About the B'nai Bagels Read online

“Are you convinced that your mother is no Rebekah?”

  “Yeah, I’m convinced.”

  “From the Bible you quote when I need from the baseball manual,” she said to Dad. Then to the light fixture she added, “You should please excuse the expression.”

  I caught Dad’s eye and said, “See what I mean? She tells Him everything. All the time.”

  Mother said, “This discussion is no discussion; it is a crossword puzzle. Four down. Five across. Not a discussion at all.”

  Dad said, “Bessie, sit down.”

  Spencer popped up from his seat to grab the papers in front of Mother. And Dad added, “You better sit down, too, Spencer.” Spencer sat. It was difficult for Dad. “What I have to tell you is… that what Moshe was trying to say was… that what may have happened yesterday was… to use plain, everyday language… Simon and Sylvester may have pulled a switch.”

  “Don’t be silly!” Mother said. “I’m certainly no great authority on numbers like certain people in this house, but I do know a four from a five. Even on the back of a shirt, all wrinkled, I know a four from a five.”

  Dad said, “Isaac did not know Jacob from Esau when Jacob was dressed in Esau’s clothes.”

  Mother looked up at the light fixture and said, “Again!”

  Spencer shook his head. “How could they have done it? There was a huge crowd. The biggest they’ve had all season.”

  Dad answered, “For that information, you better ask Mark.”

  Everyone looked at me, and I was about to begin saying that it was Barry Jacobs’ idea. But I didn’t. Instead I said, “I think you ought to call Simon and Sylvester, Barry Jacobs, and Franklin P. Botts. Call a meeting. They can give you all the answers. I’m not sure I can.”

  I had hardly finished saying it when Mother had taken down the phone book from the top of the refrigerator.

  That evening they gave me money for a movie and enough for Hersch; they also gave me fifty cents for popcorn plus a ride for both of us to the shopping center where the movie was. Never before had I been allowed out at night to a movie without being accompanied by my parents. A double feature besides. One of those that always gets circulated after the Academy Awards featuring in the one the male Oscar winner and in the other the female supporting star or some such combination.

  Hersch’s mother was supposed to pick us up from the movie. We waited for her in front of the theater, and it was then that Hersch mentioned baseball for the first time that evening. Between the popcorn and listening, we didn’t do much talking in the movie. Hersch asked, “Do you know yet who’s going to be on the tournament team?”

  “I guess that will be decided this evening,” I answered in a normal tone instead of a sneaky voice that would arouse his suspicions.

  “I think that Barry should make it for sure; it would be great if both of us could make it.”

  Second chance. Some new, deeper voice (my own new voice?) told me to stay quiet, and I did.

  Hersch added, “You know, Mark, you’ve come a long way; you’re quite a ball player now. I’ll bet if your mother weren’t manager and your brother weren’t coach, you’d be a choice candidate for the Tournament team.”

  That was a nice thing for him to say; it showed that he understood that having my mother as manager made me something less than my own person. I didn’t answer except with nice thoughts. Then his mother picked us up.

  Mother, Dad, Spencer, and Aunt Thelma were all sitting in the living room when I walked in. They were all examining fingernails or shoelaces or lint on the living room carpet. They had the look of losers.

  “Well,” I asked, “was it true?”

  Aunt Thelma answered, “Yes, your mother just called and forfeited the game.”

  I walked over to my mother and put my arm around her shoulder, and she reached up and patted my hand. “Too bad, Mom,” I said.

  She looked up at me with eyes sad and moist. “Sometimes you just can’t always tell about people.” She swallowed her own private marshmallow, and Aunt Thelma made a sound that was somewhere between a shudder and a sigh. Mother said, “Where did I go wrong, Sam?” She was pitiful.

  “It’s all right, Bessie,” Dad said.

  “Did I make them care too much, Sam?”

  “No, Bessie,” Dad said. “The trouble didn’t come about because the team cared too much. The trouble came because Barry couldn’t stand being wrong and being a loser.”

