by Meg Wolitzer
“Oh honey, it won’t be so dandeliony!” Lois Jacobson called to her from across the blinding rows of cars.
Now, among these people who had been coming to this teenaged performing-arts and visual-arts summer camp in Belknap, Massachusetts, for two or three years, Julie, a dandeliony, poodly outsider, from an undistinguished town sixty miles east of New York City, was surprisingly compelling to them. Just by being here in this teepee at the designated hour, they all seduced one another with greatness, or with the assumption of eventual greatness. Greatness-in-waiting.
Jonah Bay dragged a cassette tape deck across the floor, as heavy as a nuclear suitcase. “I’ve got some new tapes,” he said. “Really good acoustic stuff. Just listen to this riff, it will amaze you.” The others dutifully listened, because they trusted his taste, even if they didn’t understand it. Jonah closed his eyes as the music played, and Julie watched him in his state of transfixion. The batteries were starting to die, and the music that emanated from the tape player seemed to come from a drowning musician. But Jonah, apparently a gifted guitarist, liked this, so Julie did too, and she nodded her head in an approximation of the beat of the music. More V&Ts were served by Cathy Kiplinger, who poured one for herself in a collapsible drinking cup, the kind you took on campouts and which never really got clean, and which, Jonah remarked, looked like a miniature model of the Guggenheim Museum. “That’s not a compliment,” Jonah added. “A cup isn’t supposed to collapse and reconstruct. It’s already a perfect object.” Again, Julie found herself nodding in quiet agreement with everything that anyone here said.
During that first hour, books were discussed, mostly ones written by spiky and disaffected European writers. “Günter Grass is basically God,” said Goodman Wolf, and the two other boys agreed. Julie had never actually heard of Günter Grass, but she wasn’t going to let on. If anyone asked, she would insist that she too loved Günter Grass, although, she would add as protection, “I haven’t read as much of him as I would like.”
“I think Anaïs Nin is God,” Ash said.
“How can you say that?” said her brother. “She is so full of pretentious, girly shit. I have no idea why people read Anaïs Nin. She’s the worst writer who ever lived.”
“Anaïs Nin and Günter Grass both have umlauts,” remarked Ethan. “Maybe that’s the key to their success. I’m going to get one for myself.”
“What were you doing reading Anaïs Nin, Goodman?” asked Cathy.
“Ash made me,” he said. “And I do everything my sister says.”
“Maybe Ash is God,” said Jonah with a beautiful smile.
A couple of them said that they had brought paperbacks with them to camp that they needed to read for school; their summer reading lists were all similar, featuring those sturdy, adolescent-friendly writers John Knowles and William Golding. “If you think about it,” said Ethan, “Lord of the Flies is basically the opposite of Spirit-in-the-Woods. One’s a total nightmare, and the other’s utopia.”
“Yeah, they’re diametrically opposed,” said Jonah, for this was another phrase he liked to use. Although, Julie thought, if someone said “diametrically,” could “opposed” be far behind?
Parents got discussed too, though mostly with tolerant disdain. “I just don’t think that my mother and father’s separation is any of my business,” said Ethan Figman, taking a wet suck on his joint. “They are completely wrapped up in themselves, which means they basically pay no attention to me, and I couldn’t be happier. Though it would be nice if my father kept some food in the refrigerator once in a while. Feeding your child—I hear it’s the latest fad.”
“Come to the Labyrinth,” said Ash. “You’ll be totally taken care of.” Julie had no idea what the Labyrinth was—an exclusive private club in the city with a long, twisting entrance? She couldn’t ask and risk showing her ignorance. Even though she didn’t know how she had come to be included here, the inclusion of Ethan Figman was equally mysterious. He was so squat and homely, with eczema running along his forearms like a lit fuse. Ethan didn’t take his shirt off, ever. He spent free-swim period each day under the boiling tin roof of the animation shed with his teacher, Old Mo Templeton, who had apparently once worked in Hollywood with Walt Disney himself. Old Mo, who looked eerily like Gepetto from Disney’s Pinocchio.
As Julie felt the effects of Ethan Figman’s wet-ended joint, she imagined all their saliva joining on a cellular level, and she was disgusted by the image, then she laughed to herself, thinking: we are all nothing more than a seething, collapsing ball of cells. Ethan, she saw, was looking at her intently.
