The Interestings

by Meg Wolitzer

“High praise.”

  They continued on through the woods and out the back gates. It was past four-thirty, the time of day when camp was mostly quiet, everyone showering or practicing instruments or lying on their backs in the grass or finishing up projects they couldn’t let go of yet. Jules and Dennis walked the half-mile slope down the road to town. Belknap had barely changed since the 1970s, with a few exceptions. The first day they’d arrived here in the spring, they’d been sorry to find that the bakery that made the huckleberry crumble had closed years earlier and was now a cell phone store. But the general store was still in operation, and so was the Langton Hull Psychiatric Hospital. Dennis had come so far since he first fell apart in college, and even after the depression returned when he was taken off the MAOI, he had recovered and had stayed strong for years, not blunted. He was in no real danger of falling again, but as they passed the small white sign with the arrow pointing toward the hospital, they pretended the sign wasn’t there and the hospital wasn’t there and that, even if it was, it had nothing to do with them.

  Dennis bought them iced coffees and they sat on a bench on Main Street, and within moments his cell phone rang and he spoke quietly into it. “They need us,” he told her when he flipped the phone shut. “The generator went out, and no one seems to know what to do.”

  “Do you know what to do?”

  “Manny and Edie left us that bible of phone numbers. We’ll find the right person to call. But we can’t just leave the camp with no power while we sit here drinking iced coffee and thinking about life.” They stood and slowly walked in the direction from which they’d just come. On the way back into camp at dusk, bugs collected in little midair tumbleweed formations, and at least two violins could be heard in a quickie predinner practice, one playing a scherzo, the other playing something slow and weary, while elsewhere on the grounds a drummer performed a battering solo.

  Every day from then on involved small or big surprises, broken things, problems, the occasional dispute between counselors and kids. Noelle Russo, the girl with the mosquito bites, turned out to be deeply anorexic, and spent several nights in the infirmary. She was a highly talented dancer, word got around, and hard on herself, practicing until she dropped. The news traveled across the road to the house that Noelle had a fierce crush on one of the counselors, the head of the theater prop shop, whose name was Guy. Dennis sat down with Guy, a ruddy and guileless university student from Canberra with pirate rings in both ears, and came away convinced that the counselor had in no way encouraged or reciprocated the crush, nor had he acknowledged his awareness of it to Noelle or any of the other campers.

  Sometimes Jules would stop in to Girls’ Teepee 4 for a visit, hoping to find Noelle there. Jules would sit on a bed for a few minutes, knowing that she’d probably shut down any meaningful conversation just by walking in. “How goes it?” she asked the teepee at large, and the girls told her about the plays they were in or the pottery they were making. Kit, the popular androgynous girl, showed her a tiny tattoo of a meerkat that she’d gotten on her ankle that spring. Noelle fretted about the camp nurse’s insistence that she consume many more calories each day or else she might have to leave. “I can’t go home,” said Noelle. “Now that I’ve been here and seen it, I can’t possibly leave. Do you have any idea of what it’s like where I live? Chevy Chase, Maryland?”

  “Nope. Tell me.”

  “Everyone is so conventional,” said Noelle. “Their idea of experimental music is an a capella group doing ‘Moondance.’ I just cannot believe I’m expected to live there. Out of all the places in the world, that’s where my parents had to settle? It just seems so arbitrary. I can’t bear it there.”

  “Everything you do, it’ll all feel really slow for a long time,” Jules said. “But looking back, much later, it will have seemed like it was fast.”

  “That doesn’t do me much good now,” Noelle said.

  “I suppose not.”

  “You’re not really going to send me back there, are you, Jules?”

  “Well, one day I will.”

  “Not before the summer is over. I love it here. If this place was a boy or a girl, I would marry it. Maybe it’ll be legal to marry places one day. And if so, then I will marry this one.”

  “Noelle, stop talking,” said Kit, who was lying on her stomach on the bunk above, a bare arm hanging down. “I feel like I fell down the rabbit hole. You’re just running on at the mouth and I’m trying to read and/or sleep.”

  “I’m running on at the mouth because I want Jules to know she can’t send me home. The nurse doesn’t know shit about calorie consumption. I know a lot more than her.”

