The Wednesday Wars (16 page)

"Meryl Lee."

"Meryl Lee who?"

"Meryl Lee Kowalski."

"Meryl Lee Kowalski, the daughter of Paul Kowalski, of Kowalski and Associates?"

"I guess," I said.

He laughed. "You'd better hurry."

"Why hurry?"

"If Hoodhood and Associates get the junior high school contract—and we intend to—then Kowalski and Associates may very well be no more." He laughed again.

"Take her to Woolworth's," said my sister.

"Really?"

"Really. Then she'll know you're a cheapskate and dump you after the first date."

If you think that saving someone's life is all it's cracked up to be, and that the savee should swear eternal loyalty and gratitude to the saver, you don't know the part about how the savee, if she has a picture of her buttocks published in the
Home Town Chronicle,
has no further obligations to the saver.

If my father was sounding more arrogant than usual, it's because he had brought home a scale model of his design for the new junior high school, and he figured it was a winner. And looking at it sitting on the dining room sideboard, where all the silver had been pushed to the edges to make room for it, I thought he might be right. No pillars, he pointed out. No brickwork. No symmetrical layout. Everything was to be new and modern. So there were curved corners and curved walls. The roof was a string of domes all made out of glass. They arched over the main lobby, the gym, and clusters of science and art classrooms. When I pointed out that the building wasn't square, he pointed out that this was 1968 after all, and times were changing. Architecture should change, too. He pushed back his chair, walked over to the model, and took off its top half. "Look at this interior," he said. "Open hallways that rise three stories to the domes. Every classroom looks out into sunlit space. No one's ever come up with that concept for a junior high school before."

Like I told you, it was a winner.

But it didn't help me plan a $3.78 evening for Valentine's Day with Meryl Lee.

And after supper, while my sister washed and I dried, she was even more helpful than she had been before.

"What are you going to give Meryl Lee before you go out on your date?" she asked.

"It's not a date, so why should I give her something before we go out?"

"Of course it's a date. You have to give her something, like flowers or candy. Don't you know anything? It's Valentine's Day."

"I have $3.78."

"Then buy a rose. Have the florist put a ribbon on it or something. Meryl Lee will figure out you're a cheapskate soon enough anyway."

"I'm not a cheapskate. I just don't have any money."

My sister shrugged. "It's the same thing," she said.

The next day, I asked Danny where he would take someone if he were going somewhere for Valentine's Day.

"I
am
going somewhere for Valentine's Day," he said.

"You are?"

"I'm going out with Mai Thi."

"You are?" I said again.

He nodded.

"Where are you going?"

"To Milleridge Inn."

"Milleridge Inn?"

You have to know that this is the most expensive place to eat you can go to on the eastern seaboard.

"And afterward, my dad is going to drive us to see
Camelot
."

"He is?"

Danny nodded again.

"Just swell," I said.

You know how it's sometimes possible to hate your best friend's guts? I figured that by the time Danny was done, he'd spend $17 or $18. And he'd probably buy her a rose, too.

Toads, beetles, bats.

The Wednesday before Valentine's Day for the cheapskate, Mrs. Baker and I read aloud the last two acts of
Romeo and Juliet.
It was okay, but Romeo still was a jerk.

Come, bitter conduct, come, unsavory guide!
Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on
The dashing rocks thy seasick weary bark.

Sure. If I was about to die for love, I think I could come up with something better than that. But I guess the rest was all right, down in the tombs with torches and swords and stuff. Shakespeare needed to get more of that in.

By the time we were done, Mrs. Baker was almost in tears, it was all so tragic and beautiful and lovely. "You need to see this on stage, Mr. Hoodhood. It's playing at the Festival Theater on Valentine's Day. Go see it."

Now, aren't you glad I didn't ask Mr. Goldman about another play? I told you the next one would be
Romeo and Juliet—in
tights. This is called foresight, and it probably saved me from more white feathers on my butt.

"I'm already taking Meryl Lee someplace on Valentine's Day," I told Mrs. Baker.

"Are you? Where are you taking her?"

"Someplace that costs less than what's left over from $3.78 after you buy a rose with a ribbon on it."

"That limits you somewhat."

"My sister says that Meryl Lee will think I'm a cheapskate."

