The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place (9 page)

The neighbors helped each other out in the small ways that neighbors can and the ways that friendly ones do. They held keys to each others' houses, and borrowed cups of sugar and shared cookies, casseroles, and the produce from their gardens.

They called each other “Mr.” and “Mrs.”

Mr. and Mrs. Bevilaqua lived at 17 Schuyler Place, and Mr. and Mrs. Vanderwaal lived at number 21.

Alex said, “We had once a jewelry store downtown, only one block away from Town Square. We called our store Jewels Bi-Rose. We loved the name.
Bi
was a play on English words.
B-I
means
two
and is also a homonym for
buy, B-U-Y,
and for
B-Y”

Morris pointed his chin in his brother's direction. “That one took care of the crystal and china. We had a
bridal registry. I took care of the fine jewelry and watches.”

Alex added, “Business at Jewels Bi-Rose was very personal. Half the diamond engagement rings and place settings of china sold in Epiphany came from Jewels Bi-Rose. That's the way it was before the days of discount stores and universal credit cards. Things were personal. If a customer wasn't satisfied with something, he complained to us, not to his lawyer. People who were our friends and neighbors were also our customers. Back then, when we had our store, one person could be all three—a friend, a neighbor, and a customer.”

“Downtown was booming,” Uncle Morris said.

“Business at Jewels Bi-Rose was good. Very good. Morris kept a watch repair shop in the back of Jewels Bi-Rose. People from all over Clarion County came to him to get their watches repaired. And then there were the clocks.”

“I repaired the big clocks,” Morris explained. “The ones that were on the sides of buildings or in steeples or on top of columns at street corners. I've been to towns in Maine and Tennessee, and once I went to Des Moines, Iowa, to fix a clock in a bank tower. Nowadays banks aren't built to look like banks. They are built to look like bungalows with drive-through carports. Nobody puts a clock on a bungalow.”

Alex added, “My brother can repair chimes—a lost art.” He studied Jake for a minute. “It's probably hard for a young man like yourself to believe that people once relied on the face of a public clock to tell them the time of day. And before clocks, there were mill whistles and church chimes. Time was measured in sections: mornings, afternoons, and nights. It wasn't too many years ago that measuring time by the quarter hour was accurate enough for most things, and the minute hand was good for boiling eggs.”

“The second hand was invented as a form of persecution,” Morris said.

Jacob laughed. “What do you have to say about nanoseconds?”

“Useless! You can't even say
nanosecond
in a nanosecond. Can a horse win a race by a nose and a nanosecond?” Jake shook his head. “In a nanosecond, can I even tell our little Margaret Rose that we are glad she is back here with us?” He reached over and patted my hand.

“How did you find the time to do the towers?” Jake asked.

“By not being in a hurry,” Alex said. “That's how you find the time.”

Uncle Morris pushed his chair back from the table and got up. He went to the kitchen counter to start the
coffee. He ground the beans and set them into a filter and poured boiling water over them. Like the ancient Japanese tea ceremony, no part of the ritual was to be rushed. As we waited, I got up from the table to clear the dinner dishes. Jake got up too. “My job,” I said. “You must sit still while they do coffee and dessert, or my uncles will think you're in a hurry. My uncles do not believe in hurrying any part of dinner.”

As he was setting out the cups and saucers, Uncle Morris said, “Alex, my brother, he never asked me what I was doing. Never a question. What he was doing, what I was doing, we never discussed.”

“Even when we dug the foundation for the first tower,” Alex said, “even after we sank the first pilings, we never discussed it.”

Morris said, “During World War II, we couldn't build much because the country needed all the scrap metal for the war effort. Then one day Alex started making pendants. The first ones were from the broken china and crystal that we had in our store. As it was with the towers, so it was with the pendants, also. My brother pointed to a spot. I knew what to do. Without discussion, I knew what he wanted. I drilled a hole, and we hung a pendant.”

Alex said, “No rehearsals.”

“After he used up the broken pieces we had from
the shop, he started buying glass and bottles from flea markets.”

