Эд Макбейн - Barking at Butterflies and other stories

Oh, how I loved Rebecca Goldblatt!

I loved everything about her, her eyes, her nose, her mouth, her eyes. Her eyes were black. I know a lot of girls claim to have really black eyes, but Rebecca is the only person I have ever known in my entire life whose eyes were truly black and not simply a very dark brown. Sometimes, when she was in a sulky, brooding mood, her eyes got so mysterious and menacing they scared me half to death. Girls’ eyes always do that to me when they’re in that very dramatic solitary mood, as if they’re pondering all the female secrets of the world. But usually her eyes were very bright and glowing, like a black purey. I shouldn’t talk about marbles, I suppose, since marbles started all the trouble that summer — but that was how her eyes looked, the way a black purey looks when you hold it up to the sun.

I loved her eyes and I loved her smile, which was fast and open and yet somehow secretive, as if she’d been amused by something for a very long time before allowing it to burst onto her mouth. And I loved her figure which was very slender with sort of small breasts and very long legs that carried her in a strange sort of lope, especially when she was wearing a trenchcoat, don’t ask me why. I loved her name and the way she looked. I loved her walk, and I loved the way she talked, too, a sort of combination of middle-class Bronx Jewish girl with a touch of City College Speech One thrown in, which is where she went to school and which is where I met her.

I think I should tell you now that I’m Italian.

That’s how I happened to be at Camp Marvin in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, with a girl named Rebecca Goldblatt across the lake in Camp Lydia.

I know that’s not much of a problem these days, what with new nations clamoring for freedom, and Federal troops crawling all over the South, and discrimination of all sorts every place you look. It’s not much of a problem unless you happen to be nineteen years old and involved in it, and then it seems like a pretty big problem. I’m too young to have seen Abie’s Irish Rose, but I honestly don’t think I will ever understand what was so funny about that situation, believe me. I didn’t think it was so funny last summer, and I still don’t think it’s funny, but maybe what happened with Uncle Jimbo’s marbles had something to do with that. I don’t really know. I just know for certain now that you can get so involved in something you don’t really see the truth of it anymore. And the simple truth of Becky and me was that we loved each other. The rest of it was all hysteria, like with the marbles.

I have to tell you that I didn’t want to go to Camp Marvin in the first place. It was all Becky’s idea, and she presented it with that straightforward solemn look she always gets on her face when she discusses things like sending food to the starving people in China or disarmament or thalidomide or pesticides. She gets so deep and so involved sometimes that I feel like kissing her. Anyway, it was her idea, and I didn’t like it because I said it sounded to me like hiding.

“It’s not hiding,” Becky said.

“Then what is it if not hiding?” I answered. “I don’t want to be a counselor this summer. I want to go to the beach and listen to records and hold your hand.”

“They have a beach at Camp Marvin,” Becky said.

“And I don’t like the name of the camp.”

“Why not?”

“It’s unimaginative. Anybody who would name a place Camp Marvin must be a very unimaginative person.”

“He’s a junior high school principal,” Becky said.

“That only proves my point.” She was looking very very solemn just about then, the way she gets when we discuss the Cuban situation, so I said, “Give me one good reason why we should go to Stockbridge, Massachusetts, to a camp named Marvin, of all things, would you please?”

“Yes.”

“Well, go ahead.”

“We would be together all summer,” Becky said simply, “and we wouldn’t have to hide from my father.”

“That’s the craziest thing I ever heard in my life,” I said. “You want to go away and hide from him just so we won’t have to hide from him.”

“That’s not what I’m saying,” Becky said.

“Then what is it, if not hiding from him?”

“It’s not my fault he’s a bigoted jerk!” Becky said angrily, and I didn’t realize how much this meant to her until that minute, because tears suddenly sprang into her eyes. I never know what to do when a girl starts crying, especially someone you love.

“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.