by Delia Ephron
“Well, it’s weird,” he says again.
Jenna titters from nervousness—I think it was her, but it might have been me. A little laughter begets more—and more. Soon we’re stomping around the kitchen in pain holding our stomachs, trying to stop. I’m gasping, protesting it really is true, and Jenna holds up her hands to push the giggles away, and James sighs against the counter, overcome, until finally, it all dies out, and what’s left is awkwardness.
I can’t help myself, I have to fill it. “My dad’s there, I know he is.”
No one contradicts me.
“The tart’s almost ready,” says James.
“It smells fabulous,” says Jenna.
James gets some salad greens out of the refrigerator, tosses in some pine nuts, and slices in slivers of pear. After mixing oil and vinegar right into the salad, and tasting a leaf, he puts on two oven mitts, boxes Jenna’s ears with them, and slides the tart out of the oven and onto the counter. With a flick of his hands, both mitts fly off. He taps the tart with his finger. “Perfect.”
“Isn’t he hot?” Jenna mouths.
I’m starting to sweat. I drank out of a glass. I scooped red pepper paste onto a cracker, but I used the cracker to do it. Now I have to use a fork and a plate. Jenna hands them out.
“Were these in the dishwasher?” I could ask. Of course they were. I see the dishwasher in front of me. James cuts the tart and serves it. Jenna takes a bite and moans, “Oh, James.”
He tries it and smiles. “Not bad.”
They wait for me.
I won’t let the fork touch my mouth. Tart touched fork, and both tart and fork touched plate, but still… this feels safer. Using my tongue, I nudge the bite off the prongs without making contact with metal. Fortunately neither Jenna nor James thinks my eating technique is the least bit strange, or else they’re polite. I’ve never had a cheese tart. It’s pretty tasty even consumed this tricky way. “Fantastic,” I tell James, and he points out how the salad complements it, especially the sweetness of the pears.
“The air rippled,” I say.
“What air?” says Jenna.
“In the puzzle. I call it the GWW, the Great Woolly White. Didn’t I mention that?” I’m getting mixed up about what I said and what I didn’t. “Sometimes it looked misty like steam and sometimes thick like fog, but there was no wind, and the steam rising out of that missing section of puzzle—”
“What missing section?”
“What I thought was a crater wasn’t hot or cold. In the boat it was far away, so it appeared solid; in the garden it was at my feet. Maybe it isn’t air.”
“It has to be air,” says Jenna, “or you’d die.”
“Maybe it’s not weather,” says James. “Can there be air without weather?”
No one knows the answer to that.
“I think it’s void. Where the puzzle doesn’t exist, nothing exists but the GWW. I haven’t done the blues.”
“They’re the hardest,” says Jenna.
“Sky and water,” I tell James.
We can’t go anywhere because I might be spotted, so we hang out, listening to Julio Iglesias, an oily singer James loves. “I want to hold you close under the rain.” I imagine Julio slinking around the stage, gyrating his sexy torso, flexing his muscled arms sun-blotched pink… oops, not Julio’s. Scratch that fantasy. It got out of hand. I settle in sideways, lopping my legs over the arms of a cushy chair. I face away from Jenna and James snuggling on the couch, but every now and then I hear noises that might be kisses. As I laze about, stuffed and tired, for once my heart doesn’t ache (although other body parts do).
“When you were in the garden, could you see the other sections of the puzzle you’d put together?” Jenna asks. “The way you saw the house from the boat?”
“No.”
“I wonder why.”
“Maybe because the restaurant and the garden were halfway up a mountain. The house or boat wouldn’t be visible from there, but if I were in the boat, then I could see the house because it’s on the cove. Does that makes sense?”
“I guess.”
“What were you looking for at your dad’s?” says James.
“The restaurant had a mural of grape vines. The mural was like from a kid’s coloring book, black outlines colored in. When I saw it, bells went off. Where have I seen this? Then the busboy laid down a placemat, a white scalloped paper placemat like the one on Dad’s wall, the one with the watercolor grapes. Those grapes—mushy, vague—”
“I thought they were balloons,” says Jenna.
