He was writing.
She tiptoed several steps closer, careful not to make sloshing noises in the puddles.
“Hello!” she hollered.
There was no answer.
“Hello?”
There was no response.
The car was gone, and without the help of headlights, Penelope had to squint. She screamed to the man one more time. Nothing. He simply wagged his cane in the air, turned to face Riverside Drive, and hobbled off. He was a slow, unsturdy man, yet Penelope — who was so transfixed she needed several minutes to collect herself — had the eerie sensation that he’d evaporated before her eyes. She didn’t have to look at the square of sidewalk he’d abandoned to know it said: MOE WAS HERE.
Penelope kept standing there. Voices came from behind her.
“He didn’t look crazy,” she heard Tillie say.
“Why are we standing here? We should go catch up to him,” she heard Cass say.
But none of them made a move. The wind grew gusty, and they resumed their walk uptown.
“Who’d have thought Moe would turn out to be a hundred!” exclaimed Cass, finally. They were a block away from Penelope’s house. “Did you see the guy? He could barely walk.”
“Or hear,” added Tillie. “You were screaming loud, Penelope.”
“He must really want to write his name in the street,” marveled Cass. “To hobble around like that!”
“Well, maybe that’s the only way he can make a statement,” said Penelope. They were in front her house now. The night doorman, Jim, emerged to help Cass and Tillie hail a cab.
What happened to Mrs. Schwartzbaum on the day of the big charity event? To figure it out, Penelope had to piece together bits of information culled from conversations she’d overheard.
It went something like this:
On the morning of the East Village Community Playground event, Jenny called the apartment. Mrs. Schwartzbaum was having her hair blown dry, so Mr. Schwartzbaum — who’d only just returned from a five-day stint in Brazil — took the call. Jenny said she’d received a dinner invitation from Fred Something, and she didn’t want to put Penelope’s mother in an awkward position by dating one of her clients. She also didn’t want to jeopardize her job as Penelope and Nathaniel’s mother’s helper.
Mr. Schwartzbaum assured Jenny that going on a dinner date with Fred Whatever-his-name-is would be no problem, but thanked her for asking, then told her to have a good time. Penelope had to imagine he was doing a crossword puzzle while having the conversation.
Then Mrs. Schwartzbaum emerged from the bathroom, learned about the call, and instantaneously contracted a variety of ailments: her head was pounding, her stomach was aching, she had chills. All signs pointed to food poisoning from a spoiled wedge of Jarlsberg cheese she’d eaten the night before, and she got into bed, where she remained the entire weekend.
Then things began to change. Mrs. Schwartzbaum started coming home before dinnertime, ordering takeout with Penelope and Nathaniel, letting Jenny go home early. She stopped getting her hair done so often, claiming it was getting damaged from so many color treatments. For now, she said, she’d have to do with a little less luster.
And she stopped talking to Jenny about the fabulous functions she’d attended with the who’s who of the art world, and spoke to her with the same clipped formality she used with the housekeeper. If Jenny noticed, she was too polite to mention it.
When Penelope and Nathaniel asked their mother if she was okay, she said yes, just tired, it had been a hard day. Did they have any idea what a grind her job was? She was so tired. She promised them that next year, it would be different. She was going to make a change. No more overtime. No more business dinners. She was going to set limits.
She never mentioned Fred Something anymore, but Penelope knew her mother had to miss him. If she’d learned anything this year, it was that there were words inside words — there were whole worlds inside words! — and Mrs. Schwartzbaum might be saying one thing, but she meant something else. She may not have had an affair, but she’d given Fred Something her heart, as Carlos would say, and even Penelope, who’d never had a boyfriend, knew that was a big deal.
Some days Penelope would look at her mother and feel sorry for everything. She’d feel sorry for the stray cats in the North Shore Animal League commercials on TV, she’d feel sorry for the foreign dolls her father had given her that were collecting dust on her shelves. She’d feel sorry for the peanut butter congealing at the bottom of the jar, for Nathaniel’s Matchbox car that had lost its wheel, for the empty squares in her father’s crossword puzzle.
She even felt sorry for the Sunburst Clock when Mrs. Schwartzbaum decided that it no longer went with the décor and needed to come down.
