The Poison Tree (16 page)

The basketball court, of all places, was where I first met him. I had given up sports as not befitting my new artistic vocation. However, during the first week of orientation at Surprise Lake Camp, I observed counselors playing half-court pick-up games of two-on-two in the evenings. The courts were lit, and the weird yellow glare on the smooth green surface of the courts gave the pick-up games a glamorous theatricality. I watched the other counselors play, but chose not to participate, Herman Hesse's
Siddhartha
tucked firmly into the waistband of my shorts.

As I stood by watching these middle class kids from Long Island trying to play ball, I noticed one boy who obviously knew what he was doing.
Instead of just chucking the ball up and waiting for the rebound to clang off the rim, he remained under the basket waiting for his teammates to shoot from the outside. He knew how to box out his opponent, and put back the rebound for an easy layup. His game was disciplined and physical. Finally, someone around here knew how to play basketball.

During the break between games, I carefully placed
Siddhartha
on a small patch of grass, and started shooting around with the others. Seeing that I was no worse than most, I was asked to join in a makeshift tournament. I said no, until the boy who had so impressed me with his physical presence and determination looked in my direction and encouraged me—then I said “yes.” We were about the same height, but he was a few years older and maybe twenty-five pounds heavier. He introduced himself as Adar. It means “Noble” in Hebrew, he said to me.

In the glow of the floodlights, there were perhaps a dozen counselors watching our game, but it felt like I was at Madison Square Garden warming up. The game began and I was on fire, hitting virtually every outside shot I took. Adar and I worked together like a machine, beating team after team, sometimes with cleverness and passing, other times through my outside shooting or his rebounding. After hitting one long jumper from about twenty feet, I turned and watched Adar smile. That said it all: we could win, and we would win the tournament. We were a team. I saw Adar tear his shirt off at the start of the next game where we were to be “skins,” and held my breath: sweat trickled in rivulets down the line of hair on his bronzed chest toward his navel. His muscular body seemed like that of a man—not skinny, undefined, and hairless like mine—and it was with difficulty that I tore my eyes away.

After we won the tournament, we talked and realized we had more in common than just basketball. He was a painter, he said. These words, delivered with absolute certainty and purpose, ripped through my body like a jolt of electricity: a painter! I told him about my love of art and my solitary afternoon visits to the art museums in the city. He was from Brooklyn, and had never been to the Frick. This emboldened me to talk about how much I knew, then to confess something I had never told anyone before: I hoped one day to become a writer. Saying those words aloud was like tasting a magic draught—bitter and strange on the tongue. I swallowed, and the utterance was now
inside me! Saying it aloud to Adar—his very name suggested strength—made it seem that much more real. Maybe I could become something other than Norman and Rita's idiot son, a failure in school, losing things, a boy shuffling through New York City tripping over his laces—maybe one day I could possess the kind of greatness that Mr. Herman had told me was known only by the truly great: Shakespeare, Michelangelo. That night our friendship began; we stayed up all night talking about Nietzsche's idea of the Superman; about great, tormented artists; about Van Gogh, Beethoven, and Dostoevsky. About where our dreams would take us, and where we would take our dreams. By the next morning I felt I already was a writer, just as he was a painter. The following day he introduced me to his favorite: Ayn Rand and her philosophy called “The Virtue of Selfishness.” He leant me his copy of
The Fountainhead
.

“The people around us are all so small,” Adar said extending a tightly muscled forearm. “We must never allow ourselves to become diminished.” I instantly thought of Mr. Herman, and what he had said about Hamlet's indifference to sending Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to their deaths: “The elect need not concern themselves with such things.”

“From what you have told me,” Adar said, “I know you are far more than the sum of the inferior people who gave you birth,” he said. “And as you grow into the person you are destined to become, this gap will only grow wider and more visible.” He had never allowed his parents to control him, he said. Since he had been a child, he had gone to work. Even now, at Surprise Lake Camp, he was working to pay his tuition for art school in the fall. I was ashamed that I went to a private school like Horace Mann, and even more ashamed at never having to earn a cent in my life. I couldn't imagine having to work at a job to pay for my education. It was always a given that I would go to college, and that it would be paid for by my father. That was how things worked in my world.

