So Valentine’s Day had passed with tears and darkness.
But on this Saturday, the sun was finally out and warm, the sky a blue that reminded you of spring, and in the distance, the sea cozied around the islands and Meryl Lee wondered if Matt was out there with Captain Hurd and she sort of wished she was too.
That afternoon, the air got warm enough that Heidi and Marian told Meryl Lee they needed to go for a walk—which was a big deal, since Mr. Wheelock had threatened Heidi with no spring soccer if things didn’t start going a whole lot better quadratically, and they stopped by Charlotte’s room and she came out too. Heidi told Meryl Lee to wear her knitted yellow scarf, which was now thirty-four inches long, and she looped it around her neck, careful not to drop the stitches. When they got outside, it was so warm that Meryl Lee said, “Why did you want me to wear my scarf?”
“Because it might get dark out,” Heidi said, and they all began to laugh.
And just then, a car turned its very expensive self through the gates of St. Elene’s and up the drive. It stopped, and the window rolled down.
“I wonder,” the driver asked, “if you could point the way to Nestle Dormitory?”
“Do you mean Netley Dormitory?” said Heidi.
“I suppose,” said the driver.
Meryl Lee pointed. “Keep going on the drive, and when it forks, take the left road. Netley will be a little ways up on your left.”
The window rolled up. The car moved on.
Meryl Lee drew the scarf tightly around herself.
* * *
When they got back to Netley later, Jennifer was standing in the lobby with the driver and, Meryl Lee supposed, his wife. When he saw Meryl Lee, he threw up his arms. “Our guide in our hour of distress,” he said. “We are Mr. and Mrs. Truro. And you are . . .”
“Meryl Lee Kowalski,” she said. “I’m Jennifer’s roommate.”
“Perfect. We’re going out to dinner. We haven’t seen our little girl since last June, and it’s time to celebrate.”
Meryl Lee wanted to say, “You haven’t seen Jennifer since last June?” but she didn’t. She said, “Maybe you want to be alone together?”
“Yes,” Jennifer said.
“Nonsense,” said Mr. Truro. “Of course your roommate must come.” He looked at Heidi and Marian and Charlotte.
“I’ve got algebra,” said Heidi.
“Of course you do,” Mr. Truro said. He looked at Meryl Lee and then at his watch. “You better hurry and get ready.”
Meryl Lee figured he meant she shouldn’t be wearing her Camillo Junior High sweatshirt and her ratty red sneakers.
She changed and made sure the Woolworth’s tag did not show. She added a sweater from Marian, a scarf from Charlotte. Heidi offered her field hockey stick, but Meryl Lee said she’d have to do without it this time.
When she came back down into Netley lobby, Jennifer looked away and played with her pearls.
In the car, Mr. and Mrs. Truro gave Jennifer the family news: Aunt Doris had been bothered by her arthritis but was better now. Cousin Andrew had found a new job in the Berkshires. Bertram was still trying to find himself out in Washington State, and he’d been taking some art courses—so he’d probably live on the estate’s allowance for the rest of his life. Oh, and they had found an upstairs apartment in a two-story in Provincetown that was a little nicer for John and Sue, so they were finally out of the house, which was a relief. Alden could have a room of his own and not have to sleep on the couch.
“Alden?” Meryl Lee said.
Mr. Truro looked at her in the rearview mirror.
“Do you know John and Sue?”
“No, but I thought Alden lived in Scotland.”
“Alden lives on the Cape,” said Mr. Truro. “John and Sue live in Wellfleet. Why would you think he lived in Scotland?”
They looked at Jennifer, who looked at Meryl Lee the way the executioner of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, had probably looked at her.
“I thought he was from Scotland,” Meryl Lee said.
Her parents looked at Meryl Lee, then at Jennifer again, then back at Meryl Lee.
“Alden is our gardener’s son,” said Mrs. Truro.
“He’s never been to Scotland,” Mr. Truro said. “I’m not sure he’s ever been anywhere. Maybe Canada once?”