  “But Botts and the twins were in on it even if they didn’t plan it. They’re all sour Bagels,” I said.

  “Botts and the twins made a mistake, but on the whole they’ve finished the season ahead of themselves. Botts has learned something about being open-minded, and the twins have learned something about not being led around. And as for Barry’s being a sour Bagel, I’m afraid you can’t say that. The truth is that Barry doesn’t know what flavor Bagel he is. He is his mother’s and his father’s and his teacher’s kind. Nothing but overlapping flavors. It almost wasn’t his decision to pull the switch.”

  “If he planned it, it was his decision,” Aunt Thelma said.

  “Not quite. Botts’ parents paint their prejudices on him, but at least they leave him alone enough so that he can wash them off every now and then. Barry never gets that chance; he’s never alone. He’s got no private picture of himself, only a public one,” Spencer said.

  “What do you know about Botts?” I asked.

  He didn’t answer.

  Mother said, “Botts’ prejudices are like bad manners. Like he never learned to eat with a knife and fork at home. He’ll learn better.”

  “Little League was good for him,” Aunt Thelma said. “In a way it was his first lesson in table manners.”

  “What do you know about Botts?” I asked Mother.

  Mother and Spencer exchanged a look before she answered, “What do you mean what do I know about Botts? I know that he’s a terrific batter.”

  “What else do you know?”

  “I else know that he’s sorry for making us forfeit.”

  “Is that all you know, Mom?”

  “What else is a mother supposed to know? Is she supposed to know what the P in Franklin P. Botts stands for?”

  Dad offered, “I’m not too sure, but I think that the P is for Playboy.”

  I let Mother think I didn’t know that she knew about Botts; after all, Mother (and Spencer) had done that much for me. They had let me think they didn’t know.

  On Monday there was a small notice in the paper about the B’nai B’rith team forfeiting the game because of an illegal pitcher. They mentioned that the Elks had not protested but that the forfeit had been voluntary on the part of the B’nai B’rith. Mother and I spent that day at Aunt Thelma’s, but even after supper the phone never stopped ringing. I answered and told them that Mom was in the shower, and she appreciated it.

  Hersch and I were put on the Tournament Team. Some people think that I made the team because of my mother and brother, but I know that’s not the reason, and so does Hersch. What we were, was leftovers. Again. Mother felt that she didn’t have to punish Botts and Barry, but she also felt that she didn’t have to reward them either. Hersch was catcher, and I played center field in the game we won and in the game we lost; Point Baldwin was wiped out at district championship, one less than Spencer’s great year.

  It wasn’t so bad being a Tournament leftover. I got to see more of Hersch, at practices at first. And then because of Spencer I got to see him pretty often. All during the summer. Even before Barry went off to camp. One night after supper old Spence said to me, “Hey, kid, do you want a lift up to Hersch’s house? I’m going up to Crescent Hill anyway.”

  “How will I get back?”

  “I’ll pick you up and bring you back.”

  “How will I know when you’ll be bringing me back?”

  “I’ll send you a telegram! What do you mean how will you know? I’ll drive to Hersch’s and I’ll honk the horn, and you’ll come out to the car and I’ll bring you ba
ck.”

  “How come you’re doing this?” I asked.

  “I told you, I’m going up to Crescent Hill anyway.”

  “How come?”

  “Did I ask you why you’re going up to Crescent Hill?”

  “You didn’t have to. You know that I’ll be going up there to visit Hersch.”

  “Well then, don’t ask me either.”

  How can you reason with a guy like that?

  Spencer goes up to Crescent Hill a lot now. Sometimes he brings Hersch back with him. Usually when he picks me up to return me from Hersch’s, there is a peculiar smell in the car. Hairspray. And the seat cushion close to the driver’s seat is squooshed down. Spencer has quit picking on Mother. He whistles and hums a great deal. Her name is Faye; she also commutes to NYU.

