The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place Read online

  I put the pages down and stared at the courthouse. When you get older, édes Margitkám, you’ll realize that all you have is time. You have time and your side of history. And that’s all you have. One by one, events of recent history fell into place.

  The Uncles would not be building the fourth tower because it really would be a waste of time, and there never would be lemon and lime sherbet to go with the orange because all maintenance on the towers would be a waste of time too.

  The Uncles had not wanted me to stay with them because they didn’t want me to witness the destruction of the towers that I loved so much. And they couldn’t bring themselves to tell me because they loved me too much.

  And now Tartufo too made sense.

  Uncle Alex didn’t really care if Tartufo found a truffle. He had gone to Italy and bought Tartufo when all this legal wrangling started. He wanted someplace to go, something to do in the evenings when he would have been working on the towers. He didn’t want Uncle Morris to approve of Tartufo or his truffle hunting. Like the path between their roses and peppers, the Uncles needed this difference to unite them.

  And now the trip to Texas made sense too. They had gone there not because Uncle Alex wanted to prove that Tartufo could find a truffle or because Uncle Morris cared about the eight hundred dollars a pound that truffles might bring, but because they wanted to get out of town. They wanted to get away from the community that had cast them out. They did not prefer the warm companionship of the Home Owners Association and the friendly guidance of the city council.

  fourteen

  I stood on the even-numbered side of Schuyler Place and studied number 19. There was a slight breeze—too high and too slight to feel—but enough to make the pendants on the towers dance. Their sound floated above my head. Why didn’t their music work for everyone?

  I looked over at number 21, at the tasteful wooden sign that said

  HAPGOOD, HAPGOOD & MARTIN

  ATTORNEYS AT LAW

  Hapgood had said that the towers were a blight on Old Town. He didn’t like the towers because they lowered his property value. The story at number 17 was different. Gwendolyn and Geoffrey Klinger lived there, and they hated the towers because of me. It was my fault. Totally.

  —The story at number 17

  On the first day of spring vacation last year, I arrived at Schuyler Place and found Uncle Alex out in the yard pruning his roses. He called it editing. He always waited for the forsythia to bloom before he edited. He always said, “What you take away is as important as what you leave, Margitkám,” and then he would add, “and what you take away makes what you leave more important.”

  Epiphany was far enough north that sometimes the forsythia came into bloom on dim, gray days when the skies and the temperature—everything except the calendar and the forsythia—said, winter. But on this, my first day of spring vacation, the air was so clear and the sky so bright that the forsythia seemed to cast a yellow halo in the air above it. I shaded my eyes with my hand as I watched Uncle edit his roses with pruning shears and a small saw.

  Gwendolyn Klinger called to me over the fence and asked if she could talk to me about something. She always spoke just above a whisper, and she always made me feel as if I caused global warming by speaking too loud. So in her presence, as often as I could, I nodded.

  “Can we go inside?” she whispered.

  I nodded yes.

  She sat down on the sofa in the Uncles’ living room. Gwendolyn Klinger always wore sincere natural fibers and no makeup. I sat on a chair on the opposite side of the room and concentrated. She patted the sofa cushion next to her and said, “Come here, Margaret. I need to read your body language.”

  I did as requested. I sat so close to her that I saw the irises of her eyes whittle to pinpoints. I whispered, “What is it?”

  “Margaret Rose,” she said in her natural voice, which was not much louder than a whisper but was as moist as a French movie star’s, “I know you are starting your spring vacation. I also know that you like to spend time with your uncles when you are out of school.” I nodded, wondering where all this was leading. “Will you do me a favor?” Before I could answer, Gwendolyn reached out and took my hands and folded them into hers—like a hand sandwich. “For Geoffrey and me? This means as much to him as it does to me.”

  “What is it?” I asked, hushed, worried.

