“I’m busy,” Peter said, looking away.
“Well then, Friday, O.K.?” She laughed quickly. “I’ll make sure Stanley doesn’t come.”
“I’ll be busy Friday,” he said stubbornly.
She stood over him, and he kept his eyes focused on her feet. Her socks didn’t match. One had ribbing and one didn’t. He concentrated on the one that didn’t have ribbing and began thinking about it. Was it a white sock that had yellowed, or was it a yellow sock that had faded? It seemed important to come to some conclusion about it, and he kept his eyes on it until suddenly, it wasn’t there any more.
When he stood up, she was halfway up the block, and he waited for her to turn around. But she didn’t. So after a while, he walked back through the vestibule door, and then he remembered and returned to the stoop. The box was still there, so he picked it up, hurried inside, and dropped it on his desk. But later in the day, when he was sated and nearly happy again after re-examining all his gifts, he saw it there, and opened it, and looked with disdain at the cheap, dime-store cuff links with their garish, green stones. And he took up the box, and ran into the kitchen, and threw it in the garbage can.
It was Stanley who started him thinking about her again, and Marv who made him feel so rotten.
All those weeks, he’d hardly given her a thought. For a week or so after the bar mitzvah, he’d still felt angry and purposely avoided her. He began walking to school with the other kids, watching her lumbering along in the distance, alone, as she deserved to be. But school had ended in June, and there had been plenty to do, what with playing ball with the other kids, swimming, reading, and working on the moat with Marv. He’d almost forgotten about her, and when he did think about her it was with irritation and relief that no longer did he have to fight off the whole world over her. She just had not been worth all that trouble. Thank goodness it was over.
Now, in mid-August, with the summer at its peak, and with one easy day like another, with nothing
that you had to do—no homework, no Hebrew School —only ices to eat, and mosquito bites to scratch, and endless, hot, languorous days to float through, he was beginning to feel just a little restless, just a little excited about the prospect of school starting up again, and a little hungry for the sound of the alarm clock in his sleepy ears. Just a little.
A stubborn crack had developed in one wall of the moat late in July, and the water continually seeped out. He and Marv had been working away patiently, tracking the crack to its source, cementing, exulting, despairing, and facing failure at every turn. The water would not stay in. Today they would try again, but first he had to go to the egg store and buy a dozen cracked eggs for his mother. Heat or no, she had determined to make a spongecake. Bernard was expected for dinner tonight, and lately his mother had been throwing all her talents into preparing the most exquisite dishes for him. Rosalie’s hair had grown in and her face had become increasingly happy. His mother seemed to feel that the situation was close to a crisis, and that her contribution in bringing matters to a productive conclusion lay in the state of Bernard’s stomach.
Peter bought the eggs and was on his way home again, when along came Stanley.
“Hey, Peter,” Stanley yelled. “Hello, Peter.”
Stanley seemed happy to see him, and Peter looked around uncomfortably to see if Veronica was somewhere about too. Come to think of it, he hadn’t seen her far or near for quite awhile.
But Stanley was alone. He hurried up to Peter, and pulled a letter out of his pocket, and waved it proudly. “I got another letter today. And yesterday, I got a post card. She only wrote a couple of times to my mama, but she writes all the time to me.” Stanley’s bright face suddenly dimmed. A look of suspicion spread across it. “How many times did she write to you?”
“Who?” asked Peter.
“Her! Veronica!”
“Well, where is she?” Peter said impatiently.
“You know,” Stanley insisted. “She’s visiting her papa. She and Mary Rose. They went with their Uncle Charles all the way on the train. They slept on the train, and they ate on the train, and she sent me a picture post card of the train.”
“I didn’t even know she was away,” Peter said, feeling strangely irritated that she should be enjoying such an adventure without his even hearing about it. Of course, he knew her father lived in Las Vegas, and that Veronica and her sister hadn’t seen him since they were babies. What had happened suddenly to bring about their going? He had a sudden righteous feeling that it was his mediation between her and her uncle that had brought about the trip.
Grumpily, he questioned Stanley. “When did she go?”
“Right after school ended.”
“When is she coming back?”
