Peter and Veronica

by Marilyn Sachs

  “This is my boy,” she said to the guest, “my Peter. You remember Mrs. Rappaport, don’t you, Peter?”

  “Uh, I think so,” Peter said politely. “How do you do, Mrs. Rappaport.”

  “Nice boy,” Mrs. Rappaport said, smiling to Mama. “How old is he?”

  “Twelve.” Mama rested a warm, plump hand on his shoulder. “He’ll be thirteen in May.”

  “Like my grandson,” Mrs. Rappaport said, “Rachel’s boy. But he’s much taller.”

  Mama’s hand stiffened on his shoulder, and he said, “I better go change, Mama.”

  “You should give him lots of milk,” Mrs. Rappaport said, “and liver. He’d grow taller if he ate liver.”

  “Kinnahura, he eats fine,” Mama said coldly, “and he’s growing fast. He’s like my brother, Irving. He didn’t grow until he was thirteen and now he’s over six feet. It’ll be the same with my Peter.”

  Peter squirmed unhappily under Mama’s hand. He didn’t like being short, and every time Mama said how fast he was growing—and she’d been saying it for years—he felt worse.

  “I better go change,” he said.

  But Mama’s hand held him. “Reads all the time,” Mama said. “Such books! You wouldn’t believe it.”

  “My grandson too,” Mrs. Rappaport said airily.

  “The smartest one in the class,” Mama continued.

  Peter writhed desperately, and said, “Ma, I better ...”

  “Like my grandson,” echoed Mrs. Rappaport.

  “Been on the honor roll every single term since he started school,” Mama said.

  There was no response from Mrs. Rappaport.

  “I saved them,” Mama said, pressing her advantage. “I’ll show them to you.”

  “Very nice,” Mrs. Rappaport said coldly. She looked at Peter. “You go to cheder?” she asked.

  “Uh, huh.”

  “And you should hear what the Hebrew School teacher said to me last week,” said Mama. “He said my Peter’s the best, that’s just what he said, the best student he ever had. He said Peter could get a scholarship to the Yeshiva if he wanted, and study to be a rabbi.”

  Mrs. Rappaport stood up. “I’m going,” she said

  “No, no,” Mama said. “Stay a while. Sol should be home from synagogue soon.”

  Mrs. Rappaport remained standing, but she said to Peter, “It’s raining outside?”

  “Pouring,” Peter said.

  “How come you went out on such a day?”

  “Library?” Mama murmured.

  “No, I was skating with my friend,” Peter said, “and it wasn’t raining when we started.”

  “Skating?” Mrs. Rappaport said, raising her eyebrows. She sat down. “Skating? A big boy like you.”

  Mama’s hand stiffened again on his shoulder.

  “Lots of kids my age do,” Peter said uncomfortably. “My friend is thirteen and a half.”

  “A Jewish boy?” asked Mrs. Rappaport.

  “No, a girl.”

  “A Jewish girl?”

  “No ...”

  “Peter,” Mama cried, “go change! You’re soaking wet. Why are you standing there like that?” She gave him a little push toward his bedroom, and as he hurried off he heard Mrs. Rappaport say, “A very nice boy, but you got to be careful. Even at his age, you never know ...”

  Everything was wet. Peter pulled all his clothes off and put on dry things. But he stayed in his room and wandered around restlessly. After a while he opened the door a crack and listened. He could hear voices from the living room, Papa’s voice too, but she was still there so he closed the door again. Wouldn’t she ever go home?

  He moved over to the bookcase and pulled out one of his library books, a big one entitled Snakes and Other Reptiles, and settled down at his desk. But he didn’t feel like reading now, so he put it back and noticed a couple of stamps on the floor. Mama had been cleaning again, yanking out his stamp album and all his other books in her endless pursuit of fugitive specks of dust. He clenched his teeth, and then suddenly his heart began pounding as he wondered if she’d found it. Quickly he pulled out the M volume of the Wonderland of Knowledge encyclopedia, opened to page 117, and relaxed. His pamphlet, sent to him through the mail for twenty-five cents, and entitled “Basic Body Building Exercises for Boys,” lay there untouched. But he’d better find another place for it. Where though? Was there any place safe from Mama? His chest of drawers? No. She was continually arranging and rearranging his socks and underwear. The closet? No. She liked to take all the clothes out and vacuum every couple of months. Under his mattress? Even that was no good, because she had this thing about bedbugs and was forever spraying Flit on the mattress and the bedsprings.

