February

On the first Friday of February, my father missed Walter Cronkite and the CBS Evening News because he was spending almost the whole day getting ready for the formal presentation of the Chamber of Commerce Businessman of 1967 Award at the Kiwanis Club that night. Actually, we were all spending a lot of time getting ready for the Kiwanis Club, because my mother and sister were wearing long gowns, and my father and I were wearing tuxedos, which are uncomfortable and don't fit right and come with shoes made for people with very wide feet.

My sister had used most of the getting-ready time to complain, especially about the stupid purple orchid that the Kiwanis Club had sent and which she had to pin to her shoulder. It didn't help when I pointed out that I had to wear a white carnation in my lapel and that wearing a purple orchid wasn't nearly as bad. And it really didn't help when I pointed out that I had had to wear white feathers on my butt and that wearing a purple orchid really wasn't as bad as that.

And it really, really didn't help when my father pointed out that she had wanted to be a flower child, and so here was her chance.

"You don't take anything I believe seriously, do you?" she said to him.

"Tie your hair back from your face," he said.

She went upstairs to the bathroom to tie her hair back from her face.

I went up after her. "You should take the orchid and flush it down the toilet," I said.

She looked at me. "Why don't you take your carnation and flush it down the toilet?"

"Maybe I will."

She pointed toward the toilet. "Go ahead."

But I didn't have to flush my carnation down the toilet, because right then a whole series of low chords sounded from the piano in the Perfect Living Room below us, followed by a roar and crash as the entire newly plastered ceiling fell, smashing down the top of the baby grand piano, ripping the plastic seat cushions, flattening the fake tropical flowers, tearing the gleaming mirror from the wall, and spreading its glittering shards onto the floor, where they mixed with the dank, wet plaster that immediately began to settle into the carpet to stain it forever.

All four of us stood in the hall, the sickly smell of mold in our nostrils.

If the committee that chose the Chamber of Commerce Businessman of 1967 had heard what my father had to say about the carpenters and plasterers who had come to fix our living room ceiling, they might not have given him the award, since one of the requirements was that the nominee had to support the general business atmosphere of the town, and my red-faced father was hollering and swearing about how he was going to decrease the number of the town's businesses by two—and he was shredding his white carnation as he said this, which is probably what Shylock would have done if he had been wearing a white carnation after being cheated out of his ducats.

It was a good thing that neither the carpenters nor the plasterers were at the Kiwanis Club that night.

We drove there in silence, and just before we walked into the club, I took off my carnation and handed it to my father. He took it without a word, and while my mother pinned it to his lapel, I held my flowerless lapel out to my sister and smirked.

She smiled back very sweetly. Then, as soon as we had gotten inside, she excused herself, went into the ladies' room, and came back without her orchid. She was still smiling sweetly when she leaned down to me and whispered, "Down the toilet, you little jerk."

So we were both flowerless as we went into the reception hall, but no one would have seen the flowers anyway, since the hall was so dark. The only light came from the candles on the tables, the lit ends of cigarettes, and the lamps at the head table, which shone off the fake paneling on the wall behind. My father sat up there, and the rest of us sat below him at a center table with the wives of the Kiwanis Club officers. My mother refused an offered cigarette—I could tell this wasn't easy—and then she chattered to the Kiwanis wives while my sister and I sat silently through the dinner—roast beef and mashed potatoes and buttered lima beans—and through dessert—lemon meringue pie with a whole lot more meringue than lemon—and through the opening greetings and speeches, and then through my father's speech of grateful acceptance.

He was still red in the face when he got up to speak, and you could tell he was looking out at the audience for the carpenters and plasterers. But he made it through without any hollering and swearing, and everyone clapped when he talked about the growing business opportunities of the town, and how he was glad to be a part of it all, and how someday he hoped to leave a thriving and FEbRuARy 133 prosperous business in a thriving and prosperous town to his son to carry on the good name of Hoodhood and Associates. Lots of clapping at this. When everyone at the head table looked down at me, I smiled and nodded like I was supposed to, since I'm the Son Who Is Going to Inherit Hoodhood and Associates.

My sister kicked me under our table.

Toads, beetles, bats.

