The Fingertips of Duncan Dorfman

by Meg Wolitzer

  “If we’re seriously ever going to make any progress locating him,” said Lucy, “then we’re going to have to come up with a new plan.” Of course, neither of them had a plan in mind, so they sat eating the rubbery macaroni for a minute or two, thinking hard.

  When their plates were empty, April said, “I’ve got nothing. You?”

  “Nothing,” said Lucy.

  They stopped thinking about the boy for now. Instead they took out the Scrabble set that Lucy had brought with her, set it up on the tiny table, then bent over it and began to play.

  The next morning, when April Blunt awoke and went downstairs in her house, the place was in full swing. This was always the case; her family woke up earlier than she did. They woke up earlier than anyone, except maybe farmers. A ball was hitting a wall somewhere deep in the distance, with a rhythm that made the whole house shudder. Her brother, Gregory, came skating in on his Rollerblades, dressed in full hockey gear, knocking a little puck along the floorboards.

  “You’ll leave wheel marks, Gregory,” April said. She was often in a cranky mood when she woke up and had to face the sports world of her family.

  “Just because you don’t know how to Rollerblade doesn’t mean you have to take it out on me,” Gregory said, and he pivoted and glided away, leaving a wheel mark in the place where the hallway opened into the living room.

  “Maybe I don’t want to Rollerblade!” she called out to him. “Maybe I have other things to do!” But Gregory was already in an entirely different part of the house, probably leaving wheel marks there, too.

  Jenna, the older of April’s two sisters, was sitting on the living room couch studying a notebook in which were written plays for her touch football game that weekend. April’s other sister, Liz, was doing stretches on the floor, hoping that a charley horse in her left leg would heal before lacrosse tomorrow.

  “Scrabble’s a sport, too,” April said to the room in general. It was something she had said many times before, but it never made a dent.

  Jenna looked up from the sheet of diagrams so complicated they seemed like something a mad scientist would write on a blackboard. “What?” she asked through her haze of concentration.

  “I said that Scrabble’s a sport,” said April.

  “So you’ve told us,” said Liz with a little half smile, before returning to her stretching.

  April headed down the hall, passing her mother, who was on her hands and knees, her head in a closet, searching for something.

  “Hi, Mom,” April said.

  “Oh hi, babe, you’re up,” said her mother, backing out of the closet. “Good. Breakfast’s in a minute. Everyone’s starving. Have you seen Gregory’s mouth guard?”

  “What? No,” April answered.

  “Well, if you do—”

  “Okay, fine, got it,” said April, and she went into the dining room and sat down at the big wooden table, not wanting to think about a little lost black piece of rubber with her brother’s tooth marks and germs all over it. In the quiet room before her family arrived, she thought instead about Scrabble words. Yawning, April put her head down on the table and let her mind get loose and dreamy. Soon, different words appeared before her. A couple of random, strange Scrabble words drifted past. She saw:

  GARDYLOO

  and . . .

  I LEX

  and . . .

  SILEX

  April must have fallen back asleep, she realized, because the next thing she knew, everyone was all around her, and her dad was bringing a mess of pancakes to the table, and her brother was saying, “I want a ton of syrup, Dad. Like, an entire reservoir.” All the Blunts did seem to be starving, and why not? Most of them had been up since dawn, running laps or lifting weights or doing sit-ups. As usual in this family, everyone talked at once.

  When there was a brief quiet moment, April said, “Lucy and I practiced for the tournament last night.”

  “Which tournament?” asked Liz.

  “Scrabble,” said April. There was no reply.

  “Well, that’s nice,” her father finally said. “You girls work hard at that word game.”

  April’s face got warm again, but it was from frustration instead of embarrassment. She knocked back a glass of OJ to cool herself down. Too bad OJ wasn’t good in Scrabble. Why couldn’t her family understand the thrill of Scrabble, the excitement when you won a game, or even when you made an amazingly interesting word?