  Hersch and I don’t see each other as often as we used to, but he calls, and I call. Our friendship is pretty good now except for that small part about Barry. Like when a zipper gets broken and you repair it; it works all right, but there is always a fraction of an inch that’s never quite on track, and you have to remember to be careful about that part. I noticed that Hersch is careful about that part, too. We never play the sarcastic game any more.

  My bar mitzvah was in late August. Even Aunt Thelma helped bake for it (chocolate chips and brownies). Having to prepare for it was a good way for Mom to forget about Little League.

  I never knew that I had so many relatives, and a Bar Mitzvah is a good way to find out; they all bring presents. My year was a big one for thesauruses: I got four. I checked at the bookstore about trading one in on a subscription to Playboy. No dice. I also got three pairs of cufflinks, and I don’t have a single one of that kind of shirt. Neither does Dad. I offered them to Spencer, but he hadn’t run out of the cufflinks from his Bar Mitzvah yet. I went to the department store to see about trading them in on a subscription to Playboy. No dice. I figure that I’ll save one for Sidney Polsky’s Bar Mitzvah and one for Louis LaRosa’s, except that Lou isn’t Jewish.

  My parents let me invite anyone I wanted to the party on Saturday night. They had almost everyone on the list already. I added Cookie Rivera and her brothers. Not Botts, who was away at camp anyway. So was Barry. I figured that it wouldn’t hurt to have Cookie and the twins. And it was her first chance to see me without my braces. Of course, she never told me how nice I looked without them, but she noticed.

  According to Hebrew Law, now I am a man. That is, I can participate fully in all the religious services. But I figure that you don’t become a man overnight. Because it is a becoming; becoming more yourself, your own kind of tone deaf, center-fielder, son, brother, friend, Bagel. And only some of it happens on official time plus family time. A lot of it happens being alone. And it doesn’t happen overnight. Sometimes it takes a guy a whole Little League season.

  here’s a glimpse at the latest

  extraordinary novel

  from two-time Newbery Medalist

  e.l. konigsburg

  The Mysterious Edge of the Heroic World

  IN THE LATE AFTERNOON ON THE SECOND FRIDAY IN September, Amedeo Kaplan stepped down from the school bus into a cloud of winged insects. He waved his hand in front of his face only to find that the flies silently landed on the back of his hand and stayed there. They didn’t budge, and they didn’t bite. They were as lazy as the afternoon. Amedeo looked closely. They were not lazy. They were preoccupied. They were coupling, mating on the wing, and when they landed, they stayed connected, end to end. They were shameless. He waved his hands and shook his arms, but nothing could interrupt them.

  He stopped, unhooked his backpack, and laid it on the sidewalk. Fascinated by their silence and persistence, he knelt down to watch them. Close examination revealed an elongated body covered with black wings; end to end, they were no longer than half an inch. The heads were red, the size of a pin. There was a longer one and a shorter one, and from what he remembered of nature studies, their size determined their sex—or vice versa.

  The flies covered his arms like body hair. He started scraping them off his arms and was startled to hear a voice behind him say, “Lovebugs.”

  He turned around and recognized William Wilcox.

  William (!) Wilcox (!).

  For the first time in his life Amedeo was dealing with being the new kid in school, the new kid in town, and finding out that neither made him special. Quite the opposite. Being new was generic at Lancaster Middle School. The school itself didn’t start until sixth grade, so every single one of his fellow sixth graders was a new kid in school, and being new was also common because St. Malo was home to a lot of navy families, so for some of the kids at Lancaster Middle School, this was the third time they were the new kid in town. The navy seemed to move families to any town that had water nearby—a river, a lake, a pond, or even high humidity—so coming from a famous port city like New York added nothing to his interest quotient.

  Amedeo was beginning to think that he had been conscripted into AA. Aloners Anonymous. No one at Lancaster Middle School knew or cared that he was new, that he was from New York, that he was Amedeo Kaplan.

  But now William (!) Wilcox (!) had noticed him.