“—are completely different from the grapes on the wall, but the same. I realized it this morning. I swear that the person who painted the watercolor was in the restaurant and maybe even painted it on one of their placemats. Now the placemat is missing. What does it mean?”
Only Julio has something to say. “Here in a world of lies, you are the true.”
“I’d like to see the puzzle,” says James.
“Would you show it to him?” asks Jenna.
“Sure. Uscita. U-S-C-I-T-A. That word was everywhere. It’s either the name of the café or the family’s name, or it has some other Irish meaning like ‘bathroom.’ Oh, and this woman kept saying, ‘Troppo salato.’ ”
“Too much salt,” says James.
“Honey, it wasn’t too salty. The tart was perfect. He’s such a perfectionist,” Jenna scolds and brags simultaneously.
“Not the tart,” says James. “Troppo salato means too much salt. In Italian.”
“That’s impossible.”
“So they were speaking Italian?” says Jenna.
“No, it’s Ireland. They were speaking Irish.”
“Troppo salato means too much salt in Italian,” James insists.
I swing around to look at them lying there all tangled up. “Maybe it’s Irish too.”
“No way,” says James.
“No way?”
“Maybe it is, James,” says Jenna.
“Spell uscita again.”
“U-S-C-I-T-A.”
“I’ll look it up on the web.” He disappears down the hall, and while we wait, Jenna straightens her clothes and pushes her hair around. “Uscita means ‘exit’ in Italian,” he shouts.
“I guess that settles it.” Jenna applies some gloss.
“Whose side are you on?” I ask her.
“Side?” Jenna’s face contorts in misery while I rant about what a know-it-all James is because he’s a C-H-E-F, forcefully but quietly so James can’t hear.
He returns, oblivious, “If it’s Ireland, why were the signs in Italian? You’re all mixed up.”
I jump up. “You know what? I’m going home. Thanks for lunch.”
Jenna and James chase after me, with Jenna begging, “You can’t walk home—we have to drive you, Frannie, please.”
We ride down the elevator in James’s apartment building in silence. I push ONE instead of LOBBY so the trip feels endless. We have to wait while the door opens, we look out, realize it’s the wrong floor, the doors close again, and James hits the button labeled L. “Why are you sure it’s Ireland?” he says when we hit the lobby.
“Because my dad and I are from there. Way back when. Because the box has Celtic knots carved in.”
I bang through the doors and hope they slam on him as I hear him say, “What does that have to do with the price of olives?”
“Olives? What do olives have to do with anything?” My arms fly out like bat wings as I rage across the parking lot.
“What’s your problem?” he shouts.
I whirl around. “I know my dad. Why would he give me a puzzle of Italy? He wouldn’t.”
“It’s Ireland,” says Jenna. “I’m sure you’re right, Frannie.”
“Maybe you don’t know your dad,” says James.
“I know my dad!”
“It’s true, James. Frannie and her dad were really, really close.”
I want to scream. There’s nothing about Dad that I don’t know. I
get his brain. The sun is beating down, and the heat off the pavement fries my feet right through my rubber soles. “I forgot sunblock,” Jenna whines. She’s obsessed with her lily-white skin because she burns to a crisp in no time flat.
James speaks reasonably, as reasonably as to a five-year-old. “All I’m saying is, why was that sign in Italian and why was everyone speaking Italian?”
“Everyone wasn’t, only that lady.”
“Are you sure? You know, the next time you go into the puzzle, you should take an Italian-English dictionary.”
“Shut up, okay?” We’re next to the car straddling two spaces and the discarded pizza box. I bet the people in the car had a huge fight and were too angry to park properly. They more abandoned the car than parked it. I bet they were coming home to stuff themselves with pizza, and the car got abandoned rather than parked and no one was hungry anymore. In fact everyone had a stomachache without consuming a single slice. A really big stomachache, the way I do right now.
James picks up the box and throws it in a trash can. Am I supposed to think he’s a good person as a result?
As I get in the car, I hear him whisper, “Why is she so angry?”
“Shussh,” says Jenna.
Why am I so angry?
24
“We’ll do it up there.”