"It's not how much you spend on a lady," said Mrs. Baker. "It's how much you give her of yourself?"

"Like Romeo."

She nodded. "Like Romeo."

"He didn't end up too well," I pointed out.

"No," she said. "But Juliet never asked for anything but him."

"So is that what Shakespeare wanted to express about being a human being?"

"That," said Mrs. Baker, "may well be a question for your essay examination on
Romeo and Juliet.
Next Wednesday we'll review, and you'll write it the week after that. No—no more one-hundred-and-fifty-question tests. You are ready to do more than that."

I guess that was good news.

On Valentine's Day, Mr. Guareschi announced over the P.A. that Mrs. Bigio had baked Valentine's Day cupcakes for the junior high, and each class should send down a representative to pick up the class's allotted number of cupcakes at 1:00. I know this doesn't sound like a big deal, but let me tell you, Mrs. Bigio can bake cupcakes. You never want to turn down a Mrs. Bigio cupcake—even if it is all pastel pink with little hearts in the frosting.

We thought about the cupcakes all day. We even smelled them baking, their beautiful and lovely cake-y aroma wafting down the halls. When the clock clicked to 1:05, Danny gently reminded Mrs. Baker about the cupcakes. He said that he hoped that she hadn't forgotten them.

"Mr. Hupfer, has it been your experience that I have ever forgotten anything?" asked Mrs. Baker.

Danny had to admit that she never forgot anything.

Mrs. Baker looked at her watch. "I'm sure that Mrs. Bigio will have made a sufficient number." She went back to reading aloud a tragic love poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson—who, I guess, couldn't figure out how to punctuate his own name.

1:14. Still waiting for Mrs. Baker to send down a representative for the cupcakes. Up above the asbestos ceiling tiles, Caliban and Sycorax are stirring, probably since the smell of pink icing is now filling the hallways.

1:17. Still waiting. The bulging asbestos ceiling tiles are vibrating.

1:18. Mrs. Baker finally sends me down to Mrs. Bigio. Danny tells me to hurry, since he is always hungry.

1:18½. I run in the hallways.

Mrs. Bigio was waiting for me with the last tray of Valentine's Day cupcakes. She slid them along the kitchen table toward me, and then slid an envelope across as well.

"Open it," she said. "You'll want it for tonight."

I opened it. Inside were two tickets for
Romeo and Juliet
at the Festival Theater.

"Mrs. Bigio," I said.

"They're season tickets, and I won't be using them tonight. So they'll just go to waste if you don't take them—and the gossip I've picked up is that you can use them—unless you want to be known as a cheapskate."

"Thank you," I said. "I can use them."

That night, Mr. Kowalski drove Meryl Lee and me to the Festival Theater to see a production of
Romeo and Juliet
by William Shakespeare for Valentine's Day. We sat in two seats in the center of the third row. Meryl Lee held the red rose with a ribbon I had bought her. Mr. Goldman played Friar Laurence, and winked at me once from the stage. The poisoning and stabbing scene was okay, but I still think that Romeo is a jerk. They needed the ghost of Banquo up there to tell them to lay off the stabbing. Or maybe Caliban.

But Meryl Lee loved it all. She was sobbing by the time it was over. "Wasn't it beautiful?" she said as the lights came up.

"So tragic," I said.

"That's just the word," she said.

We walked through the evening light to Woolworth's, where we sat at the lunch counter and I ordered two Cokes.

Let me tell you, it was just swell.

We did the balcony scene together as nearly as we could—until the guy behind the counter began to look like he wanted us gone. So we ordered two more Cokes to make him happy—I still had $1.37 left, and I didn't want Meryl Lee to think I was a cheapskate.

"Are you going to play a part in another Shakespeare play?" Meryl Lee asked.

I thought of her sobbing at the end of
Romeo and Juliet.

"Of course," I said.

That wasn't even a Presbyterian lie; it was a flat-out lie. But after doing the balcony scene with Meryl Lee, I wasn't going to tell her what a jerk Romeo was and how the only way I was going back onto the Festival Theater stage was—well, there wasn't any way.

Meryl Lee looked at her watch. "My father will be here soon," she said. "I hope he remembers."

I sipped my Coke. I hoped he forgot.