  She flashed back once again to the boy in the blue T-shirt at the motel pool. Somehow, she knew that he would have understood how she felt. Maybe, April thought, he had even gone on to become really good at Scrabble. And maybe every time he played it now, he remembered the redheaded girl who had taught him.

  “Here’s a good thing to know in Scrabble,” April told her family. She looked around the table and saw that all of them except her mother had resumed eating, their heads bent down. She could see the parts in her sisters’ and her brother’s hair, and half of the bald circle on the very top of her father’s head.

  “Go on, sweetie,” said her mother. “We’re listening. What did you want to say?”

  “Nothing,” said April.

  “Come on,” said her father, looking up. Most likely, April thought, her mother had given him a kick under the table. “Tell us.”

  “It’s a trick for knowing what letters can go after the letters K-A,” she said. “Just remember BETSY’S FEET.” Everyone looked at her blankly. “The letters in the words BETSY’S FEET are the only ones that can go after the letters K-A in a game of Scrabble,” April said. “That means you could make every word that I’m about to say.”

  She took a breath, then rattled off:

  “KAB

  KAE

  KAF

  KAS

  KAT

  KAY.”

  Her family continued to look as blank as a set of blank tiles. “Those are actual words?” her mother asked, and April nodded. “Have you ever heard of KAB or KAF?” she asked her husband.

  “Nope,” he said. “Never have.”

  “Neither have I.”

  “Neither have we,” said Liz and Jenna, and a second later Gregory chimed in, too. Then, satisfied that they had given April enough time to talk about what interested her, they all began a discussion about the pros and cons of different brands of cleats.

  After breakfast, when her father and her siblings were out in the yard, April sat alone in the den. It was a comfortable, woodsy room with a dark red couch that you could sink into, which was what she did now. She thought again about the boy in the T-shirt from the motel pool. She didn’t even know what she would say to him if she found him. What could she say? So, um, like, what’s been new with you over the past three years? Probably their conversation would be awkward, and he would think she was peculiar for wanting to track him down.

  But she knew she didn’t have to worry about this, because she was never going to find him.

  April lay on the couch with her hands linked under her head and looked around the room. There were books stuffed into the shelves, and sports trophies on every surface. On the shelf beneath the coffee table was a stack of photo albums that her family had looked through many times over the years. Each one had gold printing on its spine. One read, THE BLUNT KIDS—ICE HOCKEY. Another read, THE BLUNT KIDS—LACROSSE. April had patiently sat and looked at these albums while her siblings gave her a blow-by-blow account of everything that was happening in each picture. She’d seen them all before, but now something—a little jab of a thought—made her want to see them again. Maybe she could find something in one of them.

  Within seconds April had pulled out an album. The words on the spine read, THE BLUNT KIDS—BASEBALL AND SOFTBALL. April sat down with it in the big leather armchair, swiftly turning the stiff, plastic-sealed pages, looking at photos of her brother and sisters in uniform. In one shot, Liz was catching a fly ball; in another, Gregory was sliding into home. April realized that she knew what she was looking for, but she didn’t actually
think she would find it.

  Then, on the second to last page, she did.

  In front of her was a snapshot of Gregory in a baseball uniform doing a somersault into a pool. Her mother had labeled the photo, GREGORY SHOWING OFF. But Gregory wasn’t the person April was looking at.

  In the background of the photo she could see a blurry image of herself, a few years younger, on a lounge chair in a bathing suit with a portable Scrabble set. Sitting across from her, also blurry, was the boy from the motel pool.

  April opened her mouth, but no sound came out. This photograph had been here for three years, and yet until this second April hadn’t known it existed. Probably, she thought, her own face appeared in the background of other families’ vacation photos, a brief and random visitor in their lives.

  She continued to stare at the boy. Though she could hardly make out his face, the white writing on his blue T-shirt was clear enough. It read: SETTLE MARS.

  What a strange phrase to put on a T-shirt. April was surprised she hadn’t remembered it before now. Within seconds, she was back upstairs in her room, and she and Lucy were on the phone, whispering frantically. Lucy, who always had her laptop open in front of her, was a very fast Internet searcher.