“Are we almost at the restaurant?” Jennifer said.
Jennifer and Meryl Lee were very quiet at the restaurant. They both had scrod, and they both said it was fine when Mrs. Truro asked if they liked it. They both said the baked potato was fine. And the sorbet was, well, fine. Mr. and Mrs. Truro sipped crème de menthe and were glad the sorbet was fine. They had decided to spend this summer in Hyannis. Had they told Jennifer about Hyannis? Maybe they hadn’t. Perhaps things could be arranged so she could come down from St. Elene’s for a week, since it wasn’t far. It would make up for missing her at Christmas, which couldn’t be helped, but Charles said she seemed to have enjoyed the run of the house. Had she?
Jennifer and Meryl Lee were very, very quiet at the restaurant.
* * *
That night, when they got back to Netley and the Truros had driven off to New York City—and they certainly would try to remember to arrange Hyannis for a week this summer and if they couldn’t remember Charles would and maybe Mary Ann could join Jennifer?—that night, Jennifer stood in front of her green satin duveted bed with her arms crossed, strands of her long blond hair tangled in her fingers.
“So are you going to tell everyone?” she said.
“Tell everyone what?” Meryl Lee said.
“About Alden. Are you that stupid you couldn’t figure it out before this?”
Meryl Lee had to admit, she was tempted to tell everyone. She was really tempted. She was really, really tempted.
But she said, “I guess I was that stupid.”
Jennifer watched her. “What does that mean?” she said.
“My parents are separated. My father lives in New York and my mother lives in Philadelphia,” said Meryl Lee.
Jennifer still watched her.
“It stinks for both of us,” Meryl Lee said.
Jennifer’s arms tightening around herself.
Meryl Lee hearing Holling. Oh, hearing exactly what he would say. No Blank.
“Let’s go find a Coke,” she said.
They went downstairs to the refrigerator in Netley’s kitchen and did. And they opened the Cokes and heard that fizz that only a cold open Coke can give, and they went back to their room, and they sat on Jennifer’s green satin duvet and talked about Jennifer’s parents and how she never ever saw them, not even at Thanksgiving or Christmas, and they never ever saw her even in summer and Hyannis would never happen, and about Meryl Lee’s parents living in two different cities, and Jennifer said maybe they sent her to St. Elene’s so she wouldn’t see them splitting up in front of her eyes, and then both of them crying on the green satin duvet, and crying, and crying. And suddenly, holding each other. The way friends do.
Things really can start over again, thought Meryl Lee. And when they do . . . well, when they do.
* * *
In the morning, it was misting and the temperature right about freezing when Meryl Lee and Jennifer walked to Morning Chapel.
They sat together in Newell. Next to Heidi, who was a little surprised.
And while the girls of St. Elene’s listened to Words of Accomplishment, the morning mist coated the brick walk in thin ice and slicked it with a sheen of freezing water on top. When the girls and the teachers came out, the walk was so slippery that they were trapped on the porch, and none of the upper school girls would move.
Until Heidi came out and saw the icy bricks . . .
Heidi stepped onto the walk, balanced, then pushed off and started to slide down, and she put her arms out, and she bent her knees, and because Heidi had balance like Richard M. Nixon had Republican, she began going faster and faster, and faster and faster, all the way to the bottom of the walk. Just like that!
And at the bottom, she twirled and curtsied—sort of like Dorothy might do—and the girls all clapped, and then Heidi hollered and waved.
Meryl Lee looked at Jennifer.
Ashley said, “Jennifer, what are you doing?”
Jennifer took Meryl Lee’s hand—which is what new friends do. She took her hand, and they stepped onto the brick walk. They balanced, and then pushed off and started to slide down, and they put their arms out, and bent their knees, and began going faster and faster—but because Jennifer did not have balance like Richard M. Nixon has Republican—and neither did Meryl Lee—and because they were laughing their guts out, they did not make it all the way to the bottom.
But they made it pretty far.
