Just Like That

by Gary D. Schmidt

  There were hospital visits to Dr. Nora MacKnockater from Meryl Lee and a limping Matt. For two of the three days she remained unconscious. On the third she was groggy. On the fourth, she was flat-out ornery.

  And there were hospital visits to Captain Willis Hurd by Matt and Meryl Lee as well. He was unconscious all the way through Mrs. MacKnockater’s ornery day, and when he finally woke up, the first thing he said was “Nora okay?”—and then “And you?”—and then “And Affliction?”

  When Captain Hurd was released several days later, he was brought to Mrs. MacKnockater’s house, where a hospital bed was waiting for him in the front room.

  “I have my own house,” he said.

  “You need more care than you’d get there.”

  “You think I can’t—”

  “Willis, just be quiet for once and do as you’re told,” said Mrs. MacKnockater.

  He was. He did.

  And back at St. Elene’s Preparatory Academy for Girls, Mrs. Connolly, the acting headmistress, assigned Bettye Buckminster the morning shift, and Alethea Browning the afternoon shift, and Miss Ames the evening shift at Dr. MacKnockater’s house. And when Dr. MacKnockater complained that she didn’t need any help, Mrs. Connolly explained that she should just be quiet for once and do as she was told.

  She was. She did.

  * * *

  On the day before the Lasses played their last game of the season against St. Anne’s, Coach Rowlandson made the team practice defense against corner kicks until dark. But the goalie for the St. Elene’s Lasses was not quite as sharp as she needed to be, so even though Matt and Heidi were hollering back and forth the next day when peppy St. Anne’s ran onto the field, and Charlotte and Jennifer were clapping on the sidelines and yelling stupid St. Elene’s chants, the Lasses’ goalie let in nine goals—which was eight more than the St. Elene’s Lasses scored. Three of the goals were off corner kicks.

  Goaltending was not Meryl Lee’s Accomplishment.

  When the game was finally over, Meryl Lee and Matt walked—or limped—quietly back to Netley, then down to the shore, where they skipped stones into the waves before Mrs. MacKnockater—who was only pretending to use the cane that she was supposed to be using all the time—called them up for chowder and corn bread.

  “Miss Ames is a wonderful nurse,” Mrs. MacKnockater whispered to them after dinner, “but she makes chowder as if she grew up in Illinois. Bettye and Alethea, however—”

  * * *

  It was late May, and the skies grew even bluer and the sunlight warmer. The grass on the commons greened and greened and the buds on the trees split open into fresh leaves and the yellow daffodils were still waving while the tulips were thinking they should be catching up to the daffodils and the poison ivy on the wall was perking up.

  The final Tuesday of May, Meryl Lee and Matt and Charlotte and Marian worked together to dissect the horrible fetal pig in Mrs. Bellamy’s class. They all almost gagged—this little sort of pink-mostly-puke-gray body sitting on a dissection board with its tiny feet and snout and ears and tail and everything. “Turn it onto its back and cut it open from chin to tail,” said Mrs. Bellamy. “You can’t imagine what wonders you’ll discover.”

  Meryl Lee and Marian did not want to imagine.

  Matt and Charlotte really did not want to imagine.

  Meryl Lee—who after all had done the locust—handed the scalpel to Matt. Matt took a deep breath. He approached the pink-mostly-puke-gray pig. He lowered the scalpel. It touched the skin . . .

  That was more than enough for Matt.

  He gave Marian the scalpel.

  Marian approached the pink-mostly-puke-gray pig. She lowered the scalpel. It touched the skin.

  Charlotte started to whimper.

  And then Marian plunged in and cut open the whole pink-mostly-puke-gray pig in kind of a hurry.

  She kept her eyes closed the whole time.

  Which later was a problem, since for homework they were all supposed to draw the unimaginable wonders that spilled completely out of the much-too-deep incision and which Marian and then Meryl Lee and even Matt a little bit tried to push back into place—Charlotte being no help at all with this—so they could observe the unimaginable wonders in the positions they were supposed to be in, and when they failed at pushing the unimaginable wonders in with forceps and then Mrs. Bellamy used her thumbs to shove everything back inside in a big mush, Charlotte, Marian, Meryl Lee, Matt, and even Mrs. Bellamy all turned sort of grim around the mouth and felt suddenly that there was not quite enough air inside the room—perhaps it was the effect of the formaldehyde.

