View from Saturday (9781439132012) (11 page)

“A puzzle.”

“Good idea,” she replied.

“Yeah, about twenty minutes ago, I thought so, too.”

“By the way, where is this party?”

“The Sillington house.”

“Well,” Mother said, “I'll bet you'll have good food. I hear that Mr. Singh is a wonderful cook.”

“I don't guess I'll be finding that out. I'm only going for tea.”

“For tea?”
Mother asked, a broad smile breaking across her face.
“Tea?”
she repeated.

I wished I could bite off my tongue. How in the world had I let that piece of information escape? “Yes,” I said. “For tea. It's a tea party, and tea is always at four.”

It would be a good walk—a mile and a half. I could cover three miles in forty-five minutes, so I guessed that I would need a half hour to make it to the Sillington House without a sweat. I was not about to ask Mother to drive me there. I put on a plaid flannel shirt and my best sweater. At
the last minute, I put on a necktie. I don't know why I did, and I didn't want to think about it.

Nadia and Julian were on the front porch. They were bending over a small ball of fur. It was a puppy.

“She is Ginger's child,” Nadia explained.

“Neat,” I replied. I hated saying
Neat.
Nadia's red hair in the autumn light made me forget not to say it.

Mr. Singh came out onto the porch, and Julian made a formal introduction. We shook hands. “How do you like Julian's present from Nadia?” he asked.

I said “awesome” and immediately wished I hadn't.

Mr. Singh held his hand over his brow to make a sunshade and looked into the distance. “That looks like our other guest. Let us welcome him.” Then he turned to me and Nadia and asked if we would please excuse him and Julian for a minute.

Nadia and I stood there on the front porch and said nothing to each other. No one would guess that we were almost relatives. We watched Noah Gershom get out of the car and start walking up the brick path to the house. In one hand he held a beautifully wrapped present. I watched Mr. Singh with his white turban and long blue apron over his trousers and Julian at his side walk down the path to greet him. Silhouetted against the sky, they looked like a travel poster for a distant land.

Mr. Singh stepped aside to allow Julian and Noah to precede him up the walk.

Julian took Noah's gift and said, “I believe you know everyone here except Alice.”

“Who's Alice?” Noah asked.

Nadia answered. “She is Ginger's daughter. Ginger is my dog, and I have given Julian one of her puppies.”

“Did you ask if Julian can have a pet?” Noah asked.

“No,” she replied.

“I've never heard of someone giving someone a pet for a present without permission.”

“I could not believe that anyone would not want one of Ginger's puppies.”

“What if Julian has an allergy?”

“If Julian had an allergy—which he does not—he would still want one of Ginger's pups. Ginger is a genius.” She looked at me and added, “She is a hybrid genius of unknown I.Q.,” and I knew that she was acknowledging our conversation of last summer.

“Oh,” Noah said. He hit his forehead with the palm of his hand. “Of course. Of course. I almost forgot. Ginger is the dog that invented E = mc
²
.”

“E = mc
²
was not invented. It was discovered, and Einstein discovered it. Ginger is a genius of her genus. She is the best there is of
Canis familiaris
, and Alice is the best of her litter.”

“Alice,” Noah repeated. “Who named her that?”

“I did,” Nadia said. “I thought Julian would like the name because he sent me the invitation to tea in the book,
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.”

“I've never heard of someone giving someone a pet for a present without permission and then choosing that pet's name without even asking.”

Nadia said, “Well, Noah, now you have. In a single afternoon you have heard of both.”

The large center hall of the Sillington house had a staircase that curved upward like a stretch of DNA. To the right
of the hall was a living room that had a huge fireplace on the end wall; there was no furniture in the room, and the wallpaper was peeling from the walls. On the left of the center hall was the long dining room. I did not remember its having a fireplace, but it did. I was drawn into the room by the large, framed poster hanging over the fireplace mantel.