  Peter sat down on the bed and allowed himself a short but intense moment of self-pity. Was there no place in the whole world that belonged to him and only him? What about the desk? He had inherited the desk from cousin Jeffrey who was now grown-up and married. It had a lock in the middle drawer but no key. But he could have a key made for it, couldn’t he? Maybe Marv could help him remove the lock from the desk. Then he could take it over to the locksmith and have a key made. Beautiful!

  Peter grinned, but his smile faded as another problem presented itself. Where would he keep the key? Well—maybe wear it around his neck. No. He hated things around his neck. Maybe over at Marv’s house, and he could go and get it whenever he needed it. But Marv had a mother, too, who was always cleaning. There was Jack Tarr whose mother was dead, but he lived over on 166th Street and that was too far away.

  So—where could he keep the key: in his shoe, maybe, or ... wonderful ... now he had it. Quickly he opened his window and reached out, feeling around the side of the building until he found the old hook. A wash line had once hung there, but now only the hook remained. He could hang the key on a string and suspend it from the hook. She’d never find it there.

  In the meantime, Peter put the pamphlet back in the M volume and replaced it on the shelf. Since she’d just dusted, he figured he had about a week’s grace, and in that time he’d make sure to get a key.

  He picked the stamps up off the floor, took out his stamp album, and settled himself at the desk. One of the stamps was from French Equatorial Africa and the other from Liechtenstein. He put a fresh stamp hinge on each of them and pasted them back in their places. He’d been saving stamps since he was nine, and at first Mama had said it was a waste of time and money. But he kept reminding her in the beginning that President Roosevelt also saved stamps and that helped. Last year, when he won second prize in a stamp tournament, she became enthusiastic. That was one thing about Mama. Prizes always made her enthusiastic.

  He turned to his United States stamps and studied his commemorative collection, noting lovingly his first-day cover of the World’s Fair stamp issued in 1939, two years ago. He’d gotten it from Joey Pincus and it had cost him twelve stamps from Brazil, three from Canada, four from the Union of South Africa, and fifty cents besides.

  Somebody knocked on his door. Peter braced himself and said suspiciously, “Who is it?”

  “Me, cookie,” Rosalie said. “Can I come in?”

  “Oh, Rosalie!” Peter jumped up and opened the door for her. “Come On in. Is she still there?” he whispered.

  His sister’s usually cheerful face looked grim. “Yes,” she said, closing the door behind her, “the yenta!”

  Peter studied his sister’s face sympathetically. Mrs. Rappaport probably had been asking her questions about Bernard, her boy friend. She’d been going out with Bernard for nearly a year now, but nothing much seemed to be happening.

  Rosalie was twenty-three and worked as a bookkeeper for a button business. She was small, a little on the plump side, and her broad, pink-cheeked face had a thoughtful, patient look. People said she was a “sweet girl,” which meant that they didn’t think she was pretty.

  “Anyway,” Rosalie said, “what’s my favorite brother up to?”

  “Oh, just looking at my stamps,” Pet
er said, motioning to the album.

  Rosalie moved over to the desk and stood, studying the stamps. “Mmm,” she said approvingly, “any new ones?”

  “No, I’ve been so busy lately, I haven’t had a chance.”

  “You’re really working hard these days, aren’t you, honey, getting ready for the bar mitzvah?” Rosalie patted his shoulder, and her eyes were tender. “My little brother, growing up so fast.”

  Peter moved away carefully. Rosalie was great and all that, but like Mama, she got mushy at times.

  “Is Bernard coming tonight?” he asked, changing the subject. Bernard had been coming every Friday night for dinner for quite some time, so it was a safe question.

  “Yes,” Rosalie said, looking at her watch. “He’ll be here in a few minutes, so I’d better get ready. We’re supposed to go to a concert tonight, but if that woman doesn’t leave, we’ll never have time to eat.”

