Not a Happy Camper (25 page)

“So you really were awake?” Hallie questioned.

“Duh!”

“Or maybe she was awake before and
now
she's asleep,” I added.

“Betty, pinch yourself and show us you're awake,” Hallie said. “Or we'll never know for sure.”

“Unless we're all dead and Betty is dreaming about us,” Autumn Evening suggested. “And then if she wakes up, we'll be gone.”

“Okay,” I said. “Don't pinch yourself.

“I don't have to pinch myself,” Betty insisted. “I'm awake. I'm awake and it's raining.”

Which it was.

We ducked under the tables to keep dry, but the rain came right in between the wooden boards.

“Why don't you go hang out with the Foxes?” our counselor suggested.

We waited for the rain to let up a bit first. When it didn't, we made a run for it, through the tables and benches, past the Giant Tee-pee and the cracked, weed-infested tennis courts. We lost our counselor at the Boys' Side office.

“I'll wait in here,” she said.

“Don't you want to come with us?” Hallie asked.

“No. It's okay. I don't want to intrude. Have fun.”

Hallie turned to me. “She has the dullest life of anyone I've ever met.”

“You think so?” I said. “I'll betcha she's engaged before we all go home.”

“Engaged?” shrieked Hallie. “To who? She's not even going out with anyone.”

We didn't see Maddy for the rest of the night.

Meanwhile, I was on a mission. If I was going to ask Philip to be my date for the Banquet Social, I was going to have to do it now. I could still change after all. I could become—a girl with a date! Of course, the whole notion of having a date was completely stupid. Everyone was going to the Social, whether they wanted to or not. It was understood that this was the one night of the summer you couldn't stay back at the bunk and the one night you could get away with not having a date. So it really didn't matter what he said, and God I hoped he'd say yes.

I thought the idea was to sneak into their bunk, but upon opening the door, Dana shouted out, “Ta-dah!”

“Whaddaya want?” Kenny whined, in a tone I now recognized as his usual cranky self.

“We came to warn you it's raining,” Dana yelled above the din pounding the tin roof.

“Yeah, that's news. Tell us when it isn't.”

He rolled over and went back to sleep without even acknowledging my presence. And I liked it that way.

Everyone knew Dana would be going to the Banquet Social with Aaron Klafter. Autumn Evening was something of a mystery.

“So, like, who ya going with?” Chip Fink asked in a tone that was at once both nonchalant and despairing.

He was taken aback when Autumn Evening answered quickly, “Michael Dushevsky.”

The name sounded familiar. I'd seen it painted on a wall somewhere.

“I don't think he's here this summer,” I said.

“Of course not,” Autumn Evening replied. “He was here for five years, from 1949 to 1953, then he died in an avalanche on a skiing trip in Gstaad. Michael was fifteen. His ghost comes up to camp every summer. I'm going with him.”

Everyone stared.

I broke the silence. “There's a place called Gstaad?”

“It's in Switzerland,” Autumn Evening explained for the unenlightened. “Some people don't pronounce the ‘G', but I find that pretentious.”

Philip got up and crossed the room, heading for the door. I needed to stop him, to tell him how sorry I was for backing out of breakfast with his parents, for embarrassing him. I'd never wanted to hurt his feelings. I only wanted to do what I thought would make me feel better. He just got caught in the middle of it. I followed him outside, to the bunk porch.

“Hey, um...” I started.

He stopped and turned. “Yeah?”

“You know, I didn't... That thing a few days ago... I mean...”

“Uh-huh,” he said.

“Cuz, y'know... I didn't mean to...”

“Sure.”

“Yeah, well anyway... I'm really... y'know...”

“Okay.”

“So you're...?”

“Yeah.”

I was glad he understood.

“You going to the Banquet Social?” Philip inquired.

Was it that simple? After all this, was
he
asking
me
to be his date? I needed to let him know I was still available.

“I guess. You?”

“I guess.”

So had I made my point? Had he asked me to the Social? Did I have my first date?

“Um, I really have to go,” Philip added, then turned and ran up the hill toward the bathroom shack.

