Late Stories

The Girl

Summer, 1952. He’d just turned sixteen and was a waiter for two months at a co-ed sleepaway camp. He and the other waiters — there were about fifteen of them, all boys — went to another camp to play a softball game against its waiters. He was his team’s best hitter. He often hit balls fifty to a hundred feet farther than anyone else on the team. He wasn’t that big a kid, but for some reason — his strong arms and maybe something to do with the wrists — he could hit a ball hard and far. He also had a good eye for the ball. He rarely struck out and he got his share of walks.

Their camp was in Flatbrookville, New Jersey. He thinks the town is underwater now because of a lake that was created when a dam was built there about twenty years after he worked at the camp. The camp they were playing was also on the Delaware River, near Bushkill, Pennsylvania. They were driven there in an old World War II army truck, with an open flat bed large enough to seat the entire waiter staff and all their sports equipment. One of the camp directors and the head of the waiters sat up front with the driver. It took about an hour to get there, which was as long as it took to get to the Bushkill public landing the one time he paddled to it in a canoe with another waiter. His first time in Pennsylvania, he thought then. They didn’t do much once they reached the landing. Ate the lunch they brought with them and then paddled back to camp.

This other camp had a softball diamond much better taken care of than their camp’s and with real bases, not pieces of cardboard and linoleum their camp used. They were there only a couple of minutes when the camp director told the team to take batting practice and make it fast. “I want to get the game going so you kids can be back in camp to set up and serve dinner.” Everyone lined up to swing at three pitches each. The camp director lobbed in balls. He hit two of them over the heads of the outfielders, who were from his camp and playing him far. “That a way to go, slugger,” one of them yelled. “Show ‘em where you live.”

“Do that for real when you come up to bat,” the camp director said. “I want to announce in the mess hall tonight that you brought pride to our camp and helped win the game.”

There were about a hundred people from the other camp, kids and adults, sitting in the stands along the first- and third-base lines. One of them, on the third-base side, was a very pretty girl. She was around his age, so he assumed she was a C.I.T., or maybe they had some girl waiters in this camp. Long blond hair brushed back, slim, a good figure, and calm and collected expressions and a bright face. She had the look of some of the brainier girls he knew, but was much prettier than any of them. She was wearing shorts, cut well above her knees, and seemed to have nice strong legs. When she laughed with the girls her age she was sitting with, she laughed modestly, quietly, not loudly or uproariously as the rest of them did. And her face didn’t get distorted when she laughed as theirs did. He liked her face. In fact there wasn’t anything about her he didn’t like. She seemed like the perfect girl for him. He had a hard time taking his eyes off her and wished he could meet her. But what were the chances of that? He wasn’t the type of guy to just go over to her after the game and introduce himself and say he hasn’t got much time to talk, his camp director will want to get them back on the truck soon and out of here, but can he have her name and does she think he could maybe write her? The camp director had told them before they left for this camp that it was a kosher one like theirs, though not as strictly religious, and that almost all the campers and staff came from Pennsylvania, and most of those from Philadelphia. “Just thought you should know a little history about who you’ll be playing and whipping the butts off of today, and that if they offer you snacks after the game, you can eat them.” Anyway: Pennsylvania. So what good would it be in getting to know her? But who knows.

After he took batting practice, he looked over to her to see if she might be looking at him. One of her friends may have told her that he had looked a lot of times at her. If she was, and she smiled to his smile, or even if she didn’t smile, it might give him enough courage to make a move on her later. But she was listening, with her hand holding her chin and with a serious expression, to one of the other girls talking.

The umpire, who was some kid’s father from the other camp, said “Okay, visiting team; batter up.” His side went down one-two-three. The pitcher was good; hard to hit. Struck out the first two batters and got the third on a pop-up. He was on deck, batting clean-up, flexing his biceps as he swung two bats, even though she didn’t seem the sort of girl to be impressed by them.

