The Way to Schenectady (14 page)

We found ourselves behind the very fat man. All three of us. His dark suit was wide enough to block our view of the food table. I peeped around the back of his coat, and saw squares and cookies and triangle sandwiches. When he’d finished loading up, it was our turn.

The noise level rose around us like water in a bathtub. The fat man ate busily. So did we. Bernie had a Rice Crispie square in each hand, and was taking alternating bites. Bill grinned around a mouthful of chocolate chip cookie. “Not bad, eh?” he whispered.

“Not too bad.” But it wasn’t really good either. Marty should have been there, not us. We didn’t belong. And time was marching on. It was three o’clock. The sooner we left the better. I wanted a chance to have a bath,
maybe have Mom fix my hair. I tried to smile when Myrna came back, but it wasn’t my best smile.

“Jane, Jane, come with me! There’s someone I want you to meet.” Somehow Myrna being so happy to see us made it worse, not better. “You boys come along, too,” she said.

She grabbed the arm that wasn’t full of dessert and propelled me forward. Bernie and Bill followed, munching doubtfully. She led us up to a family group – a woman, a boy, and a girl. I’d noticed the girl during the service, yawning. Part of the family.

Myrna introduced her daughter, Mrs. Stouffer. The girl and boy were her children, Myrna’s grandchildren. Emma, the granddaughter, was the one I was supposed to have so much in common with. “Hi,” I said to her. She kept her hands together, so I gave a small hello wave.

She unclasped her hands. “Bye,” she said, waving back.

“Now, Emma,” said her mom. “Don’t tease the girl. She’s not used to you.”

“Excuse me?” I said.

“There’s no excuse for you,” said Emma quickly.

Her mom laughed. Myrna smiled and moved off, now that the two of us were getting along so well.

“Ha, ha,” I tried to smile. “That’s a good one. Very sharp.”

“Not like you, then.”

“What?”

Emma grinned. “You’re very dull.”

“Oh?” I said. And stopped.

“Emma,” said her mom warningly. Her brother -who’d been introduced as an afterthought – looked blank.

She was a little taller than I am, and a lot ruder. Her dark hair was cut close to her head. Her dress hung on her skinny shoulders like a set of drapes. Her chin bent to one side, like her mom’s. Like Marty’s, come to think of it.

Emma sneered. “Why don’t you make a noise like an airplane and take off,” she said.

Her mom snickered. “Emma, stop that. You’re such a tease.”

Bill said, quietly, “Let’s go.”

“Emma’s so clever,” her mom went on. “We’re used to her, but she oughtn’t to be rude to strangers. She just does it to show off her high spirits and intellect.”

Emma made a face at me. High spirits.

“That’s okay,” I said. “No hard feelings, Emma. One of these days you’ll make a noise like a tree and grow up.”

Emma’s head snapped back as if I’d closed a door in her face. “Why don’t you make a noise like snow, and melt away.”

Her mom laughed, but not very hard. “Snow … melt away. Very good, Emma.”

“You’re kidding,” I said to Emma’s mom. “You call that good?”

“Don’t say anything,” she replied. “It’s better not to try. She’ll only get worse. And really, her insults are so amusing.”

Emma opened her mouth again. I should just have gone. I shouldn’t even have stayed this long. But I couldn’t help myself. I spoke fast. “Why don’t you make a noise like a dead bird and get stuffed,” I said. Emma closed her mouth. I kept going. “Why don’t you make a noise like a golf ball and fall in a hole.”

Behind me, Bill spluttered. Emma’s mom didn’t say anything.

Emma took a step back. High spirits indeed. The girl was a bully. “You should go to the store so you can get a new outfit,” she said.

“You should believe in reincarnation so you can get a new life,” I said.

Emma’s face worked a bit. I guess she wasn’t used to people fighting back. “Your hair reminds me of the sunset,” she spat. “Too bad it can’t sink below the horizon.”

My hair again. At least she’d noticed it. “Funny. I was just thinking that your hair was like a winter’s day: short, dark, and dirty.”

Bullies are all or nothing, like balloons. They look great when they’re complete, but once you prick them they disappear. Emma knew she couldn’t bully me, so she just stopped. She stood there staring at me, and I could see the angry spark in her eyes go out. She was still angry – but not at me anymore. It was the same with Greg, in grade three. I knocked him down, and then he got up and ran away across the school yard, hitting himself.

I hadn’t liked that part of the confrontation with Greg, and I didn’t like it now with Emma. I’d had enough of the game. “Your personality, Emma, has all the charm of the common cold,” I said. “Unfortunately, it seems to be just as contagious.” I smiled. “I’m sorry for insulting you. Actually, your hair looks very pretty. And that’s a nice dress.”

She didn’t say anything. I went on.

“I’m sorry to hear about Mr. Oberdorf. I didn’t know him, but he sure sounds like a nice man. I know his
brother, Martin. Have you tried these chocolate squares? They’re good.”

She opened her mouth, but no insult came out of it. It was as if she’d forgotten how to speak nicely. She might have wanted to, but it was a foreign language.

A man with a camera around his neck came up and whispered in Emma’s mom’s ear.

“Okay,” she said to him. “Emma, darling, we have to go. There’s going to be a picture.”

“It was nice to meet you,” I said. I waved again. “This time I do mean good-bye.”

Emma followed her mother without another word. The brother hadn’t said anything the whole time. Before following his family, he leaned forward and put out his hand. Feeling a little ashamed of myself, I took it.

Bernie was licking his fingers. “That was a mean girl,” he commented calmly.

“Not as mean as Jane,” said Bill in admiration.

We found Dad and Grandma with Henry. “They’re lining up the family for a group photograph,” said Henry. “Under the chandelier.”

