The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place (18 page)

Two sarcasms, and I was sure that he had a syndrome and that I was falling out of love. I took a deep breath. “I wouldn't ask for your help if I didn't need it.”

“Do you want to discuss this over lunch?” Now all the mockery was gone from his voice. “Let me wash up,” he said as he started toward the bathroom. I stood
there, waiting. “Go on,” he said. “I'll meet you in the Tower Garden.”

“In the kitchen,” I said.

“I thought we had a plan.”

“I prefer the kitchen,” I said.

“Whatever you prefer,” he said, and waited for me to return his smile.

I did. No reason not to. I had his attention.

Even when the news was bad—as this surely was—I always got a certain shudder of excitement, which is called a
frisson,
at being the first to tell. I was embarrassed that this was so, but not so embarrassed that I did not feel my blood warm at the drama of what I had to say—and at what I guessed would be Jake's reaction to it.

I was not disappointed. He bounded up from his chair and lifted it, jammed it back down onto the floor, sat down with a thump, and pounded the table. “Who are these Philistines?”

“The neighbors. They're lawyers.”

“They can't do this!”

Feeling very grown up, I replied, “Yes, they can. They can unless we stop them.” I told him about my conversations with Peter Vanderwaal and Loretta Bevilaqua, and how each of them had told me that step one was to stop the demolition. “Possession is nine points of the
law,” I explained, “so I am going to buy the towers as Loretta said I should, and then I am going to occupy them. Will you help?”

I told Jake what I hoped to do, and we discussed it as equals. We made a list and checked it twice. After we reviewed who would do what and when, Jake said, “Sounds like a plan.” And we shook hands on it.

When Jake was ready to head back to Camp Talequa, I walked out to the alley with him. He looked up at Tower Two. “Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Are you scared?”

I nodded again.

“Good,” he said. “If you're scared, you won't get careless.”

I
got through dinner without mentioning the towers even once, and afterward Uncle Alex and I took Tartufo for his walk. “Tartufo likes to walk at night,” he said. “In Italy where he was born, they train truffle dogs mostly at night because the
tartufai,
the truffle hunters, like to keep their best locations secret. People have been known to kidnap prize truffle dogs. Truffle hunting is a very competitive business. The season is short, and the rewards are high. There is safety in secrets.”

“What if Tartufo never finds any truffles, Uncle?”

“I don't care. He keeps me doing something from within myself for the sake of something that is not. Tartufo is good company.”

“Uncle Morris doesn't think so.”

“Yes, he does. That's his secret,
édes
Margitkám. We'll let him keep it.”

“Doing something from within yourself for something that is not—is that why you built the towers?”

“Probably. They kept Morris and me going through
some bad times. It was good having something that was common to both of us and was its own thing besides. Other people have children they raise. The children are from both parents, but also someone in their own right. They are good company while you have them, but you have to let them go.”

“Like the towers, Uncle? Is that why you don't care that the towers are coming down?”

Uncle Alex stopped short, but Tartufo kept going, tugging on the leash. Without looking at me, he resumed walking. “So you know.”

“Yes, I know.”

“I guess I should be relieved. Neither Morris nor I could bring ourselves to tell you.”

“Because you really do care.”

“Of course we care. But it's like having kids or like having Tartufo. Having had them is more important than keeping them. Can you understand that,
édes
Margitkám?”

“Not really.”

“Maybe it will take a few more years.”

“A few more years? I thought they were going to start next week.”

“I mean, a few more years for you to understand that ‘'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.'”

“What's that?”

“Tennyson.”

“Was he an artist?”

“No. A poet who lost a dear friend.” I reached over for Uncle's hand. “Yeah,” he said, lifting my hand to his lips and kissing my fingertips. “Friends, sisters, towers. Loved and lost. There's nothing more to say.”

When we returned to the house, Uncle Alex said to Uncle Morris, “She knows.”

“You told her?”

“I did not.”

“Then how does she know?”

I hated having people talk about me in the third person as if I weren't there. “Why don't you ask me?”

“So?” Uncle Morris asked. “You found out how?”

By careful editing, leaving out as much as I put in, I told them how I had found out. I worried whether not telling them my plans was a lie and decided that it wasn't. It was a secret. And hadn't Uncle just said that there is safety in secrets? Feeling relieved about telling the truth but not the whole truth, I asked my uncles if they would sell me the towers for a dollar a piece. (As part of our afternoon planning, Jake had given me a cash advance on the refund I was due from Talequa.)

“Why do you want them, Margitkám? You will have
the house. It's in our will that you will inherit the house. The towers? They are not worth anything at all. They are what we call in business a liability.”

“Not to me. I want to say they're mine even if it is only for a little while. Like having children.”

Uncle Alex, who caught the reference and was touched by it, said, “Morris, the child wants them. Give them to her.”

“No,” I insisted. “I must buy them. I have the money.”

“All right,” he said. Then, turning to his brother, he said, “Alex, you write up a paper.”

“And we'll get it notarized.”

“Notarized? Where did you learn of such things?”

I did my best imitation of the Old World shrug. “Sixth grade.”

The following morning my uncles and I made a trip to the bank where they normally did their Time Zone business. Mr. McDowell, their loan officer, made out an official bill of sale. Before I turned over my three dollars to complete the sale, Mr. McDowell asked my uncles, “Does this niece of yours realize that if anyone gets hurt as a result of something falling from them or if anyone falls off of them, she can be sued?”

I truly hated being talked about as if I weren't there.
I said, “We have a fence and a vicious dog to keep them out. If they get in, they'll be trespassing.”

Mr. McDowell still wouldn't talk to me. “Does your niece know that the towers have been condemned?”

