Meryl Lee was moved to use some words not usually heard in Tea and Biscuit Conversations, which led to Lois Tuthill covering her ears and running from Mrs. Mott’s rooms, which led to Mrs. Mott asking Meryl Lee to please wait until the others had left.
When they were alone, Mrs. Mott described to Meryl Lee the virtue of a calm spirit, which apparently St. Elene was famous for.
Meryl Lee was absolutely sure she would not become Accomplished in the virtue of a calm spirit.
Mrs. Mott agreed that growth in this area might come only after a long process, but there would be plenty of opportunities for growth during her education at St. Elene’s, and Mrs. Mott was confident that Meryl Lee would enlarge her capacities.
So the very next day, Meryl Lee tried to remember the virtue of a calm spirit in Life Sciences when Mrs. Bellamy announced that today they would be dissecting earthworms.
Meryl Lee hated earthworms. Who doesn’t?
First, Mrs. Bellamy showed her class the earthworms. They were floating—kind of—in a gray glass jar filled with formaldehyde. They were much bigger than earthworms deserved to be. Bigger long and bigger round. Mrs. Bellamy said bloated earthworms were easier to dissect, but Meryl Lee thought bloated earthworms were easier to throw up because of. You want earthworms to be where they’re supposed to be—in the dirt, with everything else that crawls and is slimy—like Jennifer, Ashley, and Charlotte from Charlotte.
Meryl Lee shook her head. She was resolved. She would try to practice the virtue of a calm spirit.
Then Mrs. Bellamy distributed metal forceps to use in removing an earthworm from the gray jar of formaldehyde. Earthworms in gray jars of formaldehyde are very slippery and very long and very hard to remove from their jar. And since Charlotte from Charlotte was Meryl Lee’s lab partner and she wasn’t helping because she absolutely could not would not risk the possibility of getting a drop of formaldehyde on her pale Charlotte, North Carolina, skin, Meryl Lee had to remove the bloated earthworm by herself. And when she finally flopped the thing onto their dissection tray, it wasn’t her fault the earthworm spat a molecule of formaldehyde toward Charlotte from Charlotte and that Charlotte from Charlotte accused her of making the bloated earthworm do this on purpose.
Calm spirit. Calm spirit.
Then Mrs. Bellamy told the class they had to identify the anterior and the posterior. “You should be able to distinguish them because the anterior is round and fleshy and the posterior is small and pointed and has a small hole in it for evacuation.”
Evacuation? thought Meryl Lee.
But when she tried to distinguish the anterior and the posterior, both ends looked pretty much the same. Actually, exactly the same. Bloated. And Charlotte from Charlotte was standing so far back, she would have needed binoculars to help. So Meryl Lee raised her hand and told Mrs. Bellamy they had some sort of mutant earthworm and Mrs. Bellamy came over and touched it—touched it!—and said that if they checked for the clitellum, they would see clearly which end was the anterior end. Then she took Meryl Lee’s finger and pulled it—pulled it!—until she was touching—touching!—the clitellum and she said, “You see how this is thicker here?” and Meryl Lee nodded quickly because she was trying not to pass out. (Calm spirit. Calm spirit.) Then Mrs. Bellamy told Charlotte from Charlotte to come closer and she took her hand and pulled it toward the earthworm and Charlotte from Charlotte was leaning back as far as she could and all of her auburn flounces had suddenly wilted against the sides of her head and Mrs. Bellamy said, “Stop being silly,” and she touched Charlotte from Charlotte’s finger to the clitellum.
Meryl Lee thought Charlotte from Charlotte was going to evacuate all over the dissection tray.
It was great.
“Do you feel how this part is thicker?” said Mrs. Bellamy.
Charlotte from Charlotte tried to nod.
“What’s the clitellum for?” Meryl Lee asked, and she really did ask because she wanted to know—mostly. Despite what Charlotte from Charlotte said later.
“Reproduction,” said Mrs. Bellamy.
And Charlotte from Charlotte was gone. Meryl Lee was not sure anyone saw her leave the room, she was that fast.
