Nasturtiums

by Susan Alpert

It was near the end of another school year. Already, Wendy, who was about to enter eighth grade in the fall, hated the idea of having nothing to do for days at a time during the summer vacation.

She knew from TV shows like The Brady Bunch, that she was supposed to be looking forward to this time of year. That she should find a job at an ice cream store, although legally she was too young to get working papers. She should date boys on the football team, even though all the sports teams at her school, including her own Wildcats girls basketball team, ended because of the New York City budget cuts.

It wasn’t like she missed school that much either. She didn’t. Last semester, Mrs. Frye forced Wendy’s language arts class to read the book, Johnny Tremain. The book had all this Revolutionary War military background that bored her. The only portion she enjoyed reading about was when Johnny’s hand was severely burned by molten silver at the shop where he apprenticed.

There was a curious thing she noticed. The books they read in school were at least thirty years old. Her mother told her that Johnny Tremain had even been made into a Disney movie. Still, it never seemed to be on The Wonderful World of Disney at the time Wendy had to read the book so she couldn’t just pretend to have read it. The books they were required to read seemed to have been best-sellers at one time. Maybe that’s why the school had so many free paperback copies to now lend each student.

The other seventh grade classes in her school, the students considered not as smart, or average, got to read Cheaper By The Dozen. It was probably because that was considered less analytical.

In addition, the books in the school library were so old. She even found one written by the actor who co-starred on the TV show Hazel. She was so bored that she read it.

So, the problem was the school year was dull, and the summers were even bleaker. It was very hard to get to anywhere interesting from where she lived on Staten Island. She took a bus, a ferry, and a subway just to see a good French art movie. She often felt like she was in a James Bond movie trying to leave Staten Island. The only means of James Bond transportation missing in her life was a helicopter and an Aston Martin.

She had to be careful taking the ferry. Grown up men were already starting to talk to her. She really didn’t want them to, and yet she was curious about them. A fifty-year-old man, named Ralph, told her he lived in the East Village next door to Al Pacino’s acting teacher, and could probably arrange for her to meet the actor.

She did think of going with Ralph to his apartment. Then she studied him more closely, she noticed his thinning hair was dyed brown, probably with Just For Men. His glasses were thick. His trench coat was worn and torn in some places. She saw a slight shakiness about him that made it seem like he drank a lot. She wondered why someone from the East Village would be visiting Staten Island at all, but then he mentioned that he had a young daughter who lived there with her mother.

On another ferry ride she spoke with a young tourist with a southern twang named Carl, who said he worked for NASA in Florida. He was rather square looking, and seemed a bit confused about tourist sites in the city, but he had a radical handlebar mustache.

As they said goodbye, Carl said, “See ya,” and Wendy said, “No, we won’t.”

When the time came, maybe in a decade, her mother would probably want Wendy to marry a man like Carl, but Wendy knew she wouldn’t. She would always be drawn to men like Ralph, father types, with a laundry list of failures.

Wendy’s mother was a paralegal for a law firm that was just a few blocks away from their home. It seemed that the male lawyers made all the money, on mostly real estate transactions but her mom did all the work. She often came home late, so Wendy made Hamburger Helper dinners for the two of them. Her mom wasn’t paid by the hour either.

It was on one of the final days of seventh grade, on the class trip to Wild West City, that Wendy decided what she would do that summer.

It wasn’t so much the theme park itself that inspired her. She and the other kids were seated on a stagecoach that was robbed by an actor playing a Wild West robber, who rode a horse. However, the robber told them to stay seated so much that he reminded her of Mr. Bloomberg, her middle school principal, during assemblies. One of the students, Dennis Hess, joked instead of a hold up, the experience was more like a sit down.

At the theme park’s general store, Wendy bought a souvenir. It was a miniature amber bottle etched with tiny designs. It cost twenty-five cents, and it was the most beautiful thing she had ever owned.

It was on the way home from the theme park that she asked for the addresses of some of the other students. Not the ones from her class that she knew well and who mostly ignored her. Instead, she asked the kids from the other classes, the easier classes, who had to read Cheaper By The Dozen instead of Johnny Tremain.

She was surprised that a few of the kids in those classes were willing to give her their addresses, in order to keep in touch.

