George

  “That’s only the second reason. The first reason is because I told him to shut up.”

  “Why did you do something dumb like that?”

  “Private reasons.”

  “Shall I tell Dr. Herrold that George isn’t talking to us anymore?”

  “Yeah. Tell him that, Howard. He’d like to hear that. That’s what he has been working for.”

  And so Howard did. He told; he told how George had talked to him and how George had stopped. He explained; he explained when—the first time after he had been expelled from kindergarten and the other times when they were walking home from the Sandlers’ or discussing their chores for supper. Howard confessed; he confessed the names that George had invented for Mrs. Carr.

  Dr. Herrold smiled; he smiled at it all. And he called another conference with Mrs. Carr. He again explained to her that George was Ben’s way to say things that he didn’t have the courage to say. He also believed that George was Ben’s way of consoling himself for not having friends. Ben believed that George had not wanted him to have friends. George had not spoken to Ben or Ben to George for three and a half months. That was progress. Ben was integrating his two personalities into one strong one. Dr. Herrold believed that they could safely cut down on the number of visits, and he had mentioned that in his last letter to Mr. Carr. He further explained that Mr. Carr was quite anxious to see the progress that Ben has made. “I have no objection to his visiting his dad. It is wonderful to work with such an intelligent boy and with such cooperative parents,” he concluded.

  “What about Howard?” Mrs. Carr asked.

  “Oh, yes, Howard. He certainly speaks up. He is a little loud, but I think that he will learn to control that in time.”

  “What I meant was, what about Howard visiting his father with Ben?”

  “Oh, yes. By all means, Mrs. Carr. Howard will add to the normalcy of the situation for Ben. We want to test, but we are not ready to stress. Do you understand what I mean by that, Mrs. Carr?”

  Mrs. Carr nodded yes, she understood, so Dr. Herrold explained anyway. “We want to test, but not to stress,” he resumed. “Too much stress, too much pressure, too much responsibility may bring about George’s return. We don’t want that. And I believe that I may safely say that now Ben doesn’t want that either.”

  And so in view of George’s longtime silence, plans were made for Ben and Howard to visit Dad and Marilyn and their half-sibling, Frederica, just as they always did at Easter time. All in view of Ben’s progress. On the Saturday before Easter recess would begin, Dr. Herrold probed and prodded Ben; he asked if he missed George. Ben lied and said no. Dr. Herrold pronounced him ready for Marilyn, and he smiled as Ben left the office.

  Ben did not smile. He felt nasty; what grown-ups call irritable. He wanted a fight with someone; what grownups call hostile. He felt picked on and put upon; what grown-ups call frustrated.

  As they passed Astra, Ben put all those feelings into focus, turned to his mother and said, “I’d like you to stop the car so that I can stop in the lab for a minute.” He looked straight out the windshield before he added, “Please.”

  Mrs. Carr decided that all the dark notes in his voice and manner would grow if she answered in the same tone, so she said lightly, as lightly as she could, “I hope you won’t be too long; I’ve got to do the laundry today.”

  Ben sat with his arms folded across his chest, not moving. “If it’s too much trouble for you to stop for me, forget it.”

  “It’s really no trouble to stop. As a matter of fact, we are stopped. I’d hate to have to wait too long, though. I need to catch up on the laundry today so that you will have clean clothes to take to Norfolk.”

  “If you’re going to rush me, I won’t bother at all.”

  “Go on in, Ben. How will fifteen minutes be?”

  “I don’t know how they’ll be. They may not be enough.” Ben did not move from the car.

  “Well, try fifteen,” Mrs. Carr said. “If they aren’t enough, come back out and tell me. I’ll go home, do the laundry and come back for you.”

  Ben got out of the car and poked his head in through the open window. “I’ll try to finish in twenty minutes. But you wait. Don’t leave without telling me.”

  Ben walked toward the school entrance he always took, hoping that he would find it locked. Then he wouldn’t have to prepare an opening remark for when he walked into the lab. The clever things that he thought to himself after he was in bed needed to be modified for an audience, especially an audience as special as William, who was about to become his friend.