That left Meryl Lee without a lab partner, but she swallowed hard, then pinned the bloated anterior and the bloated posterior to the tray, and opened the skin with a scalpel, and started looking for the organs Mrs. Bellamy was drawing on the board. It actually was amazing. The earthworm has five hearts—sort of. There are five dark loops wrapping around its esophagus. It has a crop where food is stored, and on top of the crop is another long dark vessel that carries the blood. From the crop, the food goes down to the gizzard and then to the intestines. And below the intestines is a white nerve that runs the whole length of the earthworm.
It really was amazing. Even Holling would have said it was amazing.
By the time Meryl Lee was done, the earthworm was completely splayed out on the dissection tray. It looked pretty mutilated, but Mrs. Bellamy said Meryl Lee had done fine for her first dissection. Maybe someday she would make an Accomplished biologist.
Then Mrs. Bellamy asked Meryl Lee if she thought Charlotte from Charlotte would like to see the earthworm completely splayed out.
“I’m sure she would,” said Meryl Lee. “I’d be happy to take it up to her.”
So together they flipped the whole dissected earthworm onto wax paper, and some of the guts spilled out and the wax paper got sort of streaky, but Meryl Lee took it anyway.
She put it under her bed until after she got back from Famous Women of History.
Then she left it outside Charlotte from Charlotte’s door.
The scream came about twenty minutes later.
Meryl Lee didn’t know if it was from Ashley or Charlotte from Charlotte.
Didn’t matter.
Twenty-Seven
On the last Monday of January 1969, when clouds thick with snow were gathering in the west and an hour after Mrs. Connolly had drafted her formal complaint regarding Dr. MacKnockater’s outrageous decision to break the oldest tradition of St. Elene’s Preparatory Academy for Girls, Matt Coffin was enrolled as a student, and something like a million years of precedent shattered.
Some precedents between Matt Coffin and Dr. MacKnockater had shattered too, as his enrollment was, Dr. MacKnockater understood, one of the very few times she would win with this boy.
But it had not been easy. She told him that she had taken him as far as she could in mathematics and the life sciences and that he needed teachers like Mr. Wheelock, who could introduce him to the pleasures of algebra, and Mrs. Bellamy, who could fascinate him with the wonders of invertebrate and vertebrate biology.
He told her that he would never need algebra and that even if he did, he doubted there were many pleasures in it, and he doubted there was a whole lot of wonder in verte-something biology, either.
She told him that he would need algebra and invertebrate and vertebrate biology for college.
He laughed at her.
She told him that the first day, perhaps they could start slowly—with just one class. Say, algebra. Then, if he liked it, they could move on from there.
He said he had been in classrooms before and he knew he wouldn’t like it.
She told him that the classrooms of St. Elene’s were nothing like the classrooms of Harpswell Junior High.
“You’re right,” he said. “Because they only have girls.”
“Miss Kowalski would be in your classroom,” she pointed out.
“Oh,” he said, after a minute. “Okay.”
The night before, while Mrs. MacKnockater was in the kitchen looking for the lemons she had quartered, Captain Hurd had told Matt that there were certain times when Nora MacKnockater was a godlike force that could not be denied and he was wise not to try. “It’s like trying to hold back the tide,” he said.
“So, how often have you tried to hold back the tide?” said Matt.
“Twice,” he said. Once when he tried to get he
r onto Affliction for a sail around the islands. She had made it quite clear she wasn’t taking a single step off land.
“And the other time?”
“When she told me she wouldn’t marry me.”
Matt looked at him.
“Love is a tough business,” said Captain Hurd, and then Mrs. MacKnockater came back in with the lemons.
And so, on that last Monday, while the snow clouds gathered, Matt Coffin and Mrs. Nora MacKnockater walked through the high gates of St. Elene’s Preparatory Academy for Girls, hurrying across the commons because they were a little late.
“Bagheera,” said Matt, “you’re the headmistress. They’ll wait for you.”
She looked at him. She realized she was resisting the urge to take hold of his hand.
“Matthew,” she said, “perhaps it is best if on the grounds of the school, you should call me Dr. MacKnockater.”
“Why?”
“Propriety.”
“What’s that?”
