Mrs. Kaplan seemed to take issue with everything I said until I said the one thing that made her so mad that she put an abrupt end to the little chat, and her smile dropped so fast, it almost made a sound. Her nostrils dilated, and she seemed to vacuum in half the air in the room. Huffing out the syllables of my name, she said, “Margaret Kane.” She took a deep breath, this time sucking the air back in through her clenched teeth. “Margaret Kane, we want you to think about the cruel thing you have just said. We want you to think about that very hard. Very hard. And then we want you to think about what you can do to apologize.”
She sprang up from the bed as if from a trampoline. The paper plate fell, and the remaining cookie broke into a hundred pieces.
I sat on Heather’s bunk, bouncing ever so slightly from the recoil of the mattress. Mrs. Kaplan looked down upon me and the scattered cookie with equal contempt. She said, “You may sweep that up.” She paused just a second and added, “Now!” She watched as I got the broom and started sweeping. “When you’ve finished here, we would like you to report to the infirmary and see Ms. Starr. And we don’t want to hear that you prefer not to.”
Ms. Starr was Nurse Louise. I did not like her at all. Except for the fact that she dyed her hair and wore a lab coat, she was just like Mrs. Kaplan. I truly would have preferred not to go there again.
As soon as Mrs. Kaplan left, I began to sing:
“God save our gracious Queen
Long live our noble Queen
God save the Queen!”
I sang as I swept and by the time I had finished the fifth verse and had sung the second verse (my favorite) twice, I had swept the entire cabin from wall to wall, paying special attention to the four corners. When I was finished, I decided that “sweep that up” did not also mean “pick it up,” so I left the mound of crumbs, dust bunnies, and sand in a neat pile at the entrance, propped the broom in a corner by the door, and left for the infirmary.
five
We were now on a part of the highway that is officially scenic. We were passing markers that explained—in paragraphs that were too long and lettering that was too small—what we should be appreciating. A person would have to be an extremely rapid reader or be in an extremely slow vehicle to be able to make out what they said. I didn’t even try.
Tartufo sat on the floor, resting his head on the seat between Uncle and me. I stared out the window, thinking that everyone at Talequa had a name for me but none of them knew me. Even if I would never get a prize for being Miss Congeniality, I didn’t deserve incorrigible.
“Nurse called me incorrigible, Uncle,” I said.
Uncle lifted my hand and kissed my fingertips. It was an Old World thing he did when he approved of me—which was often. “I know,” he said. “I read the report.”
“I didn’t know she wrote it, too.”
By the time I got back to the cabin after seeing Nurse Louise, all the Meadowlarks had returned from tubing. The first thing I noticed was that the mound of crumbs and dust balls at the threshold was gone, scattered back over the floor of the cabin. The second thing I noticed was that Ashley and Alicia looked incandescent. Then I saw that everyone had a neon glow. Even Blair Patayani, whose skin was a shade of coffee ice cream and who had bragged that she never burned, did. I made my way into the room. Everyone was oddly quiet. When I got to my bunk, I saw why.
One foot of my bunk ladder was sitting in an ugly pool of vomit. Heather Featherstone, who had the bunk beneath me, was lying on her side with her back to the room. Her back was a luminous shade of raspberry. She was clutching her Fringie to her stomach. I asked, “What happened?”
Berkeley Sims stepped forward and said, “Maybe you can tell us.”
“What do you mean?”
Ashley exchanged a knowing smile with Berkeley before saying, “That mess was not here when we left, and you were the only one in the cabin.”
I opened my mouth to answer, but I couldn’t speak. I hopped over the lowest rung of the ladder and made my way up to my bunk, holding on to both rails of the ladder so that they could not see me shaking.
