Wish You Were Here

by Hilma Wolitzer

  Grace was sitting next to Nat, and she was crying. I guessed they’d finished Charlotte’s Web. I went into the kitchen, where Ma was putting Celia’s supper on a tray. “Can I bring it up to her?” I asked.

  Ma hesitated, but then she said, “All right,” and handed me the tray.

  I took it to my room first, and put the mended horse next to Celia’s chicken soup. I knocked on her door with my knee. The soup sloshed over a little. Celia didn’t answer, so I balanced the tray on one hand, like a waiter, and opened the door with the other. She was sitting up in bed, under the covers.

  “I brought you your supper,” I said, although she could have figured that out for herself.

  “You did?” she said.

  I sat on the side of her bed and put the tray on her lap. She didn’t look at it. There were crumpled Kleenex all over the place. Celia tugged at the stubby ends of her hair a few times, as if she could stretch them, and then she let go, dropping her hands to her sides. I wanted to say that her hair wasn’t so bad, that I even liked it that way, but it was too big a lie. Instead, I said, “It’ll grow back again, Silly.” That was my baby name for her, and I hadn’t used it for years.

  “Yeah, when I’m about thirty.”

  “It’s even better than the wig,” I told her, “for the play.”

  “The play,” she said sadly.

  “You’ll be okay,” I said. “Try to remember how Frankie feels, that’s all.”

  Then she saw the horse.

  “Celia? I’m sorry,” I said. “For everything.”

  “Me, too,” Celia answered, picking the horse up by its plastic mane.

  “Look,” I said. “It’s as good as new. I glued it together with this terrific stuff I won. They tested it on an old, smashed-up Egyptian vase. Even this muscleman couldn’t pull it apart.”

  “Poor little Jackie,” Celia said, and the bottom half of the horse broke off and fell with a splash into the soup.

  “Oh, no,” I moaned.

  There were splatters of soup on the quilt, on Celia’s chin. “You bonehead,” she said. “You idiot!”

  “Waiter!” I cried. “What’s this horse doing in my soup?”

  “The b-b-backstroke?” Celia said, starting to laugh.

  “No, no, the dead-horse float!” I said. Then I was laughing, too.

  Every time we tried to say something after that, one of us would point to the horse’s bottom floating in the noodles. And we’d both crack up again, jiggling the tray and spilling more soup.

  Grandpa

  “EVERYBODY READY?” MA ASKED. “It’s almost two-thirty.”

  “I’m ready,” I said, not adding that I’d been ready since I woke up that morning. It had really been hard to sit still in school and concentrate. At least I’d gotten special permission to leave early.

  “I’m ready,” Grace echoed. She had so much stuff with her you’d think she was going off on a long trip, instead of just meeting Grandpa at the airport. She was holding an old cardboard doll’s trunk with one hand, and a shopping bag with the other.

  “What’s in there?” I asked, pointing to the trunk. Grace hardly ever played with dolls. She shook it, and I could hear crayons rattling around. Then she let go of one of the shopping-bag handles, so I could look inside. She had some rolled-up drawing paper and assorted snacks. “We’re driving to Kennedy, not Florida,” I reminded her, and helped myself to a couple of her Fritos. I’d been too nervous to eat my lunch, and now I was starving. Grace closed the shopping bag and moved out of my reach.

  Ma glanced at her watch. “Where’s Celia?” she said. “Bernie, would you please get her.”

  I stood at the bottom of the stairs and cupped my hands around my mouth. “Hey, Cel-ia!” I hollered. “Get the lead out, will you!”

  “Good grief,” Ma said. “I could have done that, if I wanted to deafen everyone. I meant for you to go upstairs.”

  “I’ll be right down,” Celia called.

  I knew she had spent the last half hour trying on scarves and hats and sticking barrettes into what was left of her hair. Ma was going to take her to the beauty parlor after it grew in a little, to get it evened out. In the meantime, Celia did everything she could to hide it. Ma was always saying these encouraging things, like how good it would feel in the summer not to have that hot, heavy hair on your neck, and how chic Celia would be once she’d had a professional trim. The kids in school were impressed by what she’d done—she was kind of a heroine—and Mr. Rooney said she could definitely play Frankie without the wig. Even I was getting used to her this way.