When we got home that night, my father phoned the carpenters and the plasterers. He told them that he didn't care that it was late on a Friday night. And he didn't care that tomorrow was a Saturday. They had better be at the house first thing in the morning, ready to fix the ceiling permanently and to offer restitution for the property damage their carelessness had caused.

They were there, first thing in the morning.

If I had had anything to say about it—which, of course, I didn't—I would have had the carpenters and plasterers head over to Camillo Junior High as soon as they were done with the Perfect Living Room, because the ceiling in our classroom was getting to be a bigger and bigger problem as the weeks went by and Mr. Guareschi and Mr. Vendleri couldn't trap, poison, snag, snare, net, corner, maim, coax, or convince the rats to give themselves up. Eight asbestos ceiling tiles had started to bulge down, which meant that either Sycorax and Caliban were getting fatter or the ceiling was getting weaker. Every morning, Mrs. Baker looked up at the bulges to inspect them. And every morning she looked a little more nervous.

"So suppose she looks up there and sees that they've chewed a hole in the tiles and they're looking back down at her. What happens then?" I said to Danny.

"You know that sound the bus driver made just before she hit you?"

I remembered the sound.

"It wasn't anything compared to what Mrs. Baker would do."

We waited hopefully, but the eight bulging tiles stayed intact.

At the beginning of February, Mrs. Baker had assigned me Romeo and Juliet. I read it in three nights.

Let me tell you, these two wouldn't make it very far in Camillo Junior High. Never mind that Romeo wears tights—at least according to the pictures—but he just isn't very smart. And Juliet isn't too strong in that department, either. I mean, a potion to almost kill you? She drinks a potion to almost kill you? Who would drink a potion to almost kill you? Then Romeo goes ahead and drinks a potion that will kill you because he can't figure out that she's only had a potion that almost kills you? And then Juliet, who at least is smart enough to figure out that Romeo really is dead, makes sure that she uses a knife this time, which is not almost going to kill you, but really will kill you?

Doesn't this sound like something that two people who can't find their way around the block would get themselves into?

Of course it does.

Mrs. Baker couldn't see this problem at all. Because she's a teacher, and no teacher ever does. "Didn't you find it tragic and beautiful and lovely?" she asked me when I told her I'd finished reading it.

See?

"Not really," I said.

"What did you find it then?"

"Stupid."

"There we have an opinion that overturns three hundred and seventy-five years of critical appreciation. Is there a particular reason that you find it 'stupid'?"

"Because they never would have done what they did."

"Fall in love?"

"All the stuff at the end."

"The poison and the knife," she said.

"Yes. They never would have done that."

Mrs. Baker considered this for a moment. "What would they have done?"

"Gone to Mantua together."

"And their parents?"

"Ignored them."

"I'm not sure that life is quite as simple as that. These are star-crossed lovers. Their fate is not in their own hands. They have to do what has already been decided for them. That's why it's so tragic and beautiful and lovely."

You see? Tragic and beautiful and lovely again. Why not just stupid and dumb?

Meryl Lee thought it was wonderful that I was reading Romeo and Juliet, since, having been inspired by the Long Island Shakespeare Company's Holiday Extravaganza, she was reading it, too. "Don't you think it's romantic, Holling?"

"I guess so."

"And you're reading it just before Valentine's Day."

"Yeah."

"The most romantic day of the year. Don't you love the balcony scene?" She clasped her hands and held them beneath her chin. "O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?"

"Meryl Lee, let's go somewhere together for Valentine's Day."

I turned around to look behind me, because someone else must have said what just popped out of my mouth.

"What?" said Meryl Lee.

I was still trying to figure out how that popped out. I think it must have been because of Mrs. Baker and her "Shakespeare is expressing something about what it means to be a human being" and the "tragic and beautiful and lovely" routine. It all had gotten into the air and mixed together, and the first thing you know after you start breathing that stuff, you say things like what I said to Meryl Lee.

But what could I do now? So I said it again: "Let's go somewhere together for Valentine's Day."

She put her hand on her hip and thought for a moment. Then, "No," she said.

This, in case you're missing it, is the tragic part.

"Why not?" I said.

"Because you called me a blind mole, and then you acted like a jerk about your father winning the Baker Sporting Emporium contract."

