6: Little Touches
Mabel got the idea the week after Mrs. Pepper's funeral. The kind, elderly Mrs. Pepper had been Mabel's art teacher, and her favorite. Her replacement, Mr. Stottard, was a skinny young man with a mustache and thick glasses who kept emphasizing the rules.
Rules for perspective. Rules for materials. Rules for color matching. Rules for proportions. Mabel began to think of art class as a cage with bars made entirely of rules.
Mrs. Pepper had been just the opposite—rules counted as pointers leading through a wonderful imaginative process. She urged students to go beyond the rules, to explore, to be creative. She liked experimentation and a touch of the unexpected in art. Everyone was unique, and their art, she explained, reflected that.
On the other hand, Mr. Stottard liked uniformity. The first thing the class had to do when he took over was to sketch a still life of a blue ceramic pitcher and a matching bowl with a banana, a red apple, a green apple, and an orange in it.
Twenty-four sketches, and according to him they should all be identical. "Just draw what you see, and even though this is a charcoal sketch, give each element the shading and range that reflects the color values in black and white."
When they turned in their sketches, he put them up on an easel, one by one, and whacked at them with a pointer. "Leon, look how flat your apples and orange are! You've got to indicate the roundness with shadows! Suzy, this is a mess! Get it right the first time and you won't have all these smears where you tried and failed to fix it! Mabel, this looks more like a face than like a pitcher, bowl, and fruit! Do you need your eyes checked?"
"No," Mabel had said. "But the way they're arranged, the pitcher is a long face, the banana's a nose, the fruit's a lopsided mustache, and the bowl is his lower jaw. He has an underbite."
"Imagination has no place in representative art!"
At lunch, a smoldering Mabel said to Kyle and Leon, two fellow sufferers, "I wish we had Mrs. Pepper back. Art used to be fun."
"It's not any longer," Leon said. "I wanted my sketch to look like a poster, not a photo. But Stottard won't even listen to me."
Mabel sighed as she toyed with her veggie sandwich. "I wish we could do some kind of tribute to Mrs. Pepper."
"That'd be cool," Kyle said. "She taught here for, like, forever. I mean, the kids who were in her first freshman art class are, like, in their forties now! There must be hundreds of them who remember her."
"Thousands," Leon insisted.
"I got an idea," Mabel said.
Over the next few days, she spent many, many study periods in the library—but not studying. Instead, she went through stacks of yearbooks, beginning in 1984, when Mrs. Pepper first came to teach at the high school. "Aw," she said, "she was only three and a half months from retirement when she died!"
But more important, Mrs. Pepper could be found in that yearbook and every one after it, in group photos with all of her art classes and with the Arts Club. And the yearbook identified every single student.
"Dipper," she said after her first dive into the yearbooks, "You're always doing stuff for me for no reason and never asking for anything in return."
"Yes?" he asked, looking up from his copy of Journal 2, which he had read completely through only four times.
"I want you to do it again!" Mabel said, raising a fist to the sky—or at least to the ceiling of Mabel's room.
"Whaaat are you up to?" he asked suspiciously.
"Here." She handed him two notebook-filler pages crammed with names—about fifty-four names to a page, in two columns, for a total of over a hundred. "These kids were in Mrs. Pepper's first art classes in 1984. I want to track them down!"
"Whoa!" he said, looking up from the sheets. "That's, like, crazy!"
Mabel put her hands on her hips. "You can't do it?"
Dipper shrugged. "Well, I would, but I don't see how."
"You have to see how! This is important to me, Dipper!"
"OK, but let me read through the names." He got a third sheet of paper, blank, and a fresh pen, one with few bite marks on it yet. A third of the way down the first column, he said, "Fred Pederfeld. There's a Pederfeld family over on Oakland Avenue, isn't there? I think the dad's name might be Fred." He jotted the name down.
Eventually he found a total of five names that he recognized—all of them male, because, as he said, "I guess most of the girls eventually married, and they changed their names."
Fortunately, Fred Pederfeld was listed with Directory Assistance, and Mabel called his number. A woman answered.
"Hi," Mabel said. "Listen, this is Mabel Pines, and my family doesn't live very far from yours. Is your husband Fred Pederfeld?"
The woman sounded surprised. "Yes, he is."
"Um—did he go to the local high school?"
This time the woman laughed. "Yes. He was on the football team. He's still telling stories about the big game."
"May I please speak to him?"
"Just a minute."
