About the B'nai Bagels

by E. L. Konigsburg

  “Well, sir, it is not always more stimulating, but there are times when it seems more necessary.”

  And then Hersch and I would yuk and poke each other as much as carrying our books would allow, and we were home before we knew it.

  At first after Hersch moved, we both missed each other a lot. And then it became just me missing him. I didn’t notice the first few times he said, “Listen Moshe, I’ve got to hang up now. I’ve got to go.” I believed that he had to take out the garbage or something. After a few weeks I noticed something else; it was always me who was doing the calling and it was always he who had to go. But I never thought of Barry Jacobs. Not seriously at least, not until one night late in November. It was the night I got disapproved by Mrs. Jacobs. She had phoned my mother and asked if I could come to supper. Only she called it dinner. She mentioned that Hersch was also invited because she “liked Barry to experience all kinds of people.” Mrs. Jacobs was very interested in Barry’s getting experiences and getting stimulated. My mother was interested in my getting places on time. When my mother asked me if I wanted to go, I wanted to have the courage to say no, but I didn’t. Because the truth is that I wanted to see how things were at the Jacobs’. Kind of like the way people would like to know how things are on a family night at Jacqueline Kennedy’s without reporters.

  My mother drove me there giving me all kinds of hints about using a napkin and not talking with my mouth full. Besides being on time the only thing my mother wanted me to experience was good manners.

  After the meal started Mr. Jacobs said, “We left off our discussion of the emerging African nations with an analysis…”

  I caught Hersch’s eye and lifted my eyebrows. He didn’t pay attention. I nudged him under the table and did the eyebrow bit again. And all he did was to look at me and look away and say something to Mr. Jacobs about Liberia. The whole meal was pretty uncomfortable, with them trying to get my opinions and me trying to draw conclusions about Africa from having seen four recent Tarzan shows. All of which, I found out later, were filmed in Mexico.

  Mrs. Jacob’s cooking was like her pronunciation—very tidy. The portions were tiny.

  Mrs. Jacobs drove me home. It was a quiet ride; I could bet that I would get zero for stimulation.

  I called Hersch when I got home. “Vat kint of bizness iss zat? Iz alvays dizcussions from Africa at zee zupper table?”

  Hersch said, “Sometimes they discuss the space program. One time the topic was the Common Market.”

  “Vell vat kint of bizness iss zat?” I asked again.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Jacobs are very intelligent, you know,” he answered. “She used to be a schoolteacher. They always have a dinner topic. I find it stimulating.”

  That’s when I knew that I had lost Hersch.

  The next night at our supper at home I said, “What do you think will happen if the Russians get to the moon first?” My fork fell onto the floor.

  Dad answered, “Please pass the herring.”

  I started to pass the dish when it slipped. Only two pieces slid to the floor, and I put them in the garbage and immediately wiped the spot with a sponge as I had always been taught to do.

  “Well,” I repeated, “what do you think will happen if the Russians get to the moon first?”

  Mother said, “Save some of the potatoes for Spencer; he said that he’d be late home.”

  I helped myself to potatoes; they were buttered and parsleyed and only one slipped off the dish. I put it on my plate after I picked it up. I reached for a roll and knocked over my milk. “Now about the moon,” I persisted as I was cupping my hands to catch the dripping and as Mother was running for some paper towels.

  Dad looked up and said, “Mark, why don’t you try eating on the floor and see if you can drop things up to the table?”

  I had to laugh, and so did Mother. There went the space program, Africa, and the Common Market. I never tried to stimulate my family after that. Or Mrs. Jacobs either. Of course, the night that they made the posters for the tryouts was the first time I had seen her since that Friday night supper—dinner.

  Immediately after the nine- and ten-year-old tryouts, Spencer and Mother had a long kitchen conference. I did my homework in the el so that I could hear. It seems that our town, Point Baldwin, used the auction system. Every guy who isn’t a holdover from last year is given a price. Not in money, but in credits. Mother’s team, the B’nai B’rith, would have 12,200 credits, which sounded like a million. Except that since Mother had only seven holdovers and except that the B’nai B’rith had finished at the bottom of the league last year and except that she would need a lot of talent. Eight real talented guys to be exact. Good players go for thousands and thousands.