The other team got a run the first inning. Three straight singles. He played third base, and because of that fielding position and he always played close to the bag, he got a closer look at her. She was even prettier than he first thought. Beautiful, he’d say. And so mature looking and with a nice even tan on her arms and legs but not her face. Smart. For even her eyebrows were blond. If she wasn’t sitting in the shade — a couple of her friends were in the sun — he was sure she’d be wearing a hat. He fielded one grounder that inning and threw a perfect peg to first. Made the play look easy. After they got the third out, he trotted to his team’s bench on the third-base side and sat with his back to her. She didn’t look at him when he came off the field. None of the girls she was with did. They were too busy talking and barely looking at the game, even when their waiters were up. To him that was a good sign. That she didn’t have a boyfriend on the team. If she did, she’d be looking and smiling at him every now and then and maybe cheering their team on a little. So why were they there then? Maybe they were told to by their counselor or someone of authority, at least, to be there at the start of the game.

He was first up the next inning. He wanted to impress her with a solid hit and his fast base running or if possible even a home run to tie the score. For sure, one of those his first time at the plate, before she and her friends got bored with the game, as girls will, and left, if they were allowed to, because if they were all C.I.T.’s, then they could be there to be near their campers. He knew you’re not supposed to swing at the first pitch, especially your first at-bat, but he was eager and the ball looked too good to pass up, coming in slow and fat, and he swung and hit it as far as he ever hit a softball, but it curved foul by about twenty feet.

“Straighten it out next time,” a couple of his teammates yelled. “You can do it.”

He swung at the next pitch, too — a bad one, way too low — and missed. Take it easy, he told himself. You’re much too eager. Last thing you want is to strike out in front of her. Even if she had seen him hit the first pitch that far, it went foul, so meant nothing.

He stepped out of the batter’s box to calm himself. The pitcher was about to throw the ball and stopped. And it was a real batter’s box, chalked like the on-deck circle was and the baselines all the way to the ends of the outfield. He also wanted to give her time to look at him looking pensive and determined.

“Come on, son,” the umpire said. “Get in position. You’re wasting time.”

Now that could be embarrassing, he thought, but he won’t say anything. He saluted the umpire, then thought what a stupid move, saluting, and got back in the box. Definitely let the next pitch go past if it looks like a ball. Trust your eyes. Wait for another good one. He swung at the next pitch — it would have been a strike if the umpire called it right — and grounded to the pitcher and was thrown out.

The girl stayed around. Cheered once when her side got another run. Or pretended to cheer, really. That’s what it looked like to him. Then she and the other girls cheered together “Two, four, six, eight, who do we appreciate? Na-ho-je, Na-ho-je,” which was the name of their camp, “yea-a-a.”

The score was still two-zip in the fourth inning when two of the players on his team got on base with walks and he came to bat. “Knock it out of the park,” his teammates were shouting. “If anybody can do it, you can.”

“Don’t be anxious,” the waiter counselor had told him. “Wait him out. Maybe we can walk around. Or just a simple hit. We need a run and that’ll keep it going.”

“Got ya,” he said.

He swung at the first pitch, a fast one straight across the plate, and hit it over the leftfielder’s head. He ran around the bases and ended up with a triple. He felt he could have stretched it into a homer, but the camp director, who was coaching at third, held him up.

“Why’d you stop me?” he said. “I could’ve made it. Then we’d be ahead.”

“Don’t be such a hero,” the camp director said. “Best to play it safe. I also didn’t want you sliding into home and hurting yourself and being sent to the infirmary. Who’d, then, wait your tables?”