Looking like two low-wattage infrared bulbs, Alicia and Blair came over. Stacey and Kaitlin joined them, and then, as if on some unspoken signal, the six of them formed a semicircle and stood shoulder to shoulder at the foot of the bed, giving as wide a berth to the pool of vomit as the space between the beds allowed. I don’t know who said “Clean it up” first. Maybe it was Kaitlin, but it could have been Ashley. I looked around from face to face. They returned my stare, and in that brief exchange of looks, I saw it happen. I saw them change from nasty to vicious. Right before my eyes they closed in, silently at first. Then they linked arms at their shoulders, and with the precision of a line of Radio City Rockettes, they started chanting, “Clean it up, clean it up, clean it up.”
I was no longer shaking. I was frozen in place. My blind inner self must have told me that they were beyond reason, beyond logic. Anything I could have said—had I been able to speak—would not convince them otherwise. I sat up there on my bed and watched them invent their rage. They had become a warrior gang. They needed a victim. Me.
They picked up a rhythm. “Clean it up, clean it up, clean it up, up, up.”
In a groupthink pause between chants, Gloria came in.
They shut up and quickly dropped arms.
Gloria assumed the girls were gathered around my bunk out of concern for Heather. “How is she?” she asked. The girls broke up to let Gloria through. She sidestepped the base of the ladder and sat down on the edge of Heather’s bed, just where Mrs. Kaplan had sat earlier. She said, “Jake’s over in the mess hall. Why don’t one of you go tell him what happened. He’ll know what to do.”
Ashley volunteered to go, but not before exchanging a vile smile with Kaitlin and Alicia.
That evening when Gloria came back to the cabin, I sat up in my bunk and sang “God Save the Queen.” I sang all five verses all the way through and then sang them all the way through again.
I was looking out the window, but I was seeing nothing. I was thinking about the three kinds of we: The plural we, the editorial we, and the royal we. I could thank my id, the part of my psyche that is totally unconscious, for knowing that Mrs. Kaplan thought she was a queen. My subconscious knew even before I did that the woman thinks she is a royal we. It was my id that instinctively chose “God Save the Queen” as the song I should sing. I started to hum it.
Uncle asked, “What are you singing, Margitkám?”
“The same song that I sang yesterday.”
“What song was that?”
“The British national anthem. I started singing it yesterday afternoon. Later, I sang it sitting up in my bunk.”
“Always the same song?”
“Always ‘God Save the Queen.’” In a weak tremolo I began:
“God save our gracious Queen,
Long live our noble Queen,
God save the Queen!
Send her victorious,
Happy and glorious,
Long to reign over us;
God save the Queen!”
“Where did you learn that?”
“Sixth grade. My language arts teacher was an Anglophile. She made us learn five verses. She said there was a sixth, but she didn’t like it, so we only learned five. Listen to the second verse. It’s my favorite.”
“O Lord our God arise,
Scatter her enemies
And make them fall,
Confound their politics,
Frustrate their knavish tricks,
On Thee our hopes we fix,
God save us all!”
Uncle laughed. “Very good,” he said. “And very appropriate.”
I sang the second verse again, and soon Uncle started humming. By the time I got to the top again, he was singing along. Neither of us had any singing voice to speak of, and Tartufo reacted by lifting his head and howling.
Uncle asked, “What happened when you sang, Margitkám?”
“Nothing. The Meadowlarks paid no attention at all. I think it’s called ‘shunning.’ All of them except Gloria, my counselor.”
“What did Gloria do?”
“At first she tried to ignore me, but after I had sung it straight through for a second time, she asked me to please stop. ’Please, Margaret, please stop singing that song,’ she said.”
“And what did you do?”
“I stopped singing, and I started to hum. I hummed. I hummed and hummed until I came to Frustrate their knavish tricks. I sang those words, and then I la, la, la, la, laed, until I came to God save us all! I sang those words, and then I started humming again. Do you think I was being incorrigible?”
“Incorrigible? I’m not so sure. But irritating, yes. Irritating, I’m very sure.”
“Good,” I said, strangely satisfied. And then, as if prompted by a choral director, we sang the first two verses all over again. This time Tartufo lifted his head and howled as if the moon and not the sun were full and visible. We stopped after singing a second chorus, and Uncle Alex kissed the top of Tartufo’s head, and I did too, and that was the moment when I caught Jake the handyman’s reflection in the rearview mirror, and this time—no mistake about it—he was smiling. Definitely smiling.