  As soon as a manager runs out of credits, he has to stop bidding on players and wait for the other managers to run out of credits, too. Then everyone finishes filling out his roster from the leftovers. Leftovers play on the team just like anybody else. Nobody is supposed to know whether he was bought or whether he was a leftover. Some guys never know. Some guys can play a whole season and figure that they were paid for just like anybody else. If my mother had not been made manager, I never would have known that I had been one. My mother would not have known it either. Finding out that I was a leftover was the first fringe benefit I got; that is, it was about as much of a one as the night of the tomato soup had been.

  I think that we could have lived happily the rest of our lives and not known that I had been bought for free my first year. Hersch, too.

  But we wouldn’t be free again. It’s try now, pay later with the leftovers. The price that Mother would have to pay for us was called an option price and was set by taking an average of what all the managers thought the guy was worth at the end of the year before. The manager that had put up with the guy for a whole season got first dibs on him by saying yes he’d pay the option price. If the manager didn’t want to pay, the guy would get put up for auction.

  Mother would want Hersch and me back, I was sure, and she’d have to use up some of her 12,200 credits to buy us. The least amount a player could be sold for is five hundred credits. I calculated that Hersch and I would cost at least a thousand apiece. At least.

  Spencer did most of the talking that night. After he had seen the nine- and ten-year-olds, he told Mother that as far as he could see, they would use the minimum number in that age group, which meant that they would take only two. Considering the amount of skill displayed that afternoon, he said that he couldn’t see spending a lot for any of those kids.

  “We’ll take three,” Mother said.

  “We only have to have two,” Spencer reminded her.

  “We have to have three; I promised their mothers.”

  “For crying out loud, Bessie. This is not a wedding invitation list. This is baseball. Do you want a winning team, or don’t you?”

  “Sure I want a winning team. But we’ll take three: Sidney Polsky, Harry Abrams, and Louis LaRosa. I promised their mothers.”

  “Sidney Polsky? Sidney Polsky! He doesn’t have enough coordination to zip his pants. He’s a loser, Bessie. We can’t have him.”

  “I tell you, I promised his mother. She called me up special and said that poor Sidney never makes any team, and would I please take him? I figure we can get him cheap. Five hundred credits. That’s the minimum. We’ll still have 11,700 to splurge with.”

  “Mother, you can’t do that. You can not. Even if you could get him for one hundred fifty, he’ll end up being the most expensive player you have. He’ll cost you every game because we won’t have what we should have had instead of him. He’s a klutz. He can’t field, hit, or pitch. He’ll be benched every game. Now think how that will make him feel. He’s definitely for the minors. There he’ll get some training.”

  “Spencer darling, what can I tell his mother?”

  “You tell his mother to let him make something on his own instead of making phone calls for him. Also tell her to quit driving him everywhere so that he can walk o
ff some of that fat. Then maybe, just maybe, he can run to catch a ball.”

  “You’re right, Spencer, but what shall I tell his mother?”

  “I just told you what to tell her.”

  “Oh, I can’t tell her that. She’d never believe me.”

  “Then tell her anything you want, but I won’t have that kid on our team. He’s a cry baby, and he doesn’t even try.”

  I yelled in, “They call him the Big Whine.”

  Mother called back, “Mark, do your homework.”

  Spencer added his two cents, “Listen, kid, butt out. This is grown-up talk.”

  I didn’t say anything else, but that didn’t stop me from thinking anything else. Like if Spencer was so sure he was a grown-up, then he wouldn’t have to make remarks reminding me of it.

  “Spencer,” Mother said, “I see where I’m going to make enemies.”

  “Not if you handle it well. Just tell Mrs. Polsky what I told you. Only tell it gently.”

  Then Mother said, “Can I still have Harry and Louis?”