  Ben had thought about William’s project. And Cheryl’s. He had studied and sorted out their troubles, what they had claimed were their troubles and which they had described to Mr. Berkowitz. Ben had questioned Mr. B. about them when he was over at his house one Saturday night. Mr. Berkowitz was usually at their home on Saturday nights. Besides, he often stopped in for coffee during the week. Mrs. Carr had taken to clearing the dishes from the table right after supper, but she still did the crossword puzzle before she washed them.

  If George had given Ben any indication at all that he was ready to make up, Ben would have happily discussed William’s project with him. But he didn’t, so Ben had had to think it out alone. Ben was pleased that he had successfully thought through a problem without George’s help. Of course, the problem had merely been one of sorting information and putting it in good order. George had been better at solving problems that involved a crazy way of looking at things. George was crazy. Not him. Not Benjamin Dickinson Carr.

  Ben could have discussed his idea with Mr. Berkowitz several times. Any of the times that he had come over for coffee or the time he had brought records from his apartment. He had brought them to share and not because he didn’t have a record player of his own. But Ben didn’t want to talk it over with Mr. Berkowitz. That would be a lesser form of charity: to help and let everyone know that you had helped. Besides, since Ben had lost contact with George, what William thought mattered more to him than what Mr. Berkowitz or his mother or any other adult in the world thought.

  And now, his mother had stopped the car; Ben was at the front door of the school, and it was not locked. He would have to tell William and Cheryl. It would help if he could think of a very clever opening sentence. He didn’t have to.

  As he approached the lab, he heard Cheryl singing. Singing, moaning, and giggling all together and all apart. The moans were from the throat, and the giggle from her head. Her eyes looked like the punched-out holes in two-ring notebook paper. Dark and strangely unblinking. She looked as if she were cooking on the inside with something that was pulling all the moisture from her skin. Bright but powdery.

  “What’s the matter with you, Cheryl?” became Ben’s opening remark.

  “Which me are you referring to? To the one who is here or to the one who is tiptoeing around the ceiling?”

  Ben answered with a puzzled look to William. Were they making fun of him? Did they know about George? William put his arm around Ben’s shoulder. “She’s upset because we have failed again. I was just taking down our equipment. She’ll be all right.”

  Ben continued staring at Cheryl who was now picking lint, invisible lint, or bugs, invisible bugs from her slacks. William interrupted Ben’s line of sight by standing in front of him as he asked, “Is there some special reason why you came to school today?”

  Ben tried peeking around William at Cheryl. She was a sight, with her head weaving as if her neck had been injected with Jell-O.

  “Is there something special you wanted, Ben?”

  “Well, I have a plan for your project. Your research, William.”

  “Oh, we’re going to give up. It won’t affect our grades anyway. We’re quitting. Nothing else doing for the rest of vacation. I was taking everything down now to clean it up and return it all to Mr. Berkowitz when we get back to school.”

  William suddenly turned around and dashed over to where Cheryl was gazing at the glowing coils of
a small electric heater. She stretched her arm to touch it, and William pulled it away from her by the cord. Cheryl acted as if he were playing, and she giggled and began to chase the heater, climbing up on the lab table and padding around on all fours to do it. William found an asbestos glove and lifted the heater off the table and brought it to the table near where Ben stood. He noticed Ben staring at the electric heater. It was just like the one that had been taken from the lab. It could have been it, and it could not have been. One electric heater is the twin of every other electric heater, except for the number taped to the bottom.

  “We were assigned this one. For our research,” William volunteered after he noticed Ben’s staring.

  “Why would you need that?”

  “For refluxing, silly. You know that. Any long period of reflux requires an even heat. You can’t be safe with a Bunsen burner. You should know that.”

  “But, William, why do you need a long reflux period? That’s what is breaking down your amide. That’s why you’re not making any progress. Look, give me a piece of paper, I’ll outline my idea.”