  “We’re going to be late,” Ma said, and I was all set to holler up to Celia again, when she came running down, wearing my old striped engineer’s cap. It was so big none of her hair showed, making her look bald.

  “Hey!” I said. “Who said you could wear that?”

  “Oh, don’t be so selfish,” Celia answered.

  “Selfish?” I said. “Me? You’re the one who—”

  “Let’s just go,” Ma interrupted. “You can fight in the car.” I could tell she was glad Celia and I were on speaking terms again, even if we were arguing.

  Once we were in the car, though, I forgot about Celia. I could only think of my grandfather, of how it would be to see him after all this time. I looked out the window at the boring scenery of the Long Island Expressway, and pictured the red Seagull pulling into port, with Grandpa in his white captain’s hat, waving to us. I wanted things to be like that again, and I knew they never could be.

  Ma put the radio on, and hummed along with the love song they were playing. Sometimes she and Nat danced in our living room to records from the olden days. He’d offered to go to the airport with us, but Ma decided that he should meet Grandpa after we had our reunion.

  We were a few minutes early, and the plane was a few minutes late. Every time an announcement came over the loudspeakers, Grace asked, “Is that Grandpa’s plane?”

  Then it was his plane, Flight 18 from Miami, and we hurried to the gate with a lot of other people. Some of them carried flowers or cameras. When the passengers started coming out, there were little yells, and flashbulbs popped. Pretty soon it got crazy, with everybody greeting everybody. Grandpa still hadn’t come out. Grace kept jumping up, trying to see, and saying, “Is that him? Is that him?” I thought she was being babyish until I realized she might not recognize Grandpa, that she probably didn’t have the clear memory of him that I had.

  Then Ma began waving and calling to an old guy in a business suit. “Sam! Oh, Sam! Hello, we’re here!” She worked her way through the mob to get to him, and they just held each other for a long time. That gave me a chance to really look at him, to see that it was my grandfather, after all.

  He kissed each of us, saying our names, and holding our faces as if they were made of glass. Celia had pulled off the engineer’s cap, and Grandpa stroked her shaggy hair, smiling and smiling. I took the flight bag he’d put down, and he linked his arm with mine. I remembered him lifting me, remembered riding high on his shoulders above the whole rest of the world. When he’d kissed me before, I noticed he didn’t smell the same anymore. That fishy, salty smell of the sea was gone. I got a whiff of after-shave instead, and breath mints.

  “Bernie,” Grandpa said. “Look at you! When did you get so big?”

  Happiness and sadness crowded my heart. Grandpa, I wanted to say, when did you get so small?

  He was glad to be staying in my room. He gave this low whistle when he saw the wallpaper. “Snow,” he said, “all year round! I’ll tell you the truth, I miss the snow.”

  I helped him unpack and put his things next to mine in the closet and the drawers.

  “So we’re going to be bunkmates, eh, Bernie?” Grandpa said.

  If I couldn’t move to Florida, I thought, maybe he could move in here with us. It was a little cramped—I banged my leg on the cot a couple of times—but the room was nice and cozy with two people in it.

  Nat came over just before supper.
He and Grandpa shook hands when they were introduced, and Nat said he was honored that Grandpa had made the trip and would be at the wedding. Grandpa welcomed Nat into the family. They were friendly to one another, but also kind of stiff.

  Things were more relaxed during dinner. Celia yakked about the play, which was only two nights away. She said she was a complete wreck, but she looked okay to me. She showed her Southern accent off for Grandpa, and he said it was the real McCoy, and that he should know, being a Southerner now himself. Grace brought some of her drawings in to be admired, and she sat on Grandpa’s lap during dessert. I didn’t mind sharing him with everyone, because I knew he and I would be alone later, when it was time for bed.

  After we finished eating, Ma insisted that Grandpa rest, that he had to be tired from the trip and all the excitement. Grandpa said she was right, but that he needed my company While he rested. “I’ll just take a load off my feet,” he told me. “We can talk.”

