The Wednesday Wars

  "I am going to Columbia University as soon as I finish high school."

  "You will be going to Columbia University when lima beans fly."

  Which was the moment that my sister demonstrated that lima beans can fly, across the table, past my face (mostly), and onto the scale model of the new junior high school.

  Toads, beetles, bats.

  That was the last night my sister came down for supper. Every night afterward, she'd take her plate and eat in her room, alone with the Beatles and their yellow submarine.

  Probably she didn't eat a single lima bean.

  Still, my father did find some of the comfort that he wanted: The day after the Supper of the Flying Lima Beans, he came home with a brand-new Ford Mustang convertible. It was white, with a genuine red leather interior. It had an AM/FM radio. Really! It had a 390 big-block V8 engine and a stick-shift four-speed transmission that could take you up to 160 miles per hour if you wanted. The chrome glittering across the front grille gleamed so brightly that you had to take your eyes away from it when the sun struck just right. It made a sound like ... Power.

  It was, all in all, the most beautiful, perfect car that God has ever allowed to be made on earth.

  My father and mother went for a drive in it every evening, right after Walter Cronkite was finished. They backed out of the driveway slowly, my mother waving at us and laughing as if she was in high school and going on a date. My father would be concentrating on the road, since he didn't want his Ford Mustang to be near any other car that might come too close and spatter a pebble up at the chrome.

  During the day, he left it parked in the driveway—probably because he thought it would look just right in front of the Perfect House, and probably so that Chit wouldn't park his yellow VW bug there. My father wanted to be sure that people didn't think he was driving a bug with pink and orange flower decals, which no one in the running for Chamber of Commerce Businessman of 1968 would drive. At night, after it was too dark to see how wonderful the Ford Mustang looked in front of the Perfect House, he pulled the station wagon out from the garage, drove the Mustang in away from the nighttime dew, and parked the station wagon in the driveway. He did love the Mustang. He watched over it like his Reputation.

  I dreamed of driving that car: The AM/FM radio on. The top down and the wind big and loud. Left hand curved around the wheel. Right hand playing on the shift. Seeing if it really could reach 160 miles an hour on a long straight stretch.

  But I wonder if even the brand-new Ford Mustang convertible comforted my father any the night my sister left for California to find herself.

  We didn't discover anything until the next morning. My father was already at work when my mother went to wake my sister up and found only a note on her bed.

  By the time you read this, I will be somewhere on the highway heading toward the Rocky Mountains with Chit. I'll call when I can. Don't worry. And don't try to follow me.

  ***

  That was all she wrote.

  For supper, my mother set only three places. She did not cook lima beans. She did not say anything while my father swore up and down that my sister had made her own decision, that she would have to live with it, that he wouldn't send her a dime—not a dime—if she got into trouble, that she better not call him first because he was likely to tell her exactly what he thought of her. Didn't she realize that this didn't help his business reputation or his chances for the Chamber of Commerce Businessman of 1968, which that creep Kowalski was trying to steal from him? And why weren't there any lima beans for supper tonight?

  That evening, my mother did not go for a drive in the Mustang with my father. He drove off alone, without even listening to Walter Cronkite.

  And I did the dishes alone.

  I wondered what it was like for my sister, cramped into a yellow Volkswagen Beetle with the folded and hairy Chit, heading toward the sunset, going off to find herself. I wondered what exactly she would find. And I wondered if it wouldn't be a whole lot better going off to find yourself in a brand-new Ford Mustang convertible with a 390 big-block engine.

  Our house grew quiet and still. My father stopped watering the azalea bushes along the front walk, and they drooped and began to die. There was no music from upstairs. There were no more lima beans—which, let me tell you, didn't cause me much sorrow. But there was hardly any talk. And what words there were felt careful, since there was a whole lot that no one wanted to talk about.

  Sort of like things between Claudius, Gertrude, and Hamlet. You can't say a lot if the whole time you're wondering if everyone else is really thinking about the thing you're not supposed to be thinking about, because you're afraid the thing you're not supposed to be thinking about is going to harrow you with fear and wonder. Or something like that.

