Peter and Veronica (3 page)

“Who cares what she says?”

“I care.”

The door opened and Peter’s father came into the room. “She’s gone? Thank goodness. I had to run out for a breath of air. Ah—Peter! How’s my boy?”

“Fine, Papa.”

“He’s not fine,” said Mama. “He was fresh to Mrs. Rappaport and he runs around all the time with a girl—a terrible girl—and you’ve got to tell him to stop.”

“Stop!” said Papa.

He and Peter began laughing. Mama raised a finger in the air and prepared to explode, but then the doorbell rang and Mama’s hand dropped, and her face assumed that special eager look it had whenever a boy friend arrived for Rosalie.

“I’ll talk to you later,” she hissed, and then in a louder voice, a sweeter voice, she called, “Rosalie ... go, Rosalie, open the door. It’s Bernard.”

Saved by the bell, Peter thought, as he returned to his room to put away his stamp album and to make certain that the M volume of the
Wonderland of Knowledge
wasn’t sticking out any further than its companions.

Marv Green was a genius. Peter knew this with absolute certainty. He knew with equal certainty that nobody else, including Marv and his family, believed this to be the case.

Sunday at nine, a drizzling, blowy Sunday, Peter crossed the street and headed for Marv’s house. There were only two one-family houses on the street, and Marv lived in one of them. All the other houses were apartment houses, and the two small gray brick buildings huddled together between their giant neighbors, attached like ancient, wizened Siamese twins.

Both houses had wooden staircases leading up to the front entrances. One of the houses had a small plot of land on the side of the staircase with a neat border of privet hedges framing it. The other house had a moat with a bridge over it constructed of cement with stones, pieces of flowerpots, broken crockery, and soda bottle tops embedded in it. The moat was empty now except for puddles, but in the summer it would be converted into the only swimming pool in the entire neighborhood.

Peter hurried across the bridge and down the small set of stairs leading to the basement. The door was open, as usual, and Peter passed quickly through the dark basement and out through the back into the yard. Here Marv could generally be found. Sometimes Peter wondered what would have happened to Marv if his family had lived in an apartment house and there had been no yard for him to operate out of. But it was an impossible thought—like trying to think of an eagle without the sky or a whale without water.

Marv was a builder. He built all the time. Even when he wasn’t building, he was thinking about building. In school, he was in the dumb class because his teachers said he just wouldn’t pay attention. He failed in math, but had no difficulty in constructing the complicated mechanical elevator that stood twelve feet high over in one corner of the yard. The elevator had taken Marv only three months to build. Peter, who was always the star pupil in his math classes, had offered to help, but had found all the calculations too difficult for him to fathom. Marv had his own system of figuring that left Peter far behind. But Marv was always patient and tolerant, so Peter carried the wood, hammered the nails, and put the screws and pulleys where he was told.

Now that the elevator was finished, Marv planned on putting a building around it. He was there in the yard, as Peter had expected, but his eighteen-year-old sister, Frances, was there too. Marv had another sister, Betsy, who was fifteen, and so pretty that Peter felt uncomfortable every time she spoke to him. Frances was pretty too, he supposed, but most of the time he saw her, she was generally shouting at Marv, and this morning was no exception.

“I told you this part of the yard was mine,” she was yelling, “and if I told you once, I told you a hundred times.”

“I know, I know,” Marv was saying sadly. “I’m sorry. I forgot, but next time.”

“Next time!” Frances hissed between her teeth. “It’s always next time. First you dug up all my daffodils when you made that crazy goldfish pool. Then you built that stupid dog palace for Queenie, and she never even goes into it, and you spoiled the iris. Then you built that horrible moat outside, and all the cats keep drowning in it....”

“Only two,” Marv corrected gently.

“... and pulled up all the rosebushes. Then those sappy revolving doors going nowhere over
my
cannas, and now that elevator. What do you need an elevator for? There’s nothing above it. Just look at this yard. It’s disgusting. I’m ashamed to bring anyone home for fear they’ll look out the window and think this is a lunatic asylum. And every time I plant something, you spoil it.”

“Frances,” Marv said patiently, “would you like me to make you a window box?”

“No!”
screamed Frances.

“Frances,” Marv continued, blinking at the force of his sister’s cry, “I’ll make you two window boxes. You can have them outside your bedroom windows and they’ll be safe there.”