Then some of the other girls started to slide too—and you really couldn’t help it, the walk was that slippery—and some of them even stayed up on their feet most of the way.
Marian and Charlotte did not stay up on their feet even a little of the way, but they were laughing so hard, who cared? Who cared if their regulation St. Elene’s uniforms were a little muddy? Who cared if they were more than a little wet?
But when Mrs. Connolly came out of Newell Chapel, she cared, and she stepped out onto the brick walk to stop all this! and Meryl Lee thought that wasn’t the best thing to do, and she was right, because when Mrs. Connolly stepped onto the slick bricks, she started to slide down too. She waved her arms and turned around to try to get back to the chapel, but she couldn’t. And now she was sliding downhill facing backwards, and since she was sort of bending over, the sharp-ars—the skinny wrong part of her was in the lead.
She did not reach the bottom.
She might have given what was in the lead a large and uncomfortable bruise.
* * *
In the late afternoon, the sun low, Meryl Lee was coming around the corner of Lesser Hoxne, heading past Newell Chapel on the way to Putnam Library before Evening Meal. No one else was around—except Dr. MacKnockater and Matt, who were up at the top of the hill on the chapel steps. Meryl Lee watched Dr. MacKnockater peer across the commons—probably to see if anyone was watching—and Matt said something to her, and then she stepped onto the brick walk and started to slide down. Meryl Lee could hardly believe it. Dr. MacKnockater sliding down the brick walk! She didn’t wave her arms or bend her knees. She slid slowly and with Awful Dignity all the way to the bottom, and after she slowed, she stepped onto the grass, sort of adjusted herself, and looked back up.
Meryl Lee watched her. I hope, she thought, that when I am a hundred years old like she is, I will slide down an icy walk too.
Then Matt pushed off. He bent his legs so he was low to the bricks, and it was as if he were flying—his arms out like wings, his cap blown off and his hair blown back, his legs adjusting easily to the shallows of the bricks, slowing down just a bit toward the bottom and then sliding right into the open arms of Dr. MacKnockater.
Right into her arms.
Meryl Lee could not, could not, believe it.
Right into her arms.
Meryl Lee watched Matt do this two, three, four times—sliding down from the chapel into the arms of the Awful Dignity. But she didn’t look like the Awful Dignity then. She looked like . . . she looked like a mother.
Like a mother.
Then, after four times, Matt looked over her shoulder, and he saw Meryl Lee.
Smiled.
Held out his hand.
Dr. MacKnockater watched from the bottom while Matt and Meryl Lee held hands and slid down together, and she thought they looked as if . . . they looked as if they had found what the Tin Woodman had lost.
And maybe what she had lost once too.
She thought of Captain Hurd, and she began to wonder, to really wonder, whether she shouldn’t lose it again.
Thirty
The snow continued. The cold continued. Though the days were about to pass into March, it seemed that the sun had forgotten that it needed to shine a little bit longer. It still got dark before Evening Meal.
On the last day of February, Meryl Lee was knitting a couple more inches of bright yellow while sitting next to Jennifer on her green satin duvet, when there was a knock on the door. Jennifer opened it.
Bettye stood in the hall with a coconut cream pie.
Really. A whole coconut pie.
“My father watched the Evening News with Walter Cronkite last night,” she said. “Mostly about Vietnam. He bakes whenever he gets nervous, so he made six of these. Would you like one?”
Jennifer looked at Bettye, and then she looked at Meryl Lee, then she looked at Bettye again. “Won’t you come in?” she said.
Bettye looked at Jennifer and she shook her head. “I only . . .”
“Please,” said Jennifer.
This is what it looks like when things start over again.
They all sat on the green satin duvet, eating coconut cream pie, and Bettye told stories about Jonathan.
About how Jonathan kissed Melinda DuChenney when he was eleven and the slap she gave him that everyone heard even though they were in the church basement when she slapped him.
About how Jonathan fell into the Christmas tree when he wouldn’t let Bettye put on the star, and how when he fell, he knocked down every Christmas ornament. Not a single one left.
