Wish You Were Here Read online

  “Sure,” I said, “for someone living inside a bubble.”

  “Your mother?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I said, glad that I could speak to her about Ma, and guilty about squealing. “As long as I walk like a snail and wear forty sweaters, everything’s cool.”

  Dr. Cardoza laughed. “Sounds hot to me,” she said. “Well, at least you haven’t lost your sense of humor, Bernie. But your mother shouldn’t restrict you so much—you’re old enough to set your own limits. Would you like me to talk to her?”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “I can handle it.”

  “Good. And maybe it will help when you tell her about the change in our schedule.”

  “What change?”

  “I think you can try coming in once every two weeks from now on. If that works out, we’ll cut your visits down to once a month. Now that my touch is so light, I’ll need less practice.”

  “Wow! Do you mean it?”

  “Uh-huh. And try twenty sweaters. You’ll be able to walk faster.”

  I was whistling when I left her office, and jingling the change in my pocket. The buck-fifty Celia had paid me was still in there. When I added it to the nine-fifty in my bank, I’d have eleven dollars. I was getting there, but not very fast, and I knew I’d have to find more work.

  Helping Celia rehearse hadn’t been as bad as I expected. It was almost fun, except that she made us go over the first act for the entire two hours. I wanted to read the rest of the play, to see what happens, and she wouldn’t let me.

  All of the action so far took place in the Addamses’ kitchen and yard. My favorite character was the one-eyed black cook, Berenice Sadie Brown. She was very funny, and she knew lots of interesting things. I bet it would be great to have someone like her to talk to. And John Henry was kind of cute, once you got used to him. Only Frankie didn’t seem real, the way Celia played her. After reading that one act so often I practically knew it by heart, I realized that Celia said her lines with too much expression but not enough feeling. Frankie was pretty flaky, but she was also smart, and kind of original. “You make her sound like an open-and-shut basket case,” I said. “She’s supposed to be mixed up and unhappy, not a psycho.”

  Celia got really mad. “Who died and left you drama coach?” she said. “You’re supposed to feed me cues, that’s all. That’s what I’m paying you for, not your stupid opinion.”

  But when we went over it again, Celia/Frankie had changed, just a little, had become more believable, and likable. I felt excited and proud, but I didn’t say anything about her improvement.

  When I got home from Dr. Cardoza’s office, I found two pieces of mail waiting for me. One was a big square envelope, and the other was a picture postcard from my grandfather in Miami. He used to be a commercial fisherman and he always picks cards with photos of marine life on them. This one had a beautiful blue whale cutting across the Atlantic and spouting water like a geyser. On the back of the card, my grandfather had written:

  Dear Bernie,

  This is the one that got away! I’m sitting in the sun near the docks right now. Wish you were here.

  Love from Grandpa

  I hadn’t seen him for more than a year, since he’d moved down there, although Ma talked about all of us taking a trip to Florida someday soon. Grandpa was supposed to come up for my bar mitzvah. Then he got the flu and the doctor wouldn’t let him travel. We talk on the phone once in a while, but Grandpa’s a little deaf, so you have to shout. Long distance always makes me shout anyway, and it’s hard to say anything private. We yell back and forth about how everybody is, and about the weather here and the weather there. Writing to each other is a lot better.

  I read the postcard again. Wish you were here. “Me, too,” I said.

  “You, too, what?” Grace said, looking up from her latest creation, which was completely black, without a single person or thing in it. It was weird the way she suddenly paid attention when you weren’t talking to her.

  “Nothing. What’s that?” I asked, pointing to the drawing. It gave me the creeps.

  “Night,” Grace answered, still scratching her black crayon back and forth across the paper.

  “It’s really a dark one, isn’t it?” I said. “Where’s the night-light?”

  “The girl in the picture is too old for a night-light.”

  “What girl? I don’t see any girl.”

  “That’s because it’s dark,” Grace said, as if she was fed up with a pesty younger kid. Maybe they shouldn’t put black crayons in those boxes.

  Celia tapped my arm. “Aren’t you going to open your other mail, Bernie?” she asked, holding out the envelope.

  When I reached for it, she passed it to her other hand and held it over her head.

