Skating with the Statue of Liberty

by Susan Lynn Meyer

  Gustave didn’t really feel like going anymore. But Papa had been so excited back when Gustave had told him about the camping trip that he had gone out specially and bought him a new pair of wool socks and a khaki army blanket at the secondhand store. So Gustave kind of had to go. He nodded.

  “Have you ever been camping in cold weather before?” The rabbi was clearly trying to make light conversation.

  “Sure.”

  “Ah. Then you know how things are done. Lots of layers. And wear your warmest clothes. À bientôt!” See you soon. To Gustave’s relief, the rabbi let the door close.

  The last time Gustave had been camping in the winter was a few years ago, in the mountains with his Boy Scout troop in France. Jean-Paul and Marcel had been there too. They had roasted potatoes over the fire and eaten them, and then Marcel had had the brilliant idea of putting the leftover baked potatoes at the bottom of their sleeping bags to keep their feet warm. For a moment it had felt absolutely wonderful. But then the troop leader had come running over. “Non, non, non!” he had exclaimed. “What if wild animals smell food and come into the tent at night? Do you want them nibbling your feet off?”

  So the three of them had quickly taken the potatoes out of their sleeping bags. Then Marcel ate his, even though he had just been rubbing his toes against it.

  To his surprise, Gustave found himself grinning as he walked down the street away from the rabbi’s apartment. That was Marcel, all right! Totally disgusting—but in a good way.

  26

  After school on Tuesday it was surprisingly warm, but rain was pouring down, and Gustave didn’t have an umbrella. He turned up his collar and raced down the street, darting from awning to awning, shaking the water off when he got underneath one. When he reached the awning outside the grocery store on the corner, somebody else was waiting under it too.

  “Hey, Gustave! Are you still being punished?” It was September Rose, holding a striped umbrella.

  “No. It’s over. Finally!”

  “Yay! Then do you want to walk Chiquita together today? We can go up to my apartment and get her and then go to the park.”

  “Seppie, it’s raining!”

  September Rose shrugged. “You can share my umbrella. Dogs still need to be walked even in the rain. What do you say?”

  “Sure, I guess.” He was already wet through, so he might as well.

  “So I decided I’m going to audition for the victory chorus,” September Rose told him as they walked to her apartment, sharing her umbrella. “Listen. Here, hold this so I can sing.” She handed him the umbrella. Giggling, she danced out into the rain and sang a song about a flag. She darted back under the umbrella and dried her face with her sleeve. “Did you like that one?” she asked. But without waiting for an answer, she slipped back out into the rain and, dancing down the pavement, she sang another song about waiting for a letter. “Which one do you like better?” she demanded, coming back under the shelter.

  “The letter one.”

  “Me too, I think.” She squeezed water out of her hair. “But I’m also thinking about singing this other one. It’s a boy telling his girl to wait for him while he’s away at war. It’s kind of funny and sweet. Don’t sit under the apple tree/With anyone else but me…,” she sang, dancing a few steps. One of her feet hit a puddle, sending up a spray of water, and she shrieked gleefully. “Well, I have to think about it. Do you want to go to the library this weekend to work on our history projects?”

  “I can’t. I’m going camping with my Boy Scouts troop.”

  “In this weather? You French Boy Scouts are tough! How about next Tuesday? It’s the auditions, but we can meet somewhere after.”

  “The Joan of Arc statue?” he asked. “You know that one near school, at the end of Ninety-Third, in Joan of Arc Park?”

  “Sure.”

  The rain was starting to lighten as the two of them turned onto September Rose’s block. As they made their way around a large display of dripping suitcases on the sidewalk in front of a store, two older Negro boys zoomed by them on bicycles, splashing through a huge puddle and sending a spray of water in their direction. One of them turned, glared at the two of them walking side by side under the umbrella, and yelled some English words Gustave had never heard before.

  September Rose stiffened, and a mottled crimson darkened her face.

  “What’s the matter? What did he say?”

  “Just something stupid. Bad words.”

  “But what did it mean?”

  “I’m not gonna repeat stuff like that, Gustave!” she snapped. “He called me something bad!”

