the palm’s wet. He dries it with a paper towel, gets up and dries the other palm, her eyes always on his, and sits and bends his head down and shuts his eyes. He’s about to cry. Tries not to, biting the insides of his cheeks, but he cries. He says with his eyes shut and head down “I hope you’re not watching this. I’m sorry, if you are, but you know I don’t like seeing you like this, so that’s why. How I wish you were all better. I’d give anything to help you get well in a flash, and you will get well, though in time.” She pulls her hand away. “Well look at that. You see your hand? You pulled it. That proves you’re getting well. Tugged it right out of mine. Were you able to all this time? And blinking and tapping too, I bet. I’m sure you were, but you were just holding back. Stubborn, aren’t you, or something.” She closes her eyes, her lips move. “No no, don’t try to speak. Not with those tubes in you. The nose.” Her lips continue to move. Spit comes out. “Oh, gee.” He wipes it with a paper towel. “No, too rough, the paper.” Wipes it with his handkerchief. “I swear, no germs. It’s clean, I haven’t even used it. This handkerchief, I’m talking about.” Her eyes open and he dangles the handkerchief in front of her. “Wait. Those lemon-flavored swabs. I just remembered. There’s a drawer full of them.” He pulls out the drawer by her bed. They’re there, a whole box full. “None here. I’ll go to the nurse’s station to get them. For your lips. They’re still too dry. I’ll be right back.” He leaves the room and cries outside. Goes to the station and says “I know there are lip swabs in her drawer, but to get out of the room I told her—” “Who is ‘her?” the nurse says. “My sister, Vera Tetch, 4–26, down this hall.” He gets swabs and goes back. The door’s shut while he’d left it partly open. He knocks. A nurse comes to the door and says “Give me five minutes.” “Is she all right?” “Sure, just cleaning up. Make it ten.” His parents are out. His oldest brother’s in the army, the other’s working as a movie usher. At seven o’clock he says to her “Don’t forget. Mom said for you to be in bed by eight and lights out by eight-thirty and asleep by nine.” She says she doesn’t have to. “You’re not the boss.” “Yes I am, at least for now. You heard them tell me to give you the order if you don’t do it by yourself.” “That still doesn’t make you the boss. I’m staying up for as long as I want to till Mommy comes home.” “That’s what you think.” At eight he yells down the hall to her room “It’s eight, Vera. Start getting into your pajamas and don’t forget to wash up and brush your teeth. I forgot that’s what Mom said for me to see you do too. Your hands and your face. And both sides of your hands and don’t forget your neck.” She doesn’t answer him. At eight-thirty he yells down the hall “I hope you’re in bed and all washed and your teeth brushed and in pajamas because your lights have to go out.” Ten minutes later he yells “Your lights aren’t out yet, Vera. Come on, they have to.” At nine he goes into her room. She’s in regular clothes, sitting on her bed, talking to a doll in each hand. “Would you like to have breakfast?” she says to them. “Yes we would,” one says, and the other says in a different voice “No we wouldn’t,” and they both bow several times. He says “Now I asked you.” She turns to him as if she just noticed him there and screams for him to get out of her room. “It’s private. You’re not supposed to be here if I don’t want you to.” “Listen, I promised Mom and Dad. They’re paying me. They’ll come home and find you playing and think I didn’t do my job. We’ll forget the washing and teeth. Now where are your pajamas? Don’t worry, with your look-Til leave before you start putting them on.” “I’m not telling you. Just get out.” He gets a pair out of the dresser, holds them out to her, one doll says to the other “What’s your favorite dessert for supper?” He grabs that doll and puts the pajamas in Vera’s free hand. She throws them and the other doll at his face. “That’s it. You could have taken my eye out with that. The shirt has buttons on it and I even think it scratched my cheek.” “Good.” He unbuckles his belt — just as his oldest brother did, slowly — takes if off and says “If you don’t do what I say I’m going to beat you with this. Now pick up the pajamas and go to the bathroom and put them on.” She suddenly looks scared, he doesn’t know if it’s an act, jumps on her bed, curls up and starts crying. “Then put them on, goddammit, put them on.” She’s now shrieking. He holds the belt over his head. Same thing Jerry used to do with Alex and him. Sometimes beat them with it and sometimes pulling their pants down and beating their behinds with it and sometimes leaving welts, pants down or up. When their dad wasn’t home and their mother complained to him about something they did. They’d be in their room, sent there by then-mother, and they’d hear Jerry in some other part of the apartment yell something like “What! Again!” and then charge to their room in these heavy army boots he always seemed to wear then, and if their door was closed, throw it open so hard it banged against the bookcase behind it and knocked things off the top. Usually by this time they were both huddled together on the bottom bunk of their double-decker bed. And it worked. They did whatever he said, after. Or when he came through the door they’d start pleading