From Norvelt to Nowhere (Norvelt Series)

by Jack Gantos

  I turned around and went back inside the restaurant, but he was gone. I ran over to the table. “Where’d the detective go?” I asked.

  “Miami,” she said. “He’s after the killer and the reward money.”

  “Did you tell him anything else?”

  “I told him to drop dead,” she said.

  “Did you see the fake gun in his pocket?”

  “Why bother looking?” she replied. “He’s not going to shoot me in a soup and salad joint.”

  The waiter came by and handed me the bill. I reached into my back pocket and pulled out my wallet. I plucked out a few dollars and set them on the table.

  “This should cover it,” I said. “With a tip.”

  “I got a tip for you,” he said. “Hit the road. Get on out of here before we serve her up on a plate.”

  When we went outside Miss Volker handed me a dinner knife she had taken from the table. “Open the other can of paint,” she said. “It’s time for a new look.”

  “Right,” I said. I opened the can and poured some on the hood and stroked it back and forth with the stiff green brush. I kept pouring and painting and when I was finished it looked like we were driving a rotten Florida orange that was leaking orange juice and frog guts.

  I tossed the bucket and brush in the trash and got Miss Volker in the car. “Keep your hands on the hot dashboard,” I said, and we followed the signs that read “This Way to the Fountain of Youth.”

  At the first stoplight she said, “Look at my face.”

  I did.

  “Now, watch my face as I make a frown.” Slowly her forehead furrowed into deep creases, her eyes became pouty slits, and her mouth and all the skin around it turned down as if gravity had reached up and tugged on her chin.

  “Now,” she said, still looking gloomy, “I’m going to smile on the count of three, but watch how long it takes my skin to change from a downward frown to an upward smile. One, two, three,” she counted.

  The corners of her mouth went up but nothing else happened right away. Then slowly, like watching a photo develop, her expression began to switch over. Her forehead lines softened and smoothed out. Her eyes sparkled. Her chin pulled up tightly, as if lifted by the leather chinstrap on a hat.

  “There,” she said despondently. “Look how long it took—about a minute or more to go from one expression to the next.”

  The light had turned green and the car behind me beeped its horn. I shifted into gear and took off.

  “When you get old,” she said, “you have to plan your expressions in advance or people think you are happy when you are sad and sad when you are happy. It stinks getting old. That fountain of youth better work, even though I know better. But ever since I was a kid I wanted to come here. If nothing else it will be fun, and I can use some fun.”

  “Fun keeps you young,” I said. “Look at me.”

  “You look like a bloody mess,” she said.

  When we arrived at the Genuine Ponce de León Fountain of Youth spa we went inside and I bought one ticket.

  “I’m just her lifeguard,” I said to the attendant.

  She shrugged and continued to file her nails.

  “I need some money,” Miss Volker said. “I have to buy a bathing costume.”

  I gave her just about all the money I had left. In a few minutes, she came out of the spa’s store and made her way into the ladies’ changing room with her purchase.

  When she returned I looked at her without really trying to see her because I don’t think I had ever seen a lady as old as Miss Volker in a two-piece bathing suit.

  I had to blur my eyes at first because she sort of looked like a wrinkly plucked chicken with brightly colored elastic fabric triangles across her top and another down lower. Honestly, I didn’t want to make eye contact with any part of her below her neck, and even then I was uncomfortable because if she was a chicken, the neck is where the cleaver would come down. That thought made me feel a little more sympathetic toward how she looked.

  I held out my hand. “May I?” I asked, and extended my hand as she carefully clutched it with her still-bendable fingers. We walked through an open doorway and out to a patio area encircled by tropical plants. The pool was surrounded by the patio and palm and banana trees. There was a little fountain feature in the middle of the pool that put out a musical tinkling of water.

  Next to the steps that led into the water was a sign that read:

  SUBMERGE YOURSELF COMPLETELY

  UNDER WATER AND HOLD YOUR BREATH.

  FOR EACH SECOND YOU HOLD YOUR

  BREATH A YEAR WILL BE

  SUBTRACTED OFF YOUR AGE.

  “Okay,” I said, feeling a bit skeptical after reading the sign.

  She walked slowly down the steps and stood in the water up to her chin.

  “On the count of three, take a deep breath and dunk your head under.”

  “If it works,” she warned me, “you might want to avert your eyes because I weighed a lot more when I was younger and this bathing suit might snap off if I expand. In fact, you better duck too, because if this suit hits you at the speed of light, it’ll knock you unconscious.”

  “I promise I’ll look away,” I said. “Don’t worry about that.”

  She took a deep breath. I knew it wasn’t going to work. I’m sure she did too. It was never like her to believe in something this superstitious and romantic, like a frog turned into a prince when kissed by a princess.

  “One … two … three,” I counted out, and she went under like a stone. “One Mississippi,” I counted, “two Mississippi.” I was on a forty Mississippi count when she came up for air like a whale breaking the surface. Her face was bright red and she was coughing a bit, but not bad enough that I had to resuscitate her.

  “You look forty years younger,” I remarked.

  “And you are a liar,” she sputtered. “But I feel good. The water is warm, amniotically warm. I feel like I’m my old self again.”