About how Jonathan once met Willie Mays and Willie Mays said Jonathan was a better hitter than he was when he was Jonathan’s age.
About how Jonathan asked Reverend Buckminster—his grandfather, not his father—how Lazarus got out of his tomb if he was all wound around with sheets and bandages so he couldn’t move his legs or his arms or even see, and how his grandfather told him to try it his own self and so Jonathan did, and he fell two flights down the stairs, and the next Sunday his grandfather preached on “The Perils of Unbelief” while Jonathan stood by the pulpit of First Congregational as a sermon illustration with a black eye and a broken arm and how he smiled like he was the star the whole time.
And Jennifer and Bettye and Meryl Lee were laughing so hard that Heidi came in with Marian, and then Charlotte came in, and most of the pie was gone pretty quickly.
That’s really what it looks like when things start over.
* * *
But not everything starts over.
Late the next afternoon, when Meryl Lee was heading to Putnam, she saw Ashley walking out of Lesser Hoxne. Ashley saw her, hesitated, then came toward Meryl Lee.
Meryl Lee waited—even though she wanted to run into Putnam.
Maybe she should have.
“I want to ask you something,” said Ashley.
“Okay,” said Meryl Lee.
“Who do you think you are?”
Meryl Lee was pretty sure Ashley didn’t expect an answer.
“Do you really think you’re someone who should even speak to Jennifer Truro? Really? You’re nobody. You’re nobody at all.”
Meryl Lee stepped back, as if something had collided against her.
“We’re just friends,” Meryl Lee said.
Ashley put her hands on her hips. “Is that what you think you are?” she said. “Friends?”
“Yes.”
“We’re friends—Jennifer, Charlotte, and me. We’re friends.”
“Can’t we—”
“No, you can’t. Not when she’s what she is and you’re what you are. Someday she’s going to marry Alden Windsor Leighton, from one of the best families in Scotland. You have no idea what that means, do you? You’re just someone trying to worm your way into being friends with someone whose life you wish you had.”
“You don’t understand,” Meryl Lee said. “It doesn’t matter that—”
“And maybe that works with someone as stupid as Charlotte. But don’t think it’s going to work for a minute with Jennifer Truro. And don’t think for a minute it’s going to work with me, because”—she leaned in close—“I hate you. I hate the way you have to have everyone to yourself.”
“That’s not fair,” said Meryl Lee.
&nbs
p; Ashley—who suddenly looked as if she was about to cry—turned and headed back to Netley.
* * *
That night, Matt settled in with Oliver Twist, while Mrs. MacKnockater enjoyed Edna St. Vincent Millay. She tried to get him to listen to “Passer Mortuus Est,” but Matt wasn’t interested. “It’s poetry,” he said, and got up to stoke the wood stove.
Mrs. MacKnockater drew an afghan over her legs and turned the pages.
She read. She nodded. She closed her eyes, opened them, closed them. Her mouth opened a little.
And Matt watched Mrs. MacKnockater fall into sleep, still holding the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay, him holding Oliver Twist, and he imagined many nights doing that, again and again. If only . . .
* * *
The next week in Mr. Wheelock’s class, Matt asked Meryl Lee if she wanted to go down to the shore with him on Saturday and maybe out with Captain Hurd, and she said yes, and Matt went home that night praying for fair weather. Praying, praying, praying for fair weather. And probably because of that, Saturday dawned with sunlight that began to heal the bruised sky and melt the icicles around Netley and Newell and sweat the piles of snow that bulked around Greater Hoxne and beside the great wall of St. Elene’s Preparatory Academy. Matt and Meryl Lee met at the main gate and together they walked down toward the docks, as quiet and still as the low waves between the tides, and the Captain was waiting at dockside—“Miss Kowalski!” he called—and he helped her board Affliction as the waves chucked the boat under its chin, and Matt jumped in afterward, easy as coconut cream pie (the last two pieces of which Meryl Lee had brought with her), and they were out into the bay.
Just Like That Page 23