Peter and Veronica
Page 11
“So,” Veronica continued, catching her breath, and her voice resumed its flat, studied air, “I wanted you to know that if I ruined your bar mitzvah, as you said I did last time we spoke, you have ruined my summer, and more than that, you have destroyed my confidence in friendship. That’s all I have to say to you except that I withdraw my apology and hope that I never have to speak to you as long as I live.”
“O.K., O.K.,” Peter snapped, “now you made your little speech, suppose I make mine.”
“There’s nothing that you can possibly say,” Veronica said loftily, that cool, impassive look again in her eyes, “that would make a bit of difference. I’ve thought about you all summer, and I know now that you were the worst friend that anybody ever had.”
There was a well of words in Peter’s throat, but he couldn’t speak them. Words he had thought he would say to her before she’d spoken. Words he knew now no longer had any meaning. How could he tell her he wasn’t angry any more when she was so angry? How could he tell her he’d forget and forgive when she would not?
He looked at the gleaming row of brass buttons on her sweater and said petulantly, “Don’t tell me I ruined your summer. You don’t look like anybody ruined your summer.”
Veronica said, “If you mean because I’ve got all these new clothes, that has nothing to do with you. My father’s wife happens to be a saleslady in a department store in Las Vegas, and before we left, she got Mary Rose and me a lot of clothes half price.”
“Well,” Peter said accusingly, “you don’t even look like you any more. I don’t know what happened to you this summer but you just don’t look like you.”
“I do so look like me,” Veronica snapped. “I got a haircut, that’s all. But I don’t see what that has to do with the price of onions. Here I get to go someplace I’ve never been in my whole life, to see my father again and his wife, and everybody’s great, and they do all these great things for us, and take us all over the place, and what do I keep thinking about? You! I couldn’t enjoy anything because I kept thinking about all the things I should have said to you, the way I should have told you off instead of apologizing like a dope. Ooh!”
She ground her teeth and her eyes began blazing again.
“You know,” Peter said helplessly, “I was really planning on making up with you before I saw you again. Before you showed up looking like, well, not looking like you.”
“I do so look like me,” Veronica cried.
“Well, anyway,” Peter said quickly, “that’s not important anyway. You can’t help looking the way you look and that’s not what I mean. What I mean And he stopped, because it came to him then, what he did mean, and he said slowly, “What I really mean is—you’re right—and I’m sorry. I guess I got mixed up. I thought because I was sticking my neck out and making a big fuss, you just had to go along with it. But I should have asked you first. Maybe you would have said not to, and maybe I would have anyway, but I had no right blaming you for not going along with me. You’re you and I’m me, and I’ll try not to forget it, ever again.”
She sniffed and looked away from him. They continued walking along together silently until Peter said, “Do you remember, Veronica, the last time I apologized to you?”
“I remember,” she said crisply.
“That was after I had gotten the other boys to beat you up, and I felt so bad I just couldn’t think about anything else. But do you remember what happened after I apologized?”
“No.”
“Sure you do,” Peter urged softly. “We became friends. So now let’s do it again. I apologize and let’s be friends.”
“No!” Veronica said. “That time, maybe I was wrong, too, but not this time. This time, I know what kind of a person you are, and how little friendship means to you. I don’t want you for a friend.”
“People change,” Peter said. “You did, this summer, and it’s not only because you got a haircut and new clothes. You changed. How do you know I didn’t. If you’re the good friend you say you are, how about giving me a chance?”
Veronica did not reply, and the two of them continued walking along slowly.
“I thought maybe we could go skating this afternoon,” Peter said enticingly.
“I’m giving my skates away. I’m never skating any more. I’m too old. And besides, Lorraine asked me to come over to her house today so maybe I will.”
That there would be complications in the form of Lorraine and other girls, and that Veronica could no longer be considered his exclusive property gave Peter an unpleasant jolt. But there it was and he wasn’t going to waste time brooding over it now. So he continued as if she had not spoken. “I thought maybe we could go see my Uncle Jake and get a couple of knishes.”
No response from Veronica.
“Or maybe skate down to your uncle’s.”
No answer.
“Or over to the river.”
Veronica tossed her head.
“Or maybe,” and Peter played his last trump card lovingly, “we could go over to the cemetery and work a little over Martin Franklin’s grave.”
“I’ve been there already.”
“You’ve been there?” Peter said, very hurt. “Without me?”
“Well, I didn’t think it mattered to you any more,” Veronica said defensively. “I didn’t think you cared where I went or what I did.”
He stopped walking and she did too. The two of them stood looking at each other. Now the top of his head came up to her nose instead of her chin, as it had formerly, and he didn’t have to tilt his head back quite so far to look up at her face.
“I never thought,” she said finally, “that it would hurt so much.”
“What?” said Peter.
“Having a friend.” Veronica’s face was perplexed. “Before, maybe I was lonesome sometimes but I don’t think I ever felt so bad.”
“Well,” said Peter happily, measuring the distance from her nose to the top of her head and wondering how long it would take before the top of his own head caught up with hers, “I guess we both have lots of miserable years in store.”
She didn’t answer him then, but by the time they reached school there was no question in either of their minds about what they would be doing that afternoon.
For my nephews, Steven, Dan, Chris, and Arthur, who wanted a book about a boy.
Grateful acknowledgments are due Rabbi Bernard W. Kimmel of the Beth Shalom Synagogue in San Francisco for reading the bar mitzvah chapter, and offering his advice.
Copyright © 1969 by Marilyn Sachs
Originally published by Doubleday
Electronically published in 2012 by Belgrave House
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This is a work of fiction. All names in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to any person living or dead is coincidental.