“It is why I call Captain Hurd ‘Captain.’”
“You know, he wants you to call him something else.”
“Yes, he does. Now, here we are. This is Lesser Hoxne Hall. Do you want me to go up with you to the class?”
“I can handle it from here, Dr. MacKnockater.”
She looked at him again. “You are going to the class, correct?”
“For you, Dr. MacKnockater.”
“Stop that.”
“Okay, Dr. MacKnockater. I’ll see you back at the house.”
She watched him climb the stairs toward Mr. Wheelock’s classroom, and she thought how sweet it would be to hear those words—“I’ll see you back at the house”—every day for a very long time.
And smiling, she also thought, Why cant he ever keep his shirt tucked in?
* * *
Matt hung his coat on one of the hooks in the hall. When he opened the door, Mr. Wheelock was already handing out a stack of dittos. Matt, who had never been in a classroom he liked, was surprised at how immediately he liked this one. Plants that filled the bay window—a bay window as long as the classroom was wide—gathered what sunlight there was, grabbed hold of it, and blossomed. Purple and white flowers were shouting on the ledge, some hidden by long vines, their leaves shielding the pink flowers that blushed behind them. Matt thought that he had never seen anything so beautiful off the water.
There was no desk in front, only a long table on which was an open math book, a black mug, an ashtray with a box of matches sitting in it, a pipe, and a square box filled with yellow pencils—all sticking up their perfectly sharpened points. There were also no desks in the classroom, just long tables of two or three girls—every single one of whom was looking at him.
Every single one.
He almost turned around, but he had promised Bagheera.
Mr. Wheelock, whose red cheeks made him look as if he had just come in from the cold, turned to the class. “Students of St. Elene’s, please welcome Mr. Matthew Coffin, who has today made history just by his entry into the room as the first young man to take classes at this academy. Mr. Coffin, you are most welcome here, and though we two are vastly outnumbered, I hope that you will help me uphold the honor of our gender as strangers in this strange land”—and he gave a slight bow.
“I guess,” said Matt.
Mr. Wheelock smiled, handed Matt a ditto, then picked up his pipe and pointed at a table toward the back of the classroom. “A chair beside the lovely Miss Truro awaits,” and Matt—still knowing that everyone in the room hadn’t stopped watching him—walked back toward the table with the lovely Miss Truro, where a new The World of Algebra! book and a new The World of Algebra and You! workbook were waiting too.
When he sat down, the lovely Miss Truro scooted her chair just a little bit closer to him.
Two tables up and to the left, Meryl Lee Kowalski was sitting with her The World of Algebra and You! workbook open. He watched the back of her head and how she sometimes reached up and pulled the hair behind her right ear. When he’d sat down, she had turned toward him and smiled and now he was waiting for her to do that again. He wanted to ask her if she remembered how they had kissed on the bus and how that felt and was he familiar with algebraic word problems?
Matt looked up.
Mr. Wheelock standing between the tables, not so far from him.
“What?” said Matt.
“Are you familiar with algebraic word problems?” said Mr. Wheelock.
“Algebraic word problems?”
“Probably not,” said Mr. Wheelock. “So let me introduce you to their pleasures.” He really said that. Then he turned to the whole class. “Please note the problem I have just handed out, which you see here mapped clearly for your visual delectation.”
Really, he said that.
So Mr. Wheelock told the class to imagine Mr. Jones, who was driving west from the tip of Harpswell Peninsula, through Harpswell proper, and then past Bath and down to Sebasco on Popham Peninsula, a distance of thirty-six miles, we’ll say for the sake of argument. Mr. Smith, meanwhile, was driving from Sebasco to the tip of Harpswell Peninsula. Mr. Jones was a reckless driver and was going fifty-five miles per hour. Mr. Smith, on the other hand, was a careful driver and was traveling at twenty-five miles per hour. At what point on the arc from the tip of Harpswell Peninsula to Sebasco would they pass each other?
He turned to Matt. “Let’s try this intuitively to start off. Where might the two cars meet, Mr. Coffin? Halfway?”
Matt shook his head.
“Exactly right. Not halfway, as Mr. Jones is traveling more than twice as fast as Mr. Smith. So how might we calculate where exactly they might cross?”