At last we came to highway signs that were big enough to read, and they said that we were approaching a rest area. Uncle leaned forward and asked the driver to please stop.
“No problem.”
Uncle replied, “My two favorite words,” and then he added, “köszönöm szépen,” his Old World thank you.
Just before he put on his turn signal to change lanes, Jake the handyman turned half around and smiled directly at me. His smile was slightly mischievous and totally unvarnished.
six
When I came out of the rest room, Jake was standing in front of the car, holding Tartufo’s leash, smoking a cigar. No genuine fragile X person could smoke a cigar and look relaxed at the same time.
“If it’s all right with you, I’ll give Tartufo a little run,” I said.
He handed me the leash. “Take your time,” he said. “No hurry.” He flicked the ash from his cigar with a smooth gesture. I started toward a sign that pointed to a dog run in the back of the rest area, and glanced back at Jake. He was leaning against the car hood, a faint, relaxed smile on his face. An Asperger’s wouldn’t be leaning nonchalantly against the car hood; he’d be banging his head against it. I wondered if there were two handymen named Jake at Camp Talequa. One normal; one not.
Tartufo took his time about where to lift his leg, and when I returned to the car, I found Uncle and Jake deep in conversation. Tartufo lunged toward Uncle, yipping with excitement as if he had not seen him for days. I wondered how dogs measure time. Do they multiply minutes by seven, the way I did at Camp Talequa?
I turned the leash over to Uncle and started to open the back door of the car when Jake, between puffs of relighting his cigar, said, “No hurry.”
Who was this man who looked and sounded as if he not only knew what was going on but was in charge?
Then Uncle said, “That accident on the highway really slowed us down.”
Jake caught on right away. He took a deep pull on the cigar, then held it at arm’s length and twirled it between his thumb and forefinger while examining it. “Three cars,” he declared. He smiled slyly in the direction of the highway, where cars were zipping by at the speed of sound. “People on the scene said that the ambulance was delayed by heavy traffic.” He carefully snuffed out his cigar on the sole of his shoe, checked that it was cool, and slipped the rest of it into the bib pocket of his coveralls, which he buttoned closed.
Uncle looked over the six lanes of moving vehicles. “Traffic backed up for hours. . . .”
“It wasn’t easy getting the lifeflight helicopter to land at the site of the accident,” Jake said as he reached into the front seat of the car and took out a cooler. “Witnesses say that people delayed by the massive traffic jam were led to the best table by a man who was familiar with the territory and that they shared their loaves and tuna fishes.” He smiled again. “Follow me.”
We assembled around the table that he led us to. After we were seated, I asked if he had a last name.
“Kaplan,” he replied. “I am Jacob Kaplan.”
“Are you her husband?” I asked, shocked.
“Her son.”
Uncle said, “That makes you the heir apparent.” Jake laughed. “Only in a technical sense. It is true that I am the son of the reigning queen, but I am nothing more than an obedient subject.”
I looked at Uncle, and he looked at me, and as if on cue, we chorused, “Anobedient subject? Are you anobedient?”
Jake shook his head no and then nodded yes and laughed. “I guess I am.”
We ate slowly, enjoying the shade and the slight breeze that floated across the highway. Jake told us that he had become his mother’s handyman when he lost his job as a billboard painter. “After so many states passed laws forbidding billboards, especially the big ones like the ones I painted, I was out of work. Mother needed a handyman, and I needed a job. I am a better painter than I am a handyman. But what good is being good at a craft no one wants?”
Uncle Alex replied, “My brother is in a similar situation.”
“Is he a billboard painter?”
“No, he is a watchmaker. Not quite as bad because there are still some watches that don’t run on batteries, and people still need repairs. My brother, too, is good at his craft. He is expert at doing fine-tuning and repair work on what he calls timepieces, by which he means clocks and watches that have gears and springs. We have a place—a kiosk—in the Fivemile Creek Mall.”