Talking with Adar gave me a sense of my latent power, yet our conversations also filled me with a sense of my own weakness and dependence compared with his. He never said it in so many words, but it was implied: I was the spoiled child of wealthy parents; I never had to work or fight for anything, even my own freedom. As he said, “You have not yet begun to take responsibility for yourself; and if you don't, you can never become an artist. Or a man.” The words stung. But they also thrilled with promise.

One night after he put his campers to bed, we walked for a mile or so to be alone, away from the camp. This was technically against the rules, but what did we care about rules? At the edge of a field, Adar stopped. I did the same. I assumed he wanted to sit down, so I sat on a tree stump circled by sweet-smelling grass. Adar, however, maintained his upright position.

“You're their creature, you know,” he said, towering above me. His eyebrows were dark, much darker than the color of his sandy hair, and they nearly met in the middle of his forehead. His face had a gravity my contemporaries lacked. “Until you're financially free, you'll never be emotionally free,” he said with certainty. “You will remain enslaved.” His words had an Absoluteness to them, which was terrifying.

“You don't understand,” I said feebly, looking up. “It's not that easy.…”

Adar shrugged. “What is true is never easy,” he said, walking ahead of me and flinging the words back over his shoulder.

I scrambled to catch up.

By the time we returned to our bunks, I realized how dependent I was on my parents to provide not only food and lodging, but even a weird kind of security. That was why I was a slave. Until I was truly free—economically and emotionally—I would never be able to create.

It didn't take long for me to confide in Adar about my parents, including the physical beatings I received from my father throughout childhood. I told him about my father's belt buckle, which had scarred my thighs and bottom so visibly I was ashamed to undress at Phys. Ed. I even told him about my abduction to Vermont, which I had sworn to myself never to tell anybody else as long as I lived. Before we had known one another two days, I had unearthed all the secret places of my heart. I told him about Mr. Herman, and the discoveries I had recently made. Night after night we expressed our amazement at the depth of our friendship, and how superior we were compared to others, not only to the shallow counselors at Surprise Lake, but to people everywhere. If we remained true to ourselves and our mission, we were destined to become the leaders of an artistic revolution! As soon as I began writing, I would share my work with him, and he would show his paintings to me. We would visit museums, go to movies together. The future, which, until very recently seemed non-existent, was now filled with exciting possibilities. There was no limit to what we could achieve.

In the midst of dreaming about our “Union,” as Adar aptly called it, we dismissed our mundane duties as camp counselors. Being older and having been at Surprise Lake before, Adar's duties were far more onerous than mine. I was only a junior counselor. But we both dismissed the irksome reminders of our delinquency as beneath us: what were a bunch of spoiled, rich kids compared with the bright, new world unfolding around us?

A reprimand was delivered from the camp director that we had been reported absent from the campgrounds. We joked about the director's pompous tone, his typewritten message on Surprise Lake stationery. Then a personal message came, threatening Adar with dismissal, and me with suspension. We were summoned to meet with Mr. Meyer, the camp director.

Mr. Meyer was wearing a Surprise Lake Camp staff T-shirt and matching shorts, like we did, only he wore socks that went up to his knees like a scout master's. His cabin had real furniture in it, not just stacks of bunks. He even had a window air conditioning unit. There were framed photographs of smiling campers dating back to the 1930s. He smiled and offered us a seat on a couch, and as we sat, a Negro woman who worked in the kitchen came in and passed us a plate of chocolate chip cookies. I took a cookie; it was still warm from the oven.

“No thank you,” Adar said abruptly. I quickly put my cookie back on the plate. I wasn't going to have a cookie if Adar didn't have one, too.

Mr. Meyer addressed himself to Adar. “You boys seem to be getting along well. I'm pleased to see that. We like our counselors getting along; it's a part of the Surprise Lake experience to make us all feel like one happy family.” He smiled and paused. “But our first responsibility is and must be to our campers; our second is to their parents; and only the third is to ourselves. What concerns me here is that you boys seem to have forgotten those priorities, and placed your friendship above your responsibilities as counselors, for which you are being paid. Mr. Bornstein, you have now received two warnings about not properly monitoring your campers, and I trust that there will not be need for a third.” A lengthy pause followed during which I grew increasingly nervous. Where was this heading? I looked at Mr. Meyer; then back at Adar. Should we apologize? Or should we just hang our heads and return chastened to our cabins?