"That was three months ago, and I did not act like a jerk."

"You still called me a blind mole and hoped—let me see if I can get this right—you hoped that an unwholesome dew from a wicked fen would drop on me."

It was actually a wicked dew from an unwholesome fen, but I'm a lot smarter than Romeo, and I know when to shut up.

Now, here comes the lovely part.

"Meryl Lee," I said, "there lies more peril in thine eye than twenty of their swords. Look thou but sweet."

"Twenty of whose swords?"

"It's Shakespeare," I said. "It doesn't have to make sense. They just have to be words more beautiful than have ever yet been written."

"So mole and blind are two words more beautiful than have ever yet been written?"

"Had I it written, I would tear the word."

Meryl Lee smiled. "All right," she said. "I'll go."

I told you it was the lovely part.

Even though I still can't figure out how those words popped out of my mouth.

That night, I sat through supper trying to decide where I could take Meryl Lee on an allowance that I had to string together for three weeks just to get some cream puffs. There was a moment—this will tell you how desperate I was—when I thought I might ask Mr. Goldman about another play. But it might be Romeo and Juliet, and that would mean more tights. And not for the whole wide world was I going to wear tights again.

So I asked my mother, "Where could I take someone with $3.78?"

The supper table quieted.

"Well," she said, "I suppose for an ice cream cone."

"It's February," I said.

"Then, maybe to Woolworth's for a hamburger and a Coke."

"Woolworth's."

She shrugged. "And then to a movie afterward."

My mother was not powerful at arithmetic.

"Who are you taking?" asked my father.

"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."

"This is irregular," said Mr. Bradbrook. "Has the new concept affected the cost estimates?"

"Not significantly," said Mr. Kowalski.

Mr. Bradbrook considered. "Well," he said, "if Mr. Hoodhood will agree, then I see nothing wrong with your presentation going slightly longer. Mr. Hoodhood?"

What could the Chamber of Commerce Businessman of 1967 do? He shrugged and nodded. But the back of his neck grew as red as boiling sin, and I knew he did begrudge the extra time. He begrudged it a whole lot.

Mr. Kowalski pulled off the sheet from his model of the new junior high school. He cleared his throat again. "As you can see, gentlemen," said Mr. Kowalski, "the design is quite classical, in the best traditions of our national architecture, for a time when our children desperately need to be reminded of our great American traditions."

And it was. It looked like the Capitol in Washington, D.C. Wide steps swooped up past a line of pillars and up to the central doors. Above that rose a steep dome, with thin windows cut all around it. On either side of the dome, the building spread graceful wings—all with thin windows again—and behind, the long gymnasium formed the tail, whose rows of bright windows faced south and north to let in as much light as any gymnasium could ever have.

"But we live in 1968, gentlemen," Mr. Kowalski said. "Just as our children need to be reminded of our great traditions, so, too, do they need to enjoy the advantages of contemporary technology. I think you'll find the new interior design both modern and innovative, a perfect blend of where we have been and where we are going as a nation." He handed out copies of the plans for the new design to all the school board members, keeping his back to my father and me the whole time. Then he took us all through the new interior. Slowly.

No pillars, no straight walls. The roof a series of glass plates above the science and art rooms. The central dome three stories high over the main lobby and clusters of classrooms all looking out into the sunlit space. All as modern as could be.

"I don't believe that anyone has ever come up with this blended concept for a junior high school before," said Mr. Kowalski. Then he sat back down. He did not look over at us. Instead, he lit another cigarette and began pulling at it. He shuffled all of his papers into a folder.

The school board was astounded. Three of them applauded—not Mr. Bradbrook, since God doesn't applaud.

My father turned and looked at me again. His face was very red, and I could tell he was fighting for some kind of control. "Holling, there's something you should have told me, isn't there?" he whispered slowly.

I looked at him.

"Do you think this is a game? This is the future of Hoodhood and Associates. Everything rides on this. My future and your future. So what did you do?"

He used the kind of voice that, in my family, means that a voice a whole lot louder is about to come along in a minute or two, so you'd better start preparing.

But let me tell you, I didn't really care all that much about what he would say or how loudly he would say it. I really didn't.

Because suddenly I knew something a whole lot worse.

