The Wednesday Wars (26 page)

"Yes," I said.

I know, I know. You don't have to tell me.

The teller fingered the savings bond. "All right," she said finally. "Fifty-two dollars. I hope you're going to do something worthwhile with the money."

I nodded, and she counted the bills out onto the counter.

Further down on Commerce Street was the Western Union. I put the money up on the counter.

"I need to send all this cash to Minneapolis," I said.

"It's going for a visit, is it?" said the Western Union man. This was worse than a teacher joke. This was even worse than a nurse joke.

"I need to send it to my sister."

The Western Union man counted it out. "That's a lot of money," he said. "Where are you sending it exactly?"

"To the Western Union closest to the Minneapolis bus station."

"Huh," he said. He pulled out a directory and thumbed through it. It took about half an hour before he found Minneapolis.

"Well," he said slowly, taking his glasses off, "looks like they've got two bus stations. There's the one on Heather Avenue. And there's the one on LaSalle."

"Heather Avenue," I said. "Send it to the one on Heather Avenue."

The Western Union man put his glasses back on. "It'll cost you $1.75," he said.

"Fine."

"And what's the name of the recipient?"

I told him, and he took the money and sent $50.25 to Minneapolis, Minnesota, to a Western Union station on Heather Avenue, even though I didn't know if my sister was at that station or if she even knew that money was coming. I thought of her sitting alone in a place where everyone else was going somewhere, or wandering the streets of Minneapolis, looking for a way to come home to a place that was emptier without her.

Sort of like Hamlet, who, more than anything, needed to find a home—because he sure couldn't find himself.

I spent the afternoon hiding around town—which is not easy, since this isn't that big a town, and it would take a whole lot less than an atomic bomb to make it disappear, and since anyone who saw me might tell the Chamber of Commerce Businessman of 1967 or Mrs. Baker. And if either of them heard ... well, put me under that bomb.

I waited for a call from my sister that night. But it didn't come until late Friday night. From Chicago.

On the way.

On Saturday morning, I told my parents at breakfast that my sister would be at the Port Authority in New York at 10:50 that morning.

They looked at me like I had just chanted Hebrew.

"She'll be in the Port Authority at ten fifty?" repeated my mother. Her hand was up to her mouth, and her eyes suddenly filled.

"Yes," I said.

"How is she going to get home from there?" asked my father.

"I guess she was hoping you would go and pick her up."

"Of course," said my father. "Of course I'll drop everything and pick her up. Of course I have nothing else to do." He stood up. "If she went out in a yellow bug, she can come home in a yellow bug."

"She's alone," I said.

"You're not going to see me driving all the way into the city on a Saturday. She can take the train."

"She may be out of money."

"Well, whose problem is that?" he said.

"It doesn't matter whose problem it is. She can't get back home unless you go get her," I said.

He looked at me. "Who do you think you're talking to?" he said.

"She needs help."

"Then you go get her, Holling. The car keys are up on my dresser." He laughed.

"Okay," I said.

"Okay," he said, and went outside to start up the lawn mower.

I went upstairs and got the car keys. The Ford Mustang car keys—not the station wagon.

"Holling," said my mother when I came back down. "I think he was being sarcastic."

I went to the front closet and found my jacket.

"Holling, what are you doing?"

I held up the car keys. "I'm driving into New York City to pick up my sister from the Port Authority Bus Terminal at ten fifty. "

"You don't know how to drive."

"I've seen movies."

I went to the front door.

"Holling," said my mother.

I turned around.

"You can't drive in by yourself."

"Then come with me."

She looked out to the backyard. "We can't do that, either," she said, and her voice was as sad and lost as Loneliness.

I went out to the garage and sat in the Mustang. The red leather still smelled new. The steering wheel felt right in my hands.

It wasn't like I'd never driven before. My mother had let me drive the station wagon around parking lots—the big ones down at Jones Beach, where you can go for two or three miles before you hit anything more dangerous than a seagull. I'd gotten out of first gear plenty of times, and even up into third gear twice. And the Mustang was smaller and handier than the station wagon. I probably just had to think about turning and the car would feel it.