  As you can tell, Mrs. Baker had me reading The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark for May—which I think was punishment for taking off April. This was slow stuff, and even Romeo had it all over Hamlet. The ghost was okay, and the gravediggers, but when you write about characters who talk too much, the only way that you can show that they talk too much is to make them talk too much, and that just gets annoying. So anytime I saw a speech by Hamlet or Polonius or—well, just about anybody—I skipped over it pretty quickly, and I don't think I missed a thing.

  I shared this insight into reading Shakespeare with Meryl Lee—who, by the way, was not going to move, who now knew who Mickey Mantle was, and who had memorized the entire Yankee roster.

  "I don't think that's a good way to read something," said Meryl Lee.

  "Why not?"

  "You can't just skip the boring parts."

  "Of course I can skip the boring parts."

  "How do you know they're boring if you don't read them?"

  "I can tell."

  "Then you can't say you've read the whole play."

  "I think I can still live a happy life, Meryl Lee, even if I don't read the boring parts of The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark."

  "Who knows?" she said. "Maybe you can't."

  I tried my insight into reading Shakespeare on Mrs. Baker.

  "I see," said Mrs. Baker. "But doesn't this play in particular pose a problem for your new method, Mr. Hoodhood?"

  "What problem?"

  "That there are no boring parts in this, Shakespeare's greatest play of all." She looked at me, and she almost folded her arms across her chest but stopped at the last second.

  "I guess that would be a problem," I said.

  "Read it all," said Mrs. Baker. "Even Polonius."

  "And if it gets boring?"

  "It won't get boring."

  "It already is boring."

  "Then I suggest you start again. This is the story of a son who is asked to take vengeance for what has happened to his father, who has been dreadfully murdered. But he's not sure that he can trust anyone in his family. What might you do in such a situation?"

  "I'd run over the murderer with a Ford Mustang."

  "Short of that colorful extremity."

  "Well," I said, "I guess I'd start by looking around for someone to trust."

  Mrs. Baker nodded. "Now," she said, "begin the play."

  The next day, right after lunch recess, the atomic bomb sirens wailed again in Camillo Junior High. I guess Leonid Brezhnev was still at it.

  We scrunched under our desks again and put our hands over our heads. No talking! Absolute silence! Breathe quietly and evenly!

  "This rots," said Danny Hupfer.

  "No talking, please," said Mrs. Baker.

  "I have a question," said Danny.

  "After the drill," said Mrs. Baker.

  "This is important," said Danny.

  Mrs. Baker sighed. "What is it, Mr. Hupfer?"

  "Isn't it dangerous for you not to be under your desk?"

  "Thank you for your concern. I will take the risk."

  "But suppose an atomic bomb was really coming down, right on top of Camillo Junior High?"

  "Then," said Mrs. Baker, "we wouldn'
t have to diagram any sentences for the rest of the afternoon."

  "It might be worth it," whispered Danny.

  If Danny sounded a little snippy, you have to realize that his bar mitzvah was coming up, and he was more terrified of his bar mitzvah than an atomic bomb. He was really touchy about it, even when you tried to encourage him.

  "You've been taking Hebrew lessons for this for a year," I'd remind him.

  "Years."

  "So how hard can it be?"

  "How hard can it be? How hard can it be? How hard do you think it can be if your rabbi is standing right next to you, and your parents and grandparents are watching you, along with every aunt and uncle and cousin and second cousin—even some you've never met—and two great aunts who immigrated from Poland in 1913 and a great uncle who escaped the tsar, and every one of them is looking at you and crying and waiting for you to make a mistake, and if you do, they'll holler out the right word and stare at you like you've shamed the whole family and they'll never ever be able to walk into the synagogue again. How hard do you think it could be?"

  "Maybe it would help," I said, "if you scrunched under your desk and breathed quietly and evenly."