EXTRAORDINAIRE
S
IMONETTA
Chanteuse

Taking up most of the space in the poster was a full-length picture of a smiling, dark-haired woman in a green satin gown. At the bottom was the information:

Appearing Nightly
November 14-29
The Stardust Room

Julian came up behind me. “That is my mother,” he said.

“Your mother is a chanteuse?”

“Yes, she was a chanteuse,” he said, pronouncing it
shawn-tewz.

“What does a shawn-tewz do?”

“She sings.”

“I saw
The Phantom of the Opera
last summer. There was a wonderful chanteuse in that show.”

Julian smiled but said nothing.

“Has she retired?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “She died.”

“Oh,” I said, embarrassed. “I'm sorry.”

Julian looked up at the poster. “That poster is quite old.
From before my birth. The Stardust Room mentioned there is on a cruise ship. Mother performed there and on other cruise ships. Before it was necessary for me to start school, I used to travel with Mother and Father. Then I went to boarding school in the north of England in the fall and winter and traveled with them during one of the summer months. Until this year.”

“Are you an alien?” I asked.

“Actually, no,” he said. “Mother was an American by birth; Father is by naturalization. I was born on the high seas. That makes me American.”

“As American as apple pie,” I said.

Julian smiled. “Not quite,” he said. “Let us say that I am as American as pizza pie. I did not originate here, but I am here to stay.” He extended his arm in the direction of Nadia and Noah and took a small step back so that I could pass in front of him. “I think we must join our other guests,” he said. “Please,” he said. I crossed in front of him, and as I did so, I felt that I was crossing from stage right to stage left and wearing a tuxedo, and I did not mind the feeling at all.

The long trestle tables that are in the picture in the history museum were gone. The dining room was now furnished with two tables-for-two, three tables-for-four, and one larger table at the far end toward the back of the house. Around the tables were an assortment of chairs, none of which matched but seemed to.

The tea was very hot, so we could not gulp it down. We sat at the four sides of a table-for-four and slowly began not to hurry. We sipped the tea and ate small sandwiches that Mr. Singh brought out on a large round tray. Later he brought a three-tiered tray of small pastries. They were delicious,
and after finishing hers, Nadia licked her forefinger and with it, picked up the crumbs from her plate. She licked her finger clean so delicately that not even Miss Manners would call it bad.

I, who always preferred silence to speaking, actually started the talking. I asked, “How many eighth graders does it take to screw in a lightbulb?”

Noah replied, “How many?”

I answered, “Only one. They all know how to screw up.”

Everyone laughed.

Noah asked, “Where did you hear that one?”

“I made it up,” I confessed. I had made that joke up when lightbulb jokes were popular, but I had never told it to anyone before. I was so pleased with their response to a joke I made up that I told them one I had thought of the day Ham Knapp and Mike Froelich had attacked Julian's book bag.

“What is the difference between a pig sty and the sixth grade?” I asked.

Julian said, “I don't know. What is the difference?”

“In a pig sty an ass is a ham.”

Julian quietly said thank you, and no one asked why.

After the tea was gone and the cakes were eaten, Julian opened his presents. Noah's first. A bottle of black, black ink, a pen and a pad of paper marked with double and single lines, and a paperback book.

“For calligraphy,” Noah explained. “The ink is called India ink. I thought that would be appropriate.”

Julian laughed. “Yes, indeed it is.” (Indeed again.) “Calligraphy is a skill I have always wanted to acquire.”

“I can teach you,” Noah said.

Julian flashed his most dazzling smile at Noah. “I would appreciate that very much,” he said.

“Consider it done,” Noah replied.

Nadia said, “I have always wanted to write like that. You can teach me, too.”

“Do you have the pen?” he asked.

“I will get one.” Nadia looked over at me. “Ethan, I think you will feel very left out if you do not get one, too.”

“I will make each of you a list of what you need. I'll make the list in calligraphy. Watch me, and it will be your first lesson.” Noah filled the pen. It was a very long process. “Filling the pen is not what you do before you begin. It is the beginning,” he said. “Learn to make a plus sign so that both the vertical and horizontal strokes are the same thickness. That is your second lesson. You can practice as soon as you buy your materials.” We waited and watched as Noah wrote out the two lists.