He looked at the girl. She was looking at him. She applauded twice in his direction. Little claps. Like a seal would make. No smile, though. He took off his baseball cap and waved it to her. Good move, he thought. Dignified. She had to like it. But she quickly looked away. Anyway, she’d noticed him. He had to meet her. What would he say if he did? First of all, how would he? Like he said, he’d just go over to her and he’d say “Hi, my name is Phil. Or Philip to my friends.” No. No stupid jokes. Don’t even try. “I saw you in the stands. You seemed interesting. You from Pennsylvania?” This would have to be after the game, and as he thought, quick. And hopefully they’d won. Or if they didn’t, then something like “Your team played a good game. I congratulate them. Are you a C.I.T. here?” And then? Well, it’d depend on what she answered. And that he didn’t have much time to talk. “Uncle Abe, one of our camp directors, will be in a rush to get us back. I’d like to write you, if you wouldn’t mind. Can I ask your name”—if she didn’t already give it when he gave his—“and what bunk number you’re in, or your address here, so I can write?” If she asked why he’d want to he’d say “Because I thought, just by looking at you, you were interesting.” That ought to do it. And if they do write each other maybe once or twice while they’re still at camp, what then after camp’s over for both of them at the end of August? Maybe one day take a train or bus to Philadelphia, if that is where she lives, and spend the day with her. Would her parents allow it? Why not? It’d be a weekend afternoon and they’re both sixteen, or she almost is, it seems. And there’d be no problem with his parents. They give him lots of freedom. And he’d have the money — he always has a job after school — to pay for the fare himself. And then go to see her a second time. Hold her hand. Visit a museum. Kiss her. Talk to her. What does she like to read? Or maybe they’d already spoken about this. So what does she like to do in the city? What is she studying at school? Her outside interests. What college does she want to go to? Lots of things. And if she lives outside Philadelphia, there must be a way of getting there, too.

The next man filed out. The score was tied for a couple of innings and then the Na-ho-je team got four more runs, almost all on walks. Since it was softball, it was a seven-inning game. He came up a third time and looked over at her. She wasn’t looking at him; nor had she, when he was on the field or sitting on the bench — at least when he’d looked her — since that one time she clapped. With two strikes on him, he hit a pitch over the centerfielder’s head, even though the outfielders were all playing him deep this time. The centerfielder was fast and had a good arm and threw the ball to third in time to stop him from getting another triple. He was halfway to third and felt lucky to get back to second before he was run down and tagged out. It was by far his longest hit of the day and he looked at the stands to see if she was looking at him, but she wasn’t there. Where the hell she go? Standing on second base, he looked around for her. She and some of her friends were already a ways off, running — it looked like racing — to somewhere with a whole bunch of younger campers, probably the kids they were in charge of. Well, there goes that dream, he thought. Nothing he can do to meet her now, unless she comes back here before his team gets back on the truck and leaves.

The batter behind him ground out to end the inning. They didn’t score another run, though he felt he did all he could to win. Two big hits, no errors or strikeouts, knocking in their only runs. Anyway, they were behind by so much with only one more turn at bat, another run or two wouldn’t have helped.

After the game, they were told to shake the hands of the opposing team, take what refreshments were there — cupcakes and sugar cookies and lemonade — as they probably won’t be getting back in time to have supper before they set up and serve, so they’ll have it after, and then get back on the truck.

When he shook the pitcher’s hand, he said “Good game. You guys played well. What can I say? The better team won. But can I ask you something? There was a girl sitting in the stands. Tall, she seemed, and very pretty, and really blond hair. Over there,” and he pointed. “With some of her friends. You know which one I’m talking about?”

“Yeah, I know her.”

“Does she have a boyfriend?”

“She could. I don’t know. What a question to ask.”

“No good? None of my business, right? She’s intelligent, though. I could tell by her face — sort of the expressions — and the way she smiled and also her laugh, not like a horse. Even the subtle way she applauded me when I got that triple to tie the score.”

“She applauded you?”

“Not ‘subtle.’ Reserved? Tempered? Is that a word? Little claps. Almost pretending. And ‘subdued’ is what I think I mean.”

“She’s a very nice girl,” the pitcher said.