  "Maybe it would help," he said, "if I stuck this gum up your nose."

  Meryl Lee and Mai Thi and I decided that we should find better ways to help Danny than putting gum up our noses. So every lunch recess for most of May, we sat inside and listened to him recite what he was going to read at the service—even though we had no idea if the words he was saying were coming out right or not.

  At the end of every recess, he was always ready to run away to California.

  "I can't do this," he'd say.

  "You can do this," we'd say.

  "I don't want to do this," he'd say.

  "You want to do this," we'd say.

  "I don't even care about this," he'd say.

  "You care about this," we'd say.

  It was sort of like a play—which, as you know, I have some experience at.

  That's how it went every day.

  You can see how that didn't put us into the mood for atomic bomb drills, which was too bad, since in May there wasn't a single day that went by that we didn't practice for an atomic bomb. Meryl Lee and Mai Thi spent most of the time under their desks softly singing the music from Camelot—which Mrs. Baker didn't seem to mind, even though there was supposed to be absolute quiet. Danny practiced his Hebrew, which is hard to do when you have your hands clasped over your head. I threw spitballs at him, which is even harder to do when you have your hands clasped over your head. And Doug Swieteck went to sleep, and when he went to sleep, he really went to sleep. Let me tell you, you don't want to be in the seventh grade and have people hear you snore. What you hear when you wake up is humiliating. Not as humiliating as yellow tights with white feathers on the butt, but humiliating enough.

  One of the atomic bomb drills came on a Wednesday afternoon, about halfway through the month, right about the time the Yankees were batting .187 as a team and were stuck in ninth place again—just like last year. It was one of those hot, still days that come before summer and that remind you what July is going to be like. When I scrunched under the desk, I could feel immediately that the air there was kind of heavy and steamy, and that I was going to start sweating pretty quickly—which I did. This was really unfair, since everyone else had already left for Temple Beth-El or Saint Adelbert's.

  I think that Mrs. Baker probably agreed.

  "This, Mr. Hoodhood, is ridiculous" she said—and she wasn't even scrunched under her desk.

  I leaned out from under my desk. My hands were still clasped over my head.

  "Mrs. Baker?" I said, even though I was supposed to be breathing quietly.

  "Yes," she said.

  "Would you mind not calling me 'Mr. Hoodhood'? It sounds like you're talking to my father."

  Mrs. Baker sat down at Danny's desk. "You're still angry about Opening Day," she said.

  "I just don't want to be him already."

  "But you have similarities. Meryl Lee showed me your drawing. It was wonderful. Anyone can see that you have the soul of an architect."

  "Maybe," I said.

  "But you want to decide for yourself," said Mrs. Baker.

  I nodded. I wanted to decide for myself.

  "And you're afraid," said Mrs. Baker, "that you won't get the chance."

  "That I won't get the chance to see what I can do with the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune," I said.

  "Not many people do," said Mrs. Baker. "Even Hamlet waited too long."

  The sirens wailed, as if to remind us that there was supposed to be absolute silence.

  "This is ridiculous," Mrs. Baker said again. "Here we are in the middle of Act III, and we have to leave Shakespeare to curl up underneath a desk for an atomic bomb drill, which is, by my count, the sixteenth time you've practiced curling beneath a desk, as if anyone needed to practice curling beneath a desk."

  She rolled her eyes.

  Then she seemed to make a sudden decision.

  She gave up patrolling the aisles and walked back to the Coat Room. She seemed to be rummaging around. And then suddenly, there was a crash and a splatter, and almost instantly the entire classroom smelled like Long John Silver and his crew were yo-ho-hoing over bottles of rum. Lots of bottles of rum.

  Mrs. Baker's voice came out of the Coat Room. "It seems that the crock with Mrs. Kabakoff's pilgrim cider has fallen from the top shelf. Would you please run and bring Mr. Vendleri?"

  I did. When he came into the classroom, his eyes widened. "Smells like a brewery in this classroom," he said.