they’ll do whatever he wants or never again do whatever it was they’d done and apologize to their mother any number of times he wants them to, but usually it was too late. They could see it in his face. After the beating and they were crying, Jerry would rethread his belt and say something like “Tough shit if it hurts. Just be good and not filthy mouths and I won’t have to do it. Because you think I like to, you two dumb schmucks?” “Now will you, will you?” he shouts and beats the buckle end of the belt on the other side of the bed from her. She’s shrieking. Then he thinks what am I doing? Who do I think I am? I couldn’t hit her with this if I was paid to. “Just go to sleep. Even in your clothes if you want. Or don’t go to sleep or do anything, but I’m out of it. And tell tell tell all you want and what I did, for all I give a crap,” and leaves the room and rethreads his belt. If she told, neither of his parents or anyone else ever said a word to him about it or looked at him in a different way the next few days. They go to the same summer camp together. “Why’s your sister so scarred up?” some kids would ask. One time he overhears a boy say “Last prize is a dance with Vampire Vera at the next social.” He tries to defend her: she’s gone through serious operations; it’s been tough on her since she was a little girl; she’s been tested to have a high IQ but has never had a real chance to use it; the scars are suppose to get smaller and smaller and in a few years almost go away; if they saw pictures of her when she was small they’d know how beautiful she could have been. But he still hears the comments and cracks. Her coordination and eyesight’s bad and she loses her energy fast and she can’t play most of the sports or be part of a lot of the camp activities, or just does them poorly and clumsily. The other kids mostly ignore her. She’s probably made fun of in front of her. Her bunkmates and the girls who swim in the lake with her probably even have trouble looking at her undressed or in a swimsuit or in the shower house and he’s sure she picks this up. He sees some of it in the mess hall. His bunk’s table is on the boys’ side but he sometimes stands up to look over a lot of the other tables to see what she’s doing. Most of the other five or six girls at her table are usually talking excitedly among themselves. She’s usually just eating slowly, or staring at the spoon or fork in her hand or food on her plate or playing with the salt-and-pepper shakers or looking at the roof rafters or the huge wooden scrolls on the support posts with the names of all-around campers and best athletes and such from previous years. She always lags behind her bunkmates when they’re going to this place or that. He’ll often yell “Vera,” and wave and point that he has to go with his bunk and she’ll wave and stop to look at him. In the rec hall during a movie or show, she’s usually at the end of the bench, a foot or so from one of the other girls in her bunk, not talking to anyone, staring at the stage curtains or empty movie screen. A couple of times he sits beside her and says “So how you doing?” and she says “All right,” and he says “Hear from the folks or Alex or anybody recently?” and she says “No, you?” and he says “I’m not allowed to sit on the girls’ side but just thought I’d come over a second,” and she nods and smiles and he says “Well, got to go — why don’t you talk to your bunkmates next to you?” and she says “I do,” and seems sad when he goes and turns around to look back at him now and then before the lights gc out and show begins. “This place isn’t for her,” his counselor says. “Nobody will tell you because the directors don’t want to lose the second month’s fee when there’s no guarantee they’ll get a girl to take her place. But I see it. I’m going in after med school for psychotherapy — the mind, the brain, the whole emotional mishmash — so I can pick up your concerns and anxiousness over it and a lot of what she’s going through too. You should tell your folks. Shell go home at the end of the summer much worse off in the head than she must have been when she came. Why? Because she’s taking a beating. Call them, I’ll pay, and if the camp kicks me out for squealing, OK.” He calls home. “Let her stay,” his father says. “Tell that guy to keep his nose out of it; she’ll make friends soon.” “Listen to what Howard’s saying,” his mother says. “She’s unhappy. It’s doing her worse than good. It was a mistake thinking she’d get along well there. Let’s cut our losses for her sake.” They say they’ll discuss it further together and then with the camp directors and her counselor, and that weekend they drive up to take her home. He helps them carry her luggage to the car. It’s rest period and her bunkmates lie and sit on their beds reading comic books and playing card games and checkers and then look up and say goodbye to her, when Howard says she’s going, as if she were only leaving for a couple of hours. He thinks, walking with her to the car, What’s she thinking? He tries to make it out. She’s glad to see her mother but seems sad to be going. Some kind of defeat’s on her face and in the way her body slumps. All her smiles today have been fake, her voice so low to those girls they could hardly hear her. “What? What? None of us can understand you,” one of them said. He was hoping one or two of them would come over