  They both heard the sound of a door bang, and smiled at each other in relief. Peter opened the door to his room and shouted, “Is she gone, Mama?” He walked into the living room. Mrs. Rappaport was just standing up, putting on her coat.

  “No, she’s not gone,” said Mrs. Rappaport acidly, “but she’s going now.”

  “Shame on you, Peter,” Mama said weakly. Then she took Mrs. Rappaport’s hand, and said, “You know how it is. He’s hungry and—”

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Rappaport loftily, “I know how it is. Good-by, Peter. Be a good boy and don’t disgrace your parents. Good-by. Good-by.”

  Mama walked her to the door, and when she came back her face was furious. “Such terrible manners!” she yelled. “I was so ashamed, I could have fallen through the floor.”

  “Well, I heard the door slam so I thought she’d left,” Peter said defensively. “Besides, I didn’t like her,”

  “So what difference does that make?” Mama answered. “I don’t like her either, always bragging about her grandson, the big schlemiel, but still, she’s a guest in the house, and that’s no way to treat guests. Now she’ll tell everybody what a bad boy I’ve got.”

  “Who cares what she says?”

  “I care.”

  The door opened and Peter’s father came into the room. “She’s gone? Thank goodness. I had to run out for a breath of air. Ah—Peter! How’s my boy?”

  “Fine, Papa.”

  “He’s not fine,” said Mama. “He was fresh to Mrs. Rappaport and he runs around all the time with a girl—a terrible girl—and you’ve got to tell him to stop.”

  “Stop!” said Papa.

  He and Peter began laughing. Mama raised a finger in the air and prepared to explode, but then the doorbell rang and Mama’s hand dropped, and her face assumed that special eager look it had whenever a boy friend arrived for Rosalie.

  “I’ll talk to you later,” she hissed, and then in a louder voice, a sweeter voice, she called, “Rosalie ... go, Rosalie, open the door. It’s Bernard.”

  Saved by the bell, Peter thought, as he returned to his room to put away his stamp album and to make certain that the M volume of the Wonderland of Knowledge wasn’t sticking out any further than its companions.

  Chapter 3

  Marv Green was a genius. Peter knew this with absolute certainty. He knew with equal certainty that nobody else, including Marv and his family, believed this to be the case.

  Sunday at nine, a drizzling, blowy Sunday, Peter crossed the street and headed for Marv’s house. There were only two one-family houses on the street, and Marv lived in one of them. All the other houses were apartment houses, and the two small gray brick buildings huddled together between their giant neighbors, attached like ancient, wizened Siamese twins.

  Both houses had wooden staircases leading up to the front entrances. One of the houses had a small plot of land on the side of the staircase with a neat border of privet hedges framing it. The other house had a moat with a bridge over it constructed of cement with stones, pieces of flowerpots, broken crockery, and soda bottle tops embedded in it. The moat was empty now except for puddles, but in the summer it would be converted into the only swimming pool in the entire neighborhood.

  Peter hurried across the bridge and down the small set of stairs leading to the basement. The door was open, as usual, and Peter passed quickly through the dark basement and out through the back into the yard. Here Marv could generally be found. Sometimes Peter wondered what would have happened to Marv if his family had lived in an apartment house and there had been no yard for him to operate out of. But it was an impossible thought—like trying to think of an eagle without the sky or a whale without water.

  Marv was a builder. He built all the time. Even when he wasn’t building, he was thinking about building. In school, he was in the dumb class because his teachers said he just wouldn’t pay attention. He failed in math, but had no difficulty in constructing the complicated mechanical elevator that stood twelve feet high over in one corner of the yard. The elevator had taken Marv only three months to build. Peter, who was always the star pupil in his math classes, had offered to help, but had found all the calculations too difficult for him to fathom. Marv had his own system of figuring that left Peter far behind. But Marv was always patient and tolerant, so Peter carried the wood, hammered the nails, and put the screws and pulleys where he was told.

  Now that the elevator was finished, Marv planned on putting a building around it. He was there in the yard, as Peter had expected, but his eighteen-year-old sister, Frances, was there too. Marv had another sister, Betsy, who was fifteen, and so pretty that Peter felt uncomfortable every time she spoke to him. Frances was pretty too, he supposed, but most of the time he saw her, she was generally shouting at Marv, and this morning was no exception.