“Condemned?”
I asked. “Condemned to die like someone guilty of a crime?”

That got his attention, and at last he addressed me. “In the case of a building, it means unfit for use by official order.”

“Unfit for use! How stupid! The towers have no use. My mother says that they don't need to be useful. She says that they are superfluous and that is their power because, without them, our world would be less beautiful and a lot less fun.”

Mr. McDowell said, “She's a sassy one, isn't she?”

“She?” Uncle Alex asked. “You must not mean our Margaret Rose. Our Margaret Rose isn't sassy. She's incorrigible.”

Mr. McDowell cleared his throat and notarized the bill of sale.

F
or the next five days, between the time that Uncle Alex left for the Time Zone and the time Uncle Morris returned, I laid in supplies. I already had a rain poncho, a sleeping bag, sunblock, and mosquito repellent among the stuff that I had brought back from Talequa.

I bought quantities of bottled water, trail mix, beef jerky, and towelettes. These items required multiple trips by bus to various distant strip malls so that I could avoid those that were near Schuyler Place or my family home because I didn't want anyone who knew me to spot me. And, of course, I stayed clear of the Fivemile Creek Mall. I bought a little bit at a time so that I could find places to stash things. Every time I went out, I bought a pound of cottage cheese, ate some, dumped the rest, washed the container, and stashed it in my bottom dresser drawer.

I also made many important long-distance phone calls.

I called Loretta Bevilaqua at work and got her
administray assist,
who insisted that Ms. Bevilaqua could
not come to the phone, but I was free to leave a message either with him or on voice mail.

“When will she get it?” I asked.

“When she checks her messages.”

“Can I tell her not to call me during certain hours?”

“You certainly may, but, of course, that could delay her response.”

I chose voice mail. I said that I now owned
them.
I said that
they
cost three dollars. And that
it
was notarized, but I didn't ask for a return call.

I always had better luck reaching Peter Vanderwaal. Either a polite female voice said, “Sheboygan Art Center,” and then connected me directly to Peter, or Peter himself answered. He reported that he was making progress on getting the CPC organized, but it was taking a lot longer than he had thought it would. “At my own expense, I am sending letters out by Federal Express with prepaid return envelopes, and you have no idea—I certainly didn't—how expensive that has turned out to be. So far I have received only three of them back. When I call to remind them, they don't call back.”

I sympathized with him and told him the difficulties I was having in reaching Loretta. Peter said, “I thought she would return calls directly.”

“Why did you think that?”

“Because she is a truly busy person. Truly busy
people don't dillydally. They are decisive and they return phone calls. It's those of lesser importance who have to impress you with how busy they are and how they can't get around to your request.”

“But she has an administray assist.”

“Darling,” Peter said, “you are sunk unless you can find some way to get around her.”

“Him.”

“Worse,” Peter said. “When the administrative assistant is a male, he is hell-bent on proving how important he is, so he works overtime protecting his boss from the people she has to do business with. Tell me, don't you have any way to get around him?”

I said that I had a home number, but when Loretta's business hours were over and the administray assist was off duty, my uncles were home, and I didn't want to make or receive calls then. And that's when Peter Vanderwaal volunteered to be my go-between. “Give me that number, and I'll be your administrative assistant, darling, and you can just go about your business of stopping the demolition.” I thanked him, and he said, “Nothing to it. I'm coming home this weekend to light a fire under a few art professors at Clarion State University. They should be mounting the barricades instead of sitting on their writing hands. I hope to shame them into becoming active.”

“Will I see you?” I asked.

“You tell me when to come, and we'll have a secret visit in the Tower Garden. You'll recognize me even though I don't look at all like that picture in my mother's office. I probably don't look like anyone you've ever seen. I have a diamond stud in my left ear; I always wear a bow tie; and I shave my head. But, trust me, you'll find me adorable.”

I could hardly wait.

He was pinker and rounder than I had pictured him in my mind, but he was everything else I had hoped he would be. When he said
we
—as in “We ought to go to Summit Street and get a
latte'
—that
we
meant him, Peter, and me, Margaret, and the
latte
meant a cup of coffee with a lot of steamy milk in it served in a special glass with a metal holder.

As we sat at the small round table that was outside the restaurant, I put my elbows on the table, leaned forward, and stared deeply into Peter's eyes. He was so fascinating. “How is your father's dialysis?” I asked.

“Oh, he's all right. It sure keeps Mother busy, and that's good.”

“Why is that good?”

“What with all the care she has to give Dad, I don't think she wants grandchildren at the moment, so she
doesn't keep asking me when I'm going to get married. Mothers are so needy.”

I let my wrist go limp as I dangled my
latte
spoon in my right hand. “You don't care for children?”

“I can stand a few of them as individuals, but, God forgive me, not in groups.”

I stirred my drink and took a sip and, in my best movie-star manner, looked at Peter over the rim of my glass before putting it down. “That's fascinating. I thought the very same thing after my experience with Talequa.”

“Talequa? What's a Talequa?”

“It's a summer camp where I was being warehoused.” “Well,” Peter said, “I had a summer camp experience once. Day camp. Two weeks. It was not pleasant, but then, neither was I.”

“Oh!” I said, marveling at how much we had in common. “I was called incorrigible.”

“How did you escape?”

“Uncle Alex rescued me.”

“Well, Margaret Rose, you must regard all of life's experiences as corners in the maze of life. Round the corner or bump into it. It's all part of getting there.”

“Getting where?”

“To being grown up.”

“Is being grown up worth it?”

“You betcha.”

“Why?”

“Because grown-ups get to make all the movies, get to lead all the orchestras, and get to get their ears pierced without asking permission.”