Epilogue (Ezzy's Education: Part 41), by Garrett Murch
Twenty-eight-year-old Paul Catty was enjoying his second date with Mira. He’d met her two weeks ago at the library in the small coastal town of Reunion in southeastern Maine. Paul was renting a cottage on the ocean in that town during Ebbing High School’s summer break. To afford this with his teacher’s salary, he’d found two roommates and a job waiting mostly on tourists at a nearby restaurant three nights a week.
Mira, it turned out, was a high school English teacher like Paul, with fewer years of experience and a penchant for 19th and early 20th century American literature; Paul had a passion for the Russian greats Chekhov, Tolstoy, and Dostoyevsky. Leaving the bar where they’d met for a drink, Mira sung the praises of her perfectly grilled, medium-rare steak while “Freewill” by Rush played mildly from the bar’s outdoor speakers. Paul and Mira had been the youngest customers in the bar.
They walked barefoot in silence, sandals in hand, through dunes on warm, shifting sand and between fences made of thin wood strips that were painted red and held together by wire. A light breeze carried the smell of sea salt to them.
Approaching the ocean’s moderate, two- foot waves, Paul and Mira crossed a line of dried seaweed and sticks marking the reach of high tide. Navigating broken mussel shells and rounded pebbles strewn about, they reached sand that was wet and their feet made prints in it. Paul turned at the water’s edge and they walked the shore. The waves rolled in and the cold, bubbly saltwater washed over their ankles and began erasing the footprints they’d just made.
Mira, oceanside of Paul, put her hand in his. “I’ve done almost all the talking tonight,” she said, looking at Paul and squinting at the sun setting beyond him, her dirty blonde hair pulsing off her tan shoulders. “When we were out the other night, you told me about the madness at school last fall, but you didn’t tell me much about this girl who became student president and what happened after she was elected.”
Paul smiled and Mira looked at him as they walked. Eventually, Paul said, “She’s the only student I can honestly say I’ve learned from. It was rough for a bit after that election.”
“What do you mean, rough?”
“Well,” Paul said, “Ezzy got attacked relentlessly at first.”
“By Lucinda and Trunk? Or, I mean, Trunk’s guy, what’s his name again?”
“His name’s Trendon. And yeah, he and a few of the Trunk Incorporated kids tried intimidating Ezzy, taunting her, saying she was no different than Lucinda, saying she didn’t care about people like them—whatever that means.”
“Of course they did. Awful. How’d Ezzy take it?”
”She smiled at them.”
“What? That’s it? She just smiled at them?”
“She didn’t have to do much else.”
“Was it like a Mona Lisa smile?”
“No,” Paul said. “It wasn’t a Mona Lisa smile. I don’t know exactly what it was. But there was something about it for sure. It’s like her smile communicated to Trendon and the Trunk Incorporated boys they weren’t in charge, but she also wasn’t mad at them. It was welcoming and confident. But it presented vulnerability. And yet, that somehow made her invulnerable.”
“Fascinating,” Mira said. “The way you describe it, do you think—”
“That she felt sorry for them?” Paul said. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“Quite all right. Yes, that’s what I was wondering.”
They neared a rocky point where two people could be seen wading in the water and fly casting. A couple small boats bobbed in the water beyond the point, holding people who were also fly casting.
“I do think she showed sympathy for them. Even for Trendon, whose meanness persisted.
By the way, he missed a lot of school and didn’t graduate.” “That doesn’t surprise me. About Trendon, I mean.”
“Yeah,” Paul said. “But does that mean Ezzy felt sorry for them? I’m not sure.”
“They’re not exactly the same thing,” Mira said.
“Right. Whatever she felt, it worked. Those boys withered along with their attacks, and by spring some of the students who used to walk around our hallways chanting about Trunk were talking about how great Ezzy was.”
“Huh,” Mira said. “Amazing. So what about Lucinda, and those other girls?”
“Ha!” Paul laughed. “They practically went into hiding. I’m not sure why. Lucinda is a very ambitious, determined girl. I never saw her attempt to befriend Ezzy—or vice versa for that matter—but she sort of became a non-entity the rest of the school year. It was just so uncharacteristic, like it defied a law of nature. She did say the Patriot attacks on her were just too much for any one person to handle. Apparently she was focusing on her future and working on some big new project with her mother, who’s a professor. I don’t really know. And of course she was accepted into some great schools, but I forget which one she chose.”
“And the Dizzy girl, and Lucinda’s lieutenant, what happened with them? Did they go after Ezzy?”
Paul looked down. He bent over and picked up a snail shell. “They went like this,” he said, holding up the shell with the snail hiding inside it. “Dizzy is a good girl, a good student. She went about the rest of the year minding her own business. High honors, I believe.”
“And the other one?”
“Verica, you mean,” Paul said. “She sort of washed away, too, although people grew concerned about her in the spring.”
“Concerned?”
Paul thought about how to describe Verica. While he was thinking, a woman in one of the bobbing boats hauled a large striped bass into the boat, mostly disappeared when bending over, and released the fish back into the ocean. She fist-bumped the man bobbing in the boat with her.
“Verica,” Paul said, “started showing signs, almost like someone suffering from post- traumatic stress disorder.”
“My word,” Mira said, placing her hand over her mouth. “What happened?”
“No one knows. She became very jumpy, moody. Sometimes she lashed out at students. The school approached her parents, and her parents blamed Lucinda. They’re Patriots.”