  William acted interested and began searching the contents of his drawers for a piece of paper, something that wasn’t bound into his lab notebook. As he opened one drawer and then another, Cheryl sang, sitting on the lab table, two tables away. She sounded as if she were eighteen tables away and in the next room. Ben noticed a beautiful array of equipment as one drawer and then the next was flashed open. A fractionating column, even more dear than a condenser, a separating funnel. Yes, that would be necessary to separate the water solution from the ethyl alcohol…. But no, ethyl alcohol and water mix completely; they would have to be separated by distillation. They didn’t need a separating funnel. Ben noticed an opened box of sugar cubes; and William, seeing that Ben noticed, told Ben that they made coffee in the lab, and that, actually, if Ben really wanted to know, that was why they had the electric heater in the first place. William said that he knew that a long reflux period would break down the amide. William said that now their secret was out. He told Ben that he would appreciate it if he never said anything to anyone about their making coffee. He winked. The Board of Education might not understand their using materials to heat water for Instant Maxwell House. All that electricity down the drain, ha, ha, he added.

  “Where’s the coffee?” Ben asked, glancing in the cupboard.

  “We’re fresh out. Used the last of it this morning.” Strange that all the coffee should be gone but only one sugar cube missing. Ben looked in the wastebasket, wondering where the empty jar was. Ben answered himself, explaining that they would not want to leave an empty jar around for the janitor to discover. Probably Cheryl had put it in her purse, that huge pouch she wore over her shoulder. William asked, “Now, what was I looking for?”

  “A piece of paper.”

  “Oh, yes,” William said.

  Ben noticed a bottle of methyl alcohol. “This alcohol may be your problem, William,” Ben volunteered.

  “Oh, yes,” William laughed. “You mean Cheryl?”

  “I hope that I don’t mean Cheryl. She didn’t drink any of this, did she? This is wood alcohol. You know that. It makes people go blind.”

  William blushed. “I thought you meant the way that Cheryl was acting.”

  “No, I meant your reaction. Your research. You should use ethyl alcohol.”

  “Oh, yes. Yes. I do. We do. We do that, Ben. We use the other. The one you said. We use ethyl. The safe kind to drink.”

  “Then why do you have the methyl?”

  “Oh, just some odds and ends that I picked up while I was working at the drugstore over Christmas. We seem to use alcohol up so fast.” William looked over at Cheryl again.

  “Picked up?” Ben repeated. He didn’t like the idea that was coming into his head about the relationship between their using up so much alcohol and Cheryl’s singsong manner.

  “Well, bought. You know, the school is so funny about letting you have alcohol. You have to account for every drop of it. So I bought this. Wholesale. Like part of my pay. Stupid me, though, I bought the wrong stuff. I thought I could substitute. Dumb, wasn’t it?”

  “It must have been pretty cheap if you didn’t even try to take it back.”

  “Well, I said that it was wholesale. A fringe benefit, you might say. Like getting paid a dollar and a quarter an hour plus tips for delivering isn’t all that much.”

  “Did you buy this other stuff there, too? This ergot stuff?”

  William laughed. “Yes, I was so sure that I’d be blazing trails for science that I went ahead and bought that; it has an indole base, and I wanted to make an amide of it.”

  “You must have been successful. The ergot container is almost empty,” Ben said, shaking it.

  “Oh, we tried, but it spilled. Yeah. Knocked it over. Pretty near the whole thing spilled out. Luckily, it was soluble in water. Washed the whole thing right down the sink. Just like the lady said, right down the drain.” William slammed the drawer shut. “How about jotting your idea down on a paper towel. No, you don’t want to do that. Benjamin, I can’t seem to find a single scrap of paper. Why don’t you do this? Why don’t you write all those products of your teeming little brain, ha ha, teeming big brain down on a letter and send them to me? I’ll be home over Easter. You’ll be at your dad’s, won’t you? The mail will go through. Good old U.S. Mail. You send me your ideas. Yeah, Ben, I think that is the best idea I’ve had today. It just may be the best research idea ever.”