“Noxzema used to come in a pretty blue-glass jar,” Alex said. “Also Phillips' Milk of Magnesia. They use blue plastic now. But most of the cobalt blue glass you see there is from those old jars. I like to mix the colors and also to mix glass and porcelain and the metal parts from Morris's old clocks.”

“I saved all the old parts,” Morris said. “Worn-out gears, I saved, and balance wheels. Sometimes there were chimes.”

“There is a part inside a clock that is called an
escape wheel.
It is round and has sawteeth. I loved when Morris had one of those. Those I made into a feature attraction.”

“And you didn't love when I brought home a balance spring?”

“Of course I loved the balance springs.” He turned to Jake and pleaded, “Did you hear me say I didn't love the balance springs?”

Jake didn't know if he was to answer or not. Instead, he said, “The mix is good. I like it a lot.”

Morris grunted. “The balance wheels, he bound with wire, and these he hung on the towers like earrings.”

Alex nodded. “Yes, like earrings.”

“Did you hang them so that some of them would strike one another like wind chimes?”

Alex got a faraway look in his eyes. “They sing, you know. When the wind blows, the towers sing. The wind decides the pitch. When it blows strong, the heavy ones sing bass and compete with the crystal, which is a soprano.” He smiled to himself.

“Was that deliberate or a happy accident?” Jake asked. Alex shrugged his Old World shrug. “The answer is yes and no. It just happened; it was worked out; it was an accident; it was planned. Maybe an accident led to a plan. Maybe the accident was part of a greater plan. Who knows?”

Uncle Morris said, “The Noxzema looks pretty, but it makes a clunky sound. To the Noxzema and the Milk of Magnesia, you shouldn't listen.”

—
Downtown was booming

After the war, the veterans returned, and college enrollment swelled, and so did the population. Margaret Rose Landau gave birth to my mother, Naomi. Mrs. Bevilaqua gave birth to Loretta, and Mrs. Vanderwaal had Peter.

Returning World War II veterans were getting married, and Jewels Bi-Rose was selling a lot of engagement rings and bridal shower gifts and strings of pearls for the groom to give to the bride and watches for the bride to give to the groom.

•   •   •

“After the war Morris started again making trips to repair town clocks. Those were the years when we could count on our sister, Margaret, to help out in the store. Our sister couldn't repair watches—only Morris could do that—but Margaret knew quality, and she knew how to be nice to customers. We could always count on her.”

Morris said, “When our sister was living, we didn't need any Helgas or tattooed boys.”

I said, “There was a girl in my cabin at camp who had a tattoo.”

Uncle Morris was shocked. “A girl your age?” I nodded. “A real tattoo?” I nodded. Looking pained, Uncle Morris said to Jake, “Until these last few years, I didn't even know anyone with a tattoo except survivors from the concentration camps. And I can tell you, those tattoos were not a decoration. They were numbers. Numbers for purposes of identification. The Nazis turned people into numbers.” He shook his head sadly. “But today, these kids decorate their arms and who knows what else. . . .” He looked over at me.

“Her
tush,”
I said. “Ashley Schwartz has a tattoo on her tush.”

Uncle Alex grinned. “A tattoo of what?” he asked.

“A rose,” Jake answered.

“You've seen it?” I asked, shocked.

Jake smiled. “Of course I've seen it. Every time she puts on her bikini. If she didn't want people to see it, she would have had it below the bikini line.” Uncle Morris was still shaking his head. Jake cleared his throat and changed the subject. “Where did the clock faces come from?”

Uncle Alex explained, “They were rescued. Rescued from the big clocks that were being demolished from urban renewal. When we got into the 1970s, urban renewal became the big thing. There had been riots in the big inner cities, and the government was trying to clean them up. What they did was demolish whole blocks of old buildings. Marble came down. Bricks fell. Everything old came down. High-rise glass buildings went up. And parking garages. Parking garages so that people would have a place for their cars when they drive to their offices from the suburbs. They don't stay downtown any longer than they have to. They do their business and then get back in their cars and go back to the suburbs.”

