The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place Page 8

  Geoffrey and Gwendolyn Klinger, both lawyers, moved into 17 Schuyler Place, the house where the Bevilaquas once lived.

  “But your property is valuable again,” Jake said. Morris and Alex exchanged a look, and Jake asked, “Isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Uncle Morris said. “Valuable.”

  Uncle Alex massaged his neck and leaned his head back. He closed his eyes and said, “We have lawyers on our right and lawyers on our left. And if lawyers know anything, they know property values.” He charged forward, opened his eyes, and grimaced. “And how to protect them.”

  eleven

  I told the Uncles that Jake wanted to paint a rose ceiling for me. “A giant rose rose from wall to wall on my ceiling.”

  Uncle Morris said, “Very nice. Very decorative.”

  Uncle Alex said, “Very nice.” Then, looking mischievously at Jake, he added, “Very interesting.”

  “When? When will he do this thing?”

  “On Wednesdays,” Jake answered. “Wednesday is my day off. I’ll start the day after tomorrow, if that’s not too soon.”

  “He’ll need a scaffold, Uncles,” I said.

  “That is no problem. No problem whatsoever.”

  “Not at all,” Uncle Morris said.

  “I’ll bring the paint,” Jake said. “I have many shades of rose, but first I’ll need to see the room to measure the ceiling.”

  The energetic, cheerful Jacob Kaplan who took the stairs two at a time was hardly the shuffling handyman who had fixed the shower in Meadowlark cabin. This man walked around humming under his breath. This man smiled as he took the measurements of the room and studied the ceiling. “It’s almost square,” he said. “I’ll need to draw a grid. Do you think one of your uncles will help?”

  “I know Uncle Alex will be happy to help,” I replied. There was no question in my mind that he would. My father complained that the Uncles spoiled me. It was true that they did let me have whatever I wanted, but I had always figured that that was because I never asked for anything they didn’t want to give me. It was equally true that they let me do whatever I wanted, but that, too, was only because I never asked to be allowed to do anything that they didn’t want to allow. “Uncle Alex takes the afternoon shift at the Time Zone, so he’ll be available in the morning.”

  Jake sat on the edge of my bed. “And you, Miss Margaret Rose, I’ll need you to go to the library and find a picture of the most beautiful rose rose you can find. You better love it, because it will be very large and it will be with you forever.”

  “I’ll do it tomorrow.”

  Jake said, “Good!” and he looked up at the ceiling again.

  I hesitated to ask, but I had to. “Are you being so nice to me because your mother wasn’t?”

  Jake’s eyes stayed focused on the ceiling, and when he did look at me, he asked me to stand in front of him so that we could be eye to eye. “That’s part of the reason.”

  I was secretly hoping that it would not be any part of the reason.

  “And there is something else.”

  “What else?”

  “I admired your resistance and your uncle’s determination to rescue you.” Standing there, eye to eye as he sat on the edge of the bed, he took both of my hands in his. “Margaret, you have to understand that my mother is ill equipped to handle girls who have a vocabulary that matches hers. And she is no match at all for your uncle. He is like a stealth bomber. You can’t see what’s coming until you’ve been wiped out. I like him a lot. Morris, too.” He let my hands go and looked out the window. It was too dark to see the towers, but I knew he was picturing them in his mind’s eye.

  My voice barely above a whisper, I asked, “You fell in love, didn’t you?” And then, embarrassed at mentioning the word love to a person of the opposite sex, particularly to this person of the opposite sex, I quickly added, “You fell in love with the towers, didn’t you?”

  “I guess it’s love, but it is something more. It’s a longing to be in love.”

  Relieved that Jake had not misinterpreted my remark about love, yet disappointed that he had not, I said, “Like why not paint a rose ceiling?”