  “Well,” said Jules, “there’s an excellent lasagna for dinner tonight that I hope you try.” Noelle made a face that seemed to indicate no lasagna would ever cross her lips.

  “I’ll eat what you don’t,” said Kit. A third girl entered lugging a kettle drum. “Where are we possibly going to put that?” Kit asked, and all the girls began a discussion about musical instruments and their proper storage places at camp.

  Samantha banged in, fresh from the showers, towel-wrapped, calling out to the teepee, “Pantene conditioner is the exact consistency of semen!” before noticing that Jules was there. All the girls went immediately silent, then laughed in horror. Jules took that moment to leave.

  They needed her and didn’t need her. They had formed their own society, and she was touched and unnerved seeing it in operation. What surprised her was that they didn’t have trouble asking for what they needed. They frequently approached Dennis or Jules; she might be walking by herself listening to a concerto drifting up from the music barn, or just thinking about nothing much, when a voice would call out to her, “Jules?” Or more likely, “Jules!” And then the follow-up: “There’s a stuffed toilet in the upper girls’ bathroom. Super tampons again, we think, and no one can find the plunger.”

  They assumed she would be as interested in their stuffed plumbing as she would be in their creations; she was meant to be interested, concerned, at the ready. The counselors did a lot of work, but the camp directors did too. Had the Wunderlichs felt special being here for all those decades, or had they simply accepted their role as art and plumbing shepherds? She wished she could ask them, but she didn’t want to disturb them up in Maine, where, according to a postcard that had arrived days earlier, they were busy “clamming” and “snoozing.” They’d turned the problems of camp-running over to Jules and Dennis, and they meant to stay out of it now.

  It was becoming apparent to Jules that this job had probably never been much of a creative job. It hadn’t occurred to her to ask the Wunderlichs, “When you were running the camp, did you feel creatively fulfilled?” She felt irritated somehow that they hadn’t told her and Dennis at the interview, “You do realize that a not-insignificant part of your job will be to make sure that bulk orders of produce from Greeley’s Farms arrive on time, yes? The kitchen staff can’t be trusted to handle that.” But even if Manny and Edie had said this, Jules would have been positive the trade-off was worth it, and sometimes it was. Sitting in the theater watching this new production of Marat/Sade, she was enraptured. Dennis seemed to sense these moments, and he held her hand in the dark. She’d been swimming back to this place all this time, though she hadn’t known she’d ever get back or that when she got here it would be similar to what it had been, due to the Wunderlichs’ diligence. It was as though Manny and Edie had been curators of art, preservationists of a past that, if not carefully maintained, would be forgotten like a lost civilization.

  That was it: the Wunderlichs were preservationists, not artists. Jules had wanted to be an artist. The difference could be felt here now in the darkness of the theater, sitting on one of the hard wooden benches among the campers and the counselors, watching the dynamic Kit Campbell onstage, a girl who in everyday life was punked out in combat boots and low-riding shorts, but onstage was regal in the bolt of material that had been fashioned into a gown just for her. People whis
pered to one another that she would go far, would become famous, would be huge. But again, who ever knew anything about what might or might not happen?

  When the play ended the lights came up, and it was Dennis or Jules’s role to stand onstage and make a series of dull announcements. The strange beauty of the play and the power of Kit’s performance had barely been given time to be acknowledged, but the camp directors were required to come in and break the moment. “You want to do it?” Dennis asked, but Jules shook her head no. Instead she walked toward the door, and the night outside, heading alone onto the lawn as her husband climbed onstage and reminded everyone that this camp was a peanut-free environment.

  NINETEEN

  The Mastery Seminars had been named in a fit of desperation. Ethan Figman knew the name sounded pretentious, but back when the project was starting up, he was told he had to decide on a name immediately, and a majority of board members liked it, so he had waved his hand in resigned agreement. Now the name appeared in sans serif type all around the Strutter Oak Resort and Conference Center in Napa, California. The seminars were taking over the entire resort for a week, as they had done for the previous two years, and never in Strutter Oak’s history had there been such a concentration of VIPs here at one time. The board had gotten a little punch-drunk at those organizing meetings in the early days, shouting out names, aiming higher and higher into what seemed unreachability and eventually, at midnight, even naming two people who were dead, but who still, in the heat of the moment, were carelessly added to the list.