  William Wilcox was anything but anonymous. He was not so much alone as aloof. In a school as variegated as an argyle sock, William Wilcox was not part of the pattern. Blond though he was, he was a dark thread on the edge. He was all edges. He had a self-assurance that inspired awe or fear or both.

  Everyone seemed to know who William Wilcox was and that he had a story.

  Sometime after William Wilcox’s father died, his mother got into the business of managing estate sales. She took charge of selling off the contents of houses of people who had died or who were moving or downsizing or had some other need to dispossess themselves of the things they owned. She was paid a commission on every item that was sold. It was a good business for someone like Mrs. Wilcox, who had no money to invest in inventory but who had the time and the talent to learn a trade. Mrs. Wilcox was fortunate that two antique dealers, Bertram Grover and Ray Porterfield, took her under their wings and started her on a career path.

  From the start, William worked side by side with his mother.

  In their first major estate sale, the Birchfields’, Mrs. Wilcox found a four-panel silk screen wrapped in an old blanket in the back of a bedroom closet. It was slightly faded but had no tears or stains, and she could tell immediately that it had been had painted a very long time ago. She priced the screen reasonably at one hundred twenty five dollars but could not interest anyone in buying it. Her instincts told her it was something fine, so when she was finishing the sale and still couldn’t find a buyer, she deducted the full price from her sales commission and took the screen home, put it up in front of the sofa in their living room, and studied it. Each of the four panels told part of the story of how women washed and wove silk. The more she studied and researched, the more she became convinced that the screen was not only very fine but rare.

  On the weekend following the Birchfield sale, she and William packed the screen into the family station wagon and tried selling it to antique shops all over St. Malo. When she could not interest anyone in buying it, she and William took to the road, and on several consecutive weekends, they stopped at antique shops in towns along the interstate, both to the north and south of St. Malo.

  They could not find a buyer.

  Without his mother’s knowing, William took photos of the screen and secretly carried them with him when his sixth-grade class took a spring trip to Washington, D.C. As his classmates were touring the National Air and Space Museum, William stole away to the Freer Gallery of Art, part of the Smithsonian that specializes in Asian art and antiquities.

  Once there, William approached the receptionist’s desk and asked to see the curator in charge of ancient Chinese art. The woman behind the desk asked, “Now, what business would you be having with the curator of Chinese art?” When William realized that the woman was not taking him seriously, he took out t
he photographs he had of the screen and lined them up at the edge of the desk so that they faced her. William could tell that the woman behind the desk had no idea what she was seeing, let alone the value of it. She tried stalling him by saying that the curatorial staff was quite busy. William knew that he did not have much time before his sixth-grade class would miss him. He coolly assessed the situation: He was a sixth grader with no credentials, little time, and an enormous need. He squared his shoulders and thickened his southern accent to heavy sweet cream and said, “Back to home, we have a expression, ma’am.”

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “Why, back to home we always say that there’s some folk who don’t know that they’re through the swinging doors of opportunity until they’ve got swat on their backside.”

  William waited.

  It may have been because he returned each of her cold stares with cool dignity, or it may simply have been the quiet assurance in his voice coupled with his courtly manners that made it happen, but the receptionist picked up the phone and called the curator, a Mrs. Fortinbras.

  William showed Mrs. Fortinbras the photographs, and Mrs. Fortinbras was not at all dismissive. She said that the photographs—crude as they were—made it difficult to tell enough about the screen. But they did show that it might be interesting. She suggested that William bring the screen itself to Washington so that she could arrange to have it examined by her staff.

  When school was out for the summer, William convinced his mother to pack up the screen again and drive to Washington, D.C., and have Mrs. Fortinbras and her staff at the Freer give it a good look.

  And they did take it there.

  And Mrs. Fortinbras and her staff did examine it.

  And Mrs. Fortinbras and her staff did recommend that the museum buy it.

  And the museum did buy it.

  For twenty thousand dollars.

  When they got back to St. Malo, William called the newspaper. The Vindicator printed William’s story along with the pictures he had taken. The article appeared below the fold on the first page of the second section.