  “Creep.” Gustave looked after the boys, but they had disappeared.

  “Yeah, stupid creep. I’m not gonna let it bother me.”

  They walked the rest of the way to September Rose’s apartment building in silence. Gustave stopped when he came to the railing where he usually locked Mr. Quong’s delivery bike. “Do you want me to wait outside while you go get Chiquita? So your brother doesn’t get mad at you?”

  “No, come on up. He’s never home this time of day. Only Granma will be there, and she likes you. Anyway, I have to feed Chiquita first, so it’ll take a few minutes.”

  As soon as September Rose opened the apartment door, Chiquita ran toward them, yipping and jumping up on September Rose. Somewhere else in the apartment, voices were shouting.

  “You got to stay away from those hooligans! Look at you!”

  “We’re doing what needs to be done! Anyway, it’s my business. Stay out of it!”

  A door slammed, and Mrs. Walker came down the hall and collapsed into a chair in the kitchen, rubbing her eyes.

  “What’s wrong, Granma?” September Rose cried.

  Mrs. Walker pulled her into a hug. “It’s that brother of yours. I just don’t know what to do with him,” she said, her voice trembling slightly. “You should see how he came home. Hello, Gustave.” She wiped at her eyes. “I’m sorry—you caught us at a bad time.”

  “Why’s he here this early? Is he hurt? What happened to him?” September Rose looked terrified.

  “He got beat up. He won’t say how. I’m at my wits’ end. I just don’t know how to get him to stay out of trouble. He’s bruised and he’s got a terrible black eye. Will you run to the butcher and get him a piece of liver to put on it?”

  September Rose reached into a sugar bowl in the cupboard for some coins. “Sorry, Gustave,” she whispered. “I can’t go to the park after all. We’ll walk Chiquita another time, okay?”

  “Okay.” Gustave headed toward the door. Chiquita followed him, whining hopefully.

  “Wait!” September Rose called out. “I forgot.” She darted into the apartment. In a moment she was back, shoving something into his hand. “I got this for you. I wanted you to feel better about your friend and everything. It was so hard to find. You would not believe how many markets I looked in before I found it. About a million! See you.”

  She closed the door, and Gustave looked at the object she had given him. It was wrapped in notebook paper secured with a rubber band. His name was printed on the paper in capital letters. As he unwrapped it, the delicious smell of chocolate wafted up. It was a candy bar, a kind he had never seen before. “Butterfinger,” he read out loud. It was the word September Rose had taught him the day they’d played hopscotch. On the back of the lined paper was a note:

  Hi, Gustave!

  I’m sorry you’re worried about your friend. Keep your chin up. Hope this makes you feel better.

  From Seppie and Chiquita.

  P.S. Don’t drop it–ha-ha!

  Gustave smiled. When he got outside, the rain had stopped, and a faint rainbow arced high over the pale buildings through a sky filled with tumultuous clouds.

  —

  After dinner that night Gustave poured the money from his savings jar onto the tablecloth. One dollar and fifty-five cents. Mr. Quong was letting him skip his Friday deliveries so that he could go on the Boy Scout camping trip, but beca
use he had worked Monday and would work tomorrow, he would still earn fifty cents this week. So after Mr. Quong paid him, he would finally have enough to buy the pants! Gustave wouldn’t take them camping, because he didn’t want them to get messed up, but when he went to school on Monday, he’d be dressed like a normal American boy.

  Gustave put one nickel back in the jar and zipped the rest carefully into a pocket in his schoolbag.

  —

  During school the next day, and while he was riding around doing his deliveries afterward, he kept fingering the outside of the pocket nervously, making sure that he could still feel the coins. After his last delivery, as he was biking back to the laundry, Gustave suddenly got worried that somebody else might have bought the pants since he’d last checked on them. He chained the bike and ran inside to the used-clothing rack. Molly pattered over to him, meowing and rubbing against his legs. For a moment he couldn’t see the pants. He rummaged through the clothes on the crowded rack, searching. There was the blouse with the stain, there was the men’s jacket, there was the child’s dress with the duck on the pocket—and there they were, jammed between two much bigger pairs of pants. Gustave pulled them off the rack and squatted down to rub Molly gently behind the ears.