  “I told you this part of the yard was mine,” she was yelling, “and if I told you once, I told you a hundred times.”

  “I know, I know,” Marv was saying sadly. “I’m sorry. I forgot, but next time.”

  “Next time!” Frances hissed between her teeth. “It’s always next time. First you dug up all my daffodils when you made that crazy goldfish pool. Then you built that stupid dog palace for Queenie, and she never even goes into it, and you spoiled the iris. Then you built that horrible moat outside, and all the cats keep drowning in it....”

  “Only two,” Marv corrected gently.

  “... and pulled up all the rosebushes. Then those sappy revolving doors going nowhere over my cannas, and now that elevator. What do you need an elevator for? There’s nothing above it. Just look at this yard. It’s disgusting. I’m ashamed to bring anyone home for fear they’ll look out the window and think this is a lunatic asylum. And every time I plant something, you spoil it.”

  “Frances,” Marv said patiently, “would you like me to make you a window box?”

  “No!” screamed Frances.

  “Frances,” Marv continued, blinking at the force of his sister’s cry, “I’ll make you two window boxes. You can have them outside your bedroom windows and they’ll be safe there.”

  “I don’t want window boxes,” Frances shouted. “I just want a little piece of this yard. That’s all I want.”

  “Frances,” Marv continued dreamily, “I can make you two window boxes, and in one I can carve FRANCES and in the other I can carve GREEN. I can inlay pieces of blue glass in the FRANCES, and maybe pink glass in the GREEN, or maybe green glass (Marv chuckled), and I can have a light inside that goes on and off ...”

  “Ma!” Frances yelled desperately, “Ma!”

  A window over the yard opened, and Mrs. Green stuck her head out. “Shh, Frances,” she said. “You’ll wake Papa. Hello, Peter.”

  “Mama,” Frances cried, “will you please make him stop ruining my flowers?”

  “Shh,” said Mrs. Green, “come inside, children. It’s raining outside. You’ll get wet.”

  “Mama,” Frances continued stubbornly, “I’ve got as much right to this yard as he has. And if you don’t figure out a way to make him respect my rights, I’ll
have to take some kind of drastic action.” She pointed a finger dramatically at Marv and stood like an accusing angel, waiting for her mother to speak.

  Mrs. Green hesitated, looked around her uncomfortably, and then brightened. “Let’s have breakfast,” she said happily. “I’ll make pancakes.”

  “Oh, Ma!” Frances yelled. She stamped her foot and ran out of the yard, banging the cellar door behind her.

  Mrs. Green sighed. “She’s very high-strung,” she said in explanation to Peter. “Come inside, Marvin, and have breakfast.”

  “Oh, Ma, I don’t have the time,” Marv said. “Just throw me down a roll and butter, cheese and onion, and I’ll eat it down here.”

  Mrs. Green nodded, smiled, and withdrew, closing the window behind her. It wasn’t so much, Peter knew, that Marv’s mother appreciated his accomplishments. Any time Marv would show her his current creation, she’d say something like, “Fine, but don’t fall” or “Very good, but put on a sweater. You’ll catch cold.” It was just that she was a gentle, easygoing woman who avoided arguments more than anything else. As long as Marv was happy and didn’t make too much noise, she was satisfied.

  In a little while, Marv, munching away on his roll, began laying out the foundation for the new building. There was no problem finding wood. For years, long before Peter had known him, Marv had been building, and the yard looked like an archaeologist’s dream, with layers and sublayers of the ruins of former glories. Wood from the top layers of these ancient relics would be gathered by Marv for new projects.

  By the end of the morning, they had laid the floor and were working on the upright posts for the walls. The rain had stopped, and the air smelled clean and full of the sweetness of wet wood.

  Mr. Green came through the cellar door, and Marv yelled, “Pa, look, Pa! We’ve got the floor laid.”

  Mr. Green walked over to the construction site, inspected the floor, and chuckled. He was a very busy man, Marv’s father, a baker, who spent long hours after work involved in his union. Lately he hadn’t been feeling well and his face was pale and thin.