“I don’t want window boxes,” Frances shouted. “I just want a little piece of this yard. That’s all I want.”

“Frances,” Marv continued dreamily, “I can make you two window boxes, and in one I can carve FRANCES and in the other I can carve GREEN. I can inlay pieces of blue glass in the FRANCES, and maybe pink glass in the GREEN, or maybe green glass (Marv chuckled), and I can have a light inside that goes on and off ...”

“Ma!” Frances yelled desperately, “Ma!”

A window over the yard opened, and Mrs. Green stuck her head out. “Shh, Frances,” she said. “You’ll wake Papa. Hello, Peter.”

“Mama,” Frances cried, “will you please make him stop ruining my flowers?”

“Shh,” said Mrs. Green, “come inside, children. It’s raining outside. You’ll get wet.”

“Mama,” Frances continued stubbornly, “I’ve got as much right to this yard as he has. And if you don’t figure out a way to make him respect my rights, I’ll have to take some kind of drastic action.” She pointed a finger dramatically at Marv and stood like an accusing angel, waiting for her mother to speak.

Mrs. Green hesitated, looked around her uncomfortably, and then brightened. “Let’s have breakfast,” she said happily. “I’ll make pancakes.”

“Oh, Ma!” Frances yelled. She stamped her foot and ran out of the yard, banging the cellar door behind her.

Mrs. Green sighed. “She’s very high-strung,” she said in explanation to Peter. “Come inside, Marvin, and have breakfast.”

“Oh, Ma, I don’t have the time,” Marv said. “Just throw me down a roll and butter, cheese and onion, and I’ll eat it down here.”

Mrs. Green nodded, smiled, and withdrew, closing the window behind her. It wasn’t so much, Peter knew, that Marv’s mother appreciated his accomplishments. Any time Marv would show her his current creation, she’d say something like, “Fine, but don’t fall” or “Very good, but put on a sweater. You’ll catch cold.” It was just that she was a gentle, easygoing woman who avoided arguments more than anything else. As long as Marv was happy and didn’t make too much noise, she was satisfied.

In a little while, Marv, munching away on his roll, began laying out the foundation for the new building. There was no problem finding wood. For years, long before Peter had known him, Marv had been building, and the yard looked like an archaeologist’s dream, with layers and sublayers of the ruins of former glories. Wood from the top layers of these ancient relics would be gathered by Marv for new projects.

By the end of the morning, they had laid the floor and were working on the upright posts for the walls. The rain had stopped, and the air smelled clean and full of the sweetness of wet wood.

Mr. Green came through the cellar door, and Marv yelled, “Pa, look, Pa! We’ve got the floor laid.”

Mr. Green walked over to the construction site, inspected the floor, and chuckled. He was a very busy man, Marv’s father, a baker, who spent long hours after work involved in his union. Lately he hadn’t been feeling well and his face was pale and thin.

“Very good,” he said, “and maybe sometime today, when you get a chance, you can look at the hot-water faucet in the bathroom sink. It’s leaking again.”

Marv hit his head. “I keep forgetting to buy a washer,” he said. “Tomorrow I’ll pick one up after school.”

“Fine!” Mr. Green said, and laid a hand on Marv’s shoulder. “But also, how about trying to let Frances have a piece of the yard too? She’s upset and I can’t blame her. You know, Marv, she likes flowers and she should have a chance to use the yard too.”

Marv hung his head. A word from his father was like ten thousand words from his mother.

“So how about it?” Mr. Green said gently. “You’ll try, Marvin?”

“I’ll try, Papa,” Marv said earnestly, “I’ll really try. Maybe I should build a little fence around her part of the yard and then I won’t forget.” Marv brightened. “I’ve got some posts and some chicken wire, and I’ll make one—no—maybe two round plots just for her.”

“Good boy,” Mr. Green said, and began walking back toward the cellar.

“Papa,” Marv said longingly, “are you going somewhere, Papa?”

“I have to go to the union hall,” Mr. Green said.

“Oh.”

Mr. Green hesitated at the cellar door and looked back at his son. “You want to come, Marvin?” he asked.

“Sure, Pa. It’ll take me a minute. I’ll hurry and clean up.” Marv’s voice was eager.

Mr. Green smiled. “Good. I won’t have too much to do there, and maybe afterward we’ll go somewhere.”

