The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place Page 11

  In only one day, I had already gotten much older.

  —you realize that all you have is time

  I checked my digital watch. I had four and a half hours before Uncle Morris returned. Four and a half hours that were all my own. Four and a half hours to think and eight and a half days to take action.

  —You have time and your side of history

  I didn’t have much time, but there was forty-five years of history on my side.

  —And that’s all you have

  But that was not all I had. I also had two of the three steps it would take to change things.

  The first step was being unhappy with things the way they were. I already had that step well behind me. I was more than unhappy. I was pissed.

  The second step was having a desire to change things. Well, I was there already. I was burning with desire to change things.

  The third step was having a plan.

  Unfortunately, that was still in my future.

  Uncle Alex had said that you can’t stop history from happening because the entire past tense is history. But the future is choices. And the choices of a single person can change future history even if that person is underage and does not have a driver’s license or a credit card. I thought about Joan of Arc (but not her fate) and Anne Frank (but not her fate either).

  As soon as I had a plan, I was ready to change history.

  fifteen

  The minute I got back to the house, I dialed the number that Mrs. Vanderwaal had given me. I expected to get an answering machine but got a human voice instead. Unprepared, I asked, “Who is this?”

  A pleasant male voice answered, “This is Peter.” Pause. “Now, who are you?”

  “I am Margaret Rose Kane,” I began, and then I rattled on. “I am the daughter of Naomi Landau, who is the daughter of Margaret Rose Landau, who was the sister of Morris and Alexander Rose. They were your neighbors when you lived at 21 Schuyler Place. I am their grandniece, Margaret Rose, and we need to talk.”

  “Can we start at the beginning? Please?” Peter Vanderwaal had lightly dusted his native Epiphany accent with the vowels of the British royal family. But there was also something welcoming and kind in his voice. “This sounds like a matter of some urgency.”

  “Very urgent,” I said.

  “Because?”

  “It is urgent because the towers are coming down unless we can save them.” I heard him gasp. I began reading him the newspaper article. He interrupted when I had gotten no further than “The city has awarded the contract to demolish the structures to—” He asked me to repeat what I had just read.

  “. . . demolish the structures . . .”

  “Aha!” he said. “Their first mistake.”

  “Which is?”

  “Structures,” he said. “That’s where we’ll get them.”

  “Where is that, Mr. Vanderwaal?”

  “The towers are not structures. They are important works of outsider art.”

  “Does outsider art mean that it isn’t indoors?”

  “No, no, my dear. Outsider art means art that is outside the mainstream.”

  I wondered, Didn’t his Ivy League college teach him that you shouldn’t define a word with the word being defined?

  Mr. Peter Vanderwaal continued, “Most people call it folk art. It means it was done by a person who has not been formally trained.”

  I had heard the towers called an “off-color joke” and “superfluous” and “a waste of time,” but I had never heard them called works of art. “You mean that my uncles are artists?”

  “Yes, Margaret Rose, I do mean that. They fit the category: Outsider artists make up their own techniques and use materials that trained artists don’t use. That’s your uncles. Outsider art is less refined, less restrained than mainstream art—there is always something untamed about it. An outsider artist is like a gypsy violinist. Either you are a gypsy violinist or you aren’t. You don’t—you can’t—go to school to become one. And that’s the towers.”

  “And that means that the towers are works of art?”

  “Precisely. Your uncles are artists, and the towers are not structures that were built without permits or plans. They are true works of art. They are, in fact, masterpieces.”

  Masterpieces, I thought. My uncles made masterpieces. There were three of them in the backyard of 19 Schuyler Place. Ten minutes ago, I didn’t even know they were artists, and now Peter Vanderwaal had said they are masterpiece artists. “Mr. Vanderwaal,” I asked, “are you sure that my uncles are artists?”

  “I’m sure.

  “And the towers are masterpieces?”