  Unlike my uncles, who were in business together but separately and who ran the household together but separately, Gwendolyn and Geoffrey Klinger were as together as the biblical Ruth and Naomi, except they were of opposite gender. They were together in all endeavors. The law, remodeling their house, decorating their offices, cooking, baking. Everything. Gwendolyn said, “Geoffrey and I are going away for a week. There’s a conference on torts in Tucson. . . .“

  “There’s a whole conference on tortes?” I asked, allowing my voice to rise. I knew they liked to cook and bake, but I couldn’t imagine two lawyers going all the way to Arizona to attend a conference on tortes. “Uncle Alex can probably teach you everything you need to know about tortes, Mrs. Klinger. He bakes a Dobos torte and a Sacher torte that could take a prize and—”

  Gwendolyn Klinger smiled benevolently. “No, Margaret dear, these torts are T-O-R-T-S. They are legal cases, like when one person sues another for wrongful acts willfully done.”

  “I thought you meant the kind of cakes that are called tortes.”

  “I know you did, dear, but that has an e on the end. T-O-R-T-E,” she said, at last unwrapping the hand sandwich so that she could pat my hand. I pulled both my hands away—slowly, so as to not cause any offense—and moved to the far end of the sofa. “Geoffrey and I thought we’d like to stay in Arizona a few extra days as a little vacation, but we need someone to take care of a little something for us. Will you?”

  I wondered why a grown woman would say little so much, but I nodded yes.

  Gwendolyn lowered her head and stretched her neck to read my body language. “Sure?” she asked.

  Not at all sure I meant it, I said, “Sure.”

  She reached for my hand again, but I decided to twist my earring. (Getting my ears pierced had been my birthday present for turning ten.) I waited.

  Gwendolyn said, “We need you to feed our starter. It’s not like it will die if you don’t, but it is very important to Geoffrey and me that you feed it. It’s so new, so very new; it needs a little extra care.”

  “I think you ought to tell me what it is I’ll be feeding.” Gwendolyn looked down at her lap and said, “It’s our starter.”

  Well, I thought, if I heard right, she’s talking about starts, not stoats, so it’s probably not a ferret. I certainly hoped it wasn’t a ferret. I had heard that some people were getting ferrets. I didn’t want to feed a ferret. I also didn’t want to feed a hamster or a gerbil or any variety of mouse. I didn’t even like Mickey.

  “We would like you to feed it once while we are gone. Only once. We would like you to do this for us. Will you?” she asked. “For Geoffrey and me?”

  “I will if you tell me what a starter is.”

  “It’s our flour-and-water mixture that contains the yeast used to make bread rise. Ours is a very famous starter. We sent to San Francisco for it. I haven’t used it yet because it is still so new, but when I do use it, our bread will be sourdough.”

  “And you want me to feed it?”

  She giggled girlishly and reached for my hand, which I had been keeping out of reach. “It’s the yeast, silly. Yeast is a living organism. Yeast needs to be fed. It is a type of fungus, and it is used in fermenting bread to make it rise. Although the instructions say we can let our starter go for even a month without feeding it, it’s new, and it is special. We don’t want it to go so long. I saved its feeding for today, so if you’ll come over to our house, I’ll show you how.”

  We entered the back door of 17 Schuyler Place. The Klingers’ was the first house on Schuyler Place to add on a room in the back to use as a living room. They had also c
ompletely renovated the kitchen, adding large windows along the back that captured the afternoon sun to warm and brighten the kitchen. It was the nicest room in the house. The countertops had more appliances than I had ever seen outside a Williams-Sonoma catalog. On a magnetic holder there was a full range of knives from small to large, like the bars of a xylophone, and hanging from an overhead rack were pans in more shapes than you would find in a geometry book.

  From her refrigerator, Gwendolyn took a pint-size jar that had a rubber gasket and a metal clamp to keep it sealed. She opened the jar, and a sour smell filled the room. I winced, but Gwendolyn seemed not to notice. I coughed. “Can you tell me what that is on top?” I asked, pointing to a ditchwater-dark liquid that floated on top of the jar.