“Soon.” Stanley’s face looked suddenly drawn. “They didn’t tell me she was going to go. My papa took me to the zoo that day, and I ate hot dogs and popcorn and three root beers, and when I came home, she was gone, and Mary Rose too.” Stanley began hiccuping. “So my mama said I could sleep in their bed that night, and my papa bought me a wagon the next day, and she sent me an Indian belt, and lots of post cards and letters, and , . .”
Stanley stopped talking and stood there hiccing, with such an abandoned look in his eyes that even Peter was moved to pat him gently on the shoulder and say kindly, “Well, I guess she’ll be back real soon. School will be starting in a couple of weeks.”
“Yeah,” Stanley said, happy again. “She’s not going to stay there. She’s coming home on the train. She said so in her letter. She said she was bringing me a surprise. What do you think she’s bringing me?”
“Something nice,” Peter said softly. He shifted the eggs and said, “Well, I’ve got to go now.”
“Where?” Stanley asked.
“Home.”
“Can I come too?”
“Well, gee, I don’t know. Doesn’t your mother want you home?”
“She said I could play outside for a while. Can I come with you?”
Stanley followed him into the kitchen. Peter put
the eggs on the table and called into the interior of the apartment, “Ma, the eggs are on the table.”
“Fine,” came his mother’s voice.
“I’m going now.”
“Where are you going?”
“To Marv’s.”
“Don’t get dirty.”
“O.K., Ma.” With Stanley trotting along at his heels, he hurried down the stairs, grateful that it hadn’t been necessary to introduce Stanley to his mother and answer any uncomfortable questions.
Across the street, Marv was already at work, and a number of neighborhood kids, hopefully clad in bathing suits, were standing around watching him and waiting.
“How’s it going?” Peter asked.
Marv looked happy. “I think I’ve got it. Look-down in that corner. You see where the wall bulges out? We didn’t notice that little hole there, right under the bulge. I think that’s where all the trouble is coming from.”
“Can I take off my shoes?” Stanley said, looking hungrily into the moat,
“I guess so,” Peter said.
“Who’s the kid?” asked Marv, looking up.
“Stanley—uh—Veronica’s kid brother.”
“Oh. Hi, Stanley,” Marv said, smiling, and resumed his examination of the wall. Stanley took off his shoes and socks and jumped down into the moat. He wasn’t hiccuping any more, and after a while, he
climbed out of the moat, crossed over the bridge, and wandered off into the cellar.
“We’ll stuff it up with gravel,” Marv decided, presenting his diagnosis, “and then cement it over.”
“We gonna swim today?” asked one of the neighborhood children.
“Are you gonna fill it up with water soon?” asked another.
“Not today,” Marv said pleasantly. “We’ve got to wait until the cement dries. Maybe in a few days you’ll be able to swim.”
Some of the children wandered off. A few others joined Stanley in the basement. Throughout the whole summer, the neighborhood children seemed to converge on Marv’s house, poking around the moat, playing in the cellar or out in the back yard, where Marv’s finished and unfinished structures provided a play area unmatched by any of the city playgrounds. Marv never seemed to mind having younger kids around, and Peter looked thoughtfully toward the cellar where Stanley had gone, and suddenly felt like talking.
“Marv,” he said, “could I tell you something?”
“Sure,” said Marv, bending over the moat again, his hands probing and exploring like a surgeon’s.
“You know Veronica and I aren’t friends any more, but I never told you why.”
“I figured you had a fight or something,” Marv said, climbing down into the moat and bending down to peer into the diseased spot in the wall.
“Do you want to know what really happened?”
“O.K.” Marv’s hand’s began patting the area around the hole.
So Peter told him. And all the old anger and hurt came back as he spoke, and he was surprised because he thought it was all over with. He told Marv about his mother’s dislike for Veronica, her prejudice, his father’s abandonment, and of the whole unhappy, painful time that led up to his bar mitzvah.
Marv nodded as he spoke and said “Oh,” and “Gee,” and continued working on the hole.
Then Peter said that as bad as all that had been, it was nothing compared to how Veronica had acted, how she had betrayed him, and made his long struggle all for nothing.
“What did she do?” Marv asked, still intent on his work.
“She didn’t come.” Peter stopped and waited for Marv to react,
“Yeah?” said Marv. “And then what?”
“She just didn’t come. She just never showed up.”
