Each one of us tossed a handful of dirt onto Quentin’s coffin.
April 25, 1970
Choosing Up Sides in Ponzini
It’s the never-ness that gets you. The thing is, it doesn’t hit you right in the face. It comes in waves
April 30, 1970
Kissing Beverly
Beverly stopped by late in the afternoon, around five o’clock. She didn’t tell me during school she was going to stop by. She didn’t even call first. She rang the doorbell, came upstairs, and said she wanted to go for a walk. We had just enough time before dinner to walk over to the Bowne House. We sat down on the grass behind the house, next to the oak tree. We didn’t talk much. But we kissed six times. It was pretty good. I mean, it was pretty good
May 2, 1970
The Coffin
When you think about it, it was a beautiful coffin. Why would you bury something like that? I know you’re not supposed to think about stuff like that, but the thing is
May 3, 1970
Definitions
Addleeoonee: the topsy-turvy way the world is, with bad things happening to good people, and good things happening to bad people, and guys like Quentin dying.
Fiffle: the stuff that distracts you from what you should be thinking about.
Horgonk: the white paste that sticks to the cover of a composition book after you peel off the price tag.
Quilby: how your heart feels when you’re carrying your friend on your back.
Zeetoosk: the back-and-forth sound shovels make in the dirt.
May 4, 1970
Tribute
It wrecked me that I never came up with those definitions while Quentin was still here, that I never got a chance to show them to him. I stared at them in the composition book afterward, and I teared up. How could I have been distracted by all the fiffle when I could’ve been figuring out Quentin’s definitions?
Beverly and I walked home from school together this afternoon, and I told her about the words. She just listened and didn’t say much. Except then, as we turned the corner onto Thirty-Fourth Avenue, she came up with an idea … maybe the greatest idea I’d ever heard.
We arranged to meet up again after dinner, in front of the Hampshire House. That gave me enough time to copy Quentin’s words and their definitions onto my mom’s good stationery. I mean, you should’ve felt that paper. It was as thick as a bar mitzvah invitation, and it had classy ruffled edges.
I wrote out the words and definitions as neat as I could. Not in cursive. I printed the entire thing. It took a few tries. I did it twice before dinner, but the lines came out slightly crooked. I guess maybe I needed food, because after dinner, the third time I tried, my hand was steadier, and the lines came out almost perfect. They were as straight as I could get them.
Beverly was waiting for me at the Hampshire House. It was eight o’clock and real dark. No one was outside on the block except the two of us. The wind was blowing hard, and it was whipping her hair a thousand ways at once. I showed her the paper, and she nodded at it. That meant a lot, given how good she was at art.
Then we started to climb the tree.
Quentin’s sneakers were dangling by their shoelaces four stories up, right below his window on the fifth floor. Four stories might not sound like a lot, but it feels like a lot when the branches get thinner and thinner, and the wind is roaring in your ears, and you know there’s just sidewalk underneath you. The old oak at the Bowne House is a higher climb, but at least there you’re climbing over grass.
I started getting jittery about three stories up. Beverly was out in front of me by then. From where she was sitting, she could reach up and grab the branch the sneakers were hanging from. She glanced back at me, and I shook my head. I couldn’t go any higher. I pulled the folded paper from my pocket and held it out, and she shinnied down the branch, took it from me, and stuffed it into her pocket. Then she shinnied back and caught hold of the branch with the sneakers. She chinned herself up and shinnied out. It scared the daylights out of me, how thin that branch was, and how much it drooped. But I figured she’d gotten out that far before to hang the sneakers, so she could do it again. Sure enough, she got to the sneakers and took the folded-up paper from her pocket.
I felt my eyes welling up as she slid the paper into the right sneaker. But I fought it off. I didn’t bawl.
Neither did she.
“I hope Quentin’s got a good view of it,” Beverly whispered.
“I hope so too.”
After that, we started the long climb down.
June 6, 1970
Manhood, I Guess
My bar mitzvah was last week. I figure I should mention that. I’m tired of writing stuff down, but I didn’t want to end this thing without a real ending. I’m not going to say much about it, though. It was a bar mitzvah. I got dressed up in the same blazer I wore to Quentin’s funeral. I did what I had to do. I said my haftarah. I said the words. I didn’t glance down even once at the crib sheet. I could’ve recited it with my eyes closed, standing on one foot. After I was done, while I was still at the podium, Rabbi Salzberg walked up behind me, grabbed me by the shoulders, and said to the congregation, “Today, Julian Twerski is a man.”