“Was Lucinda to blame?” Mira asked.
“I don’t see how. She and Verica were great friends. Although you didn’t see them together much after the election.”
“That’s so sad.”
“Got another!” the woman bobbing in the boat yelled.
Paul and Mira stopped walking and watched the woman land another striped bass. “You go!” Mira hollered to the woman, who didn’t seem to hear her.
Paul grinned. Mira was growing on him fast. “The culture of the school changed before long,” he said.
“Something tells me it was for the better,” Mira said, smiling.
My god, she’s pretty when she smiles like that. “Yes, for the better. The school was more relaxed, and yet at the same time more energized. The students worked harder. Every teacher noticed it. It’s almost as if Ezzy inspired them.”
“So it became cool to do well in school?”
“A teacher’s dream, right? Oh, and the school is replacing the signs at both the teacher and the student parking lots.”
With the sun low enough, Mira no longer squinted at Paul. “What was wrong with the old signs?”
“Nothing was wrong with them. They said Ebbing High School. The new ones will still say ‘Ebbing High School,’ but below it will read, ‘Helping everyone be their best.’”
“That’s a little vague, but I like it.”
Changing the subject, Paul said, “But Ezzy, truth be told, changed me as well.”
Mira’s eyes lit up. “How so?”
“Well, it started before the first election, when Ezzy wasn’t even involved. She wrote a note to me on her quiz suggesting students didn’t have to do the assigned reading to get good grades.”
“What was the assigned reading?” “Othello.”
“Your students didn’t have to read it?”
“Hey now, Mira, don’t go all Patriot on me!” Paul laughed.
“Hey now yourself, Paul.” Mira grinned. “Paul the Justice. Ha! I kid. You know I’m not one of those Patriot politicians who think women wearing hijabs must be terrorists.”
“Ha! I know you’re not. And while I’m still a Justice, I’ve grown wary of both parties. But anyway, yes, I mean, the students probably didn’t have to read the play to do well. I may have emphasized sexism in Shakespeare’s writing over students appreciating the overwhelming brilliance of Shakespeare’s work.”
“Paul!”
“In my defense, this was strongly encouraged by the school board. So were these framed black eyes of Justice that hung around the school. I hadn’t mentioned those. I had one in my classroom, but I took it down. And I heard the school took them all down this summer.”
They stopped walking and faced each other, just short of where the beach met large rocks covered with barnacles and wet seaweed. The waves made light crashes on the rocks.
“Ezzy said something else,” Paul said. “What did she say?”
“I guess it wasn’t a specific statement or anything. But Ezzy made it clear she believed the biggest disadvantage a kid could have was living in an unstable home, and the best way to chip away at disadvantages is equipping kids with an education that strengthened their critical thinking skills. She even lobbied for classes in logic to be added.”
“She’s right.”
“I know she’s right. I mean, we can’t fix a child’s home life, or completely erase a disadvantage a kid has. But we can, and we should, help every kid’s brain work better. We need to do that more than we were. Pushing my politics didn’t improve any kid’s brain function, but it was turning kids off. Empowering students’ minds, not with political talking points but with real mental power, that’s how to fight injustice, to serve the underprivileged.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Mira said. Her hands were on her hips and she was smiling.
“So Ezzy taught me that.” Paul put his hand on his chin. “No, she didn’t.” He looked down for a moment, then gazed at the ocean. “She forced me to remember that.”
“I know we can be effective doing that,” Mira said. “If the education system allows us to be.”
Paul sighed a sort of manly sigh that had a bit of a groan to it. “Well yeah, there’s that,” he said.
Mira put her hand on Paul’s elbow and smiled at him.
“This fall,” Paul said, “no honors English student of mine will be able to get an A on Othello or any other exams without doing the reading. Or even a B—hopefully. And the same for all my classes, not just honors English.”
“You’ll be giving the children an enormous gift. You’ve got a lot to offer them. Your passion for literature could be contagious.”
“I think Ezzy and some of the other students were bored. I’m going to make class more interesting, too.”
”That’s not easy,” Mira said. “I try. I don’t think it always works. Some kids don’t seem interested in learning. But I believe you can do it.”
“Oh, and I almost forgot to mention: Ezzy sent me a handwritten letter after she graduated.”
“Really! That’s incredible. What’d she write?”
“She apologized for that snarky note she wrote on her quiz. And she confessed to calling our AP English class ‘Advanced Political’ English.”
Mira tried to cover up her laugh with her hand that was not on Paul’s elbow. “Sorry,” she said.
“No worries. She also told me how much she loved reading, especially challenging books, because on top of being enjoyable, reading them expands her mind and she can feel it improving different intelligences. She’s considering pursuing an English minor this fall but she’s still going to be a biochemistry major. And she wrote me some heartfelt lines about how she finally enjoyed school again, especially my class, once the politics calmed down.”
“An English minor, now? I like her even more. You must be a halfway decent teacher, Mr.
Catty, to get such a compliment from a girl like Ezzy.”
“What hit me hardest was the reminder to help strengthen and expand my students’ minds.
The politics was shrinking them.”
“Ezzy might be in for a rude awakening if she thinks the politics won’t be there in college,” Mira said.
“Not my problem.”
“I think Ezzy has increased your potential as a father, not just as a teacher,” Mira said. “Huh? What does that mean?”
“Oh, never mind,” Mira said. “Thinking out loud.” She grabbed the back of Paul’s waist and pulled him to her. “Kiss me.”