  Now Ethan stood in the broad corridor outside the resort’s main dining room. Attendees gathered, holding the booklet that listed the events—a chapbook, really, so beautifully made was it—and surreptitiously glanced at Ethan, as well as at the elder-statesman astronaut Wick Mallard who stood facing a wall, talking quietly into his cell phone. Nearby, two assistants spoke into their headsets like astronauts themselves. Everyone here was privileged, accustomed to access; because all the proceeds from the Seminars went to the Anti-Child-Labor Initiative, Ethan justified this saturation in the world of the hyperrich. As he walked along the wide, elegant corridor, trailed by his assistant, Caitlin Dodge, a few participants waved shyly, and a couple of them tried to engage him in talk, but he kept going.

  “Mr. Figman,” said a young boy standing with his parents, who had absurdly paid full fee for their nine-year-old to attend for the week. Subtly, the parents pushed the boy into Ethan’s path, and he stood with his head down, as if ashamed of his parents’ frank aggressiveness.

  “You can tell him,” said the mother. “Go on.”

  “No, forget it,” said the boy.

  “It’s okay,” she said.

  “I’m an animator too,” the boy said quietly.

  “What’s that? You’re an animator? Well, that’s good; keep working,” Ethan said. “It’s a great job. Though honestly, these days,” he added for an unknown reason, “you might consider choosing a slightly different field.”

  “Not animation per se?” asked the mother worriedly, waiting for Ethan’s answer and preparing herself to concentrate hard on whatever course correction he suggested. “Maybe something related?”

  “Nah. Private equity is a much better idea.”

  “You’re teasing him,” said the mother. “I can tell.” To her son she said, uncertainly, “Dylan, he was teasing you.”

  Ethan only smiled and wandered off. He didn’t even know why he had teased that boy and mother; it had been a little mean of him. He felt that he ought to give the boy a notebook next time he saw him—just say, “Here,” handing him one of those chunky numbers that Ethan was always filling with doodles. The kid would be thrilled, and the parents would be thrilled—“Don’t draw in it; save it!” perhaps the mother would tell her son—and Ethan would redeem himself. He would try to remember to do this, but he knew he probably wouldn’t. Instead, the whole family would leave after the week ended thinking that Ethan Figman wasn’t what he seemed at all. He was nothing like Wally Figman, the boy who was bursting with ideas. Instead, he’d become a little bit like Wally’s crabby father. Certainly Ethan was under pressure this week, living here in an immense suite with Ash; and with Mo and Mo’s current caregiver, Heather, right across the hall. Mo had nothing to do, even here in this place where there was everything to do. Ethan had tried to send his son off to a seminar yesterday on the mechanics of animation, given by three young animators whom Ethan had mentored, but Mo had gotten restless and bolted in the middle of the session.

  Ethan asked Caitlin Dodge, “Has my friend registered yet?”

  “Let me see. . . . Yes, half an hour ago. He’s waiting in the hospitality suite.”

  They turned a corner and Ethan pushed through a set of fire doors, briefly exchanging the wood-beamed rustic luxury of the conference center for the industrial ambience of the fire stairs. The hospitality suite had to be accessed with a special card; Caitlin swiped it and Ethan entered first. A former undersecretary of State sat alone in a leather wingback chair, dozing, his mouth half-open. Two servers stood at attention at the buffet table. There by the window was Jonah, who had ostensibly been sent here by his employer, Gage Systems, in order to attend a few technology lectures. Ethan had of course invited Jonah to be his guest this week, and Jonah’s boss was excited that Jonah had access to Ethan Figman and the Mastery Seminars, and hoped that maybe one year someone from Gage—maybe even Jonah?—would be invited to give a presentation on innovations for the disabled.

  The men hugged hard, with loving back slaps. Both of them were now fifty-two, one thick, with thinning hair, the other lean and gray-haired. “Everything to your liking?” Ethan asked.

  “What did you give me, the King’s Suite? The Sultan’s Suite? It’s very luxurious.”

  “It’s called the Vintner’s Bounty Suite. I wanted you to be comfortable.”

  “I’m never comfortable.”