“Hey, I didn’t say she wasn’t. I was complimenting her on the way she tried to show her congratulations or whatever you want to call it to someone on the other team. She from Philadelphia?”

“She could be. I wouldn’t know.”

“We were told that almost everyone from your camp is supposed to be from Philadelphia.”

“That could be so. I am too. Where are you from?”

“Do you know her name?”

“Sure. Are you asking for it? Because I don’t know if I should give it. It might be wrong to. She might not want it handed out. Ask Sid there — the assistant head counselor — the guy in the white tennis shirt. If he thinks it’s okay, he’ll give it.”

“Nah, I should probably forget it. It might be a nuisance, my asking, and what would be the use?”

“If you say so, pal. She’s a helluva looker, I’ll grant you that. And good game too. Your part, anyhow.”

“Yeah, I had a good day. You, also. The score wasn’t even close, and you got a couple of singles.”

Going back, the camp director sat in the bed of the truck, with a cushion under and behind him. It was windy back there and he said “I have something to say. Can everyone hear me?” They all indicated they could. “I want to be honest. This won’t be nice. It was an experiment, going to another camp to play, one I’m not going to repeat. You played lousy softball today. What’s all you’re practicing get you? You could have beat them. They didn’t have a long-ball hitter and the last three innings their pitcher was throwing twice as many balls as strikes. Except you were swinging at all the bad pitches as if they were strikes. Phil did okay. Three cheers for Phil. But the rest of you? I was expecting a victory. Now what am I going to tell the campers in the mess hall tonight? We lost? We screwed up? We got creamed?”

“We did,” the team’s captain said, “So I guess you have to. We can take it.”

“No, I want them to feel good and prideful about their camp and waiters and want to come back next summer. I’ll put it in words that won’t make it sound as bad as it was. That the opposing team — I won’t even give out its name — had the home-field advantage and a cheering squad of girls to pump it up. I know; I know. I shouldn’t be taking it so hard. Only a game, and so on, but I don’t like to lose. Okay, somebody’s got to. And even the great Babe himself struck out a thousand and one times in between belting Gargantuan home runs.”

He thought of the girl a lot afterwards, at least the first few years. And then once every third month or so, maybe, or even less: twice a year, right up till the time he met his wife. She was the only person this happened to with him. It wasn’t that she was the only girl he ever had a crush on. But for some reason her face and expressions and blond hair and way she wore it and even what she had on that day — the khaki shorts and a maroon T-shirt with her camp’s name on it and leather sandals — stuck in his mind. Well, maybe the same images, once they got there, just repeated themselves over and over. He thinks that’s how it usually goes.

His wife, who was eleven years younger than he, was several months pregnant with their first child when he told her about the girl. He’d kept it to himself that long — they’d been together for close to four years — because he thought she might find it a bit peculiar, his recalling for thirty years a girl he never met or talked or wrote to and who only gave him a couple of weak hand claps for having hit a triple and knocking in two runs and tying the score of an inter-camp softball game. And who didn’t smile at him once and never looked his way again in the less than two hours she sat in the stands, at least so far as he saw. What prompted him to finally mention her was a nine-by-twelve-inch framed photo of his wife in the living room of her parents’ apartment. The photo was taken the summer before she started college, which she did when she was sixteen and a few months. She looked in the photo so much like he remembered the girl looked at around the same age. Long blond hair, shape of her face, round cheeks, sort of almond-shaped eyes. The photo was always there, so lots of the times he saw it he thought of the girl. And one afternoon, as they were walking from her parents’ building to the bus stop on Broadway to get to their apartment uptown, he said “You feel okay?” and she said “Sure, why wouldn’t I?”

“We could take a cab if this is too much of a trudge for you,” and she said “It’s good exercise. And I don’t walk enough, which I should.”

“You know the photograph of you with your first cat that’s always on the side table to the right of your parents’ couch?”