  But you know what? Later, when they all sat down in Putnam to try to draw the unimaginable wonders, Meryl Lee looked around and there was no Blank. There was Charlotte trying not to laugh, and Matt focusing with his tongue at the side of his mouth, and Marian bearing down with her pencil, and Mrs. Hibbard knitting, and the fiction shelf where The Grapes of Wrath was supposed to be but Mrs. Mott was in an easy chair scanning the pages of the book, and there was no Blank.

  * * *

  Meryl Lee had been wondering, so the next day, after Chapel, she asked Dr. MacKnockater—who was back at St. Elene’s now, because no one could stop her, and she wasn’t even pretending to use the cane—if she had read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz that spring after all.

  “I have,” she said. “In fact, I have been thinking about the Lion.”

  “The Lion?”

  “I’ve been wondering if he always had courage inside himself and only needed to find a way to recognize it, or if he had to resolve to put on courage as something utterly new to him.”

  “I don’t think it matters,” said Meryl Lee.

  “Why?”

  “What matters is that he became courageous.”

  Dr. MacKnockater nodded.

  Meryl Lee looked at her. “This is about Mrs. Connolly,” she said. “Isn’t it?”

  Dr. MacKnockater nodded again.

  And that was why, later that afternoon, after another day of American Literary Masterpieces when Mrs. Connolly had been oh so coldly polite to all the girls but especially one Meryl Lee Kowalski, Meryl Lee stood outside Mrs. Connolly’s office door, knocking.

  Sort of hoping no one would answer, but wondering what would happen if . . .

  Mrs. Connolly opened the door. She looked at Meryl Lee and she said, “Yes?”

  “May I come in?” said Meryl Lee.

  “I’m busy, Miss Kowalski.”

  “I won’t be long.”

  Mrs. Connolly considered this, then turned and went back to her glass-top desk. She sat down behind it and poised a red pen over a stack of exams.

  Meryl Lee sat down.

  “How are you?” said Meryl Lee.

  “Busy, as I said,” said Mrs. Connolly.

  “I know. Mrs. Connolly, I’m sorry that—”

  Mrs. Connolly put her red pen down.

  “Miss Kowalski, this isn’t going to be a scene, is it? I don’t have time for scenes, and if you’re thinking of staging one now, I’m going to ask you to leave.”

  “I’m here to ask you to come back to the literary society,” said Meryl Lee.

  Silence in the cold office.

  Long silence.

  “We can start again, Mrs. Connolly,” said Meryl Lee, almost in a whisper.

  Mrs. Connolly waited a long time. Then she said, “I’m considering leaving St. Elene’s, Miss Kowalski. I’m afraid it’s too late.”

  “Leaving? You’ll be headmistress next year.”

  She shook her head. “No, I will not. I’m sure it will be all over campus soon enough, so there’s no harm in telling you. My son Thomas, who is a senior at St. Giles’s, was filmed by a local news crew burning his draft card, swearing he would head to Canada to escape this imperialist nation of ours. He always has been articulate, and he was on this occasion as well. His speech was replayed on several more prominent newscasts, and he has since crossed the border.”

  “I don’t unde
rstand what this has to do with—”

  “Mr. Allen has declared that the headmistress of St. Elene’s Preparatory Academy for Girls cannot be a woman whose son is a”—she paused—“draft dodger.”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Connolly.”

  “I have been asked to remove my name from consideration. That’s the way things are done.” She stood and turned away from Meryl Lee. “No loss, I suppose. None of the girls, and few of the faculty, would have been glad to see me as headmistress.”

  “That’s not true,” said Meryl Lee.

  Mrs. Connolly turned back to her. “Miss Kowalski, you have just uttered what you know to be a prevarication.”

  “A. . . ?”

  “Look it up in Mrs. Saunders’s Funk and Wagnalls tonight.”