  “Then we’re even,” said Ethan. They smiled at each other. “I’m so glad you actually came.”

  “It wasn’t too hard to convince them at work,” said Jonah. “Your name opens doors.”

  “Yep, I’m the original doorman,” said Ethan. “Listen, Ash is up in our suite, working. She likes to get a lot done during the day but she’ll join us for dinner; she’s so excited you’re here. Mo is here too, though the last time I looked he was outside, in the vineyard, being trailed by his saintly caregiver.” Ethan went to the window and squinted out, and Jonah stood beside him. Deep in the distance, in a bolt of sun, were two figures in the rows of vines. Maybe it was only two workers, or maybe it was Mo being followed by the person looking after him; it was hard to tell from here. “Jules and Dennis can’t make it,” said Ethan, turning away from the window, “but I guess you know that. Spirit-in-the-Woods—how crazy is that? All roads lead to Spirit-in-the-Woods.”

  “I know,” said Jonah. “She was so excited to go back. The camp was such a big thing for her. I wish I could go there this summer, but this is my only time off. Are you and Ash going to go? I bet it would really give you a pang.”

  “It would. It’s slightly possible we’ll go for a day at the very end. We’re going to try. But we’re visiting Larkin in Prague, and then I’m off to Asia for Keberhasilan—you know, the school. And of course there’s the show.”

  Caitlin stepped forward and said, “Ethan, some Renee person said you agreed to introduce a dialogue?”

  “Shit, I did say that. Will you be okay?” Ethan asked Jonah. “I do not mean in a cosmic sense.”

  “I’ll be fine.” Still Jonah looked so uncertain. “Hey, it’s fucking Bambi,” Goodman had once said as Jonah entered the teepee. And it was true that if you categorized people by which Disney character they were, then Jonah would always be Bambi. Motherless, graceful, unobtrusive. Ethan—Jiminy Cricket, the annoying little conscience but a more sedentary, pudgy version—wanted to give Jonah a wonderful time this week. Caitlin looped an all-access pass around Jonah’s neck, then handed him a booklet
that contained all the information he would need. The men agreed to meet for drinks alone later, then for dinner with Ash and a small group of presenters. During the day, Ethan said, Jonah should feel free to go to as many seminars and presentations as he liked. Or go to none. He could get a hot-stone massage in his suite if that was what he wanted, and then go home at the end and tell Gage Systems he’d learned so much.

  “I’m not going to get a hot-stone massage,” said Jonah. “I want to go hear Wick Mallard talk. I remember when he had to repair that space station; it was so dramatic.”

  “That’s at two,” said Caitlin Dodge. “And he’s brought a virtual weightlessness chair, which is supposed to be amazing.”

  “Okay, I’m in,” Jonah said.

  They slapped backs again in that awkward way of middle-aged men who ache to hug but have already hugged too recently. The gay-straight dichotomy was always slightly stymieing to Ethan. Beauty was beauty; after all, just look at Ash. In the Disney hierarchy she was Snow White; always had been, always would be. Inscrutably sad beauty, like Jonah’s, was always compelling, regardless of its gender package. Ethan loved his old friend and wished he could talk about him right then with Ash, or maybe even with Jules. He paused to wonder which Disney character Jules was, and realized that Disney did not make women or girls or woodland animals that were like her.

  • • •

  It was a siren song. That was how Jonah Bay described it to himself later. He was walking without much thought toward the lecture by the astronaut Wick Mallard, and could see the long line forming outside the closed doors of the ballroom. A few staff members were talking on cell phones; the line of attendees waiting to get in seemed lively and excited. Most of this crowd was male; the idea of an astronaut telling stories of his experiences in space seemed to offer an enviable pioneer bleakness, and the presence of the supposedly amazing virtual weightlessness chair made it even more tantalizing. Jonah was about to get in line too, when he heard a sudden torrent of music from further down the hall, where someone had briefly opened the door of another ballroom. The music was acoustic and sharp and somehow familiar, even in the few seconds that the door stayed open. In curiosity he walked toward that other ballroom. The sign outside read “Reinvention: The Creation of a Second Self,” and Jonah slipped inside. He didn’t know why he was doing this, and he didn’t even think to wonder.