The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place (17 page)

As soon as Jake arrived, Uncle Morris whisked him upstairs to examine the scaffold to see if it needed adjustment. It was, Jake decided, exactly the right height: masterfully built and designed. The struts were X-shaped, which gave it added strength and stability, and they were placed at close enough intervals that he could climb to the top as easily as he could climb a
flight of stairs. Jake said, “Perfect. It doesn't need anything more—it is perfect.”

Uncle Morris said, “That's all I needed to hear.” Of course, that was not
all
he needed to hear.
Perfect
was
the least
he needed.
Perfect
suited him just fine.

I invited Jake to come downstairs and have a cup of coffee before he started work. I watched him close his eyes and inhale deeply of its aroma. I waited as he added cream and sugar and took his first long sip. I was hoping he would say,
Perfect,
but he didn't. Just as I was beginning to think that he would never look at the book of roses, he did. From the bib pocket of his white painter's overalls, he took the slip of paper with the room dimensions, a small ruler, and a pocket calculator. With the ruler, he measured the rose I had selected. He did a few rapid calculations. “Works out pretty well,” he said.

I was worried. Could I have gotten a
perfect
instead of a
pretty well
if I had chosen the Redouté?

Then, looking at Uncle Alex, he said, “If you will help me with the preliminary work on the ceiling, I may even be ready to start the painting today. Would you mind?”

“Of course not,” Uncle replied. “I much prefer helping to just sitting around.”

“Do you know where there's a color copier? I will
need two copies of this page. They should be able to copy it double size.”

Uncle had to think. Finally, he thought of the office supply store two blocks from the courthouse. He looked the number up in the phone book and called.

“They can do it,” he said when he hung up.

“How much?” Jake asked. “I'm just curious.”

“Twelve ninety-five each,” Uncle said.

“I could make do with one. The second is backup.” “Always have a backup. I believe everyone should always have a backup. Besides, twenty-five dollars and ninety cents is not much for raw material for a work of art.” He took a sheet of notepaper from the counter by the telephone and marked the place in the book before closing it. “I'll drop it off on my way to the mall and have Morris pick it up on his way home. He'll be home after six.”

“Let me go,” I said. “I, too, prefer helping to just sitting around.”

“Good,” Jake said. “I always like to know what you prefer.” I was embarrassed but pleased. “Now, Margaret, if you'll pour me another cup of that excellent coffee before you leave, I'll take it upstairs and get started.”

Jake climbed up and down the scaffold, moving it along like an old lady with a walker. He measured off the ceiling
in six-inch intervals on both sides. He had to fudge a little so that there would be an even number of squares.

After he finished making his marks along two perimeters, he and Uncle each held the end of the piece of chalked string that Jake unwound from a small reel. When Jake was certain that the string was taut, he asked, “Ready?” And when Uncle answered, “Ready,” Jake snapped it so that it left a blue line from one marker to its mate across the room. They went from marker to marker, making parallel lines. Then they turned ninety degrees, so that they could make lines perpendicular to those they had just finished.

By the time I returned from picking up the color copies, they had finished and both men were sweating profusely. Uncle Alex had to take a shower and get ready for work.

Before he even looked at the color copies, Jake wrapped a red bandanna around his forehead to keep the sweat out of his eyes. “Do you think you could find an electric fan somewhere?” he asked.

Coffee. Fan. I was happy to be his gofer.

I knew there was a fan in the unused dining room. I found it in a box behind the old display counter that Uncle Alex had used during the time that Jewels Bi-Rose had operated out of 19 Schuyler Place. It was
dusty, of course. Everything in the unused dining room was. I picked the fan up and decided to test it before I cleaned it up and carried it upstairs. I began looking for a wall socket. The house was over sixty years old and, at best, had one outlet per wall.

