The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place (11 page)

Jake sat on the edge of my bed. “And you, Miss Margaret Rose, I'll need you to go to the library and find a picture of the most beautiful rose rose you can find. You better love it, because it will be very large and it will be with you forever.”

“I'll do it tomorrow.”

Jake said, “Good!” and he looked up at the ceiling again.

I hesitated to ask, but I had to. “Are you being so nice to me because your mother wasn't?”

Jake's eyes stayed focused on the ceiling, and when
he did look at me, he asked me to stand in front of him so that we could be eye to eye. “That's part of the reason.”

I was secretly hoping that it would not be any part of the reason.

“And there is something else.”

“What else?”

“I admired your resistance and your uncle's determination to rescue you.” Standing there, eye to eye as he sat on the edge of the bed, he took both of my hands in his. “Margaret, you have to understand that my mother is ill equipped to handle girls who have a vocabulary that matches hers. And she is no match at all for your uncle. He is like a stealth bomber. You can't see what's coming until you've been wiped out. I like him a lot. Morris, too.” He let my hands go and looked out the window. It was too dark to see the towers, but I knew he was picturing them in his mind's eye.

My voice barely above a whisper, I asked, “You fell in love, didn't you?” And then, embarrassed at mentioning the word
love
to a person of the opposite sex, particularly to this person of the opposite sex, I quickly added, “You fell in love with the towers, didn't you?”

“I guess it's love, but it is something more. It's a longing to be in love.”

Relieved that Jake had not misinterpreted my
remark about love, yet disappointed that he had not, I said, “Like
why not
paint a rose ceiling?”

“Exactly,” he said. “There is no reason to paint a rose ceiling, and there is no reason not to. It is
areasonable,
isn't it, Margaret?” Too dry-mouthed to answer, I nodded. “I've longed to do something areasonable for a very long time. The towers made me realize how much. I don't mind fixing toilets and cleaning out showers, and I don't even mind being the camp idiot—actually, I am the camp idiot by choice—and I know that painting billboards is not art; it's hardly a craft, but I loved doing it. I loved it because it was doing something big, the way your uncles love doing the towers. Sometimes I wonder about that need in me. I go to these craft fairs in the mall, and I see all these wooden puzzles and birdhouses and patchwork place mats and painted tin buckets, and I know that there are a lot of people like me who have a need to make things. It's like asking why we speak. We speak because we are human and because we can. Your uncles build towers because they are men and because they can. I understand the towers. They speak to me. Their language is exotic, but their alphabet is familiar. I understand what they are saying. I do. I really do.”

“What do you think they are saying?”

“They are telling me a story. A story full of sense and nonsense. They are saying that if life has a structure, a staff,
a sensible scaffold, we hang our nonsense on it. And they are saying that broken parts add color and music to the staff of life. And they also say that when you know that your framework has been built right and strong, it's all right to add color to it, too. The towers are saying, there is no
why
—only a
why-not.
That's what the towers say to me.” He reached out and took my hands between his, pressing them together like cymbals. “So I say to you, my sweet Margaret,
why not
paint a rose ceiling? Besides, it gives me a wonderful place to come to on my day off.”

All the way down the sixteen steps from the second floor to the first, I could feel the touch of his hands where he had held mine when he called me
my sweet Margaret.

Uncle Alex was feeding Tartufo, and Uncle Morris was washing the supper dishes. I picked up a dishtowel and started drying dishes, not totally aware that I was doing so. Uncle Morris pointed to the wall phone and asked Jake if he would like to call his mother.

“I prefer not to,” he said. He winked at me. The second time he ever did. “But I will. I'll call her from a pay phone on my way home.”

He left. The Uncles finished putting away the dishes and silverware, and I gathered up the soiled napkins to put in the upstairs hamper.

I kissed my uncles good night and climbed the stairs with something in my heart that had never been there before.

I
awakened to the smell of pancakes. I knew they wouldn't be ordinary pancakes. They would be
palacsinta,
the thin crepes made with flour, milk, eggs, and carbonated water that Uncle fried one at a time, spread with jam, and rolled.

I rushed downstairs in my pajamas.

I would have three to start.

Dressed, ready for the Time Zone, Uncle Morris was sitting at the table reading the morning paper and drinking coffee. The minute he saw me, he quickly folded the paper and stashed it on the seat of the chair on his left.

“Good morning,” he said. He had always before greeted me with
Jó reggelt,
which is
good morning
in Hungarian, then he would wait for me to repeat the Hungarian. Uncle Alex would add his
Jó reggelt,
and I would repeat it for him, too.

This morning, Uncle Alex said nothing—did not even greet me in English—but stood at the stove, with his back to me, pouring batter into a pan. He tipped and twisted
the pan until the small amount of batter covered its surface. When the top of the batter bubbled, he flipped the pancake and allowed it to fry for only four or five seconds more before turning it out onto a plate.

Even Tartufo did not give me his usual greeting. He sat at Uncle's legs, greedily watching every movement of batter and batter-maker. Only after I was seated did he get up and make his way over to me. I petted him and told him, “Good dog,” and when his tail started thumping the floor with pleasure, I whispered that he could have one
of my palacsinta.

Without turning around, Uncle Alex said, “But no jelly. Gives him bad breath.” He spread plum jelly on three of the
palacsinta,
rolled them up, sprinkled them with powdered sugar, and set them on a plate in front of me. Then he sat down across from me, waited until I had taken my first bite, and asked, “Good?”

“Very.”

