Home from the Vinyl Cafe (23 page)

“She wanted to come to Paris,” said Annie to Morley on the phone. “I’m sorry. Will you be all right?”

“She’ll be fine,” said Morley, not knowing that at that moment Dave was standing by a luggage carousel at the airport, trying to coax the color of her suitcase out of his niece.

“Is it that one?” he said.

“I don’t know,” said Margot. “I told you. Mommy packed. I haven’t the foggiest what color it is.”

Stephanie, who had refused to come into the airport, was lying in the backseat of the car when they got there. She was wearing aWalkman and had her eyes closed, her feet tapping on the passenger door window. She didn’t acknowledge their arrival until Dave reached into the backseat and removed her headphones.

“Hey!” she said.

Margot watched carefully.

She was growing up to be a serious and intense little girl. Stephanie, six years her senior, was clearly the most interesting thing to have entered her universe in a long time. Here was a gateway into the world of teenage femininity. Margot wanted as much of it as she could get. She was attentive to
everything that Stephanie did, the music she played, the way she used the telephone, what she watched on television, and especially, the nightly application of unguents and balms. When she learned that Stephanie and Sam were about to leave for two weeks at camp, Margot was distraught. “What about me?” she said.

When Annie had asked, Margot had rejected the idea of camp. “Summer camp is for
children
,” she said. Now, however, as Stephanie’s departure drew closer, Margot wanted to go to camp, too.

She became increasingly difficult. “There is nothing to do,” she said. “I’m bored.”

Morley gave her the Camping Association booklet and said, “Maybe there’s a place you’d like.”

Margot took the book to her room and came back in an hour, pointing to “The Crystal Lake Thespian Experience: Artistic Direction and Creative Encouragement for Young Actors.”

Morley phoned the camp the next morning. It was full. That night she handed the camping booklet to Dave and said, “This is your job.”

These were the sort of decisions Dave normally tried to avoid. He preferred the conceptual over the practical. But the possibility of two weeks without Margot—without, in fact, any children—delighted him.

“There must be a camp with space somewhere,” said Dave.

Dave had spent only one summer at camp himself. He had been hired as the arts and crafts director. Before he left for camp, he was seized by some primitive and unfamiliar wilderness spasm and bought a book on plant identification. It featured pencil sketches of flowers, trees, and shrubs. Dave
had the idea that he would spend his free time poking around in the forest. He believed that if he applied himself, by the end of the summer he could become an accomplished woodsman. Maybe by August, some kid hanging around the Hike and Trip Office would poke his buddy as Dave swung by and say, “That’s Dave.” The kid would say it with the same reverence he might say, “That’s Pierre Radisson.” Dave planned to forgo the pleasures of the Red Pine Inn, where the other counselors went to drink at night. He would get up with the sun and go to bed at dark. Born to television, bred to the automobile, he would become Wilderness Dave.

As arts and crafts director, Dave had a two-room cabin called the Wigwam, near the hospital. He set off from his cabin at rest period on his second day at camp, armed with his plant book.

Somewhere between the chapel and the rock where the trail angled up toward the Indian Council Ring, Dave found himself staring at a shrub with three leaves and prominent veins. It looked like the first picture in his book, an Indian turnip.

The way you identified Indian turnip, said his reference, was by its white root. Dave reached out and plucked the plant from the ground. To his great astonishment, he was holding something that looked like an albino carrot.

Dave still finds it difficult to understand what happened next. Perhaps the word “turnip” was what confused him. Perhaps he was just swept away by the moment. Without pausing to think, he wiped the end of the root on his jeans and sank his teeth into it. He had already swallowed a large mouthful before it occurred to him that this might not have been the smartest thing he had ever done. That was when things started to happen in the back of his throat. The first thing was a mild burning sensation. The second felt like the
detonation of a small nuclear device somewhere in the vicinity of his tonsils. As Dave stood on the chapel trail, clutching the stump of the Indian turnip, wondering what would happen next, he noticed that his lips had gone numb. Soon his entire mouth had begun to tingle, and the tingling was crawling down his esophagus toward his stomach. It didn’t take Dave long to realize that eating the root had been a terrible mistake.

Turnip in hand, Dave made his way back to camp.

If he was going to lapse into unconsciousness, he wanted to do it where someone might help. Once back at camp, however, Dave felt too foolish to turn himself in to the nurse. How could he go to the nurse with the turnip and say “I ate some of this”?

He went back to his cabin and lay down on his bed. It occurred to him that if he passed out, no one would know why. He got up and put the turnip on his desk and wrote a note. The note read:
I ate some of this
. Dave figured if he made it to dinner, he could destroy the note and no one would know anything. If he blacked out, someone would surely find him, read the note, and organize the appropriate treatment. Dave lay down again and prepared to die. During the hour he spent on his bed, he came as close to embracing Christ as his personal savior as he had in his life. After the hour of prayer and wild promises, it occurred to him to have another look at his plant book.