It took about that, and then a man's deep voice said, "Fred Pederfeld here."
"Hi, Mr. Pederfeld," Mabel said. "You don't know me, but I'm Mabel Pines and I'm a freshman at the high school. When you were in high school, did you by any chance have an art teacher named Elizabeth Pepper?"
He chuckled. "I sure did! She was great."
"I was in her class this year," Mabel said.
"Really? How is she?"
"Uh—I'm sorry, Mr. Pederfeld, but she, uh. She died more than a week ago."
A profound silence, then softly, "I'm so sorry to hear that. Was she still a fun teacher?"
"The best."
"You're really lucky to have had her."
"I know. That's kind of why I'm calling. I'm looking for all of her old students . . . ."
You can't win them all, and two of the five names Dipper had written down didn't pan out—one had no phone number on record, and the other did, but the man who answered was only twenty-seven and had moved to Piedmont from somewhere out east and had never gone to the local schools. His name just happened to be Charles D. Smith, but as he said, "There must be thousands of us."
But on the bright side, Mr. Pederfeld knew the whereabouts of eleven people named on Mabel's list. And Jim Calladay, the third one she managed to call (the second was one of the washouts), not only knew Fred but eight others with whom he was still in touch. "We play bridge with Lainie Mommus—she's married to Dan Tyler now, though, so you have the wrong last name for her. And Reuben and Sarah McKimson are members of our church. They met in high school and they both had Mrs. Pepper's class . . .."
In all, the three guys that Mabel managed to get in touch with knew how to contact a total of twenty-two other former students. Then Dipper got his brainstorm.
"E-LifeBook!" he said. "I'll bet about half of them already have accounts. And you can create groups on it and invite people to join!" He ran to his room and brought his laptop down to the living room, where Mabel was making handwritten notes on her list.
"Okay, let me go online . . . man, I wish Dad would spring for a faster modem and router."
From the den, Dad called, "Costs money, Dipper!"
"You're in computers, Dad!" Dipper returned, rattling away at the keys. "OK, here's my E-LifeBook page. Now I'm gonna create a group. What should we call it?"
"Hot Peppers!" Wendy said.
"Um—well, maybe not," Dipper told her. "We could get people thinking it's about Mexican restaurants."
"Yeah, or strippers," Mabel mused.
"What was that?" Mrs. Pines called.
"I'm thinking of becoming a stripper, Mom!" she called back.
"Don't do it. Too annoying to go grocery shopping with three hundred one-dollar bills," her Dad said from the other room.
Mabel chuckled. "Yeah, good point. Hey, Dip, how about calling it Art by Mrs. Pepper?"
"How about. . . 'Mrs. Pepper's Class'?"
"Brobro! Perfect! You can be creative!"
A couple of days later, Dipper said, "Networking pays, Sis. Networking pays."
"Mrs. Pepper's Class" had over five hundred members, with new ones signing on every day. By then Mabel had gone through every yearbook and had a list of 3015 names, counting this year's classes. "I just wish we could get them all," she said.
But some had moved to parts unknown, some had died, and some probably had drifted so far away from art class that they had only vague memories. After another week, the site had registered sixteen hundred-odd names, and the increase slowed to only a few a day.
Mabel started to get phone calls: Julie Christopher, formerly Julie Mosley, was now a Ph.D. and the chairperson of an art department at a Midwestern university. John D. Alain was the art director for a glossy national magazine. Another dozen people were artists or art teachers—all because of Mrs. Pepper, they told her.
Dipper helped Mabel form a sub-group, just twenty members, all of them professionals in the art world and all of them on board with her idea for a tribute. Dr. Christopher advised her on how to do what she had in mind and offered to take care of the actual production in her personal studio. Mr. Alain said he'd send her samples of similar works and would offer critiques as she got underway.
Dipper digitized page after page of the yearbooks. Mabel wanted them all involved, all three thousand-odd of Mrs. Pepper's students—even the ones they couldn't reach, even the ones who had passed on.
The others on the web site obliged her by emailing photos of themselves, just three inches by two inches, as she'd requested. Some chose pictures from when they were teens, but most just did selfies. One said, "I'm a lot dumpier and plainer in this picture from today than when I was Homecoming Queen, but Mrs. Pepper taught me to be myself!"