“There’s a new boat down at the navy yard,” Marv said hungrily. “I saw it in the paper. It’s an aircraft carrier, and they let you go on it.”

“So we’ll go see the new boat,” said Mr. Green. He walked through the door, and Marv quickly began assembling his tools.

“Guess I’ll go home,” Peter said brightly, wondering if he might be invited along.

“You can stay and work if you like,” Marv said.

“Well, I’m not going to stay by myself,” Peter said, and waited.

Marv avoided his eyes. “How about tomorrow, then?”

“Tomorrow I have to go to
cheder,
but today I don’t have anything to do.”

Marv picked up his tools and began hurrying across the yard. It was plain that Peter was not going to be invited along.

“I’m going home,” he repeated, and followed Marv out of the yard.

In the cellar, Marv laid his tools down and said meekly, “I’m sorry, Peter, but ... well ...”

“Oh, forget it,” Peter said, hiding his disappointment. He knew Marv had very little time alone with his father. “I’ll see you around.”

He walked through the cellar out to the front, across the little bridge, and back to his own house. Slowly he climbed the stairs of the stoop and wondered what to do next. Maybe he’d just mention the boat to his own father.

Both of his parents were in the kitchen. His mother was busy cooking, and his father sat with a big book in front of him at the kitchen table.

“Papa,” Peter said, “there’s a new boat at the navy yard. Do you want to go see it?”

His father looked up at him. “A boat?” he asked. “Why do you want to look at a boat?”

“Don’t bother your father,” his mother said. “Let him rest.”

“It’s a big one, an aircraft carrier,” Peter said lamely. “Marv and his father are going so I thought ...”

Papa smiled but shook his head. “No, I don’t think I’d like to go. But you go ahead with them.” He began reading again.

Peter thought for a moment and then went off to find his skates.

“Where are you going, Peter?” his mother called as he passed the kitchen on his way out.

“Skating.”

“I told her already you couldn’t go.”

“Told who?”

“That girl.”

Peter came into the kitchen. “Was Veronica here this morning? Why didn’t you tell me?”

His mother ran water in the sink. “You didn’t ask.”

“Ma,” Peter cried, “why didn’t you tell her where I was?”

“I didn’t know where you were.”

“But I told you I was going to Marv’s house.”

“I forgot.”

“Mama,” Peter said angrily, “what have you got against her? What did she ever do to you?”

He dropped his skates on the floor, and his father looked up, startled, from his book.

“Now you’re disturbing your father. Why don’t you go and play with Marvin?”

“Now you want me to play with Marvin, but you used to say I shouldn’t play with Marvin because he was stupid. How come you changed your mind all of a sudden? How come now you want me to play with Marvin?”

“Because,” said his mother, turning off the water and facing him angrily, “Marvin may not be the smartest boy in the world, but he’s still a nice boy— a big difference between Marvin and that crazy, wild, fresh girl you’ve been hanging around with all of a sudden. And let me ask you a question: what do you have in common with such a girl, a boy like you, a smart, well-brought-up, Jewish boy with a ... a ..."

“That’s it, isn’t it?” Peter yelled triumphantly. “It’s because she’s not Jewish, isn’t it? Mama, you’re prejudiced, that’s what you are.”

Peter’s father closed his book and sighed.

“Prejudiced! I’m prejudiced!” shouted Mrs. Wedemeyer. “That I should live to see the day that my own son stands there to my face and calls me prejudiced! And for what? For an ignorant, stupid, ugly stranger.”

“She’s not stupid and she’s not ignorant and she’s my friend. You wouldn’t care if she was the most beautiful genius in the whole world. It’s just that she’s not Jewish. Well, she’s my friend and I like her and I don’t care what she is.”

His father began chuckling. “Thine own friend, forsake not,” he quoted in Yiddish. Peter’s father always seemed to have a proverb handy, culled from all the years poring over his religious books. “You’re making a fuss over nothing, Jennie. Leave the boy alone. He’s old enough now to pick his own friends. Don’t ask for trouble.”

There was a moment of silence. Mr. Wedemeyer opened his book again, and Peter picked up his skates. Then his mother exploded.

“Some father you are!” she shouted at her husband. “You sit there all the time with your nose in a book and you don’t take any interest in him. Why don’t you go places with him, like right now. Take him out to see ... to see that boat.”