  “They are. But, Margaret, I suggest you recover from this shocking bit of news so that we can discuss the problem at hand. But first, I must hear the remaining portion of the article. Read on.” When I was done, he asked, “Does your mother know about this impending doom?”

  “She does, but she can’t help. She’s off on an archaeological dig.”

  “Really? How very interesting. I’ve always wanted to do that myself. Is it Egypt?”

  “Peru.”

  “Oh, yes, of course. Egypt wouldn’t do. There’s that Jewish thing.” Mr. Vanderwaal paused a minute and then asked, “Your uncles haven’t put Stars of David or anything religious on top of those towers, have they?”

  “No. Just the clock faces.”

  “Yes, yes,” Peter Vanderwaal said. “Totally secular. None of the neighbors ever objected when we strung Christmas lights all over the towers. One year my dad wired up a Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer atop one of the towers. Of course, Rudolph is not in any way religious, although one could—if he were hell-bent on objecting—make a case that it had to do with Christmas and therefore was. You don’t suppose the neighbors are anti-Semites, do you?”

  “No, they’re lawyers.”

  “That, my dear Margaret Rose, is the problem right there.”

  “They say they’re worried about safety.”

  “Pish posh,” said Peter Vanderwaal. “Those towers are safe. I climbed each one of them to the tippy-top every Christmas I lived there, and I can assure you I am no athlete, and I have a very protective mother, and no one ever worried about my safety. Those towers are safe, my dear. They were built one rung at a time. Each part was made to fit tight and right before the next was added. They are what we call modular. The rungs are only as far apart as your uncles could reach, and neither is very tall. The towers could and did support the weight of both your uncles at the same time, and I suppose you’ve noticed, neither of your uncles is underweight.”

  “They do put real cream in their coffee, Mr. Vanderwaal.”

  “Very civilized, but irrelevant to the matter at hand.” He thought a minute. “But this isn’t: Those towers have been through windstorms that blew down mighty oaks and ice storms that cracked cables as thick as my wrist, and nothing ever happened to the towers except some of the pendants came off. I can assure anyone who asks that if the forces of nature have not blown them down, nothing ever will. Those towers were built to last. It will take a blast of dynamite to take them down. Surely they’re not going to risk dynamiting them—or are they?”

  “One report says that they will be deconstructed from the top down. Eddie Foscaro says that he cannot chop them down like redwoods because there is no place for them to fall, and he can’t implode them because they are too close to the other houses.”

  Peter Vanderwaal thought a minute more. “Let me tell you something, Margaret Rose. This travesty the Home Owners Association is trying to pull off is really about money. Those old Glass houses are not homes to those yuppies. They are investments. Fixing them up is nothing more than a chance to get money from that trust fund and resell them at a profit. What the lawyers are saying is that their property values will go up if their idea of historical accuracy prevails. Make no mistake about it. The only thing more destructive than someone who thinks his idea is the only possible correct one is a group of people who all think they and on
ly they have the right answer. And when that group is lawyers, watch out.”

  He paused only long enough to catch his breath. “We have to do something to stop this cultural Armageddon.” He took another breath. “If we can just stop the demolition until I can get something together to prove that the towers are not structures but works of art, I think we’ll have a shot at saving them.”

  “Do you have a plan?”

  “I’m going to do the first two things grown-ups do when they are faced with a problem.”

  “What are they, Mr. Vanderwaal?”

  “One, they form a committee; and two, they give that committee a name.”

  “Okay,” I said. “What will they name the committee?”

  “Not they. Naming the committee is very important, so we will name the committee. I suggest we call our committee the Cultural Preservation Committee. Yes. That name is very good. It has two out of three positive words: cultural and preservation. Everyone in the world is in favor of culture and preservation, and everyone in the world has to live with committees.”

  “The Cultural Preservation Committee,” I repeated.

  “Yes. We’ll abbreviate it CPC. Which is also very good. We don’t want an acronym. Acronyms are so over.”

  “So who will be on your committee? My uncles?”