I follow the direction of her finger to the hayloft, a platform of crisscrossed planks with tufts of straw poking through here and there. Seen from where we’re standing, the loft floor, which extends halfway across the barn, is our ceiling. I imagine, between those old slats, a foot trapped. A little girl skips across, her foot plunges through. Stuck forever: a little girl’s foot in a white ankle sock and a black patent leather shoe. Wouldn’t it be surreal to have a whole ceiling studded with little girls’ feet? “Are you listening, Frances?”
Harriet has taken to calling me Frances. I suppose she thinks of it as a form of discipline.
“Of course I’m listening.”
“We’ll launch the parachutes from that window,” she says. The loft window has no glass, only several boards hammered over it. It’s huge.
“Looks dangerous.”
“It’s not dangerous.”
Rickety floor, giant loft window. Is it only the illusion of dangerous? Oh well, life is an illusion, whatever that means.
“It’s all explained here, under ‘Egg Drop.’” Harriet thrusts a book into my hands. She chatters on about how, for someone with my experience, it will be a breeze, she’s bought all the supplies. She throws out an arm—here they are, stacked on the table: tissue paper in every color, a mountain high; giant bottles of Elmer’s glue; boxes of toothpicks; paintbrushes. With that, General Honker aims herself at the barn door and strides out.
In my absence (which I managed to extend for a week, will explain later), Rocco has named his lizard Leo and built him a home, a box furnished with several rocks, twigs, and pine needles. Campers huddle around, beaming down at Leo, while Rocco spins tales. “While I fall asleep, he sings in my ear.”
“He should be in a circus,” says Pearl the Tiara Girl. “An itty-bitty circus with itty-bitty animals.”
Lark buzzes by. “Did he tell you that Leo can fly?”
“He might have mentioned that,” I say, while scouring the index for “Egg Drop.”
She scoots back, shoves her face into Rocco’s, and barks, “Well, he can’t.”
“Lark, you know what? This isn’t your group.” I shoo her out the door past a boy named Seymour who is tormenting the Barbie twins, Beatrice and Amber, by shouting, “Barbies have boobs.”
Far off, down at the lake, kids climb into canoes. Paddles wave every which way, campers nearly beheading their boat partners as they try to follow Simon’s instructions. Nature Man, knee-deep in water, wades from boat to boat, correcting each camper’s grip, demonstrating how the paddle works. On the dock sits the ENP. I’m guessing she’s painting her toenails because 1) when I arrived this morning, a pileup of kids was begging to carry her polish, and 2) it looks like it judging from the way she’s sitting: One leg is bent so her thigh hugs her chest; her head bends down over her toes. Every so often her arm swings out to a camper standing next to her, then swings back. I assume the camper is holding out the polish so she can dip the brush in.
On the tennis court, kids take turns as a machine fires balls at them. They miss often but occasionally connect and send balls soaring. There’s a moment when all heads rise, following the trajectory until the ball bounces into the foot-high weeds surrounding the decrepit court. Harriet, visiting there now, applauds each player’s disaster.
As I turn back to the barn, Beatrice runs into me, throws her arms around my waist, and clings. “Don’t leave us.”
“Why would I leave you?”
The campers gather, shoving to be the one closest. “Hazel says you don’t like it here,” says Amber.
“Is that true?” Brandon asks.
“Why would you think that?”
“I didn’t say that,” says Hazel.
“Because she threw away the collage,” says Isabel. “She” is Harriet. “It’s in the big black garbage bag behind the barn.”
“Because you make faces,” Pearl says. Hazel whacks her on the back to shut her up, but Pearl gives no ground. “It’s true, she does. Like you’re bored or hate us.”
Rocco offers the lizard. “You can hold Leo.” He’s got it gripped around the middle. Poor thing. Held in such a tight fist, Leo’s diamond-shaped head with its large headlight eyes bulges out one end while the tail droops out the other.
“Loosen up. He can’t breathe.”
“Yes, he can,” says Rocco.
“Do you want to kill him?”
Rocco sucks in his cheeks as he gives that thought. Obviously I’ve suggested something that isn’t out of the question. “Give Leo to me.”