  “Exactly,” he said. “There is no reason to paint a rose ceiling, and there is no reason not to. It is areasonable, isn’t it, Margaret?” Too dry-mouthed to answer, I nodded. “I’ve longed to do something areasonable for a very long time. The towers made me realize how much. I don’t mind fixing toilets and cleaning out showers, and I don’t even mind being the camp idiot—actually, I am the camp idiot by choice—and I know that painting billboards is not art; it’s hardly a craft, but I loved doing it. I loved it because it was doing something big, the way your uncles love doing the towers. Sometimes I wonder about that need in me. I go to these craft fairs in the mall, and I see all these wooden puzzles and birdhouses and patchwork place mats and painted tin buckets, and I know that there are a lot of people like me who have a need to make things. It’s like asking why we speak. We speak because we are human and because we can. Your uncles build towers because they are men and because they can. I understand the towers. They speak to me. Their language is exotic, but their alphabet is familiar. I understand what they are saying. I do. I really do.”

  “What do you think they are saying?”

  “They are telling me a story. A story full of sense and nonsense. They are saying that if life has a structure, a staff, a sensible scaffold, we hang our nonsense on it. And they are saying that broken parts add color and music to the staff of life. And they also say that when you know that your framework has been built right and strong, it’s all right to add color to it, too. The towers are saying, there is no why—only a why-not. That’s what the towers say to me.” He reached out and took my hands between his, pressing them together like cymbals. “So I say to you, my sweet Margaret, why not paint a rose ceiling? Besides, it gives me a wonderful place to come to on my day off.”

  All the way down the sixteen steps from the second floor to the first, I could feel the touch of his hands where he had held mine when he called me my sweet Margaret.

  Uncle Alex was feeding Tartufo, and Uncle Morris was washing the supper dishes. I picked up a dishtowel and started drying dishes, not totally aware that I was doing so. Uncle Morris pointed to the wall phone and asked Jake if he would like to call his mother.

  “I prefer not to,” he said. He winked at me. The second time he ever did. “But I will. I’ll call her from a pay phone on my way home.”

  He left. The Uncles finished putting away the dishes and silverware, and I gathered up the soiled napkins to put in the upstairs hamper.

  I kissed my uncles good night and climbed the stairs with something in my heart that had never been there before.

  Perfidy in Epiphany

  twelve

  I awakened to the smell of pancakes. I knew they wouldn’t be ordinary pancakes. They would be palacsinta, the thin crepes made with flour, milk, eggs, and carbonated water that Uncle fried one at a time, spread with jam, and rolled.

  I rushed downstairs in my pajamas.

  I would have three to start.

  Dressed, ready for the Time Zone, Uncle Morris was sitting at the table reading the morning paper and drinking coffee. The minute he saw me, he quickly folded the paper and stashed it on the seat of the chair on his left.

  “Good morning,” he said. He had always before greeted me with Jó reggelt, which is good morning in Hungarian, then he would wait for me to repeat the Hungarian. Uncle Alex would add his Jó reggelt, and I would repeat it for him, too.

  This morning, Uncle Alex said nothing—did not even greet me in English—but stood at the stove, with his back to me, pouring batter into a pan. He tipped and twisted the pan until the small amount of batter covered its surface. When the top of the batter bubbled, he flipped the pancake and allowed it to fry for only four or five seconds more before turning it out onto a plate.

  Even Tartufo did not give me his usual greeting. He sat at Uncle’s legs, greed
ily watching every movement of batter and batter-maker. Only after I was seated did he get up and make his way over to me. I petted him and told him, “Good dog,” and when his tail started thumping the floor with pleasure, I whispered that he could have one of my palacsinta.

  Without turning around, Uncle Alex said, “But no jelly. Gives him bad breath.” He spread plum jelly on three of the palacsinta, rolled them up, sprinkled them with powdered sugar, and set them on a plate in front of me. Then he sat down across from me, waited until I had taken my first bite, and asked, “Good?”

  “Very.”

  Uncle Morris got up. “Jaj, Istenem!” he exclaimed. “It’s late. I better get going.”

