Peter and Veronica (13 page)

The next morning, she was walking to school with the girls. And the next morning too.

Veronica Ganz was a different person, and yet, after a few days of commenting on the change, everything seemed to settle down, and none of the other kids seemed to remember what she used to be like. It was as if she had always been the way she now was. And when, on Thursday, he saw her and Bill laughing together in the hall, and he turned around to see if anybody else shared his astonishment, nobody even seemed to notice.

What to do then? He tried to smile at her, to catch her eye, to find an opportunity to speak to her alone. But she stubbornly refused to look at him. He thought of going over to her house but for one reason or another kept putting it off. But today was Friday, and Friday had always been special for
the two of them. He made up his mind that if he didn’t get to talk to her in school today, then afterward, he would go over to her house and speak with her then.

But he had an uncomfortable feeling that the situation had grown much more complicated. Take the way she was suddenly getting along so well with the other kids. Wasn’t that what he hoped would happen? What he had planned on helping her to achieve? So why should he feel so rotten when he saw her laughing and talking with everybody else? He tried to convince himself that it was only because the two of them still hadn’t made up, and once they had, why it would even be better than it used to be. Wasn’t it a good thing that she looked so well and had suddenly become a part of the crowd? He certainly wouldn’t want her to go back looking the way she used to, and talking to nobody but himself. He wouldn’t want that. What kind of a person would he be if he did?

Well, today he’d just go and straighten it all out. Tell her he wasn’t sore any more, and—then what? He wasn’t quite sure—the way she’d gone and changed. It was unsettling.

But he did not have to go to her house after all, because Veronica sought him out. She was waiting for him Friday morning right in front of his house. He saw her as he came through the door, and greeted her with enthusiasm.

“Oh, Veronica! Gee, I’m glad to see you. I was going to come to your house this afternoon. I’ve got to talk to you.”

“I want to talk to you too,” she said, her blue eyes frosty. “That’s why I’m here. Let’s walk to school on Third Avenue so we can talk without interruption.”

“Great,” Peter said eagerly. “I’ve got a lot to say to you.”

He began walking next to her and stole a quick look at her face. With satisfaction, he noted that her tan was beginning to fade, although she still looked unnaturally well. No buttons were off her red sweater and her blue plaid skirt hung in crisp, tight pleats. Even her socks matched. Uncomfortably he wondered how he should begin. But she didn’t give him a chance.

“I wanted to talk to you,” she said, not looking at him, “because I have several things that are on my mind and I want you to know what they are.” Her voice was cold, and she spoke in a flat, rehearsed manner, as if she’d practiced saying this before.

“The last time I spoke to you,” she continued, “I apologized for not coming to your bar mitzvah.”

“Aw, Veronica,” Peter interrupted, “let’s forget all about that. I was going to tell you ...”

“Just a minute,” she said peremptorily. “Let me finish and then you can say what you like.”

Peter nodded unhappily. The conversation was not going in the direction he had planned.

“Now then,” she went on, in the same cold, flat voice, “as I said before, last time I saw you I apologized. What I want to do now is to tell you that I am only sorry about one thing, and that is that I did apologize.”

She turned to look at him then and her eyes were blazing. “I didn’t owe you an apology. You owed me one. I wasn’t the bad friend. You were! I never asked you to go and fight with your family over me. I didn’t even know you were doing it. And if you had asked me, I would have told you not to, because I didn’t want to come to your bar mitzvah. I hate parties. I hate going places where I don’t know anybody. And if you were a good friend, you would have thought about my feelings and not your own. And I want to tell you something else—maybe you thought you were such a big hero, fighting against prejudice and all that, but you didn’t do anything for me! You didn’t even care about me! You didn’t even think about me!”

“How can you say that?” Peter yelled, angry and hurt too. “How can you say I didn’t care about you, when I wouldn’t let my family discriminate against you. I was even willing to give up having the bar mitzvah if they didn’t let you come. So how can you say I wasn’t thinking about you? Who was I thinking about if I wasn’t thinking about you?”

“You!” Veronica cried. “You were thinking about you! About what a great guy you were! It had nothing at all to do with me. Because what did I care
if you fought with your family. I didn’t ask you to. I didn’t want to come. You can’t fight for people if they don’t want you to fight for them. You’ve got to see what they want, and all I wanted from you was ...” Veronica’s lips began trembling, and she had to swallow hard a couple of times before she could finish what she was saying. “... was for you to be my friend, and it didn’t matter a bit to me what your mother said, or what my mother said, or what anybody else said. But you—just because I didn’t come to your bar mitzvah—you made fun of me, and stopped being my friend. For a little thing like that. That’s all the friendship meant to you.

“So,” Veronica continued, catching her breath, and her voice resumed its flat, studied air, “I wanted you to know that if I ruined your bar mitzvah, as you said I did last time we spoke, you have ruined my summer, and more than that, you have destroyed my confidence in friendship. That’s all I have to say to you except that I withdraw my apology and hope that I never have to speak to you as long as I live.”

“O.K., O.K.,” Peter snapped, “now you made your little speech, suppose I make mine.”