  Upstairs, he took off his shoes and his jacket, and loosened his tie. When he lay down on the bed, I dived onto the cot.

  “Tell me about you,” Grandpa said.

  I hadn’t meant to, but I let everything out—my plan to go live with him, how hard it was to earn the money, and even about the plane ticket, which I still hadn’t turned in for my refund. I said that I was going to pay back the fifty dollars he’d loaned me, and that I was also going to buy my World’s Fair ring back from Grace, giving her a small profit.

  Mostly he just listened, the way he always did when you needed a listener. Then he said he was glad fate had worked in our behalf, that we could be together without my having to leave home.

  I asked him about his life in Florida, and he said it was comfortable, and not too thrilling. “Just right for an old geezer like me,” he added.

  “You’re not so old,” I said, knowing I said it mostly because I wanted it to be true. I had to change the subject, so I brought up those Sundays in Sheepshead Bay, and the good times our family always had. Then we started talking about my father, telling each other some of the things we remembered about him. Grandpa said that when Daddy was a little boy he believed you could grow anything, if you planted it. Once, he buried a penny in an empty lot, and watered it all summer, waiting for a money tree to come up. We laughed, and it seemed sort of strange, but not wrong, to be laughing at someone you loved who was dead.

  I told Grandpa what I’d told Ma, about forgetting my father even when I tried not to.

  He said, “Forgetting is the way nature helps us live.”

  When I didn’t say anything for a while, he said, “You still feel bad, Bernie, don’t you?”

  “Uh-huh,” I answered.

  “Well, we can’t change what has to be, you know,” he said, and his voice was thick and hoarse.

  I only nodded, afraid that my own voice would be worse.

  Grandpa yawned. “I’m getting groggy, Bernie,” he said. “I’m going to shut my eyes and take forty winks. When I get up, we can talk some more. We can have a regular pajama party.”

  I stayed in the room watching him sleep, way over forty winks. Ma came upstairs later and tiptoed in. Grandpa was still asleep in his clothes. She signaled me to be quiet, and to get ready for bed. She covered Grandpa with a blanket and tiptoed out.

  After I was undressed, I shut off the light and stretched out on the cot, thinking of my father—a kid named Marty—watering his penny. I thought of him now, lying under a white stone with his name carved on it, and had an idea I wanted to tell my grandfather. I listened to his breathing in the dark room, waiting for him to wake up, until I was asleep, too.

  My Idea

  I TOLD GRANDPA MY idea the minute I opened my eyes. He had showered already, and changed his clothes, and was fixing the bedspread. He sat down on the half-made bed and looked thoughtful.

  “Is it dumb?” I asked. “It’s dumb, isn’t it?”

  “No,” Grandpa said. “It’s an unusual idea, but definitely not dumb. Why don’t we discuss it with your mother?”

  Before I went to school, Grandpa and I talked privately to Ma. I told her that I wanted to take my father’s first name as my middle name, that I’d thought it over carefully the night before.

  “I don’t know, Bernie,” Ma said. “I never heard of anybody doing that.”

  Grandpa said that just because an idea was new didn’t mean it wasn’t good. “I don’t think you even have to take legal steps,” he told Ma. “And haven’t we always named our children after the dead?”

  “The children are usually newborn at the time, Sam,” she said.

  “Yes,” Grandpa agreed, “but Bernie’s situation is exceptional. And it would be a way for him to have something of his father’s forever.”

  “Well...” Ma said. “I wonder what Rabbi Stein would think.”

  Grandpa suggested they speak to him and find out. Then I had to leave for school, before the bus went without me.

  I stayed late that day for a Science Club meeting. Hornberg showed us some wildlife slides, and then we voted to go on a field trip to the Tackapausha nature preserve in a couple of weeks.

  When I came home, Ma said she had good news for me. She and Grandpa had both spoken to Rabbi Stein, who liked my idea very much. They’d arranged to have my naming take place on Monday morning at the synagogue library.

  “Why do I have to do that?” I asked. “Why can’t I just start calling myself whatever I want? Grandpa said it’s legal.”