  "Indeed," said Mrs. Baker. "You'll have to air it out after you mop up the cider."

  "You can't stay in here with a smell like this," he said.

  "Do you think so?" said Mrs. Baker. She looked at me. "Then we shall have to go on a field trip."

  "Afield trip?" I said.

  "We are going to survey points of local architectural interest."

  I thought for a minute.

  "Are there any?"

  Mrs. Baker had pulled her white sneakers out from her lower desk drawer. She looked up at me. "Yes," she said.

  We walked together to the Main Administrative Office—where all the secretaries were scrunched up under their desks—and Mrs. Baker explained to Mrs. Sidman that our classroom smelled like a brewery, and that she certainly did not think that she could keep a student there, and that she would like to take the opportunity to go on a field trip while Mr. Vendleri cleaned the room.

  Mrs. Sidman had one eyebrow raised the entire time she was listening, but Mrs. Baker had her arms crossed, and you know how convincing that can be. So Mrs. Sidman agreed, and Mrs. Baker filled out a form, and one of the secretaries crawled out from beneath her desk and called my mother, and then we got into Mrs. Baker's car and she drove me around and showed me all the points of local architectural interest.

  We crossed over the Long Island Expressway to the north side of town, and meandered down side roads until we stopped beside the Quaker meetinghouse. "This was built in 1676. Think of that, Holling. When it was built, people were still living who had been alive when Shakespeare was alive. A hundred and fifty years ago, it was a station on the Underground Railroad. Escaped slaves hid right here."

  We meandered down more side roads. "That's the first jail house on Long Island," Mrs. Baker said. "It has two cells, one for men and one for women. The first man to occupy the cell had stolen a horse. The first woman had refused to pay the church tax because she was not a member of the church. She wanted to define freedom for herself. Think of that. You can see the bars in the windows where she would have looked out."

  We drove out to the east side of town and circled Hicks Park. "This has changed a great deal over the years, but it was once Hicks Common, where the first settlers of the town grazed their cows and sheep. Those larger oaks—no, the oaks, Holling, over there—were probably saplings then. And the building backing up against th
e park—that clapboard building there—is Saint Paul's Episcopal School, where British soldiers were housed during the American Revolution. The silver communion ware it owns was made by Paul Revere, and one of the original Hicks family members hid it in a cellar so it wouldn't be stolen during the war."

  On the south side of town, we passed Temple Emmanuel. "That is the fourth temple on that same site," said Mrs. Baker. "The first building was burned by lightning, the second by British soldiers who found out the congregation was supporting the Revolution, and the third by arsonists. In all those fires, the ark holding the Torah was never damaged. It's still there today."

  And on the west, on the far outskirts of town, we drove past what looked like a garden shed. "The first abolitionist school," Mrs. Baker said, "where Negro children could come to learn to read and write and so escape the ignorance that slavery wanted to impose. Right there, Holling, is the true beginning of the end of slavery."

  I never knew a building could hold so much inside.

  On a bright blue day when there wasn't an atomic bomb on any horizon, when the high clouds were painted onto blue canvas, when tulips were standing at attention and azaleas were blooming (except for the ones in front of the Perfect House) and dogs were barking at all the new smells, I saw my town as if I had just arrived. It was as if I was waking up. You see houses and buildings every day, and you walk by them on your way to something else, and you hardly see. You hardly notice they're even there, mostly because there's something else going on right in front of your face. But when the town itself becomes the thing that is going on right in front of your face, it all changes, and you're not just looking at a house but at what's happened in that house before you were born. That afternoon, driving with Mrs. Baker, the American Revolution was here. The escaped slaves were here. The abolitionists were here.

  And I was here.

  It made me feel sort of responsible.

  Before we got back to Camillo Junior High, we passed Saint Adelbert's—"built almost a century ago with the pennies of Italian immigrants," said Mrs. Baker.

  "Let's go in," I said.

  Mrs. Baker paused. "Would your parents approve?" she asked.