  “‘SETTLE MARS,’” Lucy murmured as she typed. “‘SETTLE MARS.’ Do you think it could be a command? Or even the name of a band? I’ve heard of a grunge band called Eat My Tinfoil.” Lucy’s computer keys clicked away. “Wait. Got it,” she said, and then she read aloud: “‘Settle Mars’ is an organization that believes we should settle the planet Mars, which holds so much promise for mankind, since the earth has become so damaged by global warming.”

  “Well, that’s depressing,” said April.

  “‘Meetings are held in the basement of the Bakersfield, California, Public Library,’” Lucy went on. “A bunch of Mars-loving people in a library basement? That’s depressing, too. I wonder if they dress up in green, and speak in a language with chirps and beeps.”

  “Why are you reading me this?” asked April. “I don’t get it.”

  “Don’t you see?” said Lucy. “The boy at the pool could be a member of this group. And maybe now,” she added, “you’ll finally be able to find him. And go see him again, and say to him . . . whatever you want to say to him.”

  The next day after school, sitting in Lucy’s kitchen, April dialed the California phone number of Settle Mars. A woman answered, her voice pleasant if a little strange.

  “Hello,” said April. “I have just been reading about your organization, and I was thinking of joining.”

  “Do you live in the Bakersfield area?” asked the woman.

  “Uh, nearby,” April lied. “Are there any members who might be about my age? I’m in the . . . almost-teenaged category,” she said.

  “I should say not,” said the woman. “We are not some kind of after-school kids’ club. We are a respected group that entertains the highest scientific inquiries about the red planet. The earth is on its way out. Mars is the new earth.”

  And with that, the woman rudely hung up.

  At some point in the near future, April Blunt thought, humans might certainly colonize Mars. But for now, it seemed impossible to do something as simple as find a boy from a motel pool, a boy who lived somewhere—but who knew where?—on earth.

  April turned to Lucy and said in a defeated voice, “He’s not in the group.”

  For a second, Lucy didn’t answer. But then she said, “What if he’s in another group?”

  “What?”

  “What if he’s a member of his school’s Scrabble team? After all—and basically it’s our only hope—you did make him love Scrabble. It might have stuck.”

  “Well, that’s a nice idea, and I’ve thought of it before, but I still wouldn’t be able to find him.”

  “That isn’t necessarily true.”

  “What are you saying?” April asked.

  “Maybe,” said Lucy, “you will find him on December twelfth.”

  Chapter Eight

  SMOOTH MOVES SMOOTH MOVES

  All fall, ever since that astonishing morning in the school cafeteria, Duncan Dorfman had relied on his fingertips only twice, both times during Scrabble games against Carl Slater. Carl wanted Duncan to use them every time they played, “to get you in the habit,” he said, but Duncan refused. He was saving his ability, his “power,” for December twelfth. “And even at the YST,” Duncan had warned Carl repeatedly, “I’m only planning on using my fingertips when absolutely necessary.”

  “Yeah, sure, whatever,” said Carl.

  “I mean it,” said Duncan. “Okay, Carl?”

  “Okay. Relax.”

  One afternoon in late November, thirteen days before the tournament, Carl invited Duncan to play a few games at his house after school. Though they had been practicing all the time, they had always gone to Slice’s, setting up the travel set on a table in the back. But today Slice’s was closed for renovations, so Carl suggested they walk to his house instead.

  Carl Slater lived in a section of Drilling Falls called The Inlet, which was surrounded by high metal gates covered with ivy and had its own security booth. Carl waved to the security guard and he and Duncan walked through. Each house in The Inlet looked as if it should have been on the cover of a magazine called Rich People’s Life.

  “See that one?” Carl said, pointing in the direction of an enormous house set way back from the road. “Well, you can hardly see it, but you know who lives there? Thriftee Mike. The real guy.”

  “Really?” said Duncan. “That’s my mom’s boss. Or anyway, the boss of her boss. Not that she’s ever met him. I heard he only comes into the store at night, when everyone’s gone.”