  The early shift at the Time Zone went from ten to six; the late shift, from one to nine. I looked at the kitchen clock. It was only a quarter to nine. He never left the house before a quarter after. Uncle Morris was always “running late.” In his role as Father Time, my dad would complain, “Morris Rose is a watchmaker, and the man has absolutely no sense of time.” And every time my mother “ran late” he maintained that she had learned it from him.

  Uncle Morris took his jacket from the back of his chair. “Will you be okay while Alex and I are both gone, Margitkám?” he asked.

  I told him that I had a busy day ahead. I had to unpack my camp gear, wash my clothes and my hair, and that would take up practically the whole morning. “I also have to go to the library to choose a picture of a rose rose, and I know that will take a very long time because I need to find the perfect one.” I reminded them that they had promised to put up a scaffold. “Jake said that he’ll be here on Wednesday. That’s tomorrow.”

  “But there is the night, Margitkám,” Uncle Alex said. “We’re used to working at night.”

  “The pipe is ready. Alex will bring it up from the basement. All we have to do is fit the pieces together. The scaffold will be waiting for him.”

  Uncle Morris leaned over and kissed the top of my head. I looked up, told him good-bye, took another bite of palacsinta, and closed my eyes, trying to shut out all sensations except taste. When I opened my eyes, Uncle Morris was standing by the door exchanging a look with Uncle Alex and shaking his head no. “Don’t forget your paper,” Uncle Alex said. He grabbed it, nervously folded it over three times, and shoved it—really shoved it—under Uncle Morris’s arm.

  Pressing the paper close to his ribs, Uncle Morris stiffly opened the screen door. “Well, I’m off,” he said, and didn’t move. He and Uncle Alex exchanged another look. That puzzled me.

  “Go already!” Uncle Alex said. Uncle Morris didn’t budge. Uncle Alex turned away from the stove and waved his spatula in the air. “Go, Morris! Go to work.” I watched the screen door close. Uncle Alex turned back to the stove, flushed. The palascinta had burned. He mumbled under his breath and threw the ruined pancake in the trash. He turned to me and said, “He made me scorch the pan. I’ll have to start with a clean one now.”

  I put my fork down, feeling uneasy.

  “Would you care for another?”

  “I guess so,” I said.

  “What? You only guess so? If you don’t want more, just say so. I won’t bother scrubbing the pan. . . .”

  “I would like two more, Uncle.”

  “Only two?”

  “No. Three. I forgot the one for Tartufo.”

  After breakfast, I went upstairs and gathered up my camp clothes and took them to the basement. On my way to the washer, I passed my uncles’ workshop. I dumped everything into the washer. Everything, whether I had worn it or not. Half listening to the sound of the washing machine fill with water, I entered the workshop and looked around. A layer of dust had settled everywhere. The Uncles had never been very good at keeping order, but this was not disorder as much as it was neglect. I ran my finger through the thick dust on the worktable where Uncle Alex made his pendants. In the far corner of the room there were three sacks of Portland cement. They were for the base of Tower Four. They, too, were covered with dust.

  The washer had finished filling up. There was a click, and the slosh-squish, slosh-squish of the wash cycle began a low rhythmic undertone to the discordant sounds I had heard at breakfast. There had been no cheerful Jó reggelt. There had been: You only guess so? If you don’t want more, just say so. Uncle Alex had never before been that irritable with me. Being irritable with his brother was normal, but never with me. Never. If there was one thing my uncles agreed with each other about, it was how wonderful I was. My uncles had never before exchanged glances with each other over me.

  I lifted the lid of the washer and saw that everything was being agitated. Good. The soil of Talequa would soon go down the drain.

  I went upstairs and passed through the far side of the kitchen. Uncle Alex was again standing at the stove. He glanced over at me briefly and let me go out the back door without a comment or a smile.

  —without the lemon and lime

  I wandered over to the far side of Tower Two. I lifted a chip of paint with my fingernail and watched as it fluttered to the ground. I stood inside the tower ribs and looked up. The paint was flaking all over.

