The Wednesday Wars

As Holling’s family gets ready to go to the formal award ceremony for his father’s Chamber of Commerce Businessman of 1967 award, the freshly plastered ceiling of the perfectly decorated living room collapses. Thankfully, they make it to the ceremony and his father completes his speech “without any hollering and swearing” (132), despite still being red in the face from his anger at the plasterers. Everyone looks at Holling when Holling’s father talks about leaving his business to his son someday, and Holling simply smiles and nods.

On Wednesday, Holling gets his next assignment from Mrs. Baker: Romeo and Juliet. After reading it, Holling decides Romeo and Juliet were quite lacking in common sense. Meryl Lee also reads it, and while they discuss the balcony scene, Holling hears himself ask Meryl to go out with him on Valentine’s Day. At dinner, Holling seeks advice for where to take Meryl with his small savings of $3.78. Holling’s father chuckles a bit when he hears that Holling is taking out Meryl Lee Kowalski, the daughter of Paul Kowalski, his business competitor.

Holling’s predicament about where to take Meryl for Valentine’s is solved when Mrs. Bigio gives him two tickets to see Romeo and Juliet. They both enjoy the play, and go to Woolworth’s afterward for Cokes, where they find common ground talking about their architect fathers and their obsession with winning the architecture bid for the junior high. Meryl shares that her father created a “classical” design (144), while Holling knows from the model his own father showed him that he’s created a modern design. He even draws a prototype for Meryl on a placemat of what his father’s modern design looks like.

The next week, Holling’s father makes him come to the architecture presentation for the school board to “see firsthand how competitive bidding worked” (145). Mr. Kowalski, Meryl’s father, presents first. His design has a classic exterior, but the interior is an exact replica of Holling’s father’s design. Holling feels betrayed by Meryl and refuses to speak to her at school. When Mrs. Baker has him write an essay about Romeo and Juliet, he writes about being wary of trusting others. Meryl is clearly distraught; she tells Holling she didn’t know her father would use the design, and Holling realizes she’s been crying. He rewrites his essay, this time expressing the difficulty of caring about two things: “like caring about the Montague family and caring about Juliet, too” (152). That night, he goes to Meryl’s house with two Cokes and a rose in hand to make things right.

Holling hears from his father a few days later that just before the school board met to decide which architecture firm would get the contract, Kowalski and Associates withdrew their bid. Holling’s father is gleefully shocked, calling his competitors “chumps” (154), and Holling starts to see his father in a new light. He wonders if his father always wanted this life of pursuing money and success, or, “if there was a time when he might have wanted something else” (154). He thinks about himself, and whether he wants something else, or if he wants to take over his father’s business one day like everyone expects him to. Meryl and Holling, their friendship restored, work as partners in every class on Friday, and are with Mrs. Baker when she receives a telegram that says her husband, Lieutenant Baker, is missing in action.