The rain ended shortly before the wake-up bell and breakfast. We followed the boys down to the flagpole to see the whole camp's reaction to our work.

“Unbelievable.”

“It's incredible.”

“Never seen anything like it!”

“Everything is so—so clean!”

The waiters toweled off the shiny tables and benches and we dined al fresco.

The break in the rain didn't last long, putting me in a bit of a quandary when it came time to dress for that evening's Banquet. I wanted to be like everyone else, to wear my good Bat Mitzvah dress, purple crushed velvet with scratchy but elegant white lacey trim on the collar and cuffs, but I worried it might get wet. I didn't know what could happen to wet velvet, but I knew what my mother would say: “Why did you have to wear it? Now it's ruined.” And even if it wasn't raining, what if I'd gained weight and it was too small on me? If only I hadn't eaten quite so much in the 1960s. I'd be so much thinner now. Why did I never plan ahead?

I went to the back of the closet where no one could watch me and removed the dress from the good plastic hanger my mother had labeled with my name. It slipped on over my head with no ripping sounds, my arms still fit into the sleeves and the elasticized waist still had some give. For once I was glad I hadn't changed
and then I looked down. My ankle-length dress had gotten shorter. Or I had gotten longer.

Peeking through the hangers full of bellbottoms, hot pants, embroidered denim work shirts and faux Greek peasant blouses, I looked to see who might be available to help me.

“Dana!” I whispered. “Dana!”

She didn't hear me, but Betty did.

“Dana! Mindy is yelling to you from the closet!”

Everyone came charging in to see what was up. It was obvious. Unless I was going for my younger brother's we-can't-afford-clothing-that-fits-right flood pants look, this dress was a disaster.

“Wow,” said Autumn Evening. “It's like a midi. Cool.”

“Yeah, and it won't get wet on the bottom, like mine,” added Hallie, envy in her eyes.

“You know what you need?” Dana said. “You need me to blow-dry your hair straight.”

“Me with straight hair?”

“You don't like the idea?”

“Well, yeah, but I didn't think it was possible. Me with straight hair is like a world where dogs have thumbs and can open kitchen cabinets.”

Betty shot an odd look my way. “My brother doesn't have thumbs and he can open kitchen cabinets.”

“That's interesting,” Autumn Evening noted. “If he comes to camp next summer, Saul can make that an event in Kin & Hurra.”

Later, heading down the steps, Hallie leaned in and whispered, “You look great. Too bad you don't have a boyfriend.”

“What about Philip?” I asked. “He likes me.”

“It doesn't count if you don't like him back and everyone knows you don't.”

Well, everyone was wrong. I was wrong. And tonight I was going to prove it.

With the tables and benches back inside the dining hall, we sat crowded together, elbow to elbow, all spruced up, except for the Wolverines, who were slovenly by comparison.

“What's the matter with you boys?” Saul wanted to know. “Is this some form of protest? The '60s are over. Where are your nice clothes?”

“They burned in the fire!” a lone Wolverine shouted.

For a moment, Saul was caught off-guard, but then regained his composure. “That's no excuse,” he said. “You should look nice tonight. We're having steak.”

“Freight train of steak must've crashed,” someone muttered.

“Woo-woo!” someone else added.

“No,” chimed in Bobby Gurvitz. “It's ‘Moo-moo!'”

I just hoped it wouldn't be chateaubriand. I had too many issues with that cut of meat.

As usual, Maddy had abandoned our bunk shortly after our arrival on Boys' Side, but she did show up towards the end of the meal. For the first time all summer, Maddy and Jacques entered a room together. Immediately, the Junior Counselor girls paddled their hands against the table and made a dedication: “Quiet, please! Dedicated to the dining room: ‘Maddy Rattner, Maddy Rattner, take some good advice from me...'” But they were too late. Jacques and Maddy kissed in public for the first time, displaying their affection and the sparkly engagement ring on Maddy's finger.