  She’s taller than me—everybody is, except Grace—and Celia’s fast, besides. I chased her in and out of the downstairs rooms, and only caught her when she tripped going upstairs. I grabbed the envelope and headed for the bathroom.

  Celia rattled the knob, but I’d already locked the door. “It’s a valentine, isn’t it?” she said. “I can tell by the size and shape. Come on, Segal, who’s your secret admirer?”

  I sat on the edge of the tub and tore the envelope open. It was a valentine, a real one, with a red satin heart on the front, and A Valentine Hello to a Friend printed above it. My own heart, which was banging away from the chase, banged even harder. There was no yucky poem inside the card, and no stupid joke, either. Just a neat signature in the middle of the clean white space: Mary Ellen.

  I kept staring at it, reading her name over and over again. “Well,” I said aloud. “Well, well, well.” I stood and looked in the mirror, bouncing on my sneaks to make myself a little taller. Maybe I was a little taller. I hadn’t been measured in school or at the doctor’s for a while. Yeah, I told myself, maybe you’re really eight feet tall and you’ve just been standing in a hole. But I felt happy. My same old face, with its blue eyes and largish nose, could have been worse. My hands and feet were pretty big for the rest of me, too. Didn’t I read somewhere that it meant you were still going to grow a lot? Or was that about puppies and the size of their paws?

  I folded the valentine and stuck it in my pocket. Celia’s comb was on the counter, and I ran it through my hair, trying to lift it in front to add a few inches. Then I opened the bathroom door and managed to get past Celia. She followed me downstairs and to the front door, saying, “Who is it from? Come on, just tell me who it’s from. Where are you going, Bernie? You’re supposed to help with supper. Hey, did you use my comb?”

  The stationery store was pretty low on valentines. Some of them were covered with dirty fingerprints or were missing their envelopes. Most of the ones in good shape were the oddball cards for teachers and shut-ins. It was stuffy in the store, but I unzipped my jacket and read every card on the rack. Finally I decided on a medium-sized one with a couple of cute-looking ducks on the cover. I wasn’t crazy about the message inside: “Hi, ducky! Will you be my valentine?” But the picture reminded me of that scene Mary Ellen and I liked in The Catcher in the Rye.

  The card cost ninety-eight cents, including the tax. It hurt to turn a dollar over to the old lady behind the cash register. To make things worse, she winked at me and said, “Lucky ducky!” as she handed me my two cents’ change.

  I walked toward Allison Drive, which is around the corner from Stephanie Lane, thinking that I probably should have bought the card with the hunting dogs and the rifles on it. It was definitely less romantic, and it cost only fifty cents. I hoped I wouldn’t bump into the Wolfe boys, who would have trailed me to Mary Ellen’s, bugging me all the way. What if Pete happened to go by on his bicycle? No, Pete was at Harwell’s. And the twins weren’t in sight. The only real danger was that I might meet Mary Ellen herself, or be seen by someone in her family. I could make up some excuse about losing the English assignment, if I had to. I could think of something.

  There was a skinny, lopsided snowman on her lawn, wearing a tattere
d old scarf. A miniature black poodle came out of nowhere, lifted its leg against the snowman, and then began to bark at me.

  “Scram,” I told the dog. “Go away, you little blabbermouth.” But I was only wasting my breath. That tiny mutt thought he was a Great Dane or something. He yipped and yapped as I got closer to Mary Ellen’s house, and he nearly had a stroke when I went up the porch steps to her mailbox. I found a pencil stub in my pocket and scribbled her name across the envelope. When I dropped it in the box, my ears felt burning hot. I began to run, skidding on icy places, while the poodle stood next to the snowman and kept on barking.

  “Woof, woof,” I barked back. I was almost home before I realized that I’d never signed the card.

  A Mature Teenager

  Dear Grandpa,

  How are you? I really liked that postcard with the blue whale on it. School is okay. I passed an algebra test last Friday. It’s still cold here. Florida must be great. Good news I only need my shots twice a month! Soon I’ll have more good news, but it’s a surprise. Question. Which do you like more, collies or Irish setters? Well, Ma is calling me, so I’ll say so long for now, and take it easy.