  Gwendolyn smiled. “It’s called hootch,” she said. “It’s the liquid that comes from the fermentation. Yeast is also used to make beer and wine.” Then, with loving patience, she showed me how to feed a starter. With every step, she refined the instructions with a running commentary of do’s and don’t’s. When she stirred the mixture with a wooden spoon, she warned, “Never use a metal spoon with yeast.” She kept up a low hum of conversation as she slowly, slowly blended in the liquid until the mixture started to froth. She carefully, carefully measured out a cup full of the frothing mixture and washed it down her disposal. As she rinsed out and dried the measuring cup, she told me, “We don’t use tap water. It’s too chlorinated.” Telling me to make certain that the bottom of the meniscus is at the onecup line when held at eye-level, she poured bottled water—not too cold, not too hot—into the cup and then into the jar and followed that with a cup of white powdery stuff from a canister marked FARINE but that looked like flour to me. She stirred the mixture with the wooden spoon again and covered the jar with a dishtowel. “We allow it to sit at room temperature for a little while so that the new ingredients can communicate with the old before we cap it and return it to the refrigerator.” She handed me the key to her back door. “We would like you to come over Friday and do this for us. Just this once.” She folded her hands as if in prayer and asked, “Will you?”

  I nodded.

  “Do you have any questions?”

  I didn’t want to have one, but I did. “What’s meniscus?” I asked.

  “The convex upper surface of a liquid.”

  “And that’s to be at the one-cup line?”

  “The bottom of it is. That is, the bottom of the curve of the meniscus is to be at the one-cup mark.”

  “When at eye-level,” I said.

  “Yes, at eye-level,” she repeated. And then she asked, “Would you like me to write out the directions?”

  “No, thank you,” I said.

  “Would you mind repeating them?”

  “Yes,” I replied.

  “Well?”

  I pursed my lips, raised my eyebrows, and stretched my neck toward her so that she could read my body language. I said nothing.

  “Oh,” she said, smiling awkwardly. “You feel you already know them?”

  I nodded.

  • • •

  The weather had held that whole week. By Friday, Uncle Alex was worried that his roses would set buds too soon and be nipped by a late freeze. I fed the starter at midmorning and went back to Uncle’s, where we had an early lunch, after which I mixed up the paint that became known as orange sherbet. Uncle Alex supervised, which made him late for the Time Zone. He called Uncle Morris and told him he was running late and asked me to walk Tartufo while he cleaned up for work. The sun that had warmed us all day was high and hot as I put Tartufo on the leash and sauntered over to the Klingers’ to put the starter back in the refrigerator.

  The kitchen door was not even all the way open when I knew that something was wrong. It stank. I thought I would pass out or throw up. Before I could catch my breath, Tartufo darted past me and was licking hootch off the floor. Splinters of glass were sprinkled over a moonscape of farine paste. Puddles of hootch were everywhere.

  Tartufo was racing around the kitchen, slipping on all fours, licking the floor and scattering mounds of gray-looking farine. He was getting wild. I had to get him out of there. Slipping and sliding and using words I had only read in banned books, I made my way over to Tartufo and managed to grab him by the collar. He would not budge. He had been trained for years to hunt the musty smell of truffles. What a time for his training to kick in!

  “Stop it!” I yelled. “Stop it now!” But Tartufo was in hootch heaven. He was licking the floor clean. I knew that he was already feeling no pain, even—God forbid!—the pain of swallowing glass.

  I made my way back across the slippery kitchen floor and ran to Uncle’s house. Fortunately, Uncle Alex had not yet left for work. He recognized panic when he saw it. He ran next door with me. He entered first and quietly sneaked up behind Tartufo and grabbed him by his hindquarters. Tartufo looked back at Uncle very briefly—I think he snarled—and returned to lapping up the foul-smelling stuff—liquid and paste. His paws made a sucking sound as Uncle lifted him up off the floor.

  When we returned to 19 Schuyler Place, Tartufo started running around the kitchen. Around and around. “He’s drunk,” Uncle said.

  “Should we give him black coffee?”

  “Couldn’t hurt,” Uncle replied. Handing me the leash, he told me, “Try to get him to walk it off.”