Crawling behind the old display counter, I bumped into another box. I opened the flaps, and a fog of dust dimmed my view. I waved my hand in front of my face and sneezed at least three times before I could see what was inside. There were the handcuffs, the ones my uncles had kept handy for the crooks. The key was looped onto the chain with a piece of string. Deeper in the box was the roll of duct tape and the clean (but now dusty) socks for gags. I had to smile when I remembered that night before last when the Uncles had laughed as they told Jake about how they had learned to help the robbers in order to spare themselves.

I pushed the box aside and continued creeping along the floor, looking for a wall socket. I found one across the room under the front windows.

The fan worked. I cleaned it in the kitchen and carried it upstairs. Jake was sitting on the scaffold, looking over the tattersall of blue lines on the aged white of the ceiling. He clapped his hands together to shake the blue chalk dust from them.

I pointed to the empty socket in the center of the
ceiling where Jake had taken down the glass shade and had unscrewed the lightbulb. “What are you going to do there?” I asked.

“Look at the picture,” he said. I did as told. “See where the center comes?” I nodded. Then he said, “On the plain glazed surface of this old glass shade, there will appear the succulent heart of the rose.”

I gasped. “Does that mean that the succulent heart of the rose will be lit up whenever I turn on the light?” I asked.

“It means just that.”

I grew faint at the thought. “It also means that I will have a glass ceiling after all.” Even if Jake didn't say it, I knew I had chosen the perfect rose rose—the one with a succulent heart. “Jake,” I said, “this ceiling is going to be better than the Sistine.”

Jake laughed. “I wish I could agree,” he said. “But thanks for the compliment.” I started to leave, and Jake called after me, “Let's eat lunch under the towers. Sound like a plan?”

Worried that I would sound like a fool if I told him how good a plan I thought it was, I answered, “Okay with me. If you want to.”

The anticipation of sharing lunch with Jake in the Tower Garden was tamping down the bad news I was holding inside me, and thinking about Jake's plan for
my ceiling was crowding out the possibility of my thinking up a plan for Phase One.

Jake hopped down from the scaffold and reached for the fan. He set it down on the plank of his scaffold and tossed me the cord. “I don't suppose this will reach from here to the outlet,” he said. “I better set it on the floor, and tilt it up. Next week, I'll bring an extension cord.”

“The Uncles have miles of extension cords,” I said. “They used to work on the towers at night. I'll bring you one.”

Jake murmured thanks and turned his attention to the book of roses. He laid the glass globe on the bed and spread the photocopies out on top of the dresser. On a piece of cardboard, he measured off five inches on one side and six on the other. With a craft knife, he cut a window in the cardboard. He held the window over the copy of the rose so that the pistils and stamens were in the center—the same spot as the overhead light in the room. He traced the outline of the cardboard window right onto the photocopy and then, with a very fine pen, drew a half-inch graph on the color copy. There were ten squares in one direction and twelve in the other, just like the grid on the bedroom ceiling.

“Now, on each ceiling square, I will draw an outline of what I see in the corresponding square here,” he
explained. “When I'm ready to paint, I will do the same with the colors. I hope to get a good start on my drawing today,” he said. He untied the bandanna from around his forehead and wiped his face. “Why don't you find those extension cords for us?” he asked.

I heard an echo of Mrs. Kaplan in that
us,
and, willing gofer that I had been just minutes ago, I went reluctantly to look for the cords. I returned to the dining room and kicked the box with the handcuffs and duct tape. What was the matter with me? Just minutes ago, I was anxious for Uncle Alex to leave so that I could be alone with Jake. Just minutes ago I was ready to fix
us
a nice picnic tray so that we could eat lunch under the towers. I seemed to like us but not
us.
Maybe Mrs. Kaplan and Nurse Louise were right. Maybe I was incorrigible after all. I kicked the box again and rattled the chain of the handcuffs. Then I remembered that the Uncles kept their extension cords in the basement.