  That was disgusting! My mother asking her son, my brother, for permission. Like a kid in school asking for the pass to go to the boys’ room. Girls’ room.

  Spencer replied, “Harry and Louis aren’t so bad, and since we have to have two in that age group, they’ll do. Provided we can get them for five hundred each.”

  Mother breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank goodness. I just couldn’t tell Mrs. LaRosa ‘no.’ She’s a widow, you know.”

  Spencer continued with the business of the evening. “Now, tomorrow, when the bigger boys try out, we must look for a good pitcher and at least one strong batter. We’ll drop a wad for a good pitcher.”

  I went to watch the eleven- and twelve-year-old tryouts. I knew I didn’t have to try out. I felt very in, but I don’t think I acted it. Barry Jacobs and Hersch came to watch, too. They kept close to each other, and at first, I stayed with them. But we were like two fingers and a thumb, me being the thumb, a bit shorter and fatter and separated. If I saw them confer together, I wondered if they were joking about me. Wondering about myself was something I had been doing a lot of. Losing your best friend sure takes all the exclamation points out of a guy.

  All the managers and coaches of our league were there. Spencer and Mother, like all the others, went around and made notes on a clipboard. Spencer knew what he was doing just as Mother had known what she was doing when she forced him into being coach. Spencer had been catcher on his Little League team. Give him any chance at all, and he’d tell you what a terrific team they had had when he was a youth. That’s how he’d refer to that time: “When I was a youth,” he’d say. But you had to admit that in his year the B’nai B’rith team had won the championship of our league. And you had to admit that Spencer had been picked as a Tournament player. You had to admit it; it’s in the records. Spencer had been catcher in the game that won the district championship for Point Baldwin.

  Each team in the Point Baldwin League would pick their best eleven- and twelve-year-olds to be on the Tournament Team. Only fourteen guys get chosen from the eight teams. Like All Stars. Our Point Baldwin Tournament Team would play the next town, Rye. If they won that, they would play for area championship, then district, section, state, division, on up to regional champs. Spence’s team had lost out at the sectional playoffs. Region champs play in a World Series of Little League, and that’s a big deal. Really big. Little League Baseball, Inc., pays your way to Williamsport, Pennsylvania, where the World Series is held. Williamsport, Pennsylvania, is the Jerusalem of Little League.

  I figured that with Spencer having already made the tracks, it wouldn’t be hard to follow in his footsteps. I began to follow him and his clipboard until he noticed. “What are you doing, kid?”

  “Oh, I just thought I’d follow you around, you being my big brother and coach and all.”

  “Now, listen, kid, don’t get mushy. Get unattached. Go pick up somebody your own age.”

  “There’s no one around here I want to play with.”

  “Hersch is right over there, and so is Barry Jacobs.”

  “Hersch who?”

  “Herschel Dmitri Ivanovich Castro.”

  “You mean Herschel Miller?”

  “Very good. Verrry good. You guessed. Now go. I’m your coach. Not your nursemaid.”

  “You’re also my brother.”

  “I told you, don’t get mushy. Now scat.”

  That remark was the beginning of the kind of special attention I got the whole season from my brother, my coach.

  There had been about sixty boys trying out. When we got home, I sneaked a look at Mother’s and Spencer’s clipboards. Each boy was listed with his age in parenthesis beside. I came across two names that were underlined and double-starred. On both clipboards.

  **Rivera, Simon (11)

  **Rivera, Sylvester (11)

  There weren’t any remarks by their names; there didn’t have to be. Those guys were terrific. Identical twins. They had moved to Point Baldwin from Miami in September. Any team would be lucky to get one, but they would be auctioned as a package. The League didn’t like to break up manager and son or brother and brother. Franklin P. Botts was also underlined. A powerful batter. He had only one star and one underline; the Chicken Delights had given up his option.

  Spencer and Mother now had to draw up a list of the players they wanted in order of preference. I didn’t even look at that list. I had my own idea about where I stood, and I didn’t want to know if I was exactly right. I was relieved when Mother sent me to bed.