“Welcome to your first FonDon’t party!” shouted Bea Levin from the window of the little yellow townhouse. ‘I’ll be right down to let you in.”
Bea and Cass lived on a quiet street on the East Side, a few blocks up from Bloomingdale’s. They lived on the top three floors of the four-story building and rented the downstairs apartment to artists from out of town. “Come in, come in. I’m so sorry your parents couldn’t make it!” Bea opened the door and swept Penelope and Nathaniel inside. The foyer smelled like dried flowers and Sylvia Hempel.
“So, can I trust you two to be honest about something?” Bea gave them a serious look. “Cass says I look like a bat in this outfit.”
She was wearing a shiny black top made of a papery fabric with the hugest sleeves Penelope had ever seen. The sleeves were triangular, and they hung to Bea’s waist. Holding them outstretched, they looked like wings.
“It looks like origami,” said Penelope, because it was the first thing to pop into her head. She hoped it wasn’t an insult.
Bea lowered her arms and beamed at Penelope. ‘You’re an observant girl, Penelope, perceptive. As a matter of fact, a Japanese designer friend gave this to me. I’m on the edge of the cutting edge of fashion and all Cass can say is that I look like a bitey little creature from the zoo.”
“I like bats,” chirped Nathaniel.
Bea’s wrinkly face lit up. “Well, I like your outfit, too, Nathaniel!” she clapped. “But I should have told your parents not to dress you up. This is a FonDon’t party Get it? Fondue? Fon do? Fon don’t? FonDon’t. Oh, well, you will.”
Penelope had never seen a room with more colors than Bea Levin’s living room. And patterns, too. There was a pink armchair with tiny green dragonflies, a green silk couch spotted with red-and-yellow-checked pillows, a fuzzy orange rug specked with maroon. And stacked on coffee tables and lying on the floor were books upon books upon books. They had oil paintings and photographs for covers and were the biggest, heaviest books Penelope had ever seen.
Her eyes zigzagged every which way, and it took her a second to notice a gargantuan woman lounging on a deep purple chaise. She had long, stringy hair, black except for a big white skunk streak down the middle. She was reading under a yellow lamp, which gave her large, pale cheeks a pumpkiny hue.
“Doris, these are Cass’s friends, Penelope and Nathaniel.”
Doris looked up from her book; she blinked drowsily like a cat waking up. “Oh, I’m sorry. I was just so absorbed. Penelope, Nathaniel, hi, I’ve heard so much about you.” She had a soothing voice, and Penelope wondered if she took a lot of cough syrup.
“Doris is Cass’s aunt,” said Bea.
“I’m Cass’s father’s sister,” explained Doris.
“I thought Cass’s father was dead,” blurted Nathaniel. Penelope kicked him in the back of the knee. “Ow,” he yelped.
“Don’t worry. Dead isn’t a bad word,” Doris told them. “And, yes, dear, he is dead. But I’m still his sister. I always will be. Funny how it works that way.” She looked importantly at Penelope and Nathaniel, and Penelope didn’t know what to feel first: uneasy under the large woman’s gaze, or guilty for kicking Nathaniel.
“Hey, hi, hi, hey! No one told me you were here! How com
e no one told me you were here?” yelled Cass as she bounded down the stairs, shaggy Sylvia Hempel clicking at her heels.
“Well, if you weren’t listening to that music at a zillion decibels, you would have heard them arrive yourself, Cass. I’m surprised you haven’t damaged your eardrums. Not to mention poor Sylvia Hempel’s.”
Cass looked sheepishly at Bea, then turned to Penelope. “Guess what? Doris went to London and brought me back every Elvis Costello! You gotta hear ’em!”
“How about you give these poor thirsty children a drink before you squirrel them away in your bedroom. I got all the ingredients you asked for. Meanwhile, Doris and I will work on the FonDon’t’s.”
Bea had bought the ingredients for Purple Cows, which they slurped from yellow glasses. Cass gave Nathaniel his in a mug shaped like Snoopy’s nose.