Marv stopped working and looked at him. “Why not?” he said. “Why didn’t she come?”
“Oh, she said she was scared. She said she hated parties. They made her scared. But she just didn’t care. That’s why she didn’t come. Some friend she turned out to be. She couldn’t take the trouble to come after all the trouble I went through to get my folks to say she could come,” Peter said bitterly, and again waited for Marv to react.
Marv said slowly, “Maybe she
was
scared.”
“But that’s not the point. Don’t you see, if she was really a good friend, she would have come. Why should anybody be scared of parties anyway?”
“I don’t know,” Marv said, “but maybe she was.”
“Don’t you get the point?” Peter insisted. “She had to come because of all the trouble I went through to get my parents to let her come. Don’t you see?”
Marv blinked but he didn’t say anything. He turned his attention back to the hole. That was one thing about Marv. You could never get him to argue. In that respect, he was a lot like his mother.
“Don’t you see?” Peter repeated. “She just was a lousy friend.”
Marv kept working.
“Marv?” Peter cried.
Marv turned around, looked at Peter, and then looked away. “I think we’re going to need more cement,” he said unhappily. “I better mix up some more.”
He climbed out of the moat and escaped into the cellar. And it was suddenly very clear in Peter’s mind what Marv thought and what he was not willing to say.
He sat down on the edge of the moat and knew with certainty that Marv thought
he
had been wrong, and that Veronica had not done anything so terrible after all. She was big and clumsy and scared of parties. And if you have a friend who is big and clumsy and scared of parties, then if you’re a good
friend, you just have to like it or lump it. And he had done neither.
Peter groaned. It was a long summer, and he was growing tired of doing the same things day after day. If Veronica was in the city, maybe he’d go back with Stanley and try to make it up. He’d say, “Let’s forget about what happened. You’re the way you are, and that’s all there is to it. Maybe I was wrong to get so mad, but we’ll forget about it now. So get your skates and let’s go.”
But she wasn’t in the city. Too bad! He felt suddenly overflowing with generosity and pity. Poor big old Veronica. Let the other kids laugh at her, and him too. He wasn’t going to bear any grudges. He’d tell her when she returned that he wasn’t angry any more. He’d make it up, and they’d resume where they left off.
It was good not feeling angry any more. There were too many more important things to be angry about. Good old Marv—you could learn something from anyone. Peter almost chuckled out loud. Marv was right. He hadn’t said anything, but his look had spoken for him. You take your friends for better or worse, Marv’s look said, and if they were a little bit different from other kids, why you just try to overlook those differences. Who knows? Maybe he could even help her to be more comfortable with the other kids. Maybe he could try to draw her into the crowd, get them to like her a little more, suggest some ways that she could improve herself. Oh, there was a lot
he could, and should do for her. After all, what’s a friend for? And besides, she had her good points even as she was. A sharp flow of memories suddenly brought back to him the tang of the wind and the feel of the ground beneath his skates.
He’d make up with her on the first day of school, and the only regret he had at the moment was that she wasn’t around. Because he could hardly wait to see her face when he told her that he wasn’t angry with her any more.
“Wow!” said Frank, as they were walking through the hall to their English class. “Did you see Veronica?”
“I nearly fell over when I did,” Paul said.
And even Bill forgot to make one of his usual wisecracks about her.
Peter felt confused. He’d made up his mind to speak to Veronica on the first day of school. He’d looked for her as he was walking across the park, but she hadn’t been in sight. It was only when they were in their new classroom, and Veronica walked through the door, that he’d seen her for the first time since school ended.
She was not the same person. Her hair was cut short, her skin was very tanned, and her eyes seemed much bluer than he had remembered. She was also wearing a pink sweater and skirt that fit her just right. Pink! Veronica Ganz wearing pink, like any
other girl. And that’s what she looked like—like any other girl.
The only thing that was the same was the way she sat down without looking at anybody, that familiar tight, uncomfortable look on her face. But even that changed. At lunch time, as he was looking at her from across the yard, all by herself, and wondering if he might now go over and talk to her, he saw Lorraine Jacobs approach the bench where she was sitting and stop to talk to her. The next thing he knew, Lorraine was sitting next to her, and after a while, several other girls were parked around them too.