  “Where’s Thomas?” Meryl Lee asked.

  Mrs. Connolly sat back down. She looked at her hands. “I don’t know,” she said finally. “I hope he’s . . .” She didn’t finish.

  Meryl Lee reached down into her notebook and pulled out a sheet of paper. “We had to write haiku again for the next literary society. Bettye gave me hers.”

  “Bettye Buckminster? Are you trying to be annoying, Miss Kowalski?”

  “She wrote it about her brother Jonathan, thinking about him in Vietnam. May I read it to you?”

  “I told you I was—”

  Meryl Lee read it:

  “Brother far away.

  Light, stars through my dark branches:

  The same moon he sees.”

  Mrs. Connolly sat silently for a long time. Then she reached across the glass-top desk and took Bettye Buckminster’s poem. She read it again. And again. Then she turned in her chair and looked out the window, her back to Meryl Lee.

  “I’ll think about the literary society,” she said finally.

  She did not turn around again, and Meryl Lee, after a little while, left.

  * * *

  Three days later, the Literary Society of St. Elene’s Preparatory Academy for Girls met under the guidance of Mrs. Hibbard. Mrs. Connolly came and sat in the back row.

  Ashley had left a poem to be read at the literary society, but clearly she thought Mrs. Hibbard had said “limerick” instead of “haiku.” But after Mrs. Hibbard had read Ashley’s limerick about daffodils, which Ashley made pink to rhyme with stink, everyone clapped politely anyway.

  Then Marian read her haiku about sitting in a small parish church when she was thirteen. They all felt a kind of holy quiet about it. And they all clapped—for real, this time—and Marian said her images weren’t nearly as good as Ashley’s, and everyone could imagine Ashley smiling and fingering her pearls—but no one mentioned that.

  Then Bettye read hers, and they clapped again, and Mrs. Hibbard said Bettye had caught the longing we all have felt for someone we love who is far away.

  Then sharp-ars—Mrs. Connolly told Mrs. Hibbard that no, she didn’t want to read because she had only a sonnet and not a haiku, but Mrs. Hibbard said she should, and finally Mrs. Connolly stood up and went to the front of the room and smoothed out the poem on the lectern, and she looked right at Meryl Lee, and then she began to read.

  Here are the first two lines. It’s all Meryl Lee remembered. Everything else was sound and sadness and longing.

  The night dark your shoulders, moon glow your hair,

  Dim stars your eyes, and all else your despise.

  The poem was about Thomas crossing into Canada, leaving behind everything he ever loved, leaving behind everyone who loved him. Meryl Lee wished she could remember more—it was so beautiful, and sad, and by the end she was crying.

  And then Mrs. Connolly left the lectern and went to sit back down. But before she sat down, Bettye walked over to her, and they looked at each other, and Mrs. Connolly took Bettye’s hands, and she said something only to her, and after that, they sat side by side, holding hands, like they both knew something—the same thing.

  * * *

  On campus the next day, Meryl Lee told Mrs. Connolly she thought her sonnet was beautiful.

  And Mrs. Connolly said, “Thank you, Miss Kowalski.”

  That was all.

  But it was enough to begin again.

  Thirty-Eight

  On the next Wednesday, Dr. MacKnockater was waiting for Meryl Lee on the steps of Newell when she came out. They walked together, and Dr. MacKnockater nodded to the wilted daffodils. “The site of your sit-in,” she said. “I suspect it will not be your last.”

  “Maybe not,” Meryl Lee said.

  “Mrs. Connolly has rejoined the literary society, I understand.”

  “And she is not going to be headmistress next year. Does that mean that you’ll—”

  “I’m wondering how Meryl Lee Kowalski is doing.”

  “She’s fine,” Meryl Lee said.

  “Is she?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “‘Sometimes’ is a good answer, Meryl Lee. You’ve had a terrifying experience. And you’ve lost a great deal this year.”

  Meryl Lee nodded.

  “And have you found much?”

  Meryl Lee thought about that. “I think I have,” she said.

  “I think you have too. The world can be such an ugly place. It takes a special person, a truly Accomplished person, to make it a beautiful place.”