Soon, the rest of the guests arrived. Tillie was first. Over spring vacation, she’d gone to an allergist who prescribed a new cream that seemed to be working. She had only the slightest trace of a rash remaining, and it was on the backs of her knees. The doctor said it was a temporary reaction to the medicine. Only Tillie, they laughed, could be allergic to allergy medicine.
Next were Doris’s friends, two long-haired men who wore rings on their fingers and played Bulgarian folk music at a bar up by Columbia University. One carried a guitar, and the other, two oddly shaped drums that looked straight out of a Dr. Seuss book.
The last to arrive were the biggest surprise: Jenny and Fred Something. Fred Something wore a boxy white suit over a red button-down shirt; Jenny wore a blue-and-white striped oxford, a gauzy yellow skirt, white beaded sandals, and a pink coral necklace. It was similar to something Annabella Blumberg would wear. But Jenny looks a lot better, Penelope thought proudly.
Fred Something handed Bea a bouquet of largetoothed tropical flowers called birds-of-paradise. He had a gift for Cass, too, a comic book he’d picked up in Paris. She’d end up giving it to Nathaniel, but everyone thought it was nice of Fred Something to remember there were two hostesses.
Dinner was set in the sculpture garden. The trees were strung with Christmas lights, and Bea lit thick cream-colored candles that smelled like Ivory soap to keep away the bugs. They sat on a thick red blanket around a wooden picnic table — only it was really only a picnic table top, because it didn’t have legs, only stumps. There was room enough to sit under it if you took off your shoes and crossed your legs.
Laid out on the table were lidded crocks full of mysterious concoctions and baskets covered in black velvet napkins, the contents of which would be revealed once everyone was seated and toasts were made.
On Bea’s request, Nathaniel had changed into an old purple T-shirt of Cass’s. Bea hadn’t wanted to send him home with a mucked-up shirt, and he seemed much happier without the tight collar Mrs. Schwartzbaum had forced him into. Looking at her little brother next to Jenny across the table, Penelope thought about how jolting seeing the most familiar faces in unexpected settings could be, and how this wasn’t jolting at all. She thought: I feel more at home than at home.
Bea clinked a wineglass with her fingernail and welcomed everyone to the table. “Cass, would you like to do the honors?”
Cass rose. She then explained the origins of the FonDon’t party. “My parents, Bess and Will, loved fondue,” she told the crowd. “They loved it so much, they wanted to eat it all the time. Except I thought it was stinky.” She wrinkled her nose at the memory. “I still do. Anyway, they started to do this ritual. They’d make fondue for themselves, and they’d make another fondue for me — only mine wasn’t really fondue, because it rarely had cheese in it. That’s why we call it FonDon’t.” She motioned to the table of crocks. “You’ll see for yourself in a sec.
“When my parents died, FonDon’t was all I wanted to eat. I moved in with Bea.” Cass looked to Bea as she said this; Bea raised her glass a little higher. “And she said we could eat FonDon’t as much as I wanted. She even helped me come up with new recipes. Doris would come over and lots of different people and we made a party of it. Now it’s like a holiday — the kind that comes whenever you want it to, whenever you need it to. Just” — Cass paused a moment to sip from her water glass — “whenever we want to celebrate my parents.…”
Cass turned out to be a very effective public speaker. When she was done, Bea asked that everyone raise their glasses to toast Bess and Will Levin, “who had open minds and open hearts, and who knew that there was no one single recipe for living in this world.”
‘FonDon’t!” screamed the folk musicians.
‘FonDon’t!” screamed everybody else.
Doris was next. “Bess and Will explored the world outside, but what they cared about most was the world within. We — all of us here — are capable of so much. Inside us are sloping countrysides, bustling cities, hot days and snowstorms, beauty, ugliness, greatness. It’s all in there — no matter how small we may sometimes feel, no matter how small we may still be.” She smiled at Nathaniel when she said this last line and raised her glass. “May every day be full to bursting.”
“FonDon’t!”
Penelope tilted a crystal flute to her lips and drank the pear cider Tillie had brought Bea as a gift from her mother; it bubbled in her mouth, sweet and bitter all at once.