Romeo was a genius compared to me.

I hadn't seen at all what Meryl Lee was doing on Valentine's Day, while we were sipping Cokes at the lunch counter at Woolworth's. I hadn't realized how easily she had gotten what she wanted from me: my father's design for the new junior high.

Run me on the dashing rocks and hand me a vial of poison. I'm such a jerk, I'd probably drink it. I'm a bigger jerk even than Mickey Mantle.

I got up before I began to bawl like a first grader.

"Holling," warned my father—a slightly louder slow whisper.

I left the conference room.

My red father never did tell me what he did for his presentation. Probably it began with him demanding to see Mr. Kowalski's plans, and then suggesting that he took these from Hoodhood and Associates—not saying it outright, but just suggesting it, like he knew it was the truth but wouldn't say it—and then arguing that Mr. Kowalski should withdraw his proposal because it wasn't the same one he had submitted and that's not how honest businessmen worked. It would have been something like that, with him getting redder and redder all the time.

I bet if you were watching it, you sure would have seen that architecture is a blood sport, and Macbeth couldn't have played it any bloodier than my father.

February is a can't-decide-what-it-wants-to-be month on Long Island. What's left of any snow has melted into brown slush and runs in dirty ridges alongside the street gutters. The grass is dank and dark. Everything is damp, as if the whole island had been dipped under dark water and is only starting to dry out. Mornings are always gray and cold.

That's what it was like between Meryl Lee and me the next day at school. Slushy, damp, dirty, dark, gray, and cold. We didn't look at each other. At lunch, we ate about as far away from each other as we could, and she went outside early—even though Meryl Lee hardly ever went outside. She didn't come to Chorus, so I sang the soprano part for Miss Violet of the Very Spiky Heels alone at our stand. When Mrs. Baker asked if I'd like to partner with Meryl Lee on the sentence diagramming exercise in the afternoon, I told her I'd rather do it with Doug Swieteck.

On Friday, things were still slushy, damp, dirty, dark, and cold. Meryl Lee wore sunglasses to school, even though it was gray like always. When Mrs. Baker asked her to remove them for class, she said that her doctor had asked her to keep them on. That she was supposed to keep them on for, maybe, the rest of the school year.

I was the only one in class who didn't laugh at that.

I looked out the window.

For the next Wednesday, I wrote an essay for Mrs. Baker about what Shakespeare wanted to express about being a human being in Romeo and Juliet. Here is the first sentence in my essay:

What Shakespeare wanted to express about being a human being in Romeo and Juliet is that you better be careful who you trust.

Here is the last sentence:

If Romeo had never met Juliet, he would have been all right. But because he was star-crossed, he did meet her, and because she came up with all sorts of plans that she didn't bother telling him about, he ended up taking poison and dying, which is an important lesson for us to learn in life.

I had Meryl Lee to thank for this, you know. If she hadn't done what she did, I never would have figured out what Shakespeare was trying to express in Romeo and Juliet about what it means to be a human being.

When I handed the essay in, Mrs. Baker read it through. Twice. "So," she said slowly, "do you think Juliet was right to stab herself at the end of the play?"

"Yes," I said.

"I see," she said, and she put the essay in a manila folder and left it on top of her desk.

But unlike Juliet, Meryl Lee didn't stab herself. In fact, that afternoon she was waiting for me outside the gates of Camillo Junior High, standing beside a ridge of crusted snow that she had stamped down flat.

"It wasn't my fault," she said.

"Aren't you supposed to be at Saint Adelbert's?"

"I just showed him your drawing, because it was so good. I didn't know he would use the same design."

"Sure, Meryl Lee."

"It's true," she said.

"All right, it's true. Whatever you say, Meryl Lee. You told him everything about my father's design. Everything. And then a few days later, he draws up new plans so that the inside of his school is just like the inside of my father's school. You had nothing to do with it."

"I didn't say I had nothing to do with it," said Meryl Lee. "I said I didn't know he would use the same design."

"I'd keep the dark glasses on, Meryl Lee. It's easier to lie to someone if they can't see your eyes."

A long moment went by. Then Meryl Lee took off the glasses and threw them past my head.

I think she was trying to throw them at my head.