To my surprise, Adar said nothing. From where I sat, he seemed to be
glaring at Mr. Meyer with smoldering brows and clenching his powerful jaw muscles. I was frightened by the heavy silence. It reminded me of my father's tone, and as a child, I knew what was required. When Mr. Meyer's eye turned to me, I stammered that I was sorry—it would not happen again. Mr. Meyer seemed pleased and stood up.

“Well, that's it, boys. I'm glad to see you both understand, and that this transgression will not be repeated.” Mr. Meyer held out his hand, and I stuck out mine to accept his handshake. The cookies were still there by the window.

Adar, however, did not. He continued to sit there on the couch, glaring at Mr. Meyer. He then said something I would never have dared utter to an adult: that we had nothing to apologize for. We hadn't gone off camp grounds, we had just taken a short walk while his campers were asleep. They were not in danger, and he resented the implication that he had been derelict in his duty.

“Mr. Bornstein, I decide—not you—what constitutes our campers' well-being at SLC.” Mr. Meyer's voice was now raised, and I noticed that the plate with the chocolate chip cookies was gone. “If I can't trust you to be responsible when you are on duty, to make those campers your first and your only priority, well, you are not the counselors I thought you were.” There he paused slightly to give us a chance of expressing real contrition. “I have a right to be concerned. You see that, don't you?”

“No, Mr. Meyer, I don't.” said Adar. “And since I don't, I'm afraid I'm going to have to tender my resignation.”

“What?” said Mr. Meyer, his voice unexpectedly cracking. “How am I going to find two new counselors now?”

“That's not my responsibility,” Adar said, standing up. How could he say this to a grownup? Wasn't he afraid?

“I had been hoping to make this right, now I see that's impossible.” Adar was silent. “What about you, Henry? You've only just begun working here at SLC. I took you on as a last minute favor to your father; I can't imagine he'll be happy to find out you left after just a little more than a week. Good luck trying to find another job.”

I reddened, shaken by Mr. Meyer's sudden invocation of my father. Then I thought of Adar. I told myself it had been a matter of principle; we had been unfairly accused. Then I mumbled, “I'm resigning, too.”

“I didn't hear that, Henry.” Once I repeated it a bit louder, he continued. “All right, boys, since you have both apparently made up your minds, I guess that will be it. I'm very sorry that this had to happen. I had high hopes for you, Henry. Adar, you would have been up for promotion to senior counselor next summer with a significant pay increase. Sam will drive you to the train station.” He held out his hand for me to shake a second time, but Adar stepped between us.

“That won't be necessary, sir. We'd prefer to walk. We'll make our own way back from Cold Spring.”

I had no money, but I assumed Adar must have resources for us to take the train back to Grand Central. Otherwise, why would he refuse a lift to the station?

As we were leaving, Mr. Meyer pulled me aside. I told Adar I would join him in a second.

“I apologize, Mr. Meyer, but my decision is—”

“This is not about Surprise Lake. It's about him.”

“Who do you mean?” I asked knowing full well.

“There's something wrong with that boy. The anger inside. I'm worried about him … and about you.”

Adar had no money for the train either. It was a matter of principle, he said, not to ask for help from Meyer or his staff. So, we gathered our duffle bags from our bunks and began the sixty-mile trek back to New York City. We passed through little towns like White Plains, Harrison, Rye, Mamaroneck, Larchmont, and New Rochelle. On one occasion, a police car pulled us over and two officers got out and asked us to come along with them. The thrill of being threatened with arrest! But in the end they did little more than warn us about our safety, asking for our names and addresses and whether our parents knew where we were in the middle of the night. Then they let us continue on our way. We slept in sleeping bags in deserted fields under the moon and stars. We found some fresh blueberries, corn, and cherries—how wonderful it all tasted there on the side of the road! We even discovered an old pump that miraculously produced fresh water like it did on
Lassie
. As Adar pumped, he had his shirt off, and I saw his bronze triceps dance with the exertion. I wanted to brush against him accidentally, touch his body just once. When he finished pumping, he
stood there with his hands on his hips in the moonlight and smiled. I felt a strange feeling rise that was completely new to me. What was it?