The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place Page 5

  “Who’s minding the store?” Uncle Alex asked.

  “Who do you think?”

  “Is it Helga?”

  “Of course it’s Helga,” Morris replied. “I requested her.”

  “So then it’s all right.”

  “What do you mean, then it’s all right? Is it all right because she doesn’t steal, or is it all right because she makes fewer mistakes than the other one?”

  Uncle Alex asked, “Which other one?”

  “The one you like.”

  “I like them all.”

  Holding his hands to the sides of his head, Uncle Morris said to the kitchen table. “Jaj, Istenem! He likes them all. He likes them all because they apologize when they make a mistake.”

  Uncle Alex asked, “Which other one do I like?”

  “The boy.”

  “Why didn’t you say the boy? If you had said the boy, I’d know which is the other one.”

  Exasperated, Uncle Morris waved his open palms. “So if you know which is the other one, who is it?”

  “It’s the boy with the tattoo on his wrist.”

  “Of course,” Uncle Morris insisted. “I told you it’s the one you like.”

  “So what’s his name?” Uncle Alex asked.

  “Which one? The one you like?”

  Now it was Uncle Alex’s turn to be exasperated. “I like them all. Who’s the one with the tattoo?”

  Uncle Morris held his hands to his head again. This time he addressed the ceiling. “The tattoo is Dennis.” He repeated, “It’s Dennis.”

  “So why didn’t you say Dennis?” Alex asked.

  “Because he’s not there,” Morris answered.

  “No, Helga is. That’s what you said when I asked.”

  Uncle Morris shrugged and told the kitchen table, “He asks. I answer. He asks again. I answer again.”

  Uncle Alex waved his hand in front of his face and told the nearest chair, “He has all the answers. Always he has answers. Even if there is no question, my brother has answers.” Then he whistled for Tartufo and filled his dish with fresh water.

  I was so happy to hear my uncles argue, I practically floated up the stairs to stash my gear. My room was the small one in the back. It had a window that overlooked the towers.

  I could see Jake from my bedroom window. He walked all around the Tower Garden and then all around again. He walked around each of the towers before he stepped inside Tower Two, the tallest one, the one just outside my bedroom window. He stood inside the circle of ribs and struts and looked up and up for a long, long time. As he ducked under its lowest rungs he grazed a few of the hanging glass ornaments. I saw him start to count the pendants on a single rung, but he stopped, stepped back, and looked. Just looked. Like a kiss or a walk in the woods, the towers were meant to be experienced, not inventoried.

  He walked the length of the pathway between the flowers and the towers twice before sitting down on the back porch step. That’s where he was when I came downstairs and joined him.

  Inside the Crypto-Cabin

  eight

  Not then, but when the events of that summer were history, Jake explained how he had come to be the one to drive Uncle and me back to Epiphany.

  Jake had an arrangement with his mother.

  When Camp Talequa was in session—as well as in the spring and the fall, when Mrs. Kaplan rented the facilities to Elderhostel—Jake took care of maintenance. In winter, after all the sessions were over, and the camp was empty, Jake stayed on. He drained the water pipes and cleared heavy snow from the cabin roofs. In exchange for these services, he had year-round use of a small cabin that was deep into the woods that bordered the campgrounds. He liked to keep its location secret from all the campers, young and old.

  Acting stupid was a pose he had chosen when he first took the job. He knew all too well how easily young girls could interpret a smile as sexy or sinister, and how easily a greeting—as simple as a hello—could be interpreted as a come-on. So he made a policy of not responding to anything they said, anything they did. The easiest way to do that was to act as if he had an IQ between vegetable and mineral. He didn’t call anyone by name, didn’t talk to anyone, and pretended he didn’t understand when they whispered and giggled about him. But he saw a lot and heard a lot. And he knew all the camp tricks.

  His mother was as anxious as he was to keep the location of his little house in the big woods a secret. She seldom came.