Morris added, “They don't put big, fancy clocks on high-rise glass. I took all the clocks that no one wanted. The faces, we put on top of the towers. They came from all over. Different clocks all over. None of them match.”

Alex laughed. “They don't match, but then, they don't tell time, either.”

Jake said, “The way they're set, there's no way you can see two of them at once.”

Uncle Alex said, “Not a lot of people figure that out.” Now it was his turn to get up and announce, “Dessert will be Margaret's favorite.”

We watched as he whipped cream with a wire whisk and set that bowl in the refrigerator. He removed a roll of chestnut pâté from the refrigerator, dipped a knife into warm water before cutting four slices from it, carefully placed each slice into a stemmed glass, replaced the rest of the pâté in the refrigerator, took a container of vanilla ice cream from the freezer, and slowly dished a double scoop into the glasses, drizzled chocolate sauce over the ice cream, and followed that with a huge dollop of whipped cream. Before he set my portion in front of me, he struck the side of the glass with a spoon to make it ring, then he lifted the glass and held it high and said, “Welcome home,
édes
Margitkám.”

“Who is
édes
Margitkám?” Jake asked.

“I am.”

“She's
my sweet Margaret,”
Uncle Alex said.

“Mine too,” Uncle Morris said.

Jake looked at me and said, “I wasn't so sure about that twenty-four hours ago, but I am now.”

My favorite dessert deserved to be eaten slowly. The best way to slow down is to lick your spoon clean each time and to carefully apportion the whipped cream, the ice cream, and the chestnut pâté carefully so that all three flavors finish together. Spoon licking and apportioning make you savor each mouthful.

Uncle Morris poured the coffee.

Jake took a sip and said, “I could swoon. The only thing that would make this the tiniest bit better would be if you wouldn't mind my smoking a cigar.”

“Go right ahead.”

Jake reached into the bib pocket of his coveralls and took out two fresh cigars. “Will you join me?”

Uncle Morris did. Uncle Alex did not.

After two very long puffs, Jake asked, “Why did you paint them? Was that to protect them?”

Uncle Alex shrugged his Old World shrug. “They were not rusting. They are stainless steel, and the wires are copper.”

“Maybe you just needed to take things to the next level,” Jake suggested.

“I don't know from levels,” Uncle Morris said. “What my brother needed was exaggeration.”

“Maybe it was time for rock ‘n' roll,” Jake said.

Uncle Alex smiled. “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe that's the way to put it. But it was also true that business was
slowing down and down. There was more time. Much more time.” Uncle added, “The first time we ran out of paint, we tried to make a match, but we couldn't. The new paint never matched the old. We never could judge how much we needed and were always running out of one color or another. So when we ran out of the original color, we would just mix something new. By the time summer was over, the sun would fade the brightest shades, so the colors never blended altogether.”

“Very interesting,” Jake said. “That accounts for the camouflage pattern.”

“You don't like it?” Uncle Morris asked.

“Oh, I do. I do like it. I like it a lot. I didn't mean to say that I don't like it.”

“People don't say
interesting
when they really like something,” Morris said.
“Interesting
is what people say when they don't like something but don't want to say they don't.”

“I was trying to say that
how it happened
was interesting.”

I said to Jake, “Do you want me to tell you how it happened last spring?” He nodded. “Last spring my uncles let me mix up a batch of paint, so I added some of this and some of that and ended up with a pale orange color that looked like peach in dim light and
apricot when the light was bright. There was no color like it anywhere on the towers.”

“It was extraordinary,” Uncle Alex said. “Like an orange sherbet.”

Uncle Morris added, “It was unique. Not
interesting.
It was decorative. Very nice.
Very
nice.”

“There was some paint left over, so we used Margitkám's orange sherbet for maintenance all of last summer,” Uncle Alex said.

“This year I was supposed to make lemon and lime to go with it,” I said, “but I got sent off to camp.” It occurred to me just then that I would be able to help paint while I was there. “I can mix up the lemon and lime now,” I said. “We'll have our fruit cocktail after all.”