  Meryl Lee felt herself trembling. She seemed about to understand something. Or maybe she seemed about to believe something.

  But what?

  * * *

  On Saturday, an early morning rain cleared away and a rainbow bobbed on top of distant waves as the eighth-grade girls of St. Elene’s Preparatory Academy went down to Popham Beach for the June Lobster Fest. They couldn’t stop staring at the rainbow until Dr. MacKnockater called for help. Heidi and Charlotte and Barbara Rockcastle were in charge of making up two fires, Meryl Lee and Elizabeth Koertge and Lois Tuthill were in charge of setting the tables, Marian and Jennifer and Julia Chall were in charge of fixing the salads, and Bettye and Alethea were in charge of the lobsters, since aside from Mrs. Wyss, they were the only ones who knew something about domestic economy and boiling lobsters.

  Ashley Higginson, who had come back the night before for the end-of-the-year ceremonies and who was not wearing her pearls, was in charge of looking sour and gloomy.

  Mr. Wheelock had the lobsters in the back of his station wagon, and one by one he and Matt carried the crates down to the water and the girls covered them in seaweed, which even Charlotte did, and only one crate got knocked over and Mr. Wheelock had to recapture those lobsters frantically trying to get themselves back into the ocean, and some had lost the bands around their claws so they were snapping at him and you do not want to go after a snapping lobster in shallow water.

  Some earned their freedom.

  For the others, Mr. Wheelock put two huge lobster pots on the fires to boil seawater, and some of the girls peeled hard-boiled eggs and some stirred lemonade, and Mrs. Wyss flustered happily. It was a perfect blue day by the sea, with the water calm and bright and smooth, and the sand a little damp but still warm, and only a couple of clouds puffing on the horizon, and everyone fussing by the tables—except Ashley, who walked out to sit on the rocks alone, looking as tragic as Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots waiting for her execution.

  Meryl Lee supposed that lobster was fine to eat—if you didn’t see the lobster being lowered to its death in boiling water, or hear it scream, or mind ripping red shells apart and sucking meat out of little tentacles, or legs, or whatever they were. Jennifer and Charlotte and Heidi and Marian and Matt each ate a whole lobster. Meryl Lee tasted one, and then ate some of the fried chicken Mrs. Wyss had brought along for Mr. Wheelock, who said he didn’t eat anything with that many legs.

  And though Meryl Lee asked her to come to the tables, Ashley said she was a dope to think that she could eat lobster at a time like this.

  Or chicken.

  * * *

  On Sunday, Meryl Lee wrote to her mother about the eighth-grade graduation.


  I hope you are able to come. It’s going to be a lot of fun. The girls from the upper school are decorating the chapel with white flowers and white ribbons, and we’re going to be wearing white corsages. When everyone has been seated and Mrs. Mott has offered a prayer for the day, Dr. MacKnockater will give a speech, and we’ll read a litany together, and then we receive our eighth-grade diplomas from St. Elene’s Preparatory Academy for Girls.

  There’s a dinner afterward where the families sit together. Heidi and I and Charlotte and Jennifer and Marian have it all planned out—there will be just enough seats at one long table—so we have it reserved.

  I hope you’re coming! I’ll see you in less than two weeks.

  That’s what she wrote.

  Then she wrote her father.

  I hope you are able to come. It’s going to be a lot of fun. The girls from the upper school are decorating the chapel with white flowers and white ribbons, and we’re going to be wearing white corsages. When everyone has been seated and Mrs. Mott has offered a prayer for the day, Dr. MacKnockater will give a speech, and we’ll read a litany together, and then we receive our eighth-grade diplomas from St. Elene’s Preparatory Academy for Girls.

  There’s a dinner afterward where the families sit together. Heidi and I and Charlotte and Jennifer and Marian have it all planned out—there will be just enough seats at one long table—so we have it reserved.

  I hope you’re coming! I’ll see you in less than two weeks.

  She mailed both the letters the next day on the way to the headmistress’s office to meet with Dr. MacKnockater about housing for next year.

  “I’m assuming, of course, that you will be here next year, Miss Kowalski.”