“Hmm,” he said.
“What?”
“Telltale private chuckling. Maybe you want to slow down a little over there.”
“Yeah, maybe I should,” Julie said.
“I’m keeping an eye on you.”
“Thanks,” she said. Ethan turned back to the others, but in her precarious, high state she felt that Ethan had made himself her protector. She kept thinking a high person’s thoughts, focusing on the collage of human cells that filled this teepee, all of it making up the ugly, kind boy; and the ordinary nothing that was herself; and the beautiful, delicate girl sitting across from her; and the beautiful girl’s uncommonly magnetic brother; and the soft-spoken, gentle son of a famous folksinger; and, finally, the sexually confident, slightly unwieldy dancer girl with a sheaf of blond hair. They were all just countless cells that had joined together to make this group in particular—this group that Julie Jacobson, who had no currency whatsoever, suddenly decided she loved. That she was in love with, and would stay in love with for the rest of her life.
Ethan said, “If my mother wants to abandon my father and screw my pediatrician, let’s pray he’s used soap and water after he’s had his hand up some kid’s ass.”
“Wait, Figman, so we’re supposed to assume that your pediatrician puts his hand up all his patients’ asses, including yours?” Goodman said. “I hate to tell you this, man, but he’s not supposed to do that. It’s against the Hippocratic oath. You know, ‘First, do no hand up the ass.’”
“No, he doesn’t do that. I was just trying to be disgusting to get your attention,” said Ethan. “It’s my way.”
“So, okay, we get it; you are disgusted by your parents’ separation,” said Cathy.
“Which is not something Ash and I can relate to,” said Goodman, “because our parents are as happy as clams.”
“Yup. Mom and Dad practically tongue kiss in front of us,” said Ash, pretending to be appalled but sounding proud.
The Wolf parents, glimpsed briefly by Julie on the first day of camp, were vigorous and youthful. Gil was an investment banker at the new firm Drexel Burnham and Betsy his artistically interested, pretty wife who cooked ambitious meals.
“The way you act, Figman,” Goodman continued, “is all ‘I don’t give a shit about my family,’ but in fact a shit is given. In fact you suffer, I think.”
“Not to move the conversation away from the tragedy of my broken home,” said Ethan, “but there are far bigger tragedies we could discuss.”
“Like what?” said Goodman. “Your weird name?”
“Or the My Lai massacre?” said Jonah.
“Oh, the folksinger’s son brings up Vietnam whenever he can,” said Ethan.
“Shut up,” said Jonah, but he wasn’t angry.
They were all quiet for a moment; it was perplexing to know what to do when atrocity suddenly came up against irony. Mostly, apparently, you were supposed to pause at that juncture. You paused and you waited it out, and then you went on to something else, even though it was awful. Ethan said, “I’d like to say for the record that Ethan Figman is not such a terrible name. Goodman Wolf is much worse. It’s like a name for a Puritan. ‘Goodman Humility Wolf, thy presence is requested at the silo.’”
Julie, in her stoned state, had the idea that all this was banter, or the closest they could get to banter at their age. The level of actual wit here was low, but th
e apparatus of wit had been activated, readying itself for later on.
“There’s a girl in our cousin’s school in Pennsylvania,” Ash said, “named Crema Seamans.”
“You made that up,” Cathy said.
“No, she didn’t,” Goodman said. “It’s the truth.” Ash and Goodman looked suddenly earnest and serious. If they were performing a synchronized, sibling mindfuck, they had worked out a convincing routine.
“Crema Seamans,” Ethan repeated thoughtfully. “It’s like a soup made from . . . various semens. A medley of semens. It’s a flavor of Campbell’s soup that got discontinued immediately.”
“Stop it, Ethan, you’re being totally graphic,” said Cathy Kiplinger.
“Well, he is a graphic artist,” said Goodman.
Everyone laughed, and then without warning Goodman jumped down from the upper bunk, shuddering the teepee. He planted himself on the bed at Cathy Kiplinger’s feet, really on her feet, causing her to sit up in annoyance.
“What are you doing?” Cathy said. “You’re crushing me. And you smell. God, what is that, Goodman, cologne?”
