard a word from Jonathan,” Bettye said.
Meryl Lee took her hand.
Bettye took another deep breath. “Jonathan is only eighteen. He’s a kid.”
The wind whipped one of the leaves on the poison ivy vines, and it skittered away across the frozen ground.
“He shouldn’t be in Vietnam. He just shouldn’t be there,” said Bettye.
Then she couldn’t stop.
Jonathan’s hair was dark yellow most of the time, but it lightened after a summer out on the water, she said.
He was great with knots and could tie them blindfolded.
He cooked scrod like no one else could.
He ran like a lanky dog, all loose and half-jointed.
He knew the Gettysburg Address by heart and would recite it for you if you asked—and sometimes when you didn’t ask.
He knew where the lobsters were going to be.
He liked to memorize the timing of the tides.
He was going to be an engineer and build bridges all over the world. And when he was done building bridges all over the world, he was going to come back to Maine to be a fisherman.
That’s what he was going to do.
“But who knows if . . .”
After that, they were silent.
Because that’s what the Blank does.
* * *
Later, driving out past the poison ivy walls, Meryl Lee’s mother explained that her father hadn’t been able to take time off to come pick her up. Actually, he wasn’t at home at all. He was so busy these days. In fact, he was away for the holidays.
“Where is he?”
They’d talk about that later, said her mother.
Meryl Lee felt the Blank crowding into the car.
On the way home, Meryl Lee’s mother did ask if she thought she was becoming Accomplished. Meryl Lee played with her Wedgwood pendant and she said, “I think I’m beginning to see the Obstacles.” And then it began to snow—lovely, large flakes of twirling snow, so large you could almost see their shapes.
They got back to Long Island late.
It felt funny to come back after being away for so long. Small things had changed all over—a new lamp by her mother’s living room chair, a new carpet running up the steps, a new sleeper couch in her father’s study—all of these had happened without her. It seemed as though things should stay the same while she was away.
But they didn’t.
Meryl Lee went up to her room. A new spread on her bed. Yellow.
She hated having a new bedspread.
She looked out the window. The snow looked so . . . real. Like this had happened a million times before, and it would happen a million times again. No matter what Obstacles got in its way, snow would keep on.
Meryl Lee sat on her new bedspread. Yellow like the yellow tights Holling once wore on stage in The Tempest. Yellow as a yellow brick road. Yellow like the shirt that—
She thought about Matt. About Dr. MacKnockater. About Bettye. About Alethea’s brother. About Heidi and Marian. Even about Jennifer.
Holling.
She thought about the next semester at St. Elene’s Preparatory Academy for Girls.
She thought about becoming Accomplished.
“I think I’m beginning to see the Obstacles,” she had said.
She wondered what was next.
Spring Semester
January–June 1969
Resolutions
Twenty-Three
In 1968, the year before Meryl Lee Kowalski’s second semester at St. Elene’s Preparatory Academy for Girls, sixteen thousand five hundred and ninety-two American soldiers died in Vietnam. Most of them were one or two years older than Alethea’s brother. They had had their whole lives in front of them: meeting the girl they loved, sundaes at Woolworth’s lunch counter, opening Coke bottles, dancing, getting married, having children. Everything.
Like Holling. Like Alethea’s brother.
While she was home, Meryl Lee had almost gone over to see Mai Thi, and she had almost gone over to see Danny Hupfer, but every time she almost went over, the Blank stopped her at the door. She couldn’t go. They hadn’t any of them written, they hadn’t any of them called. It was as if Holling’s death had walled them off.
And right now, it was too much to even imagine being together. It would hurt beyond hurt.
Still, on the day before Meryl Lee Kowalski’s return for the second semester at St. Elene’s Preparatory Academy for Girls, Meryl Lee woke resolved. She walked to Holling Hoodhood’s house. She stood in front of it, trembling. She stood in front of it for a long time. And then the door opened, and Holling’s sister, Heather, came out. For a moment she was on the porch, her hands at her face, and then she ran to Meryl Lee, and they held each other, and they cried and cried and cried and cried, right out there on the sidewalk, cried and cried.
Just like that.
And for Meryl Lee, on that quiet sidewalk, there was the Blank again.
But maybe, something else too.
She would have to figure out what it was.
But that wasn’t all she would have to figure out. Over Christmas vacation, Meryl Lee had learned what she did not want to learn when she went into her parents’ bedroom and saw that everything that belonged to her father was gone—his suits, his ties, the photograph of the two of them in Quebec City he always had on his dresser—all gone, and she suddenly knew why her parents had not come up for her at Thanksgiving and why her father had not come up for her birthday and to bring her home at Christmas and what the legal appointments were about and why her father was away for the holidays.
When her mother had walked into the bedroom behind her and put her hands on her shoulders, Meryl Lee knew that everything she had figured out was true.
“We’re calling it a trial separation,” said her mother. “I’m moving down to Philadelphia.”
“Philadelphia?” said Meryl Lee.
“A new start,” said her mother. “It’s for the best.”
“You could have told me together,” said Meryl Lee, “instead of letting me find out bec
ause of an empty room.”
Her mother didn’t answer.
* * *
Christmas was awful, even though her mother had tried to act like everything was fine. They took a hotel room for three days and shopped all over New York City until Meryl Lee had more new clothes than she needed or wanted.
And when they weren’t shopping, her mother toured her around the city because, Meryl Lee figured, she thought they should stay busy. The Museum of Natural History, a Broadway matinee, Tiffany, the Christmas show at Radio City, St. Patrick’s, Central Park. Lots of silent walking in Central Park.
After they got back home, Meryl Lee spent the rest of Christmas vacation in her room, as the sparkle and glow of the red and green bulbs of the St. Elene’s Christmas tree faded, as the needles browned and dropped, and as she wondered how Matt had celebrated Christmas and if he had celebrated Christmas with Dr. MacKnockater, and where he’d grown up, and . . . You know, she thought, I don’t know anything about him.
She wished she did.
On the day she was to return to St. Elene’s, her father drove her up. They were going to stop in Portland so he could meet with a client, and Meryl Lee said she’d take the bus the rest of the way to Bath. It was only a short ride, and it would probably be good for her to get used to the bus system anyway.
Her father said that would be fine. He’d meet with the client, and then they’d get directions to the bus station. She only had the one suitcase. She’d find her way with no trouble. And he’d call the school to make sure someone could pick her up when the bus got in to the station.
* * *
One thing Meryl Lee did not know was that Matt had never celebrated Christmas before—at least, he couldn’t remember celebrating Christmas before. He remembered walking through New York City at Christmastime, of course. The snow, the cold, the stupid tourists, jostling so close together they couldn’t feel him lifting their fat wallets to bring back to Leonidas Shug. The windows decorated and more stupid tourists with fat wallets. The chestnuts burning on the street corners and even more stupid tourists with fat wallets.
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