“There’s nothing that you can possibly say,” Veronica said loftily, that cool, impassive look again in her eyes, “that would make a bit of difference. I’ve thought about you all summer, and I know now that you were the worst friend that anybody ever had.”

There was a well of words in Peter’s throat, but he couldn’t speak them. Words he had thought he
would say to her before she’d spoken. Words he knew now no longer had any meaning. How could he tell her he wasn’t angry any more when she was so angry? How could he tell her he’d forget and forgive when she would not?

He looked at the gleaming row of brass buttons on her sweater and said petulantly, “Don’t tell me I ruined your summer. You don’t look like anybody ruined your summer.”

Veronica said, “If you mean because I’ve got all these new clothes, that has nothing to do with you. My father’s wife happens to be a saleslady in a department store in Las Vegas, and before we left, she got Mary Rose and me a lot of clothes half price.”

“Well,” Peter said accusingly, “you don’t even look like you any more. I don’t know what happened to you this summer but you just don’t look like you.”

“I do so look like me,” Veronica snapped. “I got a haircut, that’s all. But I don’t see what that has to do with the price of onions. Here I get to go someplace I’ve never been in my whole life, to see my father again and his wife, and everybody’s great, and they do all these great things for us, and take us all over the place, and what do I keep thinking about? You! I couldn’t enjoy anything because I kept thinking about all the things
I
should have said to you, the way I should have told you off instead of apologizing like a dope. Ooh!”

She ground her teeth and her eyes began blazing again.

“You know,” Peter said helplessly, “I was really planning on making up with you before I saw you again. Before you showed up looking like, well, not looking like you.”

“I do so look like me,” Veronica cried.

“Well, anyway,” Peter said quickly, “that’s not important anyway. You can’t help looking the way you look and that’s not what I mean. What I mean And he stopped, because it came to him then, what he did mean, and he said slowly, “What I really mean is—you’re right—and I’m sorry. I guess I got mixed up. I thought because I was sticking my neck out and making a big fuss, you just had to go along with it. But I should have asked you first. Maybe you would have said not to, and maybe I would have anyway, but I had no right blaming you for not going along with me. You’re you and I’m me, and I’ll try not to forget it, ever again.”

She sniffed and looked away from him. They continued walking along together silently until Peter said, “Do you remember, Veronica, the last time I apologized to you?”

“I remember,” she said crisply.

“That was after I had gotten the other boys to beat you up, and I felt so bad I just couldn’t think about anything else. But do you remember what happened after I apologized?”

“No.”

“Sure you do,” Peter urged softly. “We became
friends. So now let’s do it again. I apologize and let’s be friends.”

“No!” Veronica said. “That time, maybe I was wrong, too, but not this time. This time, I know what kind of a person you are, and how little friendship means to you. I don’t want you for a friend.”

“People change,” Peter said. “You did, this summer, and it’s not only because you got a haircut and new clothes. You changed. How do you know I didn’t. If you’re the good friend you say you are, how about giving me a chance?”

Veronica did not reply, and the two of them continued walking along slowly.

“I thought maybe we could go skating this afternoon,” Peter said enticingly.

“I’m giving my skates away. I’m never skating any more. I’m too old. And besides, Lorraine asked me to come over to her house today so maybe I will.”

That there would be complications in the form of Lorraine and other girls, and that Veronica could no longer be considered his exclusive property gave Peter an unpleasant jolt. But there it was and he wasn’t going to waste time brooding over it now. So he continued as if she had not spoken. “I thought maybe we could go see my Uncle Jake and get a couple of knishes.”

No response from Veronica.

“Or maybe skate down to your uncle’s.”

No answer.

“Or over to the river.”

Veronica tossed her head.

“Or maybe,” and Peter played his last trump card lovingly, “we could go over to the cemetery and work a little over Martin Franklin’s grave.”

“I’ve been there already.”

“You’ve been there?” Peter said, very hurt. “Without me?”

“Well, I didn’t think it mattered to you any more,” Veronica said defensively. “I didn’t think you cared where I went or what I did.”

He stopped walking and she did too. The two of them stood looking at each other. Now the top of his head came up to her nose instead of her chin, as it had formerly, and he didn’t have to tilt his head back quite so far to look up at her face.

“I never thought,” she said finally, “that it would hurt so much.”

“What?” said Peter.

“Having a friend.” Veronica’s face was perplexed. “Before, maybe I was lonesome sometimes but I don’t think I ever felt so bad.”

“Well,” said Peter happily, measuring the distance from her nose to the top of her head and wondering how long it would take before the top of his own head caught up with hers, “I guess we both have lots of miserable years in store.”

She didn’t answer him then, but by the time they reached school there was no question in either of their minds about what they would be doing that afternoon.

For
my nephews, Steven, Dan, Chris, and Arthur, who wanted a book about a boy.

Grateful acknowledgments are due Rabbi Bernard W. Kimmel of the Beth Shalom Synagogue in San Francisco for reading the bar mitzvah chapter, and offering his advice.

Copyright © 1969 by Marilyn Sachs

Originally published by Doubleday

Electronically published in 2012 by Belgrave House

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This is a work of fiction. All names in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to any person living or dead is coincidental.