  “Which old self?” I asked. “Are you the nice old lady who loves Eleanor Roosevelt or the whale-obsessed Mrs. Captain Ahab? Or are you Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde? Or Thomas Hughes building a failed utopia?”

  “We’ll have to wait and see,” she said. “A true fountain of youth doesn’t take years off your life—it just dissolves all the tortures of your conscience and takes you back to a golden age of youthful purity.” She looked up at me and pointed toward my heart.

  “Me?” I asked. “Youthful purity?”

  “Yes,” she replied. “Every child has a pure heart that pumps a fountain of youth through his veins.”

  “I don’t know what you are talking about,” I said, puzzled, “because I think awful stuff all the time.”

  “Like what?” she asked.

  “Like I thought you had killed all those old ladies,” I admitted. “It is not pure of heart to think you are a murderer!”

  “Well,” she said wistfully, “honesty is also a sign of being pure of heart.”

  “Then you are pure of heart,” I quickly pointed out, “because you are extra honest!”

  She waved that statement away with the back of her hand. “Now help me out of here,” she demanded. “The water is giving me even more wrinkles.”

  I extended my hand and steadied her up the pool steps. She went to change and I found a pay phone and called home. This operator wasn’t as patient as the last one. I placed a collect call to Mom, and when she said Mrs. Gantos wasn’t home the operator began to hang up.

  But before the final click I did hear Mom shout out, “He’s in Florida!”

  Dad’s here, I thought, and he’s looking for work, and probably looking for me. After I drop Miss Volker off it would be great to fly back to Norvelt in his plane. I went back to the car and Miss Volker was waiting for me. Her hair was piled up on her head like the pelt of a wet poodle.

  “Miss Volker,” I said as I pulled out onto the road. “I think this part of the trip has been the best so far.”

  “Yeah,” she said
, and sighed deeply. “Stress-free for the moment.”

  “The next is not so good, is it?” I asked.

  “Miami will be trouble without paradise. It will be the worst,” she said. “Worse than the sorrow at Hyde Park. Worse than the humiliation at Rugby. Even worse than you falling into a septic tank,” she said with humor, and elbowed me in the ribs.

  “But could anything be worse than your Mrs. Captain Ahab imitation?” I asked.

  “Your crappy comic book reading is far worse,” she replied with contempt.

  “Well, nothing can be worse than your snoring,” I shot right back.

  “Ha. Your paint job on this car is the worst!”

  “Your lousy eating habits are pathetic,” I said, and stuck out my tongue.

  “And you need a bath,” she said, pinching her nose. “You smell the worst.”

  “Thanks for reminding me,” I said. “But there is nothing worse than old-lady smell.”

  “When’s the last time you changed your underwear?” she asked, and rolled down her window for some fresh air.

  “Probably the last time you changed yours,” I replied.

  “Well,” she said smugly. “I washed mine in the fountain of youth.”

  “Well, it didn’t make it young and fresh again,” I replied, and rolled my window down.

  This last jab seemed to hurt. She went quiet, and I felt bad for not realizing that a little part of her wanted the fountain of youth to be real.

  “When you get old,” she said after a while, “you smell like you are slowly dying, and there is no cure for that.”

  “Sure there is,” I said. “Hang out with me all day. You’ll still be old on the outside, but on the inside you’ll be youthfully immature.”

  “No time for immaturity,” she said, and pulled herself up ramrod straight in her seat. “Let’s get one good night of sleep and we’ll face the enemy in the morning.”

  We pulled in to the Ponce de León Motor Inn.

  13

  I slept oddly at the motel and woke up early in the morning feeling very different from myself. It’s like when I fall asleep while reading and the story jumps tracks and rolls along like a ghost train. In my sleep, I find myself left behind like some character in the story who has been dropped off at the wrong station. Somehow I realize I have to find my way back into the correct book. I leave the station and drift down an unknown street, and instead of finding my book I open the front cover of a random house I have never been to before.

  When I step inside, there are hundreds of rooms and each wall is a printed page of the book that left me behind. I read for a long time and finally I enter a room and read a wall and catch up to the page where I left off when I fell asleep. I learn what became of all the characters, and all their intentions, and if they had a good or bad ending.

  By the time I finish reading my way through the rooms of the story and close the back cover, I stroll away as if I have become another person. It’s odd to wake up feeling different from when you went to sleep, but I like how the old me and the new me become another me.

  Now, after traveling with Miss Volker, I felt like a character trying to catch up with himself. Maybe the same thing had happened to Miss Volker. Only she seemed to know a lot more about who she was and what was going on, and it was as if she and I were in the same book, only she was well ahead of me in knowing the story. I always read books very slowly and she was a fast reader. Maybe she knew she was getting close to the last page and had just about figured out the ending, while I was lagging behind and still hadn’t put it all together. Either way, the somber mood of the morning seemed to be very different from the mood of the night before.

  When we pulled out of the motel parking lot she looked preoccupied. I stayed quiet and waited to hear what was on her mind.

  “In Moby-Dick,” she started, “there comes a time when Captain Ahab, after all his searching, thinks that maybe he won’t find the white whale and his trip will be for naught.”