  The first time she visited Jake’s cabin that year I was at Talequa was in the evening after I had preferred not to go on the nature walk, the day of our first little talk. It was well past the dinner hour when she made her way from her office to her son’s secret cabin.

  When she was sitting behind her camp director’s desk, Mrs. Kaplan wore camp shirts with epaulets, stiff with starch, neatly tucked into the waistband of her chinos—either slacks or skirt. For her off-duty trip to her son’s house that evening, she wore a long skirt made of wispy material, a large chunky necklace made of bone and bronze, and Birkenstocks. For camouflage as well as for protection against the cool evening air, she had wrapped herself in a darkly embroidered silk shawl bordered with a deep fringe.

  She opened the front door slowly and averted her eyes.

  The front room of his secret cabin was uncarpeted and largely occupied by two easels, on each of which was an unfinished painting. Regardless of the size of the canvas, Jake painted large. His unframed canvases of hips and lips, breasts and thighs—painted in flesh colors but shaded in brilliant hues of alizarin crimson and dioxazine purple—leaned, three- or four-deep, on all sides of the room.

  Mrs. Kaplan loved Jake, but there were times when she felt that she did not get the son she deserved. She did not approve of his style of housekeeping or his keeping a pot of coffee plugged in when he was not at home—even though he knew she disapproved of keeping things plugged in, switched on, or left running. She also did not care for his style of painting or his subject matter. At best, she thought his canvases looked like illustrations for a catalog of organ transplants. She found them embarrassing—just a half beat short of pornography.

  But worst of all, she had a son who had an attitude about her attitudes. He called the Talequa handbook “The Kaplan Manifesto.”

  Jake watched his mother unfurl the shawl from her shoulders and toss it over the back of the lone upholstered chair in his front room. She cleared the magazines and newspapers from the seat and stacked them neatly on the floor. She sank into the chair and extended her arms over the length of the padded armrests, her fingers gripping the edges. She settled back into the chair and, after checking it for grease, carefully placed her head against the back cushion. He saw that despite the Birkenstocks and despite the unfurled shawl, his mother was as wound up and as stiff as a spool of nylon filament.

  He offered her a cup of coffee. She refused. She took a deep breath, inhaling fumes of turpentine, cigar smoke, and motes of dust. She coughed—a little more than was necessary to clear her throat—and said, “How can you stand the smells in this room?”

  “Keeps the mosquitoes away,” he said casually.

  Not the answer she wanted to hear.

  Jake knew that with limited means and limited education, his mother had done her best when his father had walked out on them. Jake knew that his mother had a tendency to mistake rules, her rules, for principles. She did not bend because she did not have enough confidence to know when or how far. She did not listen well because one ear was always otherwise engaged—either listening to what she herself had just said or what she would say next.

  Jake believed that when his father left, his mother lit a small flame of displeasure deep inside herself. For a long time he thought that if that pilot light ever went out, she would die. Sometimes when he aggravated her—which he almost always did—he consoled himself by telling himself that he was feeding the little flame that kept her alive. That evening, however, it was obvious that she was more upset than usual. The tiny jet of displeasure
was already burning brightly, and he did not need to feed the flame.

  He poured himself a cup of coffee and carefully added cream—real cream—until the color was the exact shade of raw umber he wanted. He added two teaspoons of sugar and slowly stirred. He took a long sip, savoring the taste and the aroma. He resisted the temptation to smoke a cigar because if he lit up, his mother would explode and leave without telling him what was on her mind. And he knew that she would never have risked a trip to his cabin unless something serious had come up. He was curious. He wanted to hear what it was. “Is something the matter, Mother?” he asked.

  She did not look directly at him. “I am having a problem with one of our campers. Refuses to do anything. When asked why, she says, ‘I prefer not to.’”

  “Bartleby,” Jake said.

  “What’s that? Bartleby?”