  “There you are, Gustave!” Mr. Quong came out of the back. “I have your pay for you.” He opened the cash register and took out two quarters. “Are you interested in those pants?” he asked, looking up. “Do you want to try them on? You can change in the room back here.”

  Between the lines of drying clothes, Gustave pulled on the new pants. They were perfect in length, and when he put his belt on, he could tighten them slightly so that they fit around the waist too. He pushed his way through some hanging sheets back out to the front.

  “Ah, they fit you nicely!” Mr. Quong smiled. “I didn’t know you wanted those.”

  Gustave unzipped the pocket of his bag and counted out the money, added the new fifty cents, and pushed it over to Mr. Quong.

  “No, no, that’s too much.” Mr. Quong handed him back some of the coins. “Employees pay half price. For you, they are just one dollar.”

  “Half price?”

  “Sure! It’s a tradition in this country. And you know what?” Mr. Quong jumped up. “I have just the tie to go with those pants. It’s an old silk one, from before the shortages. Very fancy.” He rummaged around in a cupboard under the counter and pulled out a navy blue tie with diagonal red pinstripes. “Here—no charge.”

  Gustave accepted the tie hesitantly. Lots of the boys at school wore them every day. “It’s nice.” But was it taking charity?

  Mr. Quong smiled at him. “You work hard for me—you’ve earned it. You’ll look just like the other boys at school now. Just like an American!”

  27

  It was a long drive to the mountains for the Boy Scout camping trip. Gustave watched out the window for a while as they left the city and the landscape gradually opened up into suburbs and then apple orchards and farms. After a while mountains loomed up, blue and misty in the distance, and as they ascended, the scenery got more and more wintry-looking, more like February than late March.

  Father René’s gleaming black sedan was packed with scouts, talking and laughing. It was a bit more crowded than Rabbi Blum’s car, but Gustave had chosen this one because Jean-Paul had been sitting in the backseat of the rabbi’s. Gustave listened to the boys around him chattering mostly in French but with a few English words mixed in. After a while he dozed off. He woke when Guy poked him.

  “Réveille-toi, Gustave!” Wake up over there! “Do you know this American song? It’s great for long drives. We’re going to sing ‘A Hundred Bottles of Beer,’ Father René!” he called out tauntingly.

  “No, no! Anything but that!” Father René pretended to bang his head against the steering wheel.

  Guy laughed. “Yeah! It’ll be great for Gustave’s English! Remember how hard English numbers were when you first got here? Come on, fellows!” Guy started singing at the top of his lungs in English. “A hundred bottles of beer on the wall, a hundred bottles of beer…”

  All the others sang too, and after a moment even Father René joined in with his deep baritone. The tune was singsongy and repetitive and annoying, and that was the fun of it. After a few verses, Gustave got the hang of it and sang too: “If one of the bottles should happen to fall, ninety-six bottles of beer on the wall!”

  At about bottle eighty-two, Gustave could tell from the pressure in his ears that they were climbing steeply up into the mountains. They were down to seventeen bottles and still going strong when Father René turned the car into a country lane and stopped when overgrown shrubs blocked the dirt road and he couldn’t drive any farther.

  “Here we are!” he announced. “And now, please, no more bottles of beer!”

  The boys piled out and started getting gear from the back as Rabbi Blum’s car pulled up behind them.

  “This is it?” Gustave asked André. “It looks like the middle of nowhere. I thought we were going to camp in a deserted mansion near a lake.”

  “Yeah, this is it. The road is overgrown because no one’s lived here for years. We park the cars here and hike to the house. It’s a couple of miles.”

  Rabbi Blum was arranging loads. “Three miles, more or less! Great exercise. Here you go, Gustave. You’re a hard worker—you can take a heavy one with food in it, right?”

  “Sure.”

  The rabbi handed Gustave a few packages and helped him stuff them into his backpack. “You did well at your last lesson with me,” he said to him in an undertone. “Are you feeling a bit better about the bar mitzvah and everything?”