Then she turned and walked away—but not before I saw why she'd been wearing them.

I picked up the glasses and put them in my pocket.

That night, I saw those glasses flying past my head again and again and again. And I saw Meryl Lee's red eyes. Again and again and again.

Meryl Lee wasn't in school the next day. I kept looking over at her empty desk.

At lunch recess, I wrote a new Romeo and Juliet essay in the library. Here is the first sentence of the essay:

What Shakespeare wanted to express about being a human being in Romeo and Juliet is that it's hard to care about two things at the same time—like caring about the Montague family and caring about Juliet, too.

Here is the last sentence:

If Romeo had never met Juliet, maybe they both would have still been alive, but what would they have been alive for is the question that Shakespeare wants us to answer.

I handed the essay in to Mrs. Baker at the end of the day. She read it through. Twice. Then she took my old essay out of the manila folder—which was still on top of her desk—and put in the new essay. She dropped the old essay into the trash, put the folder with the new essay into her desk, and then she looked up at me. "So what will you do now?" she said.

That night, with 79 cents left over from Valentine's Day and $1 from Monday's allowance, I bought two Cokes and a rose with a ribbon. I took them over to Meryl Lee's house and rang the doorbell. Mr. Kowalski answered it.

"You're the Hoodhood boy," he said.

"Is Meryl Lee home?" I said.

He opened the door further and I came in. He hesitated. Then, "Her room is the one at the top of the stairs," he said.

I went up the stairs slowly. I felt his eyes on my back, but I didn't want to turn around to let him know that I felt his eyes on my back.

I knocked at Meryl Lee's door.

"Go away," she said.

I knocked again. I heard her chair scrape against the floor, and her footsteps stomping across the room. Her door opened. "I told you—" Then she stopped. Her mouth was open.

"I thought you might be thirsty," I said.

Her mouth was still open.

"Are you?"

"Am I what?"

"Thirsty."

She looked at the Cokes in my hand. "Yes," she said.

I handed her a bottle and pulled the opener out of my pocket. I love the sound of a brand-new bottle of Coke when you pry the lid off and it starts to fizz. Whenever I hear that sound, I think of roses, and of sitting together with someone you care about, and of Romeo and Juliet waking up somewhere and saying to each other, Weren't we jerks? And then having all that be over. That's what I think of when I hear the sound of a brand-new bottle of Coke being opened.

On Thursday, before the school board met to decide on its new architect, Kowalski and Associates withdrew its bid for the new junior high school. Hoodhood and Associates was given the contract.

"What chumps," said my father. "They were going to win hands down. What chumps." He shook his head. "They're bound to go under now, but if you can't play for keeps, you shouldn't be in the business in the first place. And Kowalski never could play for keeps. And Hoodhood and Associates can." He rubbed his hands together like Shylock onstage.

And that's when something changed. I suddenly wondered if my father was really like Shylock. Not because he loved ducats, but because maybe he had become the person that everyone expected him to become. I wondered if he had ever had a choice, or if he had ever felt trapped. Or if he had ever imagined a different life.

With this new contract, he was a sure bet for the Chamber of Commerce Businessman of 1968. It's probably what everyone expected.

For the first time, I wondered if it was what he wanted—or if there was a time when he might have wanted something else.

Or if I wanted something else.

Or if we were both only Fortune's fools—like Romeo.

Meryl Lee and I were partners on Friday for sentence diagramming. We ate together at lunch. And we decided to be partners for Mr. Petrelli's next geography assignment, which was on "The California Gold Rush and You." "Make it relevant," said Mr. Petrelli. We sang together in Chorus for Miss Violet of the Very Spiky Heels, and when it came time at the end of the day to clean the board, we did that together, too.

And that's why we were at the board together when Mr. Guareschi came into the classroom to give Mrs. Baker a yellow telegram—a telegram that she took out of the envelope, then read, then dropped onto the floor as she rushed out, leaving Mr. Guareschi standing in front of the class without any idea what to do.

When we picked up the telegram to put on her desk, Meryl Lee and I could hardly not read it ourselves. Or at least the words that mattered:

DOWNED HELICOPTER TRANSPORT STOP KHESANH STOP LT T BAKER MISSING IN ACTION STOP