to her, help him with her things, say “We’ll miss you,” and kiss her, even say “Write and I’ll write back.” He thinks he can sense what’s inside her: stomach hurting, chest crying or just feeling full, tears held back. Standing by the car she tells her mother “I tried to do whatever they asked me. Made my bed good; ate when I was asked to, even things I hated; went out for things I could do. I think I was having a good time and was liked. Maybe it’s best going home though. We’ll go to the beach sometimes when it gets too hot, won’t we? That’s what I liked best about camp, the nice nights. You’re lucky,” she says to him. “Listen, none of it was your fault, so don’t think so,” he says. “Some places aren’t right for people. I’ve had delivery-boy jobs for stores when I shouldn’t have, the owners were so mean. And this camp concentrates too much on competition and sports. I’ll be glad to get home also.” “Why? Everybody’s been nice. I had no problems that way.” He wants to make sure not to say the wrong things, so he says nothing else. She’s lying, she knows he knows it, and maybe she knows he is too, but so what? He kisses her good-bye, careful not to press her back where there might be some new lumps there, kisses his folks, and the car drives off. Waves till he can’t see it anymore. Just as it disappears his father honks twice. Walking back to his bunk he thinks maybe if he had defended her more. Made her laugh more, spent more time with her somehow, spoken to her counselor about her, tried to get her bunkmates to include her more, and so on; punched a couple of noses. Later he’s in a way relieved she’s gone but thinks sadly of her a lot and writes her almost every other day. Short letters, but so many in three weeks that he has to borrow a stamp to write his parents for more stamps and envelopes. “Dear Vera,” one letter goes. “It’s muggy and awful here. A real heat spell where even the nights are hot and the lake water is like a steambath and the cesspool, which opened up again, stinks everything to heaven. I envy you away where there are fans to blow on you and also to be the only one alone with Mom and Dad this summer. As for me, I’m not having too good a time. Last year my bunkmates were friendly and smart, but this year they are always fighting and acting stupid Like throwing things in the messhall and saying silly things to girls and making fun of the head counselor behind his back and Rabbi Berman and Aunt Lois, who aren’t so bad. I’ll be glad when camp’s over. Not only to get out of here and see my friends on the block, but to see you and Mom and Dad again. Love to all, Howard.” She never writes back but when he calls she thanks him for his letters. “Nice as the weather’s been since I’ve been back, I’d still exchange places with you today if I could.” It’s June and she tells him her room’s much too hot and she doesn’t know how she’s going to stand it this summer. He’s working as a permanent sub in a junior high school and offers to buy her an air conditioner if their parents won’t. His mother says they would have bought her one long ago but they’ve been told the building’s wiring won’t take it. He goes to a discount store to price them, finds one that uses the least amount of power of any of them and which the salesman says will only be priced this low for one more day, and buys it. If it only blows the building’s fuses but not the air conditioner, the store says it’ll take it back. It’s a simple one and to save money he carries it home and installs it himself. He tells his parents if the building’s wiring gets destroyed when he turns the air conditioner on, he’ll pay for an electrician to fix it. “Look at you,” his father says. “Just four months on the job, now no money saved, and soon in debt if the electricity conks out. Nobody knows how to blow money like you.” The air conditioner works fine and in the morning she says it made her room so cold she couldn’t even get out of bed to get blankets. “You have to adjust the dials before you go to bed,” and he shows her how again. He complains to his mother that Vera never even thanked him for it. “That was two weeks’ salary, and if I have to pay taxes this year because I made over the minimum, nearly three.” “She’s thanking you, don’t worry, but in her own way. She told me, but not to tell you, she’s praying for you, though for what particularly she wouldn’t say.” He’s alone in the apartment with her. It’s night, around ten, and he was told by his folks to check to see she has her covers over her before he goes to bed. He goes into her room. It’s lit by a little night table light plugged into the wall. The covers are on the floor and her nightdress is above her waist. She has a little pubic hair around that area. He’s never seen any before. She’s sleeping. He picks up the covers, covers her and leaves the room. He gets halfway down the hall and is excited. He wishes he hadn’t covered her up. He’d go back and from the doorway take another look. Her hair wasn’t the big black bush in the magazine but like a little light brown Hitler mustache, if that’s what color it was. Red, even, and right above the crack and none of it around. He should have got closer and looked some more. Done it on tiptoes, held in his breath. He goes into his room and takes off his clothes to put on his pajamas, turns sideways in front of the dresser mirror to see his ha