  He turned Ben around by the shoulders and led him out of the lab, away from Cheryl who was lying on the lab table and staring at the ceiling and smiling at it very hard. Ben turned around only briefly and said, “I hate to interfere or anything, William, but I hope that you aren’t going to let Cheryl drive home.”

  “I’ll handle that. Don’t worry about it, Ben. Just don’t tell. That silly girl just got too upset about things. Don’t you think you can take things too seriously?”

  “Well, I take school seriously. And research. And using certain chemicals the way that they are supposed to be used. Like no wonder they make you sign out for alcohol. Like I don’t think that you should get methyl alcohol from a drugstore so that you can maybe drink the ethyl alcohol.”

  “Ben,” William said in a very solemn manner, “please take my word for it. Alcohol has nothing, I repeat, nothing, to do with what is bothering Cheryl right now. I promise to drive her home immediately, if you’ll promise not to tell anyone about how she is acting. Not anyone, like the man who happens to be teaching this course and who happens to be romancing your mother.”

  “What has Mr. Berkowitz’s visiting my mother have to do with anything?”

  “It should have nothing to do with anything, Ben. And I hope that it does have nothing to do with anything. Because it would be unfair to take advantage of your position to whisper things that you aren’t even sure about to Mr. Berkowitz.”

  “I’ve got to go,” Ben said. “And I think you ought to leave right now, too. My mother has to do the laundry.”

  “I’m going.” William began to guide Cheryl toward the door. “Yeah, Ben, you go, too, and help your mother with the laundry.”

  “The laundry,” Ben said, “she does all by herself. Except for the sheets, which she sends out.” Ben realized that what he was saying was foolish, but it was out like a vapor, shapeless and uncontained.

  “Well, that is just wonderful, Ben. Your li’l ole mother is just a real great li’l ole gal,” William said as he guided Cheryl through the lab door. “No wonder Berkowitz likes her so much.” The last he said as a reminder to Ben, and Ben knew it. Ben turned and walked rapidly down the corridor; he heard Cheryl singing and following behind. He rushed out of the school and into the car before Cheryl and William had finished weaving their way down the hall.

  Mrs. Carr was disappointed that Ben did not leave his bad mood in the laboratory. It was still with him when he returned to the car, but it had shifted its focus from her to someth
ing else. Something he wasn’t telling her about.

  Ben wanted George to talk to him. Here was a problem. Here was something that needed analysis. Here was a situation that was more than its parts. George and William naturally repelled each other, and Ben who was an unattached opposite charge did not know whether he wanted to pair with one or the other. As he had pulled toward William, George had turned him loose. Now that William had been repulsive, Ben wanted George. Ben had always wanted George.

  But not a chirp or whistle, not a sound from there.

  ten

  Mr. Berkowitz emerged from his Volkswagen in parts. Legs first and then the drape of his stomach. Then his moustache, his arm, and the bottle of wine attached to that. It was seven o’clock but still light enough for Howard and Raymond to be playing in the carport.

  Howard asked, “Why do you think that a big guy like him drives such a small car? He looks like a dumb eggplant.”

  “That’s probably the only kind of car that he can afford,” Ray said.

  “I’ll bet he flaps over onto the other seat on one side and chafes his leg against the door on the other. I’ll bet he has to kneesies his dumb self to be able to shift gears. I’m going to get a car with a floor shift. As soon as I have my moustache.”

  “What are you having for supper tonight?” Ray asked.

  “Him,” Howard said, staring as Mr. Berkowitz walked up the path from the curb to their home.

  “I mean what are you going to eat?”

  “We bought chicken, and we’ll have rice and salad. And the salad won’t be from a plastic bag either. We bought a whole ball of lettuce and stuff.”

  “My mother does that all the time. She breaks up lettuce and shreds cabbage,” Ray said. “My mother even fixes peas that come in pods not in cans or cartons. My mother bakes cakes, and she once baked bread even. My mother makes her own spaghetti sauce and …”

  Howard said, “Go home, Raymond.”

  Raymond left.