  Spencer had to study for some exam the night of the auction, so Mother went without him. You wouldn’t believe the list of instructions he gave her. And she listened! You would think that he was a candidate for King of England, and my mother acted as if no one had ever taught her that kings get born not elected.

  She returned home about 10:30 and called to Spencer and Dad right away. “We got them. We got them. The twins, we got. Cost me 6,800 credits for the two, but we got them. Also picked up Botts. Cheap for him, only 1975. What do you suppose is wrong with him that he was so cheap?”

  Spencer then asked about some of the others, and they talked on about how she couldn’t get Romano because she ran out of credits, so she just picked up her nine- and ten-year-olds for five hundred each and came home.

  Spencer must have been looking over the list when he saw my name. “What! You spent nine hundred and twenty-five credits for Mark. Nine hundred and twenty-five? You could have gotten him for eight hundred. That was his option price. Didn’t you pick up his option? He should have cost only eight hundred.”

  Mother answered, “Yes, by the way, how is my Moshe?”

  By the way, how is he? That’s the first that she had asked about me. I was less than a hobby to her.

  “He’s fine,” Spencer said, but he wasn’t willing to stop his accounting. He must have inherited a counting gene from Dad.

  “How come he cost you nine hundred twenty-five credits? Tell me, Bessie, didn’t you pick up his option?”

  “Well,” Mother said, “I let his option go and put him up for auction. I pushed the bidding up to nine hundred twenty-five. I figured that no son of mine would go for only eight hundred. Especially when Hersch’s option was a thousand.”

  “Hersch happens to be a better batter than your son.”

  “But he’s not nearly as cute.”

  “Bessie Setzer! You can’t run a team on heart.”

  “Yes, you can. If you’ve got guts, too.” Long pause. Then Mother said very quietly, “By the way, I bought Sidney Polsky. I couldn’t tell his mother what you told me to tell her.”

  “Mother! You’re impossible. No wonder you couldn’t afford Romano. I let you out of my sight for one evening, and you…”

  I didn’t listen any more even though they were talking loud enough for good eavesdropping. I was worth only eight hundred, and I was experienced. Finding out that I was only one and three fifths as good as Sidney
Polsky was about as joyful news as finding out that I had been a leftover. Only it was worse. Having everyone in your family know your option price makes you feel like you have nothing on in front of them. Nothing but a big tattoo saying 800.

  Hersch, who didn’t even care about baseball nearly as much as I did, was worth twice as much as Sidney. I was a cheap outfielder. Only eight hundred credits. The one hundred twenty-five was sales tax just because I’m Moshe, my mother’s son. No one was allowed to tell auction prices. The other kids who were cheap would never know it. If I hadn’t been trying to outgrow the habit, I would have cried.

  I would never let my manager and my coach know that I had listened in. I would just be nonchalant about the whole thing, but I would be terrific, simply terrific on the field.

  The orthodontist tightened my braces late on the Saturday before our first practice. On Sunday I was in pain. But pain. About seven out of ten kids in my Hebrew Class wore braces. When the class laughed, it looked like an open face mine with a silver lode one third of the way down. You could tell when someone got theirs tightened; their noses would be pink and their eyes watery: like before Dristan.

  Aunt Thelma and Uncle Ben came to dinner on Sunday. Aunt Thelma had a habit of rapidly becoming an expert on anything Mother got involved in. Like the herb garden. That is, in addition to being an expert in her two specialties: raising other people’s children and educating them. Aunt Thelma has one maid, Valerie, and one husband, Uncle Ben. Both the maid and Uncle Ben commute to work. And even if she had kids, I don’t know why Mother should listen because Aunt Thelma is the younger sister, even if she is richer. But Aunt Thelma went to daytime college and finished. Mother went to nighttime college, part-time, and quit when she met Dad who was also going to nighttime college, part-time. They still talk about how Mom worked so that Dad could go to day-time college, full-time, and finish being an accountant. They talk about it often. You’d think that they’d have gotten over it by now. I figured that my mother respected education, and that’s why she put up with Aunt Thelma. Spencer, also.