  “No, no, no, Margaret Rose. Forgive me, but your uncles must stay out of it completely. But completely. Your uncles must never show by the least scintilla that they care. They must be artfully indifferent.”

  “That won’t be hard. They seem to have given up. I think they’re resigned to the towers coming down, but I know someone who will be happy to join the CPC. His name is Jacob Kaplan, and he’s an artist, and he admires the towers a lot.”

  “Who is that?”

  I welcomed an opportunity to repeat the name. “Jacob Kaplan. He’s an artist, and he loves the towers, and he’s going to paint a rose on the ceiling of my bedroom. He’ll be happy to join the CPC.”

  “Good,” Peter said, “that’ll be fine. But we need rainmakers—people who are known to make things happen. People with prestige. People from the world of art who can get results. I know some. I’ll sign them up. I have some pictures of the towers that I took at various stages of their completion.”

  “Your mother has a picture of you and my mother and Loretta Bevilaqua on the towers. Won’t that show how safe they are?”

  “Maybe. But that won’t be the angle I’ll be working. I shall get a group together to have the towers declared works of art. My group, of course, will be known as consultants.”

  “Will you be forming a committee of consultants?”

  “Margaret Rose, my dear, no such thing as a committee of consultants exists. Consultants have been known to work with committees and even, on occasion, on a committee, but they never form committees for the simple reason that each believes his opinion carries so much weight, you could not possibly need more than one. So, my dear Margaret Rose, I must gather their opinions one at a time.”

  “What angle will I be working?”

  “I’m glad you asked. Here’s the first, second, and third thing you must do: One, stop the demolition. Two, stop the demolition. Three, stop the demolition.”

  “How?”

  “Any way you can. When is it to start?”

  “Next week.”

  “So you see how important your job is?”

  I saw Uncle Morris’s car pulling into the alley. “I’ll think of something, Mr. Vanderwaal,” I said. “I’ve got to go now.”

  “Stay in touch,” he said.

  “You, too,” I replied, and hung up just seconds before Uncle Morris walked through the door.

  sixteen

  After my uncles went upstairs to assemble the scaffold, I found the name Bevilaqua in the phone book. There was only one. I waited to call until after the sounds of my uncles’ arguing stopped, and the clang of metal being joined to metal punctuated the sound of Mozart coming from my bedroom radio.

  I had not expected a lengthy conversation with Mrs. Bevilaqua. All I really wanted was to find out how to reach her daughter, but Mrs. Bevilaqua was lonely, curious, and proud of her daughter. So she asked a lot of questions about my mother, my father, and my uncles. She insisted on knowing why I wanted to get in touch with Loretta, and when I told her, she said, “Oh, yeah, my Loretta loved them towers. Especially at Christmas. She helped decorate them. Your mother did, too. All the neighborhood decorated them towers. Even that chubbyVanderwaal kid, Peter, a boy.”

  —Especially at Christmas

  The year that Tower One was finished and the Uncles had set the foundation for Tower Two, the Bevilaquas and the Vanderwaals asked if they could hang Christmas lights on Tower One. Christmas was not the Uncles’ holiday to celebrate, but the spirit of the season was, so they said yes, and that started the holiday lights tradition. Everyone—including my mother—helped decorate the towers.

  When the second tower went up—long before it was at its full height—it, too, was decorated, and in the years that followed, decorating and lighting the towers became a neighborhood project. On a designated night, John Flanagan, who was a policeman and a neighbor, set up barricades and closed off Schuyler Place from Melville to Rinehart Streets, and all the neighbors gathered in that one block and sang carols and drank mulled cider and ate doughnuts. And then Mr. Vanderwaal, who was an electrician, threw a switch, and the tower lights went on.

  The tradition of the Christmas lights continued even after the Bevilaquas left the neighborhood. The last year of the block party, the Epiphany Times ran a feature article on holiday decorations, and the towers made the front page of the style section. They were considered a sight worth seeing. Even people who by then normally avoided the area after dark drove by to see the tower lights. City buses slowed down to let the people get a good look.

