Not a Happy Camper (21 page)

Which made me feel better about my own actions. All I did was try to steal a spoon ring and I ended up giving it back. At least I could still say, “I am not a crook.”

“Totally manipulative,” Philip said with disgust.

“Yeah, manipulating people is wrong,” I agreed, nudging closer to Philip when I spotted Kenny at the rear of the social hall.

The campers from the Allagash trip were back. Kenny was back. Back in my life. I smiled his way, trying to look casual, but he didn't return the smile. In fact, his face was bright red. Like he'd been crying. Like Nixon's resignation mattered to him. Was that possible? Could it be? My Kenny? Sure, his parents were, but I never would have suspected him, too.

I had only Richard Nixon to thank for giving me
my
secret plan. I knew now how I would make Kenny mine. Starting immediately, I would become a Republican.

to the tune of
Sugar in the Morning

“Chicken in the morning
Chicken in the evening
Chicken all noon and night.
Why do we eat chicken?
‘Cause Saul's fist is too tight.”

I
F NOTHING ELSE
, I
FELT BAD FOR
P
HILIP
S
ELIG
.

“Don't you feel like your parents are sort of cheating you?” I asked.

“Out of what?” he wanted to know.

“The whole thing. The party. The presents. The new suit. The chance to spend your summer off, without having to study.”

Philip didn't see it my way, that his parents had done him a great disservice when they arranged for him to have his Bar Mitzvah at camp. To me, it was just plain wrong. Like most of the kids from my Hebrew School class, I'd had a ceremony at the temple followed by a big party. Kids whose parents were rich had the party at The Crystal Plaza. Kids whose parents weren't rich had it at the temple in the big room behind the sliding doors. And kids whose parents were on the cusp of rich, yet sweating out every dollar they spent, had it at The Short Hills. That's where mine was.

“You didn't get to pick out invitations or anything,” I argued.

“What were yours like?” Philip asked.

“They were yellow with little green flowers around the edges.”

Philip wrinkled his nose. “Flowers? Doesn't seem like you. Sounds girly.”

“So? I am a girl,” I said indignantly.

“No, I mean I just thought you'd pick something... I don't know... more... or less-” He couldn't find the words.

“Well, you know,” I cut in, “my mother picked them out for me.”

“So you just okayed them?”

“Not really.”

My mother had also picked out the matching response card with boxes to check off if you'd be attending and, if so, whether you wanted chateaubriand or chicken for your main course. She was appalled when two people requested the latter. “Who picks chicken?” she wanted to know. “You're not supposed to pick the chicken. The whole point was to show people we're paying for steak.”

This was an important issue for my mother. We'd had chateaubriand at my older brother's Bar Mitzvah (first time I ever heard of it) and in years to come, would have it at both of my younger brothers' ceremonies and at my father's synagogue Manof-the-Year dinner. My mother cultivated a strong relationship with Mr. Trachtenberg, owner of The Short Hills, who referred to every expense as
bupkis
, and she was able to wangle some extra chateaubriand out of him shortly after we got our first dog. My mother found out that the scraps from all the fancy catered dinners were thrown away, so she convinced Mr. T to have his kitchen staff save them for her and each week she stopped by to pick up the aluminum foil packages. Sheba had steak at every meal while the rest of us continued to dine on hamburgers.

“Who'd you invite to the big shindig?” Philip inquired.

I thought about the two hundred people who'd attended The Day I Became a Woman. “I guess they were mostly my parents' friends and my father's business associates, a lot of lawyers and secretaries. And relatives . . . ”

“What about
your
friends?”

“Yeah, they were there.”

I still had some friends back then, before spring came and I shocked the town by joining the boys' baseball league, after which I was tacitly shunned. About ten of the kids I'd invited were friends and another ten were kids who'd already invited me to their parties, so I was obligated to invite them back.

“And you had your own kids' section at the back of the catering hall, right?” Philip asked. “With that big, dumb thing of flowers in the middle that all the women fight over at the end for who gets to take it home?”

“No. Only the adults got flowers. We got yellow helium balloons in the middle.”

Which made it hard to see each other across the table, a shame since we all looked our best. The girls wore floor-length frilly dresses with multiple rows of tight elastic gathers at the waist and the biggest, puffiest sleeves we could find. The boys were decked out in sports jackets over brightly colored shirts adorned with big clip-on bow ties, the perfect complement to their bell-bottomed plaid pants. Everyone loved crushed velvet.

A lot of the girls wore their first high heels. I opted for heels that were just sort of medium and I was still much taller than any of the boys, obvious when we got up to dance. My parents had hired The Herb Zane Orchestra, a band fond of Glenn Miller tunes and
Alley Cat
.

“Right knee, right knee, left knee, left...”

Every Jewish kid in Springfield danced exactly alike because we'd all attended the same Bar Mitzvah dance class, taught by a gym teacher from another town. We learned three dances: the Box Step, the Cha-Cha, and a jerky rock ‘n roll move called the Horse.

“What else am I missing out on?” Philip wanted to know. I was sorry I'd started this conversation.

“There's the money you get,” I reminded him. “All the checks. Like two thousand dollars.”

“But the party costs your parents close to three thousand, right? So really, you're losing money on the deal.”

This was true. My parents made a point of letting me know that, especially when I asked if I could buy a stereo for my bedroom like all of the other kids' parents let them do, a really good one with a semi-automatic belt-drive turntable and maybe a couple of cool new albums to play on it, like Elton John or John Denver. Anything but those same old Burl Ives records my parents were always buying at Two Guys. But they said, “No, you can keep ten dollars. The rest of the money goes into your college fund.”