The congregation applauded and filed out to the reception in the banquet room at the end of the main hall. I wanted to climb down from the stage at that point, get done with the hugs from my mom and dad and Amelia, get razzed by Lonnie and the guys, maybe get a kiss or two from Beverly. But Rabbi Salzberg didn’t let go of my shoulders. He led me back behind the stage, out the back door, and then through the side hallway to his office.
As he sat down behind his desk, he smiled at me in a satisfied way. He said, “You have a question you want to ask, Mr. Twerski. I suggest this is the right moment to ask it.”
I thought hard for a couple of seconds, then realized what he meant. “Why did you tell me about Quentin? Why did I need to know beforehand? Why didn’t you let me find out with the rest of them?”
“Because memorizing your haftarah and living your haftarah are two different things.”
That was all he said. I’m still not exactly sure what he meant. But I’m working on it.
After that, I walked out of his office and closed the door behind me. Then I headed around the corner and down the main hall to the banquet room. The rest of the day went like I thought it would. Hugging. Razzing. When the music started, I had to dance with my mom, in front of the entire crowd, while the band played an old song called “Mr. Wonderful.” That was the worst of it. Lonnie’s never going to let me live that down. But after the dance was over, Beverly caught me by the arm and pulled me behind a purple curtain. She kissed me, and I kissed her back.
Then she said, “You did it.”
“Yeah, I did it. I passed.”
That made her smile. “You always pass.”
“So do you. Why do you think that is?”
“I don’t know, Julian. I guess it just is.”
She kissed me again, real hard, and then let me go. I walked out from behind the curtain and back to the reception. I didn’t think much about Quentin for the rest of the bar mitzvah.
But I thought about him when I got home, when I saw my Bobby Murcer baseball glove in the corner of my room, and I’ve thought about him for the last week, because there are reminders wherever I look. What I’m worried about is what happens when the reminders are gone, when I’m grown up, when Thirty-Fourth Avenue is maybe just a place I once lived, and the guys are maybe just guys I once knew.
I don’t want to stop thinking about Quentin: I loved him. I love him.
It is the never-ness that gets you. It gets you right in the gut. I never even thought about never until Quentin got sick, and now, since he died, it’s all I think about. What a teensy-weensy thing now is, and what a gigantic thing never is. It’s like we were sailing together on a boat, Lonnie and me and Eric and Shlomo and Howie and Quentin, and then, for no reason, Quentin fell overboard, and now he’s drowning in the nev
er, and we’re still sailing ahead in the now, and I can’t throw him a rope, and I’m standing at the railing, and I’m leaning as far out as I can, and he’s still bobbing up and down, but he’s getting harder and harder to see. It’s like I’m losing him over and over again, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day.
How can that be?
On the other hand, how can it not be? I’m sitting here, at my desk, staring at Beverly’s painting of the Bowne House, and I’m thinking about all the dead people who were once alive inside that house. Dying is part of the big picture. It’s like the frame. You can’t have a picture without a frame. Well, I guess you could, if it was one of those tape-it-to-the-refrigerator jobs little kids draw. But real pictures, big pictures, have a frame.
You just have to remember you’re not on the outside of the frame looking in. You’re right smack in the middle of the picture, but it’s not a picture of just you, because if it were a picture of just you, you’d never be able to fill it up. The things you do, the stuff you learn, the people you love—that’s what fills up the picture. Even when the colors start to fade.
Acknowledgments
If not for the New York Writers Workshop, Julian Twerski would never have drawn his first breath. My gratitude to the organization is enduring.
This book wouldn’t have been written without the suggestions, criticisms, proddings, and occasional hisses from the usual crew: Linda Helble (along with Spencer and Spicy Jane), Charles Salzberg (friend, mentor, and third-base coach of dubious judgment), Eric Rosenberg (memory jogger and lifelong friend), Allison Estes (whose literary insight is exceeded only by her psychic resilience), and Mississippi Luke.
It wouldn’t have been sold without the patience and diligence of Scott Gould of the RLR Agency.
It wouldn’t have come together in its present form without the wisdom and guidance, and the gentle editorial hand, of Chelsea Eberly of Random House.
About the Author
Mark Goldblatt is a lot like Julian Twerski, only not as interesting. He’s a widely published columnist, a novelist, and a professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Twerp was his first book for younger readers. He lives in New York City. Visit him online at markgoldblattkids.com.
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