Matt had absolutely no idea.
“It depends on the traffic,” he said.
“There is no traffic,” said Mr. Wheelock.
“There’s always traffic,” said Matt.
“It’s early on a Sunday morning. There is no traffic.”
“Suppose Mr. Jones hits a traffic light and Mr. Smith doesn’t?”
“For the sake of argument, let us say that they are traveling uninterrupted at a constant speed, and there are no traffic lights on this route in Harpswell.”
“Isn’t that sort of unlikely? And there are two traffic lights on this route in Harpswell.”
“Exactly right again. It is unlikely, and perhaps impossible in the real world, to maintain an exact constant speed. But I think you are wrong about the two traffic lights.”
Matt pointed at the dittoed map. “One here, the other here.”
Mr. Wheelock considered this. “Right again, Mr. Coffin.” He looked up at the class. “When we tie any ideal problem to the real world, we are faced with the fact that the ideal, by definition, cannot exist. So, Miss Kowalski, in the face of that dilemma, what options do we have?”
“We could pretend that the ideal could exist.”
“And though pretense is not often used in mathematics, I think Miss Kowalski is on to something. We either must adapt the problem to reality, or we suspend our disbelief and work as if the ideal could exist.” He looked back at Matt. “So let’s follow Miss Kowalski’s advice and pretend.”
“Okay, but wouldn’t it be better for them to take a boat from Harpswell to Sebasco?”
“There are no boats.”
“There’s always boats for rent down at the docks.”
“Not on Sunday mornings.”
“I think you might be wrong about that, too,” said Matt.
“Given your previous correction, I would tend to trust you on this matter. But remember, we are suspending disbelief. Pretend. Two men, two cars, two constant speeds.”
Matt looked down at the ditto. “Then I guess they would meet somewhere around Bath.”
Mr. Wheelock smiled. “Yes, I guess they would. Good. So now let me show you how close to Bath they would be. Come up to the board with me. Miss Kowalski, you come too, please. Miss Truro, there is no need to decorate your ditto with penciled flora.�
��
So Matt and Meryl Lee went to the board with Mr. Wheelock, and as Mr. Wheelock drew the map and the routes of Mr. Jones and Mr. Smith, Matt felt sweat running down his sides and his mouth start to go dry, and he said again that it was pretty dumb to drive all that way from Harpswell to Sebasco when all you needed was four bucks to rent a stupid boat for a couple of hours, but Mr. Wheelock said, “Let’s have velocity represented by the letter V. And so the velocity of Mr. Jones is V1 and the velocity of Mr. Smith is V2. Are we together so far? Good. Now, distance is measured by velocity multiplied by time, and we know that the time in which they travel is the same, since they will meet. So V1 multiplied by t—which will stand for time—plus V2 multiplied by t will equal thirty-six, the distance they will travel. Correct? Let us write that equation on the board.” Mr. Wheelock wrote the equation with his tongue sticking out a little bit: “55t + 25t = 36. Divide both sides by t and we have what, Miss Kowalski?”
“55 + 25 = 36/t.”
“Exactly right. So, Matthew, let us see if we can solve for t now.”
And they did, and it wasn’t long before they figured that Mr. Jones was driving 24.75 miles and Mr. Smith was driving 11.25 miles, and as they walked back from the board, Matt and Meryl Lee looked at each other and Matt thought it was pretty cool to stand there with Meryl Lee and watch Mr. Wheelock work the solution and then to hear Meryl Lee say, “I get it,” at the very same moment when he did too.
And you know what else was satisfying? Matt, for the first time in any school he had ever been in—and okay, there hadn’t been that many, but still—Matt knew that Mr. Wheelock was not going to make him feel stupid.
Matt looked at Meryl Lee and wished he could tell her that.
He looked at Mr. Wheelock and wished he could tell him that—except Matt figured that he already knew.
He went back to his table, sat next to the lovely Miss Truro, and watched Meryl Lee pull the hair behind her right ear as the class worked a new problem of Mr. Jones and Mr. Smith on their way back and forth between Brunswick and Bath.
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