  Love,

  Bernie

  I folded the letter, put it in an envelope, and sealed it. My mother wasn’t calling me. In fact, I was all alone in the house. Grace was on a class trip to the Hayden Planetarium in the city, and Celia was at a rehearsal. Ma was still at work. I’d put that in about her calling me because it didn’t seem right to just end my short letter without an excuse. I’d tried to stretch it out by putting in that other stuff about my algebra test. I had passed, but by the lowest possible mark. Mrs. Jacobs had written “You can do better than this!” next to the circled 65.

  I couldn’t tell my grandfather the most important thing yet. I knew he’d say that I belonged with my mother and sisters and new stepfather, and that living in Miami with a senior citizen was no life for a young person. Once I showed up, though, he’d be tickled pink. We’d get along great, the way we always did. We’d go swimming and fishing, and when I was a little older, we could buy a small boat and start our own business. We could take people out on day trips, for fishing and sightseeing.

  Thinking about all that made me restless, and I went into Celia’s room to look at the framed photo of Grandpa on her dresser. It had been taken a few years before his retirement, when he was still a professional fisherman.

  There he was, standing in front of his boat, Segal’s Seagull, wearing a striped T-shirt, his captain’s hat tilted over one eye. He was stronger-looking than the other men in the picture, and he was smiling. His teeth were very white in his tan face.

  Some Sundays, Daddy would drive Celia, Grace, and me to Sheepshead Bay, in Brooklyn, to wait for the boats to come in. When we recognized the red Seagull, with Grandpa and his mate, Charlie, waving to us from the bridge, we waved back and shouted for them to hurry up. As soon as the boat got to shore we’d go on board, wearing huge yellow rubber boots, and look at the wriggling silvery fish in the tubs. The catch changed with the seasons: flounder, bluefish, weakfish, fluke. People leaned over the dock railing and called down to the fishermen for prices. They argued back and forth, but nobody got angry. It was just nice and noisy, sort of like an opera about fish.

  Celia would walk carefully on the slippery deck, holding her nose, and Daddy carried Grace. She was probably afraid the fish were going to jump up and bite her. I loved tramping around in those big squishy boots, hoping somebody would think I was part of the crew. We had the best times.

  A couple of years ago, everything changed and turned awful. Daddy died, and Grandpa, who didn’t have a wife or any other children, was always sad. Even his work didn’t help him feel better. Chemical dumping was polluting the water and killing the fish. He said the bigger boats were running him out of business, anyway. I’d always thought he was tougher than Superman, but now he kept saying how tired he was and how he never felt warm anymore. Eventually, he sold the Seagull to Charlie and moved to Miami. He lives in an apartment there, pretty far from the beach, on the money he gets from Social Security.

  Ma tried to give him some of Daddy’s insurance and pension money, but he wouldn’t take it. He said he had more than enough to get by, and he still kept sending us cash for our birthdays and Hanukkah. He mails crisp new bills, instead of checks like our aunt in Denver and our other grandparents. It bugs my mother. She says that Sam is much too trusting for his own good.

  I knew I could write to my grandfather and ask for a loan, without having to say what it was for. He’s like that. You don’t have to explain everything to him, the way you do with other adults—he respects you, and lets you have privacy. Yet asking Grandpa for the money I needed didn’t seem right. I wanted to be independent, like him, and getting to Florida was my own problem.

  But it sure was frustrating. That afternoon, Tommy Ricks, the kid who delivers our paper, had told me about a weekend job at the candy counter in one of the Norwood Twin Theaters. Tommy said there was a sign on the cashier’s booth asking “mature teenagers only” to apply. What a great job that would be—working the big popcorn machine, squirting Coke into the paper cups! Free candy had to be included in the deal, and they sell the jumbo sizes there. Good and Plentys, Milk Duds, Snowcaps, Reese’s peanut butter cups...And I’d been cutting down on candy to save money. But what good was dreaming? Even in a tuxedo I couldn’t pass for a mature teenager. It isn’t just that I’m short. I also have what my grandmother calls a baby face. Every time she says it, she pinches my cheek.

  Well, I had to earn the fare to Miami somehow. Once I got down there, good jobs would probably be easy to get. There are all those big hotels and beach clubs. I’d be a help to my grandfather, not a bother.

  When we got our boat, we could call it Segal’s Seagull Two, because it would be the second boat with that name, and because this one would belong to two Segals, Grandpa and me.