Before Julian opened up my gift, I knew that it was going to be just right. And it was. “A puzzle!” Julian exclaimed. “I love puzzles. Let's do it now.”

So without bothering to clear away our cups and saucers, we took seats at the larger table toward the back of the room. As we began to spread out the pieces of the puzzle, Nadia said, “Just like the Mad Hatter's Tea Party—we all moved one place on.”

We worked on the puzzle, each one allowing himself a section of the table and the necessary quiet. Then when all the pieces were used up, we brought our sections together, pushing them left-to-right or right-to-left until they fit together. One piece was missing. We looked on the floor and around the legs of our chairs but didn't find it. I was
annoyed with the people who had sold me the puzzle. “They've got their nerve selling defective puzzles,” I said.

“But the box was sealed,” Noah said.

Julian said, “I think Nadia has it in her hair.”

“Do not be ridiculous,” Nadia said. “I do not.”

“Oh, yes, you do. I see it. Can you see it?” he asked me and Noah. Before we could answer, Julian reached across the table and pulled the last piece of puzzle from Nadia's hair. He held it up between his thumb and forefinger and said, “Dear friends, may I present you with the final solution?” He reached down as if to place the piece of puzzle in the small lake of brown tabletop near the center of the puzzle. But when he opened his hand, out fell three red-and-white-striped mints. “Ah, yes,” he said, “I almost forgot our after-tea mints. Please help yourselves.” We each picked up a mint, and Julian said, “I think it's time to wrap this up. Ethan,” he said, “would you please see if that pesky piece is still in the box?”

I reached down on the floor, opened the box, and there it was—the last piece of puzzle. I took it from the box, put it in place and said, “I'm impressed.”

And I was. And so were we all.

The party broke up when Mrs. Gershom arrived to take Noah home. As Noah stood at the front door saying his thank you's, Julian said, “Same time next week. But, please, your presence but not presents.”

Noah said, “I've heard that before. As a matter of fact, I've put it in writing.”

I left shortly after Noah. The days were getting short, and it was dark when I left Sillington House. Mrs. Gershom
had offered to drive me home, but I wanted to walk. I wanted to walk the road between Sillington House and mine. I wanted to mark the distance slowly. Something had happened at Sillington House. Something made me pull sounds out of my silence the way that Julian pulled puzzle pieces out of Nadia's hair.

Had I gained something at Sillington House? Or had I lost something there? The answer was yes.

The Monday morning following our tea, Julian boarded the bus and said “Good morning” exactly the way he had said it every other day. We did not speak again, and when the bus came to its final stop, we did not wait for each other or walk together into Mrs. Olinski's classroom. That was the way I wanted it. And that was the way it remained.

On Saturday Mother asked me where I was going. I told her. She asked me why, and I said we were working on a project, and that turned out to be the truth.

Mr. Singh was stripping old paper off the walls of one of the bedrooms, and all of us got involved. Mr. Singh had a steamer to loosen the paper from the walls. Noah made a contest out of seeing who could pull off the longest strip. Working quietly on one side of the window, easing the paper off inch by inch, Nadia ended up with a piece that was almost as long as the room was tall. She won.

“What will be my prize?” she asked.

“Ask Noah,” I said. “He has a proven talent for thinking of prizes.”

“When will I know my prize?” Nadia asked.

“Before our meeting is over,” Noah said. “I think I need some tea to think.”

When we sat down to our afternoon tea, Nadia proposed that we give ourselves a name.

I thought it was a good idea and suggested, “The Gang of IV.
I,V,
the Roman numerals.”

Noah said, “No. Nadia gets to choose the name. And that is her prize for pulling off the longest strip of wallpaper. Besides, I think she already has something in mind.”

“As a matter of fact, I do,” she said. “And swear that as my prize, you will accept my choice.”

We said we would.

“Good,” she said. “Then it is settled. We are
The Souls.”