  This past spring, Morris had planted his peppers and Alex had tended his roses, but instead of starting maintenance on the towers, Uncle Alex had announced that they were taking Tartufo to Texas.

  I had asked why, and Uncle Alex had said that there was a report that the filbert trees in a large orchard had developed barren circles around their bases. Such circles, called burn patterns, are a sign of truffles. I had asked why Uncle Morris was also going.

  Uncle Alex had replied, “He’s never been to Texas.”

  “But he hates Tartufo.”

  “Truffles can bring in eight hundred dollars a pound. Even my brother finds that acceptable.”

  I had asked if they would be back in time to take care of me while my mother and father were in Peru. “I’ll mix up the lemon and lime paint to go with the orange sherbet.”

  And that was when Uncle Alex had suggested that camp might be good for me. He said that because I was an only child, a group experience might be a good thing. I was shocked. I told him that like every other only child on the planet, I was no more responsible for being only than I was for being a child. My own mother, Naomi, whom he loved as much as he loved me, had been an only child and had never had a camp experience, and everyone—with the possible exception of my father—thought that she had turned out perfect. Besides, if he had gone to school in this country instead of in the Old World, he would know that grades K through six give a person enough group experience to last the rest of her life.

  I had just gotten over the shock of discovering that my parents had no intention of taking me with them, and now I had to face the fact that my uncles didn’t want me either. I could not understand why no one wanted to solve the “What to do with Margaret” problem. I could not understand why they even saw it as a problem.

  I avoided my uncles after that, and I avoided my parents, too, except for the goods and services required by me, a minor who could not yet drive a car or earn a living wage. I spoke when spoken to and directed all my attention to my hurt feelings and the mountain of camp brochures I had sent for.

  When the Uncles returned from Texas, Uncle Morris called. I knew that his calling me was quite a concession, for Uncle Morris was convinced that telephones rotted the ears and were responsible for his hearing loss. He almost never made a phone call voluntarily. He told me that he and Uncle Alex had brought me a present from Texas. Summoning up all the indifference I could command, I managed not to ask what it was or when I could get it. This resulted in a long telephone pause that began to rot my ears. So to end the ear-rotting silence, I asked if Tartufo had found a truffle. He had not.

  I moved back out from under the cage of tower ribs and poked my finger into a paint blister. I watched it deflate, leaving a wrinkled skin of mauve like an untreated wound. The dust in the workshop, the blisters and flakes of paint were sending me a message. Something was wrong. />
  I returned to the kitchen. Uncle Alex had the refrigerator door open and was studying its contents. Tartufo pranced between me and Uncle, his feet making ticktock noises on the linoleum floor. Still keeping his back to me, Uncle Alex continued to look inside the refrigerator. “I know I have some cottage cheese.”

  “You have your hand right on it, Uncle.”

  “Oh, yes, so I do.”

  I said, “Put it down, Uncle. Please.”

  Uncle Alex closed the refrigerator door and sat down opposite me. Tartufo calmed down and sat by Uncle’s chair. Uncle concentrated on petting Tartufo. He would not look me in the eye. “I’m thinking of having Tartufo groomed,” he said. “It might improve his looks. People are so impressed by appearances. They don’t realize what a valuable dog Tartufo is. Do you realize that truffles sell for eight hundred dollars a pound? Eight hundred dollars.”

  Uncle Alex was chattering away like a talk-show host, looking at Tartufo as if he were a cue card for a subject to use up time. I never knew either of the Uncles to care about money. “Uncle!” I said. “I think you ought to tell me what’s going on. You’ll be using the pipe for the fourth tower for the scaffold, won’t you?”

  “Why not? We have it. It’s ready.”

  “There isn’t going to be a fourth tower, is there, Uncle?”

  “You want a one-word answer?” I nodded. “No. A two-word answer would be: Definitely no.”

  “Why?”