But driving around Jones Beach parking lots is a whole lot different from driving on the Long Island Expressway into New York City. And even if I could get on to the expressway, I wouldn't know what exit to get off.

Toads, beetles, bats.

I came back inside. I threw the keys on the kitchen counter. My mother was putting out a cigarette and starting to make pound cake for lunch.

Outside, the mower fussed at the edges of the lawn.

I went into the living room and sat down on the couch.

And Meryl Lee called.

Because her father was going in to Yankee Stadium.

Would I like to come?

"Can I get to the Port Authority from Yankee Stadium?" I said.

Meryl Lee asked her father.

"It's too far, but he says that if you can leave right now, we'll have just enough time to drop you off." She was quiet a moment. "I think he feels like he owes you something," she said.

I went into the kitchen. "I need money for two train tickets," I said.

"Train tickets?" my mother said.

"And money for two lunches."

She stared at me.

"Big lunches," I said.

She went upstairs for her pocketbook.

I was there when the bus from Chicago pulled in at 10:50.

The Port Authority was all noise and rushing. The accumulated combustion from the buses had thickened the air. The whoosh and squeak and hollering of the brakes and the distorted announcements over the P.A. system and the newsboys hawking and the pell-mell of more bodies than belong in any one building gave the place a general roar. As for the floor, you couldn't have found a greater confusion if the ceiling had been lifted off and the sky had rained down ticket stubs and newspapers and Baby Ruth wrappers.

But as soon as the 10:50 bus from Chicago parked itself, everything stopped. The rush, the roar, the squeak, the whoosh—they all stopped. Really. Like Leonid Brezhnev had sent over an atomic bomb and wiped it all out.

They did not start up again until my sister got off the bus, and she ran out of the diesel combustion and right to me, and we held each other, and we were not empty at all.

"Holling," she said, "I was so afraid I wouldn't find you."

"I was standing right here, Heather," I said. "I'll always be standing right here."

For lunch, we had grilled cheese sandwiches and Cokes and chocolate doughnuts at a counter in the Port Authority. Outside, we bought pretzels from a stand, and then we walked to Central Park, hand in hand. We lay down in the Sheep Meadow, and my sister told me about driving west, with the sun on your face. We got up and walked around the Pond, and stopped at an outcropping of boulders that fell out of the woods. Around us was every shade of green you could ever hope to imagine, broken up here and there with a flowering tree blushing to a light pink. All the colors were garbled and reflected in the tiny ripples of the water. Then through the wandering paths of the Ramble, looking as if we were up in the mountains of California, and then across Bethesda Terrace, where we sat on the stone walls and traced the carvings with our fingers until someone hollered at us to get off there! Then back along the Mall underneath tall elms, until we passed the statue of—no kidding—William Shakespeare, who stared down at us sternly, probably because he is wearing tights and is embarrassed doing that in front of everybody.

We walked slowly. We talked a little. I told her about our atomic bomb drills and about our town and about
The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.
She told me about Minneapolis and how she got out of the yellow bug and wouldn't get back in and how Chit drove away, and about going to the Western Union and finding the money for the ticket, and falling asleep for the first time in two days on the bus to Chicago. But mostly we didn't talk. It was spring in Central Park, and being there with my sister was enough.

We took the train out of the city and walked from the station. When we got back home, it didn't matter that my mother had made us burned grilled cheese sandwiches for supper. It was just so good that the house wasn't empty anymore.

My father said only one thing during supper:

"Did you find yourself?"

"What?" said my sister.

"Did you find yourself?"

"She found me," I said.

By the end of
The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark,
Laertes is stabbed, the queen is poisoned, and the king is poisoned
and
stabbed—which is pretty much the same thing that happens to Hamlet. By the time it's all over, there are these dead bodies all over the stage, and even though Horatio is hoping that flights of angels are coming to sing Hamlet to his rest, it's hard to believe that there's any rest for him. Maybe he knew that. Maybe that's why he dressed in black all the time. Maybe it's why he was never happy. Maybe he looked in the wrong places trying to find himself.