  It was not until the year after I was born that the tradition of the Christmas block party died. The Vanderwaals and the Bevilaquas had long since moved away, and by that time, their children, Loretta and Peter, had left Epiphany altogether.

  • • •

  I asked Mrs. Bevilaqua if she would please give me Loretta’s phone number. She said, “My Loretta, she’s a big shot with Infinitel. You heard of Infinitel, eh?”

  I said that I had watched their commercials on TV. “They’re the telephone company that has the motto, We go the distance for you, aren’t they?”

  Mrs. Bevilaqua said, “That’s right. That’s the one.” Then she repeated the motto and told me that Loretta was in charge of Infinitel’s PCS, their Personal Communication Services division, which was their new division for wireless phones. “She has a big office in a corner of one of them tall buildings in New York. She has windows that see a river on one side and a bridge on the other—both going to somewheres in Brooklyn.” Mrs. Bevilaqua told me that Loretta had married a man named Homer Smith. “She don’t use Smith in her business. For business she stays a Bevilaqua. Anyways, she divorced that Smith. So she’s still a Bevilaqua anyways. The company, they don’t want her to use Smith. Whenever them big shots at Infinitel hear Bevilaqua, they know it means something.”

  I asked if I could please have a number to reach Loretta.

  “You want home or business?”

  “Both, if I may.”

  “At work she has a secretary, called an administray assist. He’s not a woman neither. He’s a man, her administray assist. He don’t let nobody get on line unless they mean business. Big business. He asks, ‘Who I’m gonna say is calling, please?’ Very polite, but he don’t let nobody get on. But Loretta, she has two more lines in the office. One just for Infinitel people to talk to her. Intracom, it’s called. I say, why not have three phones? They can afford it. That’s their business, anyways. And she got the administray assist to keep track. Now I’ll get you the number. Hold the phone.”

  When Mrs. Bevilaqua returned to the line, she gave me two numbers—one for work and one for home. “This home number I’m gi
ving you is a unlisted number. It’s very private, which means that nobody gets it unless I give it. Capisci?”

  Cah-PEESH-ee? I guessed that Mrs. Bevilaqua was asking if I understood. I shook my head yes. Mrs. Bevilaqua asked again, “Capisci?”

  “Yes, yes, I understand. I understand completely.”

  “What do you understand?”

  “That I’m not to bother her unless it is important. Really important.”

  “Yes. Capisci.” After giving me the two numbers, area code first, Mrs. Bevilaqua advised me to call Loretta at home in the evening, or “you won’t get past the administray assist.” I thanked her, and she said, “Loretta, she liked them towers, anyways. Me too. Especially at Christmas.”

  I decided that since it was already evening, immediately would be the best time to call Loretta Bevilaqua.

  Loretta herself answered after only three rings. I introduced myself the same way I had introduced myself to Peter Vanderwaal, mentioning my mother and my uncles.

  Loretta asked, “How are they?”

  I told her that my mother was in Peru and that my uncles were depressed. She asked me why, so I brought her up-to-date on the sad recent history of the towers. She listened all the way through without interrupting, and then she said, “Legality would be the first thing the lawyers would work on. By declaring the towers illegal, they get the law on their side; and by having the neighborhood declared a landmark, they can claim that they have improved the value of your uncles’ property. What would make their property values go up even more would be to restore the neighborhood to what it was before the towers were built. The neighborhood is not as old as Williamsburg, but—”

  “Uncle Morris spits on Williamsburg. He says that it may be accurate, but it is not true. He says it gives new meaning to the phrase real phony.”

  “But Old Town would be much more true. The buildings would not be reconstructed. They would be restored. Old Town would not be a walk-around museum like Williamsburg. It would be a living community like Rainbow Row in Charleston. By declaring the neighborhood a historical treasure, your uncles’ property value goes up along with all the others.”