“Yes. It’s Canoe.”
“Well, I hate it.” But she didn’t push him off. He lingered, taking her hand.
“Now let’s all observe a moment of silence for Crema Seamans,” Julie heard herself say. She hadn’t planned to say a word tonight; and as soon as she spoke, she feared she’d made a mistake inserting herself into this. Into what? she thought. Into them. But maybe she hadn’t made a mistake. They were looking at her attentively, assessing her.
“The girl from Long Island speaks,” said Goodman.
“Goodman, that comment makes you seem kind of horrible,” said his sister.
“I am kind of horrible.”
“Well, it makes you seem kind of Nazi horrible,” said Ethan. “As if you’re using some sort of code to remind everyone that Julie’s Jewish.”
“I’m Jewish too, Figman,” said Goodman. “Just like you.”
“No, you’re not,” said Ethan. “Because even though your father is Jewish, your mother isn’t. You have to have a Jewish mother, or else they will basically throw you off a cliff.”
“The Jews? They aren’t a violent people. They didn’t commit the My Lai massacre. I was just playing around,” Goodman said. “Jacobson knows that, right? I was just goofing on her a little, right, Jacobson?”
Jacobson. She was excited to hear him call her that, though it was hardly what she’d imagined a boy might ever call her. Goodman looked at her and smiled, and she had to prevent herself from standing up and reaching out to touch the planes of his golden face; she’d never spent so much time this close to a boy who looked as magnificent as he did. Julie didn’t even know what she was doing as she lifted her cup again, but he was still watching her, and so were the rest of them.
“O Crema Seamans, wherever thou art,” she said loudly, “your life will be tragic. It will be cut short by an accident involving . . . animal desemenizing equipment.” This was a suggestive, nonsensical remark that included a made-up word, but there were approval sounds from around the teepee.
“See, I knew there was a reason I invited her in,” said Ash, turning to the others. “‘Desemenizing.’ Go, Jules!”
Jules. There it was, right there: the effortless shift that made all the difference. Shy, suburban nonentity Julie Jacobson, who had provoked howls for the first time in her life, had suddenly, lightly changed into Jules, which was a far better name for an awkward-looking fifteen-year-old girl who’d become desperate for people to pay attention to her. These people had no idea of what she was usually called; they’d hardly noticed her in these first days of camp, though of course she’d noticed them. In a new environment, it was possible to transform. Jules, Ash had called her, and instantly the others followed Ash’s lead. She was Jules now, and would be Jules forever.
Jonah Bay pulled at the strings of his mother’s old guitar. Susannah Bay had taught acoustic guitar at this camp in the late 1950s, before her son was born. Every summer since then, even after she became famous, she appeared at some point for an impromptu concert, and apparently this summer would be no exception. She would just show up one day, though no one knew when, not even her son. Now, Jonah began a few prefatory strums, followed by some fancy picking. He barely seemed to be paying attention to what he was doing; he was one of those people whose musical ability seems effortless, careless, ingrained.
“Wow,” Jules said, or just mouthed—she wasn’t sure if the word had come out—as she watched him play. She imagined that he would become famous in several years like his mother; Susannah Bay would draw Jonah into her world, call him up onto a stage; it was inevitable. Now, when it seemed as if he might break into one of his mother’s songs, like “The Wind Will Carry Us,” he instead played “Amazing Grace,” in honor of that girl from Goodman and Ash Wolf’s cousin’s school in Pennsylvania, who either did or did not exist.
They had only a little over an hour together, and then one of the counselors on coed patrol, a blunt-haired weaving instructor and lifeguard from Iceland named Gudrun Sigurdsdottir, came into the teepee with a bulky, indestructible flashlight that looked as if it were meant to be used during night ice fishing. She peered around and said, “All right, my young friends, I can tell that you have been smoking pot. That is not ‘cool,’ though you may think it is.”
“You’re wrong, Gudrun,” said Goodman. “It’s just the scent of my Canoe.”
“Pardon?”
“My cologne.”
“No, you are having a pot party in here, I think,” she went on.
“Well,” said Goodman, “it’s true that there’s been an herbal component. But now that you’ve made us see the error of our ways, it’ll never happen again.”