Mabel borrowed Dad's computer to do the actual arranging and tweaking. She emailed the files to Mr. Alain, who always returned them promptly with advice and suggestions for tweaks. When she and he were both satisfied, she sent the very large file to Dr. Christopher, who called her and told her it was perfect and that she would process it. "Look for a package next week," she said. "A pretty big one!"
So in mid-April, Mabel and Dipper marched into the principal's office and asked for an appointment. Mabel clutched a long, heavy mailing tube. The secretary asked what it was all about. Mabel said, "It's about this school and what it owes to Mrs. Pepper!"
The secretary consulted the principal, Mrs. Hethskew, and she said she'd see them. She was a fiftyish woman with coppery hair going gray and a thin hard face but kind blue eyes. "What's this about Mrs. Pepper?" she asked.
Mabel said, "I represent over three thousand of her former students. We all think there should be a memorial here at the school for her. She was a great teacher, and she taught us all art and more than that! I mean, she touched our lives, Mrs. Hethskew, and made them better. So we've cooperated, and I've made this. Dipper, little help?"
Mrs. Hethskew blinked her eyes at what they took from the tube and unrolled. "This is—remarkable," she said, getting up from her desk and staring at it.
"One of Mrs. Pepper's first students, Dr. Julie Christopher of Columbus University in Missouri, printed this on canvas for us. It needs to be stretched and framed," Mabel said. "I can't do that, but Mr. Stottard could."
Dipper added, "And a dedication ceremony would be nice."
That didn't happen until the first week in May. Then Mrs. Hethskew called a special assembly. Mabel stood with her on the stage—Dipper had politely declined because as he said, "This is all you, Mabel. I just helped a little." Behind the principal and student sat Mr. Stottard, and beside him a thin, mustached old man, and an easel held a draped picture, a very large one, about four feet by six.
Mrs. Hethskew said into the microphone, "We lost a wonderful teacher and one of my best friends this year, Mrs. Elizabeth Pepper. Her student Mabel Pines decided the school needs a memorial to her, and her thousands of former students agree. Mabel, will you unveil your work and explain it?"
Mabel took the microphone. "Thank you, Mrs. Hethskew. Teachers, students, you know we all gripe about school. I'm talking to you, too, teachers! You know you do it, am I right? But with all our griping, we need to remember that school shapes us. It teaches us things that are important, and we learn not just in the classroom, but from each other."
She choked up a little. "Mrs. Pepper is still my favorite teacher of all time. I got in touch with every single one of her students that I could, and took photos of all the others from the yearbooks, thanks to my brother Dipper, the computer geek. You're the best, bro." She turned. "Our new art teacher, Mr. Stottard, prepared the work for display. Do you want to say a word, Mr. Stottard?"
"You're doing fine," he said. "Go on."
"OK. This is Mr. Amos Markel, Mrs. Pepper's brother. He's already told us he doesn't want to speak. But I'll ask him and Mr. Stottard to unveil the tribute that all of Mrs. Pepper's students have put together."
The two men stood up and removed the cloth draping the easel. Everyone gasped.
It was a portrait of Mrs. Pepper, head tilted, a smile on her face, a twinkle in her eye.
"Hi, Mrs. Pepper," Mabel said softly into the microphone. Then, more loudly, she said to the audience, "This isn't painted in brush strokes. When you get close, you'll see that this portrait is made up of photos of all Mrs. Pepper's students, past and present. Their pictures are arranged by size and color to make up a mosaic portrait. I had a lot of help on this, and I thank everyone who pitched in."
She walked back to the portrait. "When you get a chance, look at her up close. You'll see we're all there. We're all part of her, just like she's part of all of us. This is going to hang right in the entrance hall. We'll see her smile every morning when we come to school. Would everyone who's ever been in one of her classes please stand now?"
About three hundred did, out of the twelve hundred students. They started to clap. Everyone joined in.
When the applause died down, Mabel said, "Art should be beautiful, but it should make us think and feel. Please, when we see Mrs. Pepper's portrait, let's all remember that we touch each other's lives and when we do, we change each other. Let's try to do that for the better. Thank you, Mrs. Pepper. And thank you all."
Later Mabel pasted a news story from the local paper into her scrapbook. It had a photo of her standing beside her work of art.
But on the same page she pasted a yellow three-by-five card with a note scrawled on it. She was proud of having received it.
"Dear Mabel—I apologize for criticizing you. Your art is wonderful. I'm proud to be your teacher and will try to learn from you and all my students. Benjamin Stottard."
Though she had meant the tribute as a kind of ending—it was a beginning, too.