“I might get to buy a stereo,” I said, then felt bad because I figured Philip's parents were even poorer than mine and this camp Bar Mitzvah was an excuse to save money.

“I already have a stereo,” he told me, “and about a hundred albums. But I'm kind of bored with all of them. I'll buy some new ones when we go home.”

This camp Bar Mitzvah thing was starting to look good.

“But doesn't it bother you to have to meet with Saul all summer and practice?”

“We don't really study,” Philip said. “Mostly, we sit around and he tells me stories.”

“About what?”

“About his life, growing up on the banks of the Mississippi River.”

“Saul Rattner? The camp owner? I thought he was from Teaneck.”

“He might be a little mixed up,” Philip suggested. “I think he might think he's Mark Twain or something. And I'm pretty sure he didn't go to rabbinical school like he told my parents. I'm not even sure he can really read Hebrew. Doesn't matter. I'm ready. I know the whole thing. Wanna hear it?”

For weeks Philip had been asking me to listen to him practice his Torah portion. Anywhere and everywhere, the subject came up.

“Can you listen to me now?” Philip would ask.

“Um, now?” I'd reply. “In the middle of flag-raising? While you're in your underwear? Can't you ask Saul to listen?”

And Philip would pout, “I want to know what
you
think.”

What I was thinking was that he was six months younger than I was and that girls are supposed to have boyfriends who are older and a couple of inches taller with the potential to make at least twice as much money as we ever would. These were the rules, they didn't describe Philip and I wasn't ready to break them.

“C'mon,” he practically begged. “There's no one in the bunk. We could go back there.”

“The bunk?”

“We'd have it all to ourselves. We'd be all alone.”

All alone? What if he had something else on his mind? And what if he didn't and I really did have to listen to him sing? What if he was awful and I had to plaster a smile on my face and nod and say, “Gee, you're so good”?

“Why don't you surprise me on the big day?” I suggested.

And he did. If I had listened to Philip even once beforehand, I'd have known what an amazing voice he had. Perfect, beautiful and melodic. Something I'd never possess. I wondered why he hadn't auditioned for a lead in
The Sound of Music
instead of just pulling the curtain.

I wasn't the only one who was impressed. Everyone thought Philip was great. Saul was extremely pleased, too, and in an eloquent speech detailing Philip's new duties and what is expected of an honest and humble man, Saul managed to drop in that he was responsible for Philip's training. Then Saul shocked the crowd
when he presented Philip with an expensive gift, a magnificent set of fins and snorkel gear, which, throughout the course of his lifetime, Philip would neither use nor ever give away.

It looked like the whole thing was wrapping up and then near-tragedy struck. “Maddy,” Saul called out, “won't you please send your girls up here to dance the traditional
Hora
around this young man?” In an instant, the day was no longer about Philip Selig and his induction into manhood; it was about me becoming a public spectacle. Why was I being made to suffer like this? What kind of God would take a gawky thirteen-year-old and make her dance in front of people and Kenny and not be allowed to use any of her two thousand dollars to buy a stereo? And how was it that I was so good at softball and yet so bad at putting one foot in front of the other?

My bunkmates rose and headed toward Philip, but I thought about turning and running off in another direction, to the boys' dining hall where I could hide in the closet under the steps with the rats until it was all over. I thought about it, but I didn't do it. That was the old me who wasn't going to end up with a boyfriend. The new me didn't run. The new me climbed a mountain and would once again rise to the occasion, stride toward Philip—and dance very badly.

“I can't dance,” Betty whimpered. Music to my ears if not rhythm to my feet. Surely Betty would look worse than I and all eyes would be fixed on her.

“You dance really well in your sleep,” Hallie told her.

“What? I don't dance in my sleep. Why didn't you wake me?”

Autumn Evening had told us, and we believed, that if you wake a sleepwalker they can instantly have a heart attack and die. We let Betty do whatever she wanted in her sleep.

“Just do what I do,” Dana advised her. “It'll be over before you know it.”

As usual, Dana was right. There was barely enough room for the five of us to circle around Philip. Bumping into each other and trampling over feet, we all looked equally ridiculous. Not that Philip noticed; he was beaming. As the circle broke up and I turned back toward the benches, Philip pulled me aside and asked, “How'd I do?”

“Kinda perfect,” I told him, prompting him to spontaneously kiss me on the cheek, which was, when I thought about it later, not horrible.

“Mindy, these are my parents,” Philip said, thrusting into my face two short strangers from whom he was cloned.

“Hello,” they said.

“Um, hi,” I said back.

I was disarmed by the way Mr. and Mrs. Selig looked at me, a look I would become more familiar with in college. A look that said, “You're not much to look at, but you'll be good to my son. Welcome, my future daughter-in-law.” A look, that on this day, I did not yet understand.

“Can we get a picture of you two together?” Mr. Selig asked. “Philip's first girlfriend.”

But I was not Philip's girlfriend. I was this terrible, awful person using their son because I really wanted to be dating Kenny, who I was hoping was watching so he'd think I was this great person he was missing out on, even though I was really this terrible, awful girl using Philip.

Philip put his arm around me and his father snapped the photo. Or tried to. He couldn't get the thing to work.

I picked Kenny out from the crowd and called to him. “Hey, we could use a little of your expertise!”

“We don't need him,” Philip said. “We can do this ourselves.”

But Kenny arrived on the scene and showed Mr. Selig what to press as I put my arm around Philip and flashed a great big railroad tracks and rubber bands smile.