  “‘Bartleby the Scrivener.’ It’s a story by Herman Melville. This lawyer, whose name we never learn, hires a copyist, a scrivener, a man who writes out duplicate copies of legal documents. That’s what they did before they had carbon paper or copy machines. To check for accuracy, one man reads out loud from the original, and the scriveners check their copies, word for word, against what is being read. Thus the term copyreader. When the lawyer asks Bartleby to check his copy against a reading of the original, Bartleby says, ‘I would prefer not to.’ As the story goes on, there is more and more that Bartleby prefers not to do. The strange thing is, the lawyer who hired him, and whom we suspect is partly Melville himself, is sympathetic to Bartleby.”

  “Perhaps that lawyer could afford to be sympathetic, but I cannot.” She sighed wearily. “There is something more about this child that I can’t put my finger on. I’ve had this camp long enough to have seen it all. I’ve had girls who yell and scream about the food and the accommodations and their cabin mates. And I’ve heard it all as well. I’ve had girls come into the office cursing and swearing, and I can tell you, Jake, you would be surprised at the extensive vocabulary of bad, very bad, hyphenated-bad words that some of these girls have.”

  Jake smiled at the thought of his mother having to listen to bad, very bad, hyphenated-bad words.

  “Why are you smiling?” she asked.

  “Was I smiling?”

  “You most certainly were.”

  “Was it my idiot smile or a smirk?”

  “It was—” She stopped short. “Now, don’t ask me to analyze your smiles. It was a smile pure and simple.”

  “Pure and simple. So it was my idiot smile after all.”

  “We don’t say idiot anymore, Jacob. Nobody’s an idiot anymore.”

  “Nobody’s an idiot, or nobody says idiot?” One quick look told him that she was within an inch of taking the bait. “I’m interested, Mother,” he said. “I really am. Please tell your pure and simple son what is on your mind.”

  “This Bartleby camper is on my mind.”

  “What did she do?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. She doesn’t do anything. She—”

  “Yes, yes. She prefers not to.”

  “I called her in for an interview today.”

  “Did she cry?”

  “No, she didn’t cry. I’ve had girls who cry. I know what to do when that happens.”

  Actually, his mother liked it best when the girls broke down and cried. She offered Kleenex and comfort, in that order, and then she thanked the girl for sharing her feelings. Then, with her thumb, she would gently lift the girl’s chin and ask her “to give us another chance.” It was always a masterful performance.

  “If she didn’t cry, did she at least tell you that she wanted to go home?”

  “Oh, she didn’t say she wanted to go home.”

  “What did she say?”

  “When I asked her to tell me what she did want, she said . . .” His mother could not finish the sentence. She looked down at the floor at some old cigar ash and began rubbing it into the floorboards with her Birkenstock. When she looked up, she opened her mouth to speak but couldn’t.

  “What did she say? It’ll be better if you tell me.”

  His mother studied the floor again and found a bit of cigar ash that had escaped and began rubbing it into the grain of the wood. She swallowed hard. Still not looking at her son, she answered, “When I asked her what she did want, she said, ‘I want this interview to be over.’”

  This time, Jake lowered his head so that his mother could not see the smile that seemed to have taken up residence on his face. This Bartleby was amusing him as much as she was annoying his mother. When he was certain that he had banished the last trace of a smile, he gently teased his mother by saying, “I’ll bet you told her that there are girls who come here every year. . . .”

  His mother, deaf to his playfulness, replied, “I most certainly did tell her that.”

  Still teasing, Jake continued, “. . . and for them Camp Talequa is the best part of the summer. . . .”

  “I am very proud of that.”

  “And did you tell her that you wanted her to get to know those girls?”

  “Of course I did. I told her that there are six alums in her cabin, Meadowlark. . . .”

  “Mother!” he exclaimed. “You didn’t! You didn’t put that single outsider in with those six girls who insisted on rooming together.”

  “They made bunking together a condition of coming to camp.”

  “So, Mother, why didn’t you give them a cabin to themselves?”

