Wish You Were Here by Hilma Wolitzer

Author:Hilma Wolitzer [Wolitzer, Hilma]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4532-8795-8
Publisher: Open Road
Published: 2012-10-25T02:37:00+00:00

The Invisible Hero

THE PLAINVIEW HIGH PLAYERS were at our house again. Ma and Nat had gone to a concert at the library, and Grace and I were upstairs in my room. The rehearsal was going strong, and the actors must have really been projecting, because a lot of what they said came up through my floor. Mr. Rooney was there this time, shouting directions at everybody. Grace put one of her Muppets records on my stereo, but I could still recognize Ruth, and Celia, and Gary being John Henry. I wanted to put my hands over my ears, so I wouldn’t have to listen, and I wanted to lie on the floor with one ear pressed against it, so I wouldn’t miss a single word. I couldn’t do either, because Grace was with me. I had lured her into my room, for company, by promising to let her look through my box of treasures. The box was a big one that Pop had given me a long time ago, when I was at the shoe store. According to the faded label, there was once a pair of men’s boots in it. Style: Ponderosa. Color: Saddle. Size: 11.

Now it was filled with stuff I’d collected over the years. There were some valuable old baseball cards, of Mickey Mantle, Hank Aaron, and Roger Maris. If you held them to your nose, you could still make out the sugary smell of the bubble gum. Grace liked to sniff the cards, but she wasn’t very interested in the players or their statistics.

I kept a few good shells and stones I’d picked up on the beach at Sunken Meadow. Some of the shells still had sand in them and they reminded me of summer. There were other things in there I’d meant to throw out but always put back in the box at the last minute, like the dried peach pits, the pair of lead soldiers (the only two left from a whole battalion), and one perfect report card, from first grade. Under Comments, the teacher, Miss Minelli, had written: “Bernard is a bright and inquisitive boy, with excellent language skills and well-developed large and small motor coordination. He is socially mature and interacts well with his peer group.” I’d gotten A’s in the couple of subjects you have in first grade, and my father had signed the card at the bottom: Martin Segal. He had a great handwriting. It slanted forward, and the I of Segal ended in a fancy loop. I practiced copying his signature for a while, and when my father noticed me doing it, he laughed and said I’d make a terrific check forger.

Grace sat on my bed and took things out neatly, one at a time, making little piles of them around her. A pile of marbles, and shells and stones, and peach pits. She pinned my button collection all over the tops of her pajamas. They were mostly campaign buttons for men who’d run for President and lost. There

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