"All he does is work on the model for the new junior high school. He goes over and over it. He moves a pillar here, then another one there. 'It's not classical enough,' he says. 'It needs to look like the Capitol building. Classical.'"

When Meryl Lee imitated her father, her eyes got large, and her hands went up, and she spoke low. She should be on the Festival Theater stage.

"Classical, classical, classical," said Meryl Lee. "There's hardly another word that comes out of his mouth."

"My dad doesn't have any pillars," I said. "He's got his model all modern."

"Modern."

I nodded. "No pillars, no straight walls, so much glass that they'll need three Mr. Vendleris to keep it all clean. That kind of modern." I asked the guy behind the counter for his pencil—he hesitated a second, since I guess he wasn't so sure about us. But he handed it over and made me promise to give it back, and then I drew the glass domes over the main lobby and gym and the science and art classrooms, and the curved corners and walls, and the clusters of classrooms looking out into sunlit space, all over my white paper placemat. "No one's ever come up with that concept for a junior high school before," I said.

Meryl Lee stared at my drawing, then went back to sipping her Coke. Her hair is auburn. Did I tell you that? In the lights of Woolworth's, it shimmered.

Mr. Kowalski did remember to come. We finished our Cokes, and I handed back the pencil to the guy behind the counter, and Meryl Lee took my placemat as a souvenir, and we walked to the car, hand in hand. Mr. Kowalski dropped me off at my house, and I wasn't sure, sitting in the back seat, how to say goodbye to Meryl Lee. But she saved the day: "'Tis almost morning," she said. "I would have thee gone."

"Sleep dwell upon thine eyes," I said.

I didn't have to look at Mr. Kowalski to know that his eyes were rolling in his head.

So that was Valentine's Day.

The following week, the school board met to decide on the model for the new junior high school—which was probably why Mr. Kowalski had been spending all his time muttering "classical, classical, classical." The meeting was to be at four o'clock in the high school administration building. Mr. Kowalski would present his plan and model, and then my father would present his plan and model, and then the school board would meet in private session to decide whether Kowalski and Associates or Hoodhood and Associates would be the architect for the new junior high school.

I know all of this because my father was making me come. It was time I started to learn the business, he said. I needed to see firsthand how competitive bidding worked. I needed to experience architectural presentations. I needed to see architecture as the blood sport that it truly was.

Which makes architecture sound like a profession that Macbeth could have done pretty well in.

The meeting was in the public conference room, and when I got there after school, the school board members were all sitting at the head table, studying the folders with the architectural bids. Mr. Kowalski and my father were sitting at two of the high school desks—which made the whole thing seem a little weirder than it needed to be. In front of them was a long table with the two models for the new junior high school, each one covered with a white sheet, like they were some sort of national secret.

I sat behind my father.

There was a whole lot of Preliminary Agenda stuff, and Old Business, and procedural decisions, and all that. My father sat through it coolly, occasionally looking at his watch or squaring the edges of his presentation notes. Mr. Kowalski was more nervous. I'm not sure that his cigarette was out of his mouth for more than three seconds at a time.

"Mr. Kowalski, we're ready for your presentation now," said Mr. Bradbrook, who was the chairman of the school board. He sat at the head of the table, sort of like God would sit if God wore a suit. He was smoking, too, but he wasn't working at it as hard as Mr. Kowalski was. "You have eight minutes," he said.

Mr. Kowalski picked up his presentation notes and angled out of his seat. He went up to the table with the models and stood there for a moment. Then he turned and looked at—no, not my father. At me!

Really.

My father looked at him. Then he turned and looked at me like I should know what was going on.

But I didn't. I just shrugged.

"Seven minutes," said Mr. Bradbrook.

Mr. Kowalski cleared his throat. Twice. He looked at his design papers. He cleared his throat again. Then he looked back at me once more, and began.

"Gentlemen," he said, "though this is irregular, I have made some significant design changes for the interior of the new junior high since my original submission. In fact, the entire concept has changed markedly. So the plans that you studied for this afternoon's presentation have also changed. I have copies of the new interior plans, and ask the board's patience as I show you the concept. This may take slightly longer than the allotted time, but I'm sure that the Chamber of Commerce Businessman of 1967 won't begrudge Kowalski and Associates a few extra minutes in order to clarify the proposal, and to promote the general business atmosphere of the town."