“I look a little dumpy in it, don’t I. At least my skin’s clear, which it wasn’t always then, and Matilda looks so pretty and slim. I’d just brushed her.”

“You look beautiful in it. According to the photographs your folks have around the place, you were a beautiful baby and a beautiful toddler and a beautiful adolescent and teenager and now you’re an exceptionally beautiful woman in every way.”

“What are you getting at?” she said.

“I have to be getting at something? All right; I am. I never told you something. And what I’m about to say is going to be okay. Sometimes when I look at that photo I’m reminded of a very pretty girl I once saw at her summer camp when I was sixteen and she was around the same age. She was very mature looking. Didn’t act like the other girls she was with. Nothing loud or exaggerated about her. Quiet; self-contained, or so it seemed. Maybe she was even older than I. Maybe by a year. I never thought of that before. That sure would have stopped anything from happening, if it had ever come to that. Because I never met her — never even approached her, though I wanted to — but I also never forgot her. She looked like you in that photo. The blond hair. Long and light and combed back. The face; shape of it. Even the eyes.”

“So she also had my color eyes? They’re fairly unusual, though maybe not for a Jewish blond.”

“That’s true. Her camp was Jewish, like mine. But I never got close enough to her to see what color they were. I was talking about their shape. Even her long graceful neck — you know, swan-like, was like yours, and her cheeks. What I’m saying is I have no idea why I never forgot that face and what I described about it and the one glance and little smile she gave me — no, she didn’t smile. Not to me, anyway. She did clap at me — a little clap, twice, very fast, from the bleachers she was sitting in with these other girls while she was watching a softball game between the camper waiters of my camp in New Jersey and hers in Pennsylvania. I’d just hit a triple — a three-base hit — that I could have stretched into a home run if the camp director of my camp, who was coaching at third base, hadn’t stopped me. I guess, being fair-minded, she was saying ‘good show’ or something. But you’re not really interested. And I’m getting the details of that day all mixed up. And why am I telling you it? Maybe telling you is wrong.”

“Why? It’s all right. I like hearing about you when you were young. And telling me this could be you saying she set the standard for the type of woman you were physically attracted to later on.”

“It wasn’t just physical,” he said. “It was her expressions too. She seemed smart and sweet and poised and serene. Like you are today and probably were at her age. Sixteen; seventeen. And I’d think the standard must already have been set if I was that immediately attracted to her, which never happened like that with a girl before. Though you could be right. I’m not saying you’re not. Maybe it did all start with her.”

“Then let’s say it’s possible she confirmed, or reinforced, the type of woman you were attracted to from when you were even younger than sixteen, but in a big way. You liked blondes. From what you’ve previously told me of your love life, you always have, though that didn’t keep you from also liking brunettes. Would I be wrong in saying that most of the women you’ve fallen for in your adult life have been blondes?”

“About half; yes.”

“Was she built like me too? You know, from what you can make out from that photograph and the one in my high school twentieth-year reunion book I’ve shown you, where I’m on the field hockey team.”

“I don’t remember,” he said. “The body of a young woman wasn’t as important to me then as the body of an older woman became to me later on. If she had been a lot overweight, that would have been different. But she was lithe; trim. I remember her legs. She was wearing shorts. And a T-shirt, but I remember nothing about her breasts. I wanted to meet her. I thought of ways I could, but never got the chance. She left before the game was over. We lost, by the way. I even fantasized about going over to her during the game when my team was up. Or after the game, in the short time I’d have before the whole team had to get back on this old army truck to return to our camp. And introducing myself and somehow saying, without turning her off, that I had been looking at her and don’t have much time to talk and could I write her at her camp and possibly continue the correspondence after the camp season was over? We’d been told that most of the campers and staff in her camp — she was a C.I.T.—”

“What’s that again?” she said.

“Counselor in training. Almost everyone there was supposed to come from Philadelphia or somewhere in Pennsylvania.”