With the majesty of a court magician, Cass uncovered the first FonDon’t: a crock of melted American cheese accompanied by a basket of buttery bits of toast. When you dipped the toast in the cheese, it tasted like the grilled cheese sandwich from the Utopia Coffee Shop.
There was the Texas FonDon’t, which was meat chili swirling with cheddar cheese. It came with a basket of French fries sprinkled with cayenne pepper.
There was the Indian FonDon’t, which Doris had invented after a trip to Bombay. She wouldn’t reveal the ingredients. All she’d say was that yogurt and mangoes were involved. She’d even baked a special Indian bread, thick and white and flecked with pepper and herbs.
They used skewers, not forks, and speared and dipped until the crocks were nearly empty, at which point they switched to fingers and hands. They skimmed their thumbs along the insides of the crocks and sucked on their fingers.
To raging applause, the guitarist stuck his entire face in the Popeye FonDon’t (melted mozzarella and spinach). And somehow Tillie ended up with peanut butter and jelly FonDon’t in her ear.
“I … don’t … think … I … will … ever … eat … again,” moaned Tillie.
“Tell me about it,” whimpered Penelope.
“Bet you guys ten dollars you will!” Cass said, laughing. “Wait till you see dessert. It’s not a FonDon’t party if you don’t have dessert.”
Lucky for Penelope and Tillie, Bea required that they take a break between courses, and the party moved into the living room. Penelope, Cass, and Tillie lay on their backs in the middle of the orange rug. “How are you girls going to digest that way?” laughed Doris, sinking into an armchair with a grunt.
The folk musicians played music that sounded like weird twangs to Penelope, but the adults seemed impressed. When the drummer did a solo on his Dr. Seuss drum, Doris jumped to the floor and wiggled her large body like a wet grizzly bear shaking itself dry.
“They’re okay, but this is no Elvis C,” whispered Cass so only Penelope could hear.
“I know who’s next!” Bea shouted when the set ended. ‘I’m not sure if everyone knows this, but we have a musical prodigy in the house. The next Cole Porter, if you will.”
She looked to Nathaniel, who stood up with uncharacteristic shyness. Cass’s T-shirt, streaked with FonDon’t, draped to his knees, making him look particularly small.
“This is about a place I’d like to go,” he announced “I made it up myself.”
“If I can hear a clock tick
That means I know where I’m not
I’m not where I wanna be
’Cause there are no clocks on Planet Garlic
No hours or minutes or alarms that go off
No school and no place we have to be
Only you and me
But there are no clocks on Planet Garlic
There are dogs and cats and little Martians, too
They look like kangaroos
We can go to Planet Squash if you say so
Jenny says it’s on the way, so
All we have to do is a magic trick
But I’d like to stay on Planet Garlic.”
There was a moment of silence after Nathaniel’s final trill, and then the room erupted in roaring Bravissimos. Fred Something and Jenny rose to their feet, holding cigarette lighters in the air, apparently something people did at rock concerts.
“Planet Garlic, you get a guitar lick!” roared the guitarist, and he played a riff in Nathaniel’s honor.
“That was great, but what does it mean?” Tillie whispered in Penelope’s ear.
“I guess you could say it’s a private joke,” Penelope whispered back. She didn’t think she’d ever felt this proud.
Fred Something was next to stand up. He coughed twice, glanced over at Jenny, who gave him an encouraging smile, then said: “I’m not a performer, but I do have an announcement.” He coughed again. “Thanks to the generosity of a certain sculpture collector, and with a loan from some generous and hopefully not foolhardy financiers, I’m starting my own art gallery in London.”
There was applause.
“Thanks, but that’s not really the good news.” He scratched at his chin and studied the carpet for a moment. “The good news is I’ve asked Jenny to come with me. And” — he coughed again — “she’s agreed.” He grinned a zany kind of grin Penelope thought only children were capable of. Then he said: “We’re moving to England.”
The musicians played a jig that sounded more Irish than English, but no one cared. Bea and Doris scrambled for the nearest bottle of champagne. All the clattering and commotion brought Sylvia Hempel running into the room, barking to the drumbeat, batting down glasses with her wagging tail.
Seventh Grade in the Life of Me, Penelope Page 13