I found yards and yards of yellow wire coiled into a nest on the floor next to the pile of wooden planks that the Uncles had used to create their workstation. I did not know that a coil of wires could be too heavy for me to lift, so I looked for a place where two lengths of cord had been joined. I found one and then another and another. I needed only one of those lengths—after all, my bedroom was not that large, and
the cord would not have to reach farther than halfway across. Untangling it was not easy, for the wire was not wound neatly into a spool but in layers that crossed over and under themselves. I decided to take my time bringing
us
the extension cord, so I sat down on the pile of boards and studied the coil until I found a free end, and I began to unwind.

I remembered that when the Uncles were putting the clock face on Tower Three, they had laid the boards across the rungs so that when they stood, they could easily reach the top. My mother told me that she and Loretta Bevilaqua had sometimes climbed up to one of the platforms and would use it as a tree house of sorts until the Uncles had to move the boards to their next workstation.

I had loosened one whole length of extension cord. It was as twisted as a strand of DNA, but at least it was separated from the mass. I held one end between my thumb and forefinger and wound it around my elbow, as I had seen my uncles doing. I stood beside the pile of lumber—winding, winding—absently thinking about the planks that had once been a platform and would no longer be one ... except... except... except, of course! The planks would again be a platform. They would be my platform. They would be my tree house of sorts. By the time I finished winding, I had a plan.

I was excited. I had a plan. I would take possession of the towers—nine points of the law—and prove they were safe at the same time.

I ran upstairs with the extension cord and quickly plugged one end to the fan and the other to the wall. Breathless with excitement, I said, “We have to talk.”

Jake, who was carefully making lines
on
the second of the photocopies, held his pencil in midair and continued to look at the drawing. “Sure,” he said. “Let's talk. What do you want to talk about?”

“Money”

“I don't have enough to talk about. End of conversation.” He glanced over at the fan. “That works really well. Thanks.”

“I want a refund from Camp Talequa.”

He laughed. “I think your uncle and my mother already settled that between them. Tillie Kaplan does not give refunds.”

“I need a refund. Really, really need it.”

Putting his pencil behind his ear, he crossed his arms over his chest and said, “Margaret Rose, I really, really hate to tell you this, but the last two people to get a refund from Camp Talequa were the parents of the girl who came down with Lyme disease the second day of camp. They blamed the deer ticks in the woods near the camp even though no one had been near the
woods and even though the girl's symptoms could not possibly have shown up that fast. But these were not ordinary parents. They were lawyers. Both of them. They sent Tillie a letter on cream-colored, heavy-bond stationery that was just one step short of parchment. They politely requested a refund of their full deposit. They didn't even threaten to sue—they didn't need to—their letterhead said enough. They got a check by return mail.”

“You mean that lawyers can scare even Mrs. Kaplan?”

“Tillie Kaplan would rather risk bungee jumping off the Verrazano Bridge than risk a lawsuit from a husband-and-wife team of lawyers with killer stationery.”

I thought, My uncles have lawyers to the left and lawyers to the right who have tasteful wooden signs that are just as lethal as any letterhead. “My situation also involves lawyers,” I said, “and I need a refund.”

“You may also need a lawyer to plead your case.”

“How about the cash that my mother and father put in my personal Camp Talequa account, the money they left with her for my incidental needs like candy bars and postage stamps? I didn't spend any of it.”

“Oh, that money! You mean your uncle didn't take it with him when he brought you back?”

“He didn't.”

“I can take care of that. You won't even have to send a threatening letter.”

“When?”

“Right after you tell me what you need it for.” “I've got to get supplies.”

“Supplies for what?”

“For camping out.”

“I thought you were finished with that for the rest of the summer.”

“This is not recreational. This is business. Serious business.”

“Oh,” Jake said.
“Serious
business. Well, that changes everything.”

Serious
business. I wondered again if he was being sarcastic. “I need your attention, Jake,” I said. “I need you to listen to me—really listen, really, really listen—and you'll see that what I have to say is serious enough to be a matter of life and death.”

“A matter of life and death? Well now, that does sound serious.”