  I rubbed my shirt sleeve over the glass on his picture, to polish it. Then I put it back on Celia’s dresser, next to her other things. She had a tray of perfume bottles, a forensics trophy and one for swimming, a hairbrush, a small plastic horse, and a bunch of makeup. The hairbrush still had a few strands of Celia’s straight brown hair tangled in it. Mine was the same color, but hers was a whole lot longer, all the way down to her waist. She was so conceited about it, brushing it every night until it crackled, and bragging about how it took her her whole life to grow. She gave in to having a trim once in a while, just to get rid of the split ends. Ma cut it in the back yard, while Celia sat with her eyes covered, warning Ma to be careful not to take too much off. I remembered a theater program Celia had shown us, with a picture of the actress who played the part of Frankie Addams on Broadway years ago. Her hair was so short you’d almost think she was a boy. Grace asked Celia if she was going to get hers cut, too. “Of course not!” Celia said, as if Grace was suggesting she cut off her head. “There’s this perfect wig in the costume closet at school. My own hair gets pinned up, and the wig goes over it.”

  I checked out the collection on Celia’s dresser, comparing it to the things on my bureau. Except for the perfume and makeup, there wasn’t that much difference. I had a hairbrush, and a trophy, too—for a Field Day walking race, in the sixth grade. Dr. Cardoza had convinced my mother to let me be in it, and I came in second. The horse on Celia’s dresser had once been mine. It was part of a big, fancy Western ranch set, with corral fences you had to assemble, and cowboys molded so they could sit on them. Celia kept borrowing the brown horse and taking it into her room every night, and finally she didn’t give it back. By then I’d lost interest in the whole set and didn’t care.

  One day, when I was about eight and she was eleven, I stood outside Celia’s room and overheard her talking to the horse, calling it by some name—Jack or Jimmy—and telling it about school, and about a movie she’d seen. I peeked in and saw her kiss the horse, with her eyes shut, and heard her say, in a different voice, “I love you, de
arest Jackie.” That was the name. I tiptoed away down the hall, kind of embarrassed, and confused.

  I picked up my sister’s lip gloss, and put it down again. She’d kill me if she caught me in here, but I wasn’t doing anything, was I? What was it like to be a girl? When Celia had friends over, they locked themselves in this room, whispering, and then screaming and laughing. What was so funny? A boy named Stuart, who sounded as if he was talking through a handkerchief, called Celia sometimes. He lived in Mineola. They’d met at a football game be-tween their two schools, and mostly saw each other at school events, when busing was provided. Neither of them had a license yet, although they were both taking driver’s ed. They were like Romeo and Juliet, except it was lack of transportation that kept Celia and Stuart apart. Whenever he called, she was nicer to everyone for hours afterward. I thought of Mary Ellen, of her breasts, and her small hands with their raggedy fingernails, and got this warm, pleasant feeling in my belly and groin.

  There were such funny names on some of Celia’s perfume bottles—“Surrender” and “Hard to Get.” It seemed as if they couldn’t make up their minds. I sprayed some “Surrender” in the air, turning my face away. It still smelled strong, like that floral deodorant they use in the bathrooms at school. Did Mary Ellen wear perfume? Did she know that the valentine was from me?

  Celia’s eyebrow pencil rolled forward, and I caught it at the edge of the dresser. “Medium Sable” was printed in gold on its side. I took off the cover—the pencil looked plain brown to me. Celia used it to darken her eyebrows. Mine were dark enough. Like the few hairs under my arms, and those down below. I leaned toward the mirror and peered at my upper lip. There was nothing there but that blond fuzz I always had. Well, maybe it had gotten a little thicker. I sketched a couple of quick lines over it with the eyebrow pencil. It was so much softer than a regular pencil. Holding my lip stiff, the way my father used to when he shaved, I drew more lines, out from the middle in both directions, until they formed a tiny mustache. I wiggled my eyebrows, like Groucho Marx, and laughed out loud. Then I leaned toward the mirror again and made the mustache longer, filling in the empty spaces as I went along. It looked kind of real. The softness of the lead made it furry, like hair. I squinted and stepped back a little. The mustache got better. “Yes,” I said. “Thirty grand sounds fine to me. Shall we close the deal over a drink?”