Jake Kaplan looked at me and winked. “Sooner or later, we all do what we have to do—even if it means fixing plumbing.”
Uncle and Jake gathered up the wrappings from lunch and walked toward the trash barrel by the side of the walkway. I followed, holding Tartufo’s leash. After they dumped the trash, I gave the leash to Uncle and then hung back. I was so happy not to be programmed for walks/talks/arts/crafts that I felt as if I had been given a hall pass. Freer than that. Freer even than the last day of school. I was excused.
No more Meadowlarks.
What a relief!
No more powdered-milk breakfasts.
What a relief!
No more crafts-on-demand or Mother Nature. No more friendly guidance from experienced counselors. No more, no more, no more.
I spread my arms eagle-wing wide, then with my fingers splayed, I slowly raised my arms as high as I could, and lifted my face to the sky where I directed my thanks. I would soon be at my uncles’ house. I would soon be hanging out. I would soon be in the Tower Garden. I would soon be eating while the Meadowlarks had lights-out. “Yes!” I yelled. “Yes, yes, yes.” I dropped my arms to my sides and twirled around three times—three times to totally cast out the Doom of Talequa.
Then I ran to catch up with Uncle and Jake.
As we walked to the car, Uncle said, “May I suggest, Mr. Kaplan, that when your car breaks down in Epiphany, you join us for dinner?”
Jacob Kaplan said, “I would like that very much.” Uncle Alex asked, “Can you tell me whether your mother will be pleased or angry when she discovers that there won’t be an auto repair bill?”
Jacob beamed two bright eyes directly at me and said, “I prefer not to.”
seven
Uncle Morris was sitting on the top step of the service porch, waiting.
As soon as Jake cut the motor, I was out of the car, and before I was halfway across the yard, I was in his arms. He squeezed me to him, and there in the welcome of those arms I felt right about myself for the first time in more than a week.
Uncle Morris Rose was five inches taller than his brother, and although he weighed just as much, the pounds spread out over those five extra inches made him look formidable rather than jolly. He was as bald as Uncle Alex, but Uncle Morris resented it, so he parted his hair an inch a
bove his left ear and combed a few stray strands over the top of his head, his comb-over. He further compensated for the lack of hair on his head by wearing a commanding mustache; Alex was clean-shaven. Morris was three years older and six years bossier. His Hungarian accent was deeper, his syntax more foreign, his manner gruffer, his temper shorter, his eyesight better, his hearing worse.
The three Rose siblings had emigrated from Hungary together: Alexander, Morris, and Margaret, their sister and my grandmother, who died the year before I was born. Margaret was the oldest, and her brothers had loved her very much, and for all their differences, large and small, there was nothing they agreed on more than this: I, Margaret Rose, was their sister’s name made flesh, and they loved me anendingly.
Even after Uncle Morris released me from his big bear hug, Jake still had not stepped inside the open gate. He stood stock-still between the car door and the iron pipe fence and stared. Uncle Alex beckoned to him to come forward and be introduced to his brother.
“Can it wait a minute?” he begged. “I want to look. Let me look. Just look.”
Pleased—how could he not be?—by Jacob’s reaction to the towers, Uncle Morris called back, “Take your time. Help yourself.”
Uncle Alex said, “Jacob will be joining us for dinner.”
Glancing back at Jake, Uncle Morris said, “Certainly,” and then he urged me, “Inside, édes Margitkám. Come inside.” He swung the screen door wide and let me pass in front of him. “Tell me, what did they do to you?”
“It was me, Uncle. It was what I did,” I replied. I took a step back and said, “I did nothing. That was the problem.” I laughed, and Uncle laughed too.
As soon as Uncle Alex came inside and closed the screen door behind him, Uncle Morris said, “I see you brought Tartufo.” To which Alex replied, “No, Morris, this is my other dog. My spare.”
“As ugly as your first.”
Morris Rose did not approve of Tartufo. He complained about the hair he shed. He complained about the smell of the big sack of dog food that Uncle Alex kept in the corner of the service porch and the bowl of water on the floor next to it, which he managed to kick over at least once a week.