After the meal came the entertainment. The Chipmunks' counselor, Stuart Goldstein, had declared the theme of the Banquet “Poetry in Motion,” which was Stuart's excuse to get up and read his favorite poem, Lewis Carroll's
Jabberwocky
. After that, Betty read her favorite, the suicide-themed
Resumé
by Dorothy Parker. And then it was my turn. I was on the program, too.

Word had leaked out that I'd been writing satirical poetry since I was twelve. Tonight, I would make my public debut. I had two reasons to be nervous. First, I'd spilled a tiny drop of gravy on my sleeve and even if no one in the audience noticed it, my mother surely would when I got home, and, more significantly, what if no one laughed at my poem when they were supposed to? And even if they did, there was still that thing again about everyone looking at me, and not just noticing the gravy on my sleeve. Standing on a chair in the middle of the dining hall, at least half the camp would see me in profile. My nose again. That cursed nose.

What if I fall off the chair before I finish and that's the only thing people ever remember about me? Years will go by and campers and counselors will still be telling the tale: ‘Remember that girl in the purple dress who fell off the chair at the Banquet Social?' But if I did fall off, I could still make the most of it,
I told myself.
I could fall on my face and break my nose and then the surgery would be covered by insurance and it wouldn't cost my parents two thousand dollars and I could have it done now instead of waiting until I was sixteen.

In my mother's last letter she'd told me she found out which doctor did Marlo Thomas's nose. My classmate Kathy Shein had gone to him when we were playing volleyball in gym class and a girl on the other team spiked the ball into her face. That was the doctor my mother wanted for me, the doctor who gave
That Girl
that nose. I wished I were in gym class right now, getting hit in the face with a volleyball. But I was here. At camp. About to recite my poem.

Stuart Goldstein announced me. “Mindy Schneider will recite
Camping Out
, based on her experience earlier this summer at Katahdin.”

I climbed up on the chair without falling off and, in that same loud voice that had won me the lead in my second grade class play, I began: “‘Oh, I love to go a-camping in the great outdoors, where air is fresh and life is so real...'”

At the end of the first stanza, I got a laugh. Much closer to calm and confident, I recited the rest of the poem and when I finished, I jumped off the chair to what felt like wild applause. And no one seemed to notice the gravy on my sleeve or that I took poetic license, turning the overnight into a six-day trip and mentioning foods like baked beans, which we would have killed to have had in place of peanut butter and peach nectar.
Yes,
I thought to myself,
I think I did okay.

Such was my triumph that four years later when I applied to thirteen colleges (two I was interested in and eleven safety schools), I attached a copy of the poem along with the required essay. Such was my triumph that when I went back to my bunk's table and sat down, I was aware of a feeling that was at once both familiar and foreign, as if I were suddenly transported back to General Swim at Camp Cicada, only this time I wasn't stuck in the Minnow section. I was with the Perch and the Sharks, not winning any races, just in the water. Swimming in the deep water, not afraid I might sink.

The waiters served dessert, a pinkish sheet cake.

“What're those spots all over it?” Betty asked.

“I think they're raisins,” said Dana, poking at one. “Or dead flies. Autumn Evening, you know any of these guys?”

When the Banquet was over and it was time to sing grace, Saul decided to keep us in the dining hall a little longer, waiting for the rain to let up a bit before we made a dash for the Social Hall. Wendy Katz started up her own dedication and got us singing
Leaving on a Jet Plane,
the song that always came at the end of camp.

It was not okay for boys to cry, but many of the girls, especially the older ones, openly sobbed. I wanted to sob too, though for a different reason than my peers. I would not be leaving on a jet plane. It would be years before I'd go anywhere on a jet plane. I would be leaving in the back seat of a station wagon because my
family never had money for fancy transportation. We never had money for fancy anything.

It might have helped if my parents had explained the reason for their frugality, but it wasn't revealed until years later. I have a master's degree, Jay has a master's and a Ph.D., and Mark and David each went to law school. All told, the four of us amassed some thirty-two years of higher education at private universities and upon graduation not one of us owed a penny. That was where the money went. But as kids, we just thought we were poor.

“I liked your poem,” I heard someone behind me say.