  I took him around the block, tugging on the leash to make him keep going. His stomach was swollen, and the skin on his underbelly, which was never a thing of beauty, looked like an uncooked egg roll that a sloppy chef had dribbled with soy sauce. When I got back, Uncle Alex was brewing coffee. (This was a household where instant coffee was not allowed. Uncle Morris said that he spit on it.)

  Tartufo curled up in his corner, farted three times, and fell asleep.

  “Do you think he will be all right?” I asked, worried.

  “Wake him and keep him moving,” Uncle replied. He looked down at his trousers and shirt. The farine was starting to dry like splotches of Portland cement. “As soon as the coffee brews, cool some down and see if you can get him to drink some. I’ve got to go upstairs and clean up. Please call your uncle and tell him that I missed the bus.”

  Uncle Morris started every day a little bit irritated with his brother. This would be the second call about Uncle Alex’s being late. On a normal one-call day when Alex missed his bus, Morris would explode. I had had enough explosions for the day, so I began by saying, “Uncle Morris, this is Margaret, and I’ve made a terrible mistake.”

  It wasn’t until I reviewed for him what I had done that I realized that I had skipped one step. In the mass of sub-instructions about meniscuses and eye-levels, I had forgotten to put a tea towel over the jar while the starter communicated. I had screwed the lid back on too soon. The sun beating in through the Klingers’ bright, sunny windows had made the gases build up pressure and caused the jar to burst.

  Uncle Morris said, “Don’t worry. It was a mistake. I’ll wait here until Alex comes. As soon as he arrives, I’ll come home to help.” Before he hung up, he asked, “Is Tartufo okay?”

  “He’s sleeping it off.”

  By the time I felt it was safe to leave Tartufo, the flour paste had hardened and stuck to the spotless Klinger floors. Uncle Morris was home by then, so he and I put wet paper towels over the globs to moisten them so that we could scrape them off without causing damage to the floor. It took hours.

  I insisted on the Uncles giving me an advance on my allowance so that I would be responsible for paying for a new starter and for Federal Express delivery, but, it did not arrive until after Geoffrey and Gwendolyn had returned from their Arizona torts. I went over to their house with the new starter and an apology. When I told them the part about Tartufo, they didn’t laugh.

  “I skipped a step,” I explained.

  “If you remember, Margaret, I had volunteered to write them down, and I did ask you to review the procedure.”

  “I remember.”

  “Then you woul
d say it was negligence?”

  “But not willfully done. I did not do it on purpose. I made a mistake,” I insisted. “I didn’t mean to kill your starter, and I am sorry about it. If my apology and cleaning up the damage and buying you this new starter aren’t enough, you’ll have to tort me.”

  Geoffrey laughed unpleasantly. “No, no,” he said. He examined the starter that I had brought over. “This is from the same place we got ours, Gwennie. What do you say we just start over?”

  Gwennie nodded and murmured, “I had asked her to repeat the instructions.”

  I left.

  Neither Gwendolyn nor Geoffrey had asked how Tartufo was doing.

  Later that spring when the Uncles did due maintenance on the towers—after they had painted the towers with my orange-sherbet paint—Geoffrey Klinger called the towers an “off-color joke.” Uncle Alex said to him, “The towers themselves are a joke, Mr. Klinger. They would be useless if they weren’t.” To which Geoffrey Klinger replied, “You and I have very different definitions of useless.” To which Uncle Alex replied, “And jokes.”

  —time and your side of history

  As I stood across the street and looked at the Klingers’ own tastefully painted sign, I wished that Geoffrey and Gwendolyn had gone to Arizona to study tortes instead of torts. They undoubtedly suffered from OCD, obsessive-compulsive disorder. Such people are to be pitied. But the Klingers were only part of the problem. The full weight of the treachery belonged to the Home Owners Association of Old Town and the Redevelopment Authority. The Klingers were enemies only because they were part of them. What made the home owners and the redevelopment people think they had the right to destroy something that had been part of the town for longer than they had been?

  I had defined the enemy. I was prepared to fight.

  It would be me against them, just as it had been me against the Alums. But there was this important difference: I would be fighting to save something other than my own sweet self.

  —When you get older, édes Margitkám