  “It is, and you could,” Ma said. “But this will make it seem more official. You’ll see.”

  Grace became very jealous when she heard about it. She said, “I’m going to change my name, too. From now on, you have to call me Amanda Belinda Smith.”

  “Like Frankie,” I said. “Like F. Jasmine Addams.”

  “Ohhh,” Celia moaned. “Don’t remind me!” Not that she needed reminding. There was a dress rehearsal at school that night, and the big performance the following night.

  I asked her to let me come to the rehearsal, but she said, “No, it will spoil the magic.”

  “Magic!” I laughed. “What magic? It’s only a stupid play.”

  “Then why do you want to see it twice?”

  “Because there’s nothing else to do. Because Pete’s going to his cousin’s tonight, and I’m bored stiff.” I was thinking: Because I’m nervous about Monday, and my naming, and I have to get out of here. But I didn’t want to admit that to her.

  Anyway, Celia was nervous enough for both of us. At dinner, she said, “I just know I’m going to come down with something horrible, like malaria, an hour before I have to go on.”

  “Maybe you’ll only have the heartbreak of psoriasis,” I said, helping myself to the mashed potatoes.

  “What if I lose my voice?” she asked Ma, ignoring me. “You know, like in a bad dream, when someone’s chasing you and you can’t yell. What if I get up on the stage and nothing comes out?”

  “You could always hold up signs,” I said.

  “Oh, be quiet, wimp!” Celia snapped. “Who asked you?”

  “You’re going to be fine,” Ma assured her for the millionth time.

  “Celia, darling,” Grandpa said. “Have positive thoughts. Maybe there’ll be a talent scout from Hollywood in the audience, and you’ll be discovered.”

  Celia knew he was teasing, but I could tell by her face that she was picturing something like that actually happening.

  “You’d have to change your name, too,” Grace said. “A movie star can’t be named Celia Segal.”

  “Why not?” Celia said. “I wouldn’t change a single letter. The whole family would become famous. You’d have to change your names to get away from fans and reporters who’d want to know all about me, what I was like as a child—”

  “Colicky,” Ma said, passing the bread basket.

  “Bratty,” I said.

  “I’ve already changed my name,” Grace said, “and Bernie’s changing his on Monday.”

  “He’s not r
eally changing it,” Grandpa told her. “He’s just adding to it. And Celia’s right. I, personally, would be happy to be known in Miami as the famous Celia Segal’s grandfather.”

  “More roast beef, anybody?” Ma asked.

  “It’s hard for me to even think about food,” Celia said, although she’d had seconds on everything. “Anyway, I have to get ready. Ruth’s father is picking me up in a few minutes.”

  When she was gone, the rest of us went into the den to play Monopoly. Grace guarded the play money as closely as she did the real thing. If you were broke and landed on her property, she showed no mercy. The stacks of pink and yellow and blue bills in front of her got higher and higher. When it was time for her to go to bed, she was declared the winner, even though the game wasn’t over. Ma and Grandpa were down to a few bucks each, and I was in jail.

  Grandpa went upstairs with Grace to tell her a bedtime story. Ma and I waited in the den together for Celia to come home. “I’m glad we’re alone for a few minutes, Bernie,” Ma said. “I want to talk to you.”

  “What did I do now?”

  “Nothing. I just want to ask you something.”

  “What?”

  “If you’ll be in the wedding ceremony next week.”

  I knew that my sisters had already said they’d be in it. In fact, they couldn’t wait. Celia was going to be the maid of honor, and Grace a junior bridesmaid—whatever that was.

  “Do you want me to be the flower girl?” I asked, making a goofy face.

  “Stop that, Bernie,” Ma ordered. “I’m serious. Now, you know the wedding will be in our own living room, so it’s no big deal. I’d like you to give me away.”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s only a custom,” she said, “for someone to turn the bride over to the groom, to escort her during the last mile. Do you remember Cousin Lynn’s wedding?”

  That was seven or eight years ago, and all I could remember was how loud the band played during the reception, and that another kid and I went into the men’s room and threw wads of toilet paper at each other. I shook my head. “Not really.”