“What did you think would come from your letters to each other, if she had agreed to write you? If she lived in Pennsylvania and you were both sixteen—”

“I’d visit her,” he said. “Take a bus or train. It’s not that far away, Philadelphia, if that is where she lived. Pittsburgh would have been out. But for her, if it was Philadelphia or a place in Pennsylvania a lot easier to get to than Pittsburgh, to become my girlfriend. And maybe the next summer she’d be a C.I.T. again, or junior counselor, would be more like it, at the same camp, and I’d be a waiter again at mine. It’s possible, I might have thought, when I was thinking this girl and I would exchange letters and I’d go to Philadelphia or such to see her and maybe she could come once to New York, that we could coordinate our days off the next summer. That’s how far and fast I let my imagination take me. Or I’d try to be one of the two guest waiters at my camp, which was really what I was shooting for. You made a lot more money that way — no salary but much better tips — waiting on the visiting parents, and more days off.”

By now they had reached the bus shelter on Broadway. The bench inside was filled. He said “Should I ask someone to get up so you can sit?”

“I’m fine,” she said. “Standing’s good for me too. So what did you end up doing the next summer?”

“I got a job as a busboy at Grossinger’s. I told them I was eighteen, and being a big kid, they believed me. And I guess they weren’t that choosy for such a job. The summer after that, I was legitimately eighteen and in college, and worked as a waiter and made a bundle.”

“You never went back to your camp?”

“No. I guess I went where the money was and where there was more potential for work.”

“So you didn’t even try to be a guest waiter at your camp?”

“I don’t remember. Probably not. The busboy job came up and I was told if I did well at it there’d be a good chance for a waiter’s job the next summer and also during the Jewish holidays, which was when you really cleaned up.”

“It seems, then, that you and this girl weren’t meant to get together,” she said. “I mean, if you truly wanted it to happen, you would have gone back to your camp as a guest waiter, if you could get the job — made, I would think, about as much as you would as a busboy at Grossinger’s — and in some way sought out the girl.”

“How? By just going to her camp and looking for her? Or playing on the softball team again against her camp’s team, if there was going to be a rematch, and hoping she’d be there? I don’t even know if a guest waiter was allowed to play on the camper-waiter’s team.”

“Then by trying to get a job at her camp as a guest waiter, if they had them.”

“I never thought of that,” he said. “And it’s getting a bit farfetched. Because what were the chances of her returning there? Good? Only so-so? I don’t know. And by then she might have had a boyfriend, if she already didn’t when I first saw her. And I’d lost some of my interest in her, which would have been natural, or had become in one year more of a realist. Something. Maybe all those. By the way, what I also never told you is that when I first saw you at the party we met at, but before I went over to introduce myself, I actually thought for a few moments you might be her.”

“But you never asked me if I went to a camp in Pennsylvania when I was a girl. And she has to be considerably older than I. Ten years.”

“I thought her looks might have stayed that young. It’s possible. Forty could look thirty. But it was just something that flashed through my mind then, or whatever it did, and I quickly knew was impossible. But I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“Sure you should have,” she said. “And long before. It’s interesting. And if this girl was instrumental in being the prototype for the women you were later attracted to—”

“Her expressions too. Just by her face she seemed very bright and cheerful and self-contained, as I think I said, and mature. So it wasn’t just her good looks that first attracted me to her, as it wasn’t with you.”

“I’m glad. And what I started to say was that I’m grateful to her, if she was even remotely responsible for you being drawn to me at that party. You came over, we got to talking, found we had lots in common, started seeing each other, married, and the rest.”

“So it all doesn’t sound too silly to you?”

“Not at all.”

He stepped out into the street and saw their bus coming. “There’s our bus.”

“Good,” she said. “I’m getting tired.”

“It looks crowded. If all the seats are taken, would it be all right with you if I ask someone to get up and give you his seat?”

“Yes, thanks. I could never ask anyone that myself.”