“That is all well and good. But also, you are consorting with mixed sexes,” said Gudrun.
“We aren’t consorting,” said Cathy Kiplinger, who had rearranged herself on the bed right beside Goodman, neither of them appearing flustered to be seen so close together.
“Oh no? Then tell me what you are doing.”
“We’re having a meeting,” said Goodman, lifting himself up on one elbow.
“I know when my leg is being pulled on,” said Gudrun.
“No, no, it’s true. We’ve formed this group, and it’s going to be a lifelong thing,” said Jonah.
“Well,” said Gudrun, “I do not want to see you sent home. Please break this up now. And, all you girls, please go back through the pines at once.”
So the three girls left, heading away from the teepee in a slow, easy herd with their flashlights leading them. Jules, walking down the path, heard someone say “Julie?” so she stopped and turned, training her light on the person, who was revealed to be Ethan Figman, who had followed her. “I mean, Jules?” he said. “I wasn’t sure which name you preferred.”
“Jules is fine.”
“Okay. Well, Jules?” Ethan came closer and stood so near to her that she felt she could see right into him. The other girls kept walking ahead without her. “Are you a little less high now?” he asked.
“Yes, thanks.”
“There ought to be a control. A knob on the side of your head that you could turn.”
“That would be good,” she said.
“Can I show you something?” he asked.
“Your head knob?”
“Ha-ha. No. Come with me. I’ll be quick.”
She let herself be led down the hill toward the animation shed. Ethan Figman opened the unlocked door; inside, the shed smelled plasticky, slightly scorched, and he threw on the fluorescent lights, which stuttered the room into its full majesty. Drawings were tacked up everywhere, a testament to the work of this freakishly gifted fifteen-year-old boy, with some nominal attention given to the work of other animation students.
Ethan threaded a projector, then shut off the lights. “See,” he said, “what I’m about to show you are the contents of my brain. Since I was a little kid, I’ve
been lying in bed at night imagining an animated cartoon that plays in my head. Here’s the premise: There’s this shy, lonely little kid called Wally Figman. He lives with his parents, who are always fighting, who are basically horrible, and he hates his life. So every night, when he’s finally alone in his room, he takes out a shoe box from under his bed, and inside it is this tiny little planet, this parallel world called Figland.” He looked at her. “Should I go on?”
“Of course,” she said.
“So one night Wally Figman actually finds that he’s able to go into the shoe box; his body shrinks down and he enters that little world. And instead of being this nobody anymore, he’s a grown man who controls all of Figland. There’s a corrupt government in the Fig House—that’s where the president lives—and Wally has to fix it. Oh, and did I say that the cartoon is funny? It’s a comedy. Or it’s supposed to be, anyway. You get the idea, I think. Or maybe you don’t.” Jules started to reply, but Ethan kept talking nervously. “Anyway, that’s what Figland is, and I don’t even know why I want to show it to you, but I do, and here it is,” he said. “It just occurred to me in the teepee tonight that there was a slight possibility that you and I had something in common. You know, a sensibility. And that maybe you might like this. But I’m warning you that you might also really, really hate it. Anyway, be honest. Sort of,” he added with an anxious laugh.
A cartoon sprang up on a sheeted wall. “FIGLAND,” read the credits, and antic characters began to prance and splat and jabber, speaking in voices that all sounded a little bit like Ethan. The characters on the planet Figland were alternately wormy, phallic, leering, and adorable, while in the excess light from the projector Ethan himself was touchingly ugly, with a raw sheath of arm skin etched with its own ugly dermatological cartoon. On Figland, characters rode trolleys, played the accordion on street corners, and a few of them broke into the Figmangate Hotel. The dialogue was sharp and silly at the same time. Ethan had even created a Figland version of Spirit-in-the-Woods—Figment-in-the-Woods—with younger versions of these same cartoon characters at summer camp. Jules watched as they built a bonfire, then paired off to make out and even, in one case, have sex. She was mortified by the humpy, jerking movements and the sweat that flew in the air, meant to signify exertion, but her mortification was immediately painted over by awe. No wonder Ethan was beloved here at camp. He was a genius, she saw now. His cartoon was mesmerizing—very clever, and very funny. It came to an end and the film flip-flapped on its reel.