  “Yeah, I heard that, too. I haven’t met him either,” said Carl. “He’s not very friendly, apparently. He lives there by himself, and he spends a lot of money on security for his house and stuff. I guess he’s not really all that thrifty.”

  The Slater house, down the street from Thriftee Mike’s, was massive and white, with tall columns out front. In the driveway sat Carl’s mother’s black sports car, and on the hood was the leaping gazelle ornament that seemed to coax the car forward like a horse pulling a chariot.

  CHARIOT, Duncan thought, was an anagram of HARICOT, which was a green bean. He had been picking up new words fast. A lot of them were simply words to him, but he had already learned the meanings of some of the weirder ones, and he’d started trying to use them in conversation.

  “Oh,” said Carl. “I guess my mom’s home.”

  Inside, the black-and-white hallway of the Slater house seemed to go on for a while, and the only objects in it were a few statues of the heads of Slater ancestors. On the wall was an enormous painting of Carl and his parents standing on the lawn, all dressed up and looking off into the distance unhappily. Carl’s father was a businessman who traveled a lot, Carl said.

  “Carl! Carl! Is that you?” called Mrs. Slater from down the hall. There came the sound of clacking heels as she made her way toward the boys, a cigarette waving in her hand. “Oh,” she said, “you’ve brought home a friend.” When Duncan was introduced, she said, “Yes, Carl’s Scrabble partner.”

  “That’s me,” said Duncan. He liked the way “Scrabble partner” sounded. Of course, Carl probably made fun of Duncan to Brian Kalb (who still hated Duncan for replacing him at the upcoming tournament) and Mitchell Farley and Tiffany Griggs and the others when Duncan wasn’t around, calling him Lunch Meat—perhaps even singing little mean songs about him that included the words “Lunch Meat.” But right now, Duncan almost imagined that he was Carl’s real friend.

  “You boys want a snack?” asked Mrs. Slater. “We’ve got Hoo-Has in the pantry.”

  Hoo-Has! Duncan’s mother never bought those kind of sugary treats (“High fructose corn syrup? Seventeen grams of fat? Are you out of your mind?” she’d say in the supermarket when Duncan handed her a box to put in the cart.), but Duncan wished she would, at least once in a while. And
pantry? Who had a pantry?

  Carl Slater’s mother said, “Remind your mom that she needs to send me that check.”

  “What check?” asked Duncan.

  “The check,” said Carl’s mother impatiently. “For the tournament.”

  “Oh, sorry, dude,” said Carl. “I didn’t tell you about this? I guess it slipped my mind.”

  “Carl, I distinctly remember telling you that you had to ask your partner to give you a check,” said Mrs. Slater. “It’s so I can be paid back for the registration fee for the YST, which I’ve already sent in, as well as for the special rate on the hotel rooms at the Grand Imperial. And, of course, the airfare.”

  Registration fee?

  Hotel rooms?

  Airfare?

  Why hadn’t Duncan thought about any of this before? He had been so excited by the whole thing that until this second he hadn’t really wondered how he and Carl were going to get down to Florida, or even where they would stay. Or how any of it would be paid for. He had daydreamed all the time about winning first place and bringing home the prize money. He’d imagined walking through the halls of school as if he were a popular football player in a uniform that said The Drilling Falls Dobermans; or even the middle school president—a slick kid who everyone high-fived. In this fantasy, Duncan was someone who would never be called Lunch Meat again. “Lunch Meat?” someone would say. “We were wrong to throw a piece of baloney at you, man. You didn’t deserve that at all. A million apologies. You’re awesome.”

  All Duncan had told his mother was that he had joined the Scrabble Club, and that he and his partner, Carl, were planning to go to a tournament in Florida. He had let her think what she wanted; and what she thought was that the tournament and all extra costs would be paid for by the school. She knew nothing about the fingertips part of the story. Just as she and Aunt Djuna had their whispered secrets at night, Duncan had his secrets, and his mother knew nothing about them.