Or maybe he never had someone to tell him that he didn't need to find himself. He just needed to let himself be found.

That's what I think Shakespeare was trying to say about what it means to be a human being in
The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.

And speaking of being found, that's what happened to Lieutenant Baker, too!

Really.

After almost three months in the jungles of Vietnam, he got found.

I was there on the last Wednesday afternoon of May, a cool and blue day, when Mrs. Sidman came in with an envelope and handed it to Mrs. Baker. She took it with hands that were trembling. She tore the top slowly open, and then stood there, holding the telegram, unable to pull it out to read it.

"Can I help?" said Mrs. Sidman.

Mrs. Baker nodded.

"And then I'll take Holling to my office so that you can be alone."

Mrs. Baker looked at me, and I knew she wasn't going to send me to Mrs. Sidman's office so that she could be alone. You don't send someone away who has lit a candle with you.

"I suppose not," said Mrs. Baker.

Mrs. Sidman took the envelope, then held out the opened telegram to Mrs. Baker.

But Mrs. Baker closed her eyes. "Read it," she whispered.

Mrs. Sidman looked at me, then down at the telegram. Then she read the first line: "Sweet eyes ... stop."

Think of the sound you make when you let go after holding your breath for a very, very long time. Think of the gladdest sounds you know: the sound of dawn on the first day of spring break, the sound of a bottle of Coke opening, the sound of a crowd cheering in your ears because you're coming down to the last part of a race—and you're ahead. Think of the sound of water over stones in a cold stream, and the sound of wind through green trees on a late May afternoon in Central Park. Think of the sound of a bus coming into the station carrying someone you love.

Then put all those together.

And they would be nothing compared to the sound that Mrs. Baker made that day from somewhere deep inside that had almost given up, when she heard the first line of that telegram.

Then she started to hiccup, and to cry, and to laugh, and Mrs. Sidman put the telegram down, held Mrs. Baker in her arms, nodded to me, and took her out of the classroom for a drink of water.

And I know I shouldn't have, but I picked up the telegram and read the rest. Here is what it said:

SWEET EYES STOP OUT OF JUNGLE STOP OK STOP HOME IN TIME FOR STRAWBERRIES STOP LOVE TY STOP

Shakespeare couldn't write any better than that.

Mrs. Baker hated camping.

You could tell this because her eyes rolled whenever the subject came up—which was plenty lately, since that's what her class was going to do to celebrate the end of the school year. Two nights of camping up in the Catskill Mountains. Beside a waterfall. In deep woods.

"On soggy ground," said Mrs. Baker.

"It'll be great," said Danny.

"With mosquitoes," said Mrs. Baker.

"Mosquitoes?" said Meryl Lee.

"Sleeping on rocks," said Mrs. Baker.

"Terrific," I said.

"Dew all over us," said Mrs. Baker.

"Great," said Doug Swieteck.

"Let's get back to sentence diagramming," said Mrs. Baker.

You might wonder why Mrs. Baker was going to take us camping when she thought that camping meant soggy ground, mosquitoes, sleeping on rocks, and dew. But every year since she had first begun to teach at Camillo Junior High, Mrs. Baker had taken her class camping in June. Lieutenant Baker had come along—probably because he loved camping, and Mrs. Baker was willing to put up with soggy ground, mosquitoes, sleeping on rocks, and dew for his sake. Maybe she wanted to go this year because
he
would have wanted to go. Maybe she thought that if she kept every routine the same, then he really would be home in time for strawberries.

So Mrs. Baker was taking us camping, even though she hated camping.

But let me tell you, Mrs. Baker would have had to hate camping a whole lot more to keep herself from smiling through all of her classes—even when she was rolling her eyes or crossing her arms or fussing that Mr. Vendleri had still not gotten all the spilled cider mopped up, so that it was sticky on the feet when you walked into the Coat Room.