  “Yeah. I mean, boys in my family have been having bar mitzvahs since forever. I guess I want to do what my father did, and his father.”

  The rabbi smiled. “Sure! And before him, your grandfather’s father and his father and his father. I often like to think about that too.”

  Father René and André came over and handed Gustave a faded sleeping bag. “André can show you how to tie this onto the pack. You can use some of your knots.”

  “It’s so much less gear than if we were carrying tents,” André said, showing him how the sleeping bag went over the pack. “Still, those shoes don’t look so great for hiking.”

  Gustave looked at his feet, embarrassed. He was wearing the only pair of shoes he had, the ones he wore every day. The leather on the right shoe was starting to separate from the sole, and the tread was worn down to almost nothing. The other boys all had much sturdier-looking shoes.

  “You’ll be fine,” said Rabbi Blum, shouldering his pack. “This trail is rough, but it’s quite flat.”

  “Come on!” Maurice squeezed past, bumping Gustave’s shoulder with his pack and starting down the trail.

  “Everybody ready? On y va!” Let’s go! called Rabbi Blum.

  They all headed down the path. At first it was narrow, and their way was blocked by snow-laden branches that they had to push aside, walking single file. After they had gone about half a mile, though, the path widened. Gustave saw Jean-Paul up ahead of him on the trail, looking back and waiting. There wasn’t any way to avoid him.

  “How come you didn’t ride with us?” Jean-Paul asked when Gustave got close. Gustave shrugged and kept walking. Jean-Paul started hiking alongside him.

  “Look, Gustave…” Jean-Paul went red. “I’m sorry about yelling at you in the synagogue.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Gustave said stonily. He looked down, making his way around roots gnarling the path.

  “I mean, of course I care about Marcel! He was my best friend too, except for you! I just got mad because I know how bad it is there. And you kept acting as if it wasn’t. As if we might get a letter from him anytime,” Jean-Paul ended limply.

  Gustave winced. He had said “was.” Marcel “was” his best friend. And he didn’t even seem to have noticed what he had said.

  Gustave hiked along the partly frozen mud of the trail. It was g
etting late, and over the tree line he saw a crescent moon already up in the pale sky. The image of the yellow moon rising into the sky over the East River that night he had stood on the bridge came back to Gustave, full, luminous, calming. When you didn’t know what to believe, the rabbi had said, when there was no evidence either way, you had a choice. Nobody knew for sure what had happened to Marcel. Jean-Paul thought he knew, but he didn’t, not really. Gustave knew what choice he was going to make, what he was going to believe. Until he knew something else for sure, he was going to believe that Marcel was alive. No matter what anyone else thought. No matter what anyone else said.

  Gustave and Jean-Paul hiked on side by side, silently, along the trail lumpy with roots, across an ice-glazed stream, up a slight rise, and over a tree that had long ago fallen across the path and had now begun to decay.

  “So,” said Jean-Paul, shoving Gustave playfully. “Friends again?”

  Gustave didn’t have to think the same things Jean-Paul thought to be friends with him. He shoved his cousin back, and they both slipped slightly on the muddy path. “Friends.”

  —

  “Are we almost there?” Xavier asked Father René after another mile or two. A wind had picked up, and the air was getting distinctly colder.

  “Almost. Let’s take a short break, boys.”

  Gustave shrugged off his pack, letting it fall onto the side of the path, and stretched his arms and shoulders. His back, sweaty where the pack had pressed against it, quickly felt cold in the evening air. The others were doing the same thing.

  “We’re nearly there,” Maurice said confidently. “I remember. The trees get farther apart here, and then we climb up a hill. From there we can see the mansion and the lake.”

  “That’s right. Good memory, Maurice,” said Rabbi Blum. “So—let’s make our last push. We want to gather some wood to make a fire in the fireplace and warm that gigantic room a little before nightfall.”

  They hiked up the last long hill. No one was talking anymore. The only sound was feet crunching through the snow. At the top of the rise, Bernard ran ahead through the pine trees. “Et voilà!” he said with a grand gesture. There it is! And then he looked back at them all, his face bewildered. “It isn’t there!” he said, sounding stunned. “The mansion’s gone!”