I put out my hand, and Leo pads on. He rests there, perfectly still. Every so often his eyes blink. It seems like a conscious choice, Now I will blink, thick lids descend and rise. He looks wise.
“All right, everybody. Today your activity is to go outside and find something beautiful. Anything that you think is beautiful. When you come back, you have to explain why it’s beautiful. Get going.”
Later, outside, amidst the treasures they’ve collected—pinecones, leaves, rocks, wildflowers—all spread across the top of the picnic table, I settle down to read about the Egg Drop. The Barbies have attached themselves; I wear one on each side. Kneeling on the bench with their dolls beside them, they hunch over the book. I scan the instructions and provide them with the gist. “To make parachutes, we thin the glue with water, cut the tissue into shapes—”
“What kind of shapes?”
“A flower?”
“It could be a giant flower or a butterfly, whatever you want. Then you paint every inch of the tissue with glue.”
“Check it out and kiss it.” Seymour grabs Beatrice’s Barbie and grinds her face into the book. Beatrice pummels him.
“That’s enough, Seymour, get lost.” I straighten Barbie’s prom dress, fluff the ruffles, smooth her hair, and return her to Beatrice. “When the tissue dries, it’s stiff, so when someone drops the parachute from the hayloft, it holds its shape and catches the wind. It should float down.”
A meaty arm sweeps across the table, wiping it clean. “A lot of debris here,” says Simon. He swings a leg over the bench to straddle it and sets his butt down. He upends a paper bag. What looks like a hero sandwich wrapped in foil falls out.
“What are you doing?”
Simon looks down at himself as if he expects to discover it. “What?”
Figure it out, I’m not telling you.
“Is this seat taken or something?” he inquires after a minute.
“That is not debris. I sent the Eagles to find beautiful objects. Art in nature.”
“Those leaves?”
“And rocks and pinecones and flowers.”
“We don’t care,” say
s Amber.
“I thought you were the nature counselor—don’t you know anything? Are you such a clod that you can’t see the beauty and uniqueness in a leaf?” I scramble around, picking up things, although it’s hard to tell the difference between what’s been lying on the ground and what was knocked off the table. Nevertheless I smooth the leaves and arrange the pinecones as if they are on display and have good and bad sides. Simon sits there and chews. Oil from the hero drips down the side of his hand and his large tongue laps it.
“Want some?” He holds out half the sandwich.
I shake my head and give him my most withering glare. He picks up a leaf and takes a bite. A hearty bite. The Barbies squeal.
Simon chews, swallows, and takes a swig of water to wash it down. “I eat art,” he says.
I don’t know what to say, I really don’t. Is art a joke? Is everything a joke? I bet he would plug in his iPod and veg on raucous music right in the middle of the Egyptian Temple of Dendur, even though it’s the most spiritual place on the planet. Dad and I would sit silently for an hour in the majestic glass room that the Metropolitan Museum built to house it. “I bet you’ve never heard of the Temple of Dendur.”
“You win.” He takes another bite of leaf and chews slowly.
As the Barbies holler to everyone in the vicinity that Simon eats art, he finds a napkin in his paper sack. He has white spots. On his left cheek. I notice them just before the napkin swipes it clean.
“Mold.” The word pops out.
“Mold?”
“On your face. There were little white fuzzies.”
I’ve injured him. I know instantly because he breaks out in a swaggering smile. Yep, wide cocky grin, but the eyes hurt. Just like Mona scoop-necked Lisa. Just like Dad said. The eyes are the key.
Simon stands up. He stuffs the remainder of his sandwich and the crumpled napkin back in the bag. He’s broken out in red blotches that are not from the sun. “Funny,” he says.
He’s accusing me of funny? He’s the jokester.
“But there were these spots. Oh, it was probably that white sunblock you use.”
“Nope, shaving cream. I probably didn’t wipe my face after I shaved this morning.” He takes off toward the lake. The ENP stops him. Laying her hand on his arm, she ogles adoringly, tilting her head much farther back than necessary (if you ask me) to make him feel taller. He accompanies her to the cabin porch, hoists a large carton onto his shoulder, and, like a sherpa in Nepal, follows her.