Emma and her brother and mom were at the end of the line. Not one of them was speaking. Myrna stood next to them. The very fat man was having trouble finding a place where he wouldn’t block someone’s line of sight. He hung on to a brownie like a life preserver.

Henry shook his head sadly. “Poor Cousin Joe. Would you believe he was once a bodybuilder? Fifteen years ago he had a perfect physique.”

“What happened to Cousin Joe?” asked Grandma.

“They opened a Häagen-Dazs outlet a block over from where he lived. One night he went in and ordered a cone – macadamia nut.”

My dad shook his head. “The old macadamia nut. A killer.”

The photographer had everyone lined up now. He backed up a bit, twisted this way and that, and asked everyone to look at him. He didn’t ask them to say cheese – that was for weddings.

The kid in the middle of the row was really upset. He wouldn’t look at the camera. Marie stood next to him. She was talking to him, and he was shaking his head. A shy kid, I thought.

And then I caught a whiff of a familiar scent. Not Summer Nights.

Mothballs.

And Marie put her arm around the kid’s shoulder to turn him, and the photographer snapped the picture, and I opened my mouth and cried out, “Marty!”

Not a shy kid at all. A small man overwhelmed by huge emotions. An older man, long estranged from his family, who had, it seemed, come home at last.

Marty had been stuck behind Cousin Joe during the service, which explained why I hadn’t been able to see him. “I ran right into the big guy on the church steps,” he told us, “and he recognized me right away. Picked me up like a baby and carried me around to the side entrance. Big Joe. Imagine, I used to let him beat me at arm wrestling when he was a kid.”

We were saying our good-byes in front of the church, under a sky that threatened but didn’t mean it yet, like your parents when you wake them up too early on Christmas morning. Marie and Myrna and Henry and Cousin Joe and a couple of other old people I didn’t know stood in a semicircle and waved at us. Marty was shaking everyone’s hands, one after the other.

Did he look like he belonged? I couldn’t tell. Not entirely. His long-nailed fingers looked different from theirs. His clothes smelled different. His eyes seemed to go deeper inside his head than theirs did. His smile
came and went. Mind you, one of the old men there had a sideways pointing chin like Marty’s, or Emma’s. An Oberdorf chin. Not often you see something as obvious as that. My friend Bridget claims to have her mom’s eyes, but I can’t see it at all. They’re bright blue, is all, just like a lot of people’s. Just like Barbie’s, I told her -but Bridget didn’t seem delighted to have a doll’s eyes.

Did Marty look happy? I couldn’t tell that either.

My hand got an extra-long squeeze. So did Grandma’s. Then he turned and went back to his family semicircle. Marie and Joe made room between them.

Thick gray clouds were ganging up on the sun as we walked to the van. Bernie was sitting on Dad’s shoulders and holding my hand. Affectionate. “Marty’s fingernails are almost as long as Auntie Vera’s,” he said.

“I suppose they are,” I said.

“There are seven windows on one side of the church,” he said, “and seven on the other.”

“Really? I didn’t notice,” I said.

“Daddy’s and my shadow is bigger than yours,” he said. But then the clouds moved in, and the sun disappeared, taking our shadows with it.

“Not anymore,” I said.

The van was about halfway down the block. Not a bad parking spot, an hour and a half ago. Mind you, there hadn’t been a police officer standing in front of it then. There was now.

“Not again!” said Dad. He dashed across the street, Bernie bouncing around on his head like a badly tied bonnet. “No!” he shouted. “Stop! Wait!”

Did the police officer look up when Dad came running over? Did she stop writing? She did not.

“Ham!” said Grandma. “What can we do?” She was upset that Dad was getting a ticket.

She hadn’t cared yesterday.

I looked at Grandma – an old woman, walking slowly. An idea bit me.

“Limp,” I said.

“What?”

“Limp, Grandma. And lean on Bill and me.”

“I can walk just fine – Oh.” She got it. She put out her hand. I grabbed it.

“What a nice girl you are, Jane,” she said in a quavery voice, “to help your frail old Grandma.”

I smiled. “And what a nice Grandma you are.”

“I’m glad you’re with me, Jane.”

“And I’m glad to be with you, Grandma.”

Funny thing, we were both pretending; and at the same time we weren’t pretending. I wonder if there’s a word for that.

“You know,” I said, not pretending at all, “I wouldn’t mind coming to visit you sometime. When we get back home.”

She squeezed my hand. “You know,” she said. “I wouldn’t mind you coming to visit.”

“I’m the only girl at our place,” I said. “Usually.”

“Me, too,” she said.

I thought back to the man with the hole in his heart, who pulled the baby from the inferno. You know, when the doctors examined him after the rescue, they couldn’t find anything wrong with him. The hole had just closed up. A miracle, the article said. Did I believe in miracles?

“Come on, you idiot,” I whispered to Bill. “Take Grandma’s other arm.”

We crossed the street three abreast, and very slowly.

“Oh, there you are, Alexander. I came as fast as I could.”

She sounded so nice.

“Come along, you dear little tots,” she said to us, trying to open the door of the van. I rushed to help her. Grandma leaned against the open door and breathed deeply. “I would have come sooner, but with my bad
leg, I can’t walk as fast as I used to.” Her voice was quite faint.

“What is wrong with Grandma?” whispered Bernie.

“Nothing,” I whispered. “Nothing at all.”

She addressed the policewoman. “I am sorry Alexander parked here in the
NO PARKING
zone. It’s my fault. We were invited to the memorial service at the church, and I can’t walk as far as I used to.”

The policewoman cleared her throat. “Well, ma’am,” she began.