The information on the Indian turnip was continued on page two. In his original excitement, Dave had failed to read the whole story.

Indian turnip,
he read,
is a close relation of the horseradish. When cooked, it is a mild and pleasant vegetable. When eaten raw, it is the hottest plant known in the northern woods. Indians used to feed it to settlers as a joke. Painful but not poisonous
.

That night Dave got drunk at the Red Pine Inn. He gave the plant book to the hike and trip director.

After the kids were in bed, Dave came downstairs with the camping booklet. “There are camps with rifle ranges,” he said. “We’re not sending Margot to a place where they arm the campers.”

“I knew you could handle this,” said Morley.

He chose a camp that didn’t have power boats. “No water-skiing,” he said to Margot. “No horses. A small quiet camp. With a lake and sailboats. A summer place.”

What Margot really wanted was to go with Stephanie.

But Stephanie was going to a teenage camp and, for the first time ever, to a camp with boys.

They all left the same Monday morning. It was as chaotic as Christmas. Sam packed all his comics and no clothes. He was being driven to the bus by neighbors. His first time at camp, and he ran out the front door without saying goodbye. “Hey!” said Dave. “Come back.”

Stephanie thumped downstairs with a trunk and a suitcase and a sports bag full of stuff—including, hidden in her sleeping bag, the family’s only hair dryer and a handful of makeup she had swiped from her mother’s bureau.

She wasn’t talking to anyone. She was mad about something—mostly nervous, probably. Dave looked at her across the table, scowling into her cereal bowl, and his heart went out to the boys into whose lives his daughter was about to march. Somewhere, he thought, some poor kid who has no idea what is heading his way is calmly eating breakfast.

Margot was last to leave. After lunch, Dave drove her to the parking lot of a suburban shopping center. She was wearing flared blue shorts, a white T-shirt, and a scarf in her hair.
She left on a bus with a lot of other kids and a handful of counselors wearing tie-dyed T-shirts. The last Dave saw of her, Margot was sitting alone at the back of the bus. All of the other kids were clapping and singing. Margot had her hands in her lap. She was staring dead ahead.

For the first few days the kids were gone, Dave was edgy. “I don’t get it,” he said. “Margot’s the one I’m worried about.”

In the morning he’d wake up and say, “I wonder how she’s doing?”

Morley would say, “She’s doing fine.” This would make Dave feel better. But it didn’t last. An hour later, he’d be worried again.

By Thursday, though, he was enjoying an unfamiliar sense of freedom. That night he and Morley wandered out to a local restaurant for supper. Afterward, on impulse, they went to a movie. On Friday morning they slept in.

“This is kind of nice,” said Dave. “What do you want to do tonight?”

The first letter arrived at noon:

Dear Uncle Dave,

This place is torture. Get me out of here. The meals are horrible. I haven’t eaten anything for two days. They serve old oatmeal in the morning. My counselor’s name is Phyllis. She looks like Igor. Except meaner. I hate the kids in my tent who are all weird. I got bit by a weird looking bug and my arm is swelling up and turning red. I hate this camp. Why did you send me here to this place? This place is despicable. When is my mother coming home? I can’t stand it. I might kill myself
.

Love, your niece,

Margot

Dave was horrified. “What are we going to do?” he asked.

“I thought we’d go to another movie,” said Morley.

“About Margot,” said Dave, pointing to the letter. “What are we going to do about Margot?”

“Nothing,” said Morley. “She’s fine. She’ll be fine.”

“What if she’s not fine?” said Dave. “If it’s such a great place, why did they have spaces available in the middle of July? What if the kids
are
all weird? What if her counselor
is
meaner than Igor?

“Dave,” said Morley. “She’s fine.”

At dinner Dave said, “What if they have guns and she gets a gun and shoots someone? Her counselor. What if she shoots her counselor? What if she shoots herself? She sounded pretty desperate. How am I going to explain that to my sister?”

“Dave,” said Morley. “They
don’t
have guns.”

“Maybe,” said Dave, “it just wasn’t in the brochure. Maybe they knew better than to put it in the brochure.”

That night as he was getting undressed for bed, Dave said, “What if she gets so hungry she goes into the woods and eats a poisonous plant? What if she starts eating plants that make her sick?”

Morley, who was already in bed, didn’t even pretend to stop reading. “What,” she said, “are you talking about?”

Dave said, “Margot. I am talking about Margot. What if she gets a book on plant identification and pulls up a poisonous plant and eats it?”

Morley closed her book carefully and glared at her husband. “Dave,” she said, “only an idiot would go into the woods and pull up a plant and eat it.”