At a local greeting card store, she found the stationery that she would use to write them. It was heavy card stock with botanical illustrations of red, orange, and yellow nasturtiums printed around the border. The borders would control her impulse to write to the edge, therefore making her writing seem neater. What made the stationery different from others is that it didn’t need envelopes. Later she would learn this was called self mailers or “seal and send” stationery. It folded in three parts and could be sealed with nasturtium seals that were included.

While the stationery was one piece, it was still much easier to open than the one-piece Social Security checks she got every month since her father died from smoking. Those were hard to open without tearing the checks.

Wendy also had problems with the rolls of aluminum foil. They always shredded as she unraveled them.

She loved the nasturtiums stationery so much that it inspired her to plan to go into the stationery and printing business herself. Perhaps, one day to open her own printing business in Chelsea, which had a street full of printing shops.

She decided in a year she would enroll in Marconi Vocational High School, which had a printing training program. Although most of the girls who went there studied to become nursing assistants or hairdressers. Years later, when she was out of work for a long time, that decision she made back at the age of twelve would haunt her.

From the several names and addresses she had collected, she decided to just write two of the kids. The reason was a practical one. She didn’t have enough of the nasturtiums stationery to write to everyone.

She picked the two students she knew the least about, even though they both had been in the same schools since kindergarten at P. S. 41. Their names were Dennis Hess and Verna Kerna.

Because she barely knew them, and her life wasn’t that interesting so she basically hand handwritten the same letter to send to each.

How’s your summer going? I saw Murder By Death at the Lane. It was OK. It was funny seeing Truman Capote in a movie playing a character and not just on a talk show. Yet, I kept seeing the boom mics on the ceiling in almost every scene and that ruined the movie for me. I don’t even remember what it was about and I just saw it a few days ago.          

My mother was run over by a car on Hylan Boulevard three days ago. Both her arms are in slings, and she won’t be able to go to work for a while. The sixteen-year-girl who ran over my mother came over to our house in tears the day after the accident and apologized. However, her father, who was with her, was really angry. He was mad that my mother was able to come to the door and acted like she pretended that she was injured. To be honest, he seemed prone to violence. I was a little afraid that he’d look for some other part of my mother to break.

Yours truly,

Wendy Russo

And then the letters from her new friends began pouring in.

Dear Wendy,

I liked Murder By Death. I didn’t notice the problems you mentioned with the booms.

I’m sorry about your mom’s accident. It’s rough that she broke both her arms and it must be frustrating that she can’t work.

The father of the girl who accidentally ran over your mother, sounds a lot like my dad. He hit me so badly for spending money going to see that movie. I’m glad there’s no school because I don’t want the kids to make fun of me with the black eye that he gave me.

Anyway, I like your nasturtiums stationery. It’s pretty. That’s the only thing that comes up when I try to grow seeds in the backyard.

Yours truly,

Verna Kerna

Dear Wendy,

It was nice to get your letter. I like your eye-popping nasturtiums.

I haven’t seen Murder By Death yet. To be honest, my family is sort of strict about what movies both my younger brother and I get to see. I know it’s just a Neil Simon comedy, but my parents are focused on the word, “murder,” in the title.

I learned something about the booms that you saw hanging overhead in that movie. My friend Jim Garcia is a movie projectionist. He told me that’s not a mistake caused by the director. That’s actually caused by a bad projectionist who didn't center the film correctly. You should have asked for your money back.

I’m so sorry to hear about your mom’s broken arms. You must have to help her a lot now. I’m glad though that it sounds like she will be OK.

Changing the topic, do you want to hear something cool? I was at Great Kills Beach the other day and I spotted sandcastle worms. I never saw them before, but I always wanted to. They produce their own glue and use it to make honeycomb style housing units out of sand and minerals. The colonies that I saw the other day almost seem like a miniature Levittown! I could have hung out at the beach all day looking at it and I did!

I really appreciate you writing to me, Wendy. And I look forward to your next letter.

Yours truly,

Dennis Hess

All through the summer, Wendy continued writing Dennis and Verna on her nasturtiums stationery, and they continued writing back to her on their loose-leaf paper. Although Dennis used yellow paper and Verna used blue.

That summer, Wendy’s mother got fired from the law firm because her broken arms prevented her