Happy New Year, Herbie and other stories

“Becky,” I said, “if we run away this summer, we’re only confirming his...”

“He doesn’t even know you, Donald,” she said. “He doesn’t know how sweet you are.”

“Yes, but if we hide from him...”

“If he’d only meet you, if he’d only talk to you...”

“Yes, but if we run away to hide, then all we’re doing is joining in with his lunacy, honey. Can’t you see that?”

“My father is not a lunatic,” Becky said. “My father is a dentist and a prejudiced ass, but he’s not a lunatic. And anyway, you have to remember that his father can still remember pogroms in Russia.”

“All right, but this isn’t Russia,” I said.

“I know.”

“And I’m not about to ride into the town and rape all the women and kill all the men.”

“You don’t even know how to ride,” Becky said.

“That’s right,” I said, “but even if I did know how to ride, I wouldn’t do it.”

“I know, you’re so sweet,” Becky said.

“Okay. Now if your father believes that I’m some kind of assassin with a stiletto, that’s his fantasy, you see, Beck? And if I sneak away with you this summer, then I’m joining his fantasy, I’m becoming as crazy as he is. How can you ask me to do that?”

“I can ask you because I love you and I want to be alone with you without having to sneak and skulk all the time. It isn’t fair.”

“What isn’t fair?”

“Sneaking and skulking all the time.”

“That’s right.”

“When I love you so much.”

“I love you, too, Beck,” I said. “But...”

“Well, if you love me so much, it seems like a very simple thing to do to simply say you’ll come with me to Camp Lydia-Marvin this summer.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Donald?” Becky said.

“This is a mistake,” I said, shaking my head.

“We’ll be alone.”

“We’ll be surrounded by eight thousand screaming kids!”

“The kids go to sleep early.”

“We’ll be hiding, we’ll be—”

“We’ll be alone.”

“Damn it, Becky, sometimes...”

“Will you come, Donald?”

“Well, what else can I do? Let you go alone?”

“I think that’s what scares my father,” Becky said, the smile coming onto her mouth, her black eyes glowing.

“What are you talking about?”

“That fiery Italian temper.”

“Yeah, go to hell, you and your father,” I said smiling, and then I kissed her because what else can you do with a girl like that whom you love so terribly much?

That’s how we came to be at Camp Lydia-Marvin last summer.

The quarantine was very ironic in an O. Henry way because we had gone to camp to be together, you see, and when Uncle Marvin had his bright quarantine idea, he really meant quarantine, the girls with the girls and the boys with the boys. So there was Rebecca clear the hell over on the other side of the lake, and here was I with a bunch of counselors named Uncle Bud and Uncle Jimbo and Uncle Dave and Uncle Ronnie and even Uncle Emil, who was a gym teacher at Benjamin Franklin High School in Manhattan. All the uncles took the quarantine in high good spirits for the first week, I guess. I must admit that even I found a sense of adventure in tying my love notes to the handles of the milk cans. I never once questioned the validity of a quarantine that allowed milk to be passed from one side of the lake to the other. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the milk cans, I would have gone out of my mind immediately. As it was, I almost went out of my mind, but not until much later. And by that time everybody was a little nutty.

I think it all started with the kids. Everything usually starts with kids. I once read a Ray Bradbury story called “Invasion” or something, about these Martians, or aliens, anyway, I don’t remember which planet, who are planning an invasion of Earth, and they’re doing it through the kids. Boy, that story scared me, I can tell you, since I have a kid brother who gets a very fanatical gleam in his eye every now and then. I wouldn’t be at all surprised.

The thing that started with the kids was the marbles. Now every kid who goes to camp for the summer takes marbles with him. There’s usually what they call Free Play or Unassigned, and that’s when the kids go to ping pong or tether ball or marbles. Marbles were very big at Camp Marvin, especially after the quarantine started, though I’m still not sure whether the quarantine really had anything to do with the craze. Maybe there was just an unusual number of marbles at camp that summer, I don’t know. At the end there, it sure seemed like a lot of marbles. The most marbles I had ever seen in my life before that was when I was eight years old and still living in Manhattan, before we moved up to the Bronx. My mother and father gave me a hundred marbles for my birthday, and they also gave me a leather pouch with drawstrings to put the marbles in. I went downstairs with the hundred marbles, and I lost them all in a two-hour game. I almost lost the pouch, too, because a kid on the block wanted to trade me forty immies and a steelie for it, but I had the wisdom to refuse the offer. I’ll never forget my mother’s face when I went upstairs and told her I’d been wiped out.