  “I don’t think that part was in the Classics Illustrated version,” I said, trying to recall.

  “Well, read the real book someday,” she advised. “I’ve been in Norvelt since 1934 and now I too am wondering if I’ll ever find my prey—and if I do find him, will I be driven to kill him as Captain Ahab was, or will I kiss him on his big fishy lips?”

  “Does this mean you are giving up on catching Spizz?” I asked.

  “No, I’m not giving up,” she said. “I’m not dead yet but I’m just not as angry at him. For some reverse reason, chasing him has made me like him a bit more.”

  “Well, I can help you replenish your anger,” I said, trying to do her a favor. “On the train, Spizz told me that the two of you worked together to kill the old ladies so you would be free to marry him.”

  “That’s a lie,” she snapped back. “He is a lie factory. He’s a Ponzi scheme of lies—a person tells him the truth and in return he gives them two lies.”

  “What’s a Ponzi?” I asked. I thought a question might cheer her up.

  “He was a cheater,” she said. “A Boston crook in 1920. He promised people huge returns on their investments with him. In the beginning he did pay people big returns, but that was just a trick to lure in even bigger investors. In the end Ponzi tried to run off with everyone’s money, but he was caught and jailed. Now the name Ponzi is forever linked with being a cheater.”

  “And the name Spizz?” I asked. “What will that be forever linked to?”

  She thought about it. “I guess it will forever be linked to me being a love cheater. I love that he loves me, but I don’t love him. I enjoy keeping him around but I never let him get close to me. He tortures me a little and I torture him back twice the amount, and that is not the Norvelt way. If I was a good person, I would either love him or leave him. I’d make a decision and stick with it.”

  “But you’re stuck in the middle?” I said, gathering up her thoughts.

  “Yep,” she said. “Captain Ahab had mixed feelings for the white whale. He loved him, but he feared him too. He was tortured by his mixed feelings. Finally he had to make a decision, so he decided to kill the whale to put an end to the feelings fighting within himself. Either the whale or Ahab dies—they can’t live together in the same book.”

  “Can’t you try to live with both feelings?” I asked, knowing that Ahab was the one who died, dragged under the sea by the rope of his own harpoon after he’d speared his whale.

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “My feelings for Spizz are going to fight to the death inside me,” she added. “There is no separating them, and just like Jekyll and Hyde, one of them has to go. It’s the good, or the evil. They can’t live together.”

  “So what’s next?”

  “All I know is that before the world ends I want my kiss,” she said. “I want my little bit of love.”

  “With a killer?” I asked.

  “No,” she said. “I can’t kiss a filthy killer.”

  “Then what are you getting at?” I asked.

  “There are just some days,” she said, “that are lived out like the last page of a book, and I think today is one of those days.”

  “What happens tomorrow?” I asked.

  “You start a new book,” she replied. “Now pull over,” she said. “I have to make a phone call.”

  I did. There was a row of phones, and I went to one end and she went to the other. I called Mom.

  “I accept the charges,” Mom quickly replied to the operator, once I asked for her. “I’ll make this fast,” she said. “Your father has been in touch with Mr. Hap and will meet you at some point in Miami.”

  “What will happen to Miss Volker?” I asked.

  “Mr. Hap will take care of her,” she said. “He’ll drive back up here with her once her sister’s body is shipped to Norvelt for burial.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Anything else?”

  “How’s your rash?” she asked. “Are you using that special cream?”

&nbs
p; “I gotta run,” I said. “Miss Volker’s waiting for me.”

  After I hung up, I started the car while Miss Volker finished her call. When she did, she was in a big hurry.

  “Okay,” she said, as she got back into the car and I pulled out into traffic. “This is what we do. Drive to Miami to the Vizcaya Funeral Parlor. Huffer is arriving today to drop off the casket. Hap has had my sister’s body embalmed, and once she is in the casket we’ll have a porthole viewing this afternoon and a little service, and her body will be shipped home with Mr. Huffer as escort.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I washed my face but my clothes look pretty awful.”

  “Don’t worry. You’ll be at a funeral parlor,” she pointed out. “Nobody looks worse than dead people.”

  “Do I need to be on the lookout for the detective or Spizz? Or anyone?” I asked, checking my mirrors.

  “No,” she said. “That’s all behind us. Now we just take care of my sister.”

  I hit the gas and we got on the Florida turnpike. Our little VW held together and we made it to Miami by midafternoon.

  I called the funeral home from a gas station to get directions. It was next to a large cemetery by the highway. When we pulled into the parking lot, Miss Volker glanced at herself in the rearview mirror.

  “Well,” she said, and poked at her matted hair. The Fountain of Youth had washed all the blue out of it and now the humidity had curled it into a knotted mass of gray Spanish moss. “My hair and this weather are at war with each other. Everybody in a funeral parlor has a role to play and I guess I better get all dolled up to play mine. I’m going inside to the ladies’ room and will see you at the viewing.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’d try to clean up my shirt but it’s hopeless for me.”

  “No,” she said, and opened her door. “You are clueless, not hopeless. There is a difference.”