Uncle Morris got up.
“Jaj, Istenem!”
he exclaimed. “It's late. I better get going.”

The early shift at the Time Zone went from ten to six; the late shift, from one to nine. I looked at the kitchen clock. It was only a quarter to nine. He never left the house before a quarter after. Uncle Morris was always “running late.” In his role as Father Time, my dad would complain, “Morris Rose is a watchmaker, and
the man has absolutely no sense of time.” And every time my mother “ran late” he maintained that she had learned it from him.

Uncle Morris took his jacket from the back of his chair. “Will you be okay while Alex and I are both gone, Margitkám?” he asked.

I told him that I had a busy day ahead. I had to unpack my camp gear, wash my clothes and my hair, and that would take up practically the whole morning. “I also have to go to the library to choose a picture of a rose rose, and I know that will take a very long time because I need to find the perfect one.” I reminded them that they had promised to put up a scaffold. “Jake said that he'll be here on Wednesday. That's tomorrow.”

“But there is the night, Margitkám,” Uncle Alex said. “We're used to working at night.”

“The pipe is ready. Alex will bring it up from the basement. All we have to do is fit the pieces together. The scaffold will be waiting for him.”

Uncle Morris leaned over and kissed the top of my head. I looked up, told him good-bye, took another bite of
palacsinta,
and closed my eyes, trying to shut out all sensations except taste. When I opened my eyes, Uncle Morris was standing by the door exchanging a look with Uncle Alex and shaking his head no. “Don't forget your paper,” Uncle Alex said. He grabbed it, nervously
folded it over three times, and shoved it—really shoved it—under Uncle Morris's arm.

Pressing the paper close to his ribs, Uncle Morris stiffly opened the screen door. “Well, I'm off,” he said, and didn't move. He and Uncle Alex exchanged another look. That puzzled me.

“Go already!” Uncle Alex said. Uncle Morris didn't budge. Uncle Alex turned away from the stove and waved his spatula in the air. “Go, Morris! Go to work.” I watched the screen door close. Uncle Alex turned back to the stove, flushed. The
palascinta
had burned. He mumbled under his breath and threw the ruined pancake in the trash. He turned to me and said, “He made me scorch the pan. I'll have to start with a clean one now.”

I put my fork down, feeling uneasy.

“Would you care for another?”

“I guess so,” I said.

“What? You only guess so? If you don't want more, just say so. I won't bother scrubbing the pan. . . .”

“I would like two more, Uncle.”

“Only two?”

“No. Three. I forgot the one for Tartufo.”

After breakfast, I went upstairs and gathered up my camp clothes and took them to the basement. On my way to
the washer, I passed my uncles' workshop. I dumped everything into the washer. Everything, whether I had worn it or not. Half listening to the sound of the washing machine fill with water, I entered the workshop and looked around. A layer of dust had settled everywhere. The Uncles had never been very good at keeping order, but this was not disorder as much as it was neglect. I ran my finger through the thick dust on the worktable where Uncle Alex made his pendants. In the far corner of the room there were three sacks of Portland cement. They were for the base of Tower Four. They, too, were covered with dust.

The washer had finished filling up. There was a click, and the
slosh-squish, slosh-squish
of the wash cycle began a low rhythmic undertone to the discordant sounds I had heard at breakfast. There had been no cheerful
Jó reggelt.
There had been:
You only guess so? If you don't want more, just say so.
Uncle Alex had never before been that irritable with me. Being irritable with his brother was normal, but never with me. Never. If there was one thing my uncles agreed with each other about, it was how wonderful I was. My uncles had never before exchanged glances with each other over me.

I lifted the lid of the washer and saw that everything was being agitated. Good. The soil of Talequa would soon go down the drain.

I went upstairs and passed through the far side of the kitchen. Uncle Alex was again standing at the stove. He glanced over at me briefly and let me go out the back door without a comment or a smile.

—
without the lemon and lime

I
wandered over to the far side of Tower Two. I lifted a chip of paint with my fingernail and watched as it fluttered to the ground. I stood inside the tower ribs and looked up. The paint was flaking all over.

This past spring, Morris had planted his peppers and Alex had tended his roses, but instead of starting maintenance on the towers, Uncle Alex had announced that they were taking Tartufo to Texas.

I had asked why, and Uncle Alex had said that there was a report that the filbert trees in a large orchard had developed barren circles around their bases. Such circles, called
burn patterns,
are a sign of truffles. I had asked why Uncle Morris was also going.

Uncle Alex had replied, “He's never been to Texas.”

“But he hates Tartufo.”

“Truffles can bring in eight hundred dollars a pound. Even my brother finds that acceptable.”

I had asked if they would be back in time to take care of me while my mother and father were in Peru. “I'll mix up the lemon and lime paint to go with the orange sherbet.”

And that was when Uncle Alex had suggested that camp might be good for me. He said that because I was an only child, a group experience might be a good thing. I was shocked. I told him that like every other only child on the planet, I was no more responsible for being
only
than I was for being a child. My own mother, Naomi, whom he loved as much as he loved me, had been an only child and had never had a camp experience, and everyone—with the possible exception of my father—thought that she had turned out perfect. Besides, if he had gone to school in this country instead of in the Old World, he would know that grades K through six give a person enough group experience to last the rest of her life.

I had just gotten over the shock of discovering that my parents had no intention of taking me with them, and now I had to face the fact that my uncles didn't want me either. I could not understand why no one wanted to solve the “What to do with Margaret” problem. I could not understand why they even saw it as a problem.