  “And waste a two-bed space? There are two odd girls in that cabin. This Bartleby one is not alone. The other odd one seems to have made the adjustment.”

  “The very fact that you call her the other odd one should tell you a lot.”

  “And do I need to tell you how short the camping season is? Do I need to tell you that it is necessary for me to use every bed I have in order to turn a profit? You know perfectly well that there’s one malcontent in every session. Besides, as you well know, complaints about cabin mates rank above all the others: the food, the activities, the counselors, the mosquitoes. But this Margaret—”

  “Did you say this child’s name is Margaret?”

  His mother nodded. “Yes. Margaret Kane. Margaret Rose Kane, as she likes to remind everyone.”

  “Is that Kane with a K?” he asked.

  “It is,” she replied. Then, catching a look in his eye, she asked anxiously, “Why? What about her?”

  Jake remembered being called to Meadowlark cabin when the girls came back from their nature walk. When Gloria told him that there was a problem with a shower drain there, he knew that he would pull a labeled T-shirt and/or underpants out of the pipe. He knew that whichever it would be, it would be clearly labeled. This time it was two T-shirts. Both name tags said M. R. KANE. He had hung the shirts over the door of the shower stall and left. As he was leaving, he heard the girls giggling. When he was only halfway out the door, he heard, “I’m not sure he can read.” He was well out the door and into the dark of the woods before he risked blowing his cover and smiling to himself.

  He also remembered changing a bunk mattress in the same cabin. Now he realized whose mattress it was. He should have paid more attention to the arrangements in that cabin. Six Alums, two outsiders: Not a good thing.

  Jake asked, “You say this Margaret has no complaints about her cabin mates?”

  “Not once. I repeat: Not once.”

  “Or is it not once that she’s told you?”

  “Despite what you may think, Jake, despite what you may want to believe, the Alums are not causing the problem.” When Jake did not reply, she hastily added, “You must admit that I’ve had quite a bit of experience with preadolescent girls, and I am probably the last person on earth to label children—”

  “Of course, Mother. Labels are right up there with idiot. Never to leave the tip of your tongue.”

  “That’s right. But as I was saying, as much as I hate labeling children, as seldom as I find it necessary to do so, I must say that this child
has exhibited all the classic symptoms of a passive-aggressive personality disorder.”

  He protested. “Mother, when a child says ‘I want this interview to be over,’ that does not sound passive to me, and ‘I prefer not to’ does not sound aggressive.”

  “However, Jacob, despite my distaste for labels, I do believe that this Bartleby—as you refer to her—is a textbook case of passive-aggressive personality disorder. Literally, a textbook case.”

  “How can you say that about a twelve-year-old?”

  “This child’s mother is a full professor of psychology at Clarion State University, and the child herself is an advanced reader. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find out that she’s read that ‘Bartleby’ story.”

  “I was in college when I read it, Mother.”

  “Kids who grow up in a university grow up very fast. Faster than most. And it wouldn’t surprise me to find her taking instructions on passive-aggressive behavior right out of one of her mother’s psychology textbooks.”

  “Mother, listen to me, I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but I think you’d be wise to drop your passive-aggressive analysis.”

  “Even if you don’t agree with me, the camp nurse does.”

  “Oh, Mother!” he exclaimed. “Are you talking about Louise Starr?”

  “I most certainly am.”

  “What does that great authority on child behavior conclude about our Bartleby?” Even though he wanted to keep his voice level, he could hear for himself that it had an edge.

  “She reported that the child is simply uncooperative. Simply uncooperative is just an old-fashioned way of saying passive-aggressive.” Jake shook his head. “It seems to me, Jake, that like that Bartleby lawyer, you are a little sympathetic to this camper, this Margaret Kane.”

  “No, Mother,” Jake replied, “I would say that I am a lot sympathetic to her.” His mother picked up her shawl, wrapped it around herself, and left the cabin without saying another word.