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“He seems to be bearing up,” Ellen said, then glanced at Coach with some asperity. “According to
him, at least.”
“Yeah, he’s okay,” Coach said. “Broken up, accourse.”
“Sure he is,” I said.
“He’s going to have her cremated.” Ellen’s lips thinned in disapproval. “Said it was what she
wanted.”
I thought about it. “We should have some sort of special assembly once school’s back in. Can we do
that? People can speak. Maybe we could put together a slide show? People must have lots of pictures
of her.”
“That’s a wonderful idea,” Ellen said. “Could you organize it, George?”
“I’d be happy to try.”
“Get Miss Dunhill to help you.” And before the suspicion of more matchmaking could even begin
to cross my mind, she added: “I think it will help the boys and girls who loved Meems to know her
hand-picked replacement helped plan the memorial assembly. It will help Sadie, too.”
Of course it would. As a newcomer, she could use a little banked goodwill to start the year with.
“Okay, I’ll talk to her. Thank you both. Are you going to be okay?”
“Sure,” Coach said stoutly, but his lips were still trembling. I liked him for that. They went slowly
down to his car, which was parked at the curb. Coach had his hand on Ellen’s elbow. I liked him for
that, too.
I closed the door, sat down on the bench in the little dab of front hall, and thought about Mimi
saying she would be bereft if I didn’t take over the junior-senior play. And if I didn’t sign on to teach
full-time for at least a year. Also if I didn’t come to her wedding party. Mimi, who thought Catcher in
the Rye belonged in the school library, and who wasn’t averse to a nice boink on Saturday night. She
was one of those faculty members the kids remember long after graduation, and sometimes come back
to visit when they are no longer kids. The kind who sometimes shows up in a troubled student’s life at
a critical moment and makes a critical difference.
Who can find a virtuous woman? the proverb asks. For her price is above rubies. She seeketh wool and flax
and worketh willingly with her hands. She is like the merchants’ ships, that bringeth food from afar.
There are more clothes than the ones you put on your body, every teacher knows that, and food isn’t
just what you put in your mouth. Miz Mimi had fed and clothed many. Including me. I sat there on a
bench I’d bought at a Fort Worth flea market with my head lowered and my face in my hands. I
thought about her, and I was very sad, but my eyes remained dry.
I have never been what you’d call a crying man.
8
Sadie immediately agreed to help me put together a memorial assembly. We worked on it for the last
two weeks of that hot August, driving around town to line up speakers. I tapped Mike Coslaw to read
Proverbs 31, which describes the virtuous woman, and Al Stevens volunteered to tell the story—which
I had never heard from Mimi herself—about how she had named the Prongburger, his spécialité de la
maison. We also collected over two hundred photographs. My favorite showed Mimi and Deke doing
the twist at a school dance. She looked like she was having fun; he looked like a man with a fair-sized
stick up his ass. We culled the photos in the school library, where the nameplate on the desk now read
MISS DUNHILL instead of MIZ MIMI.
During that time Sadie and I never kissed, never held hands, never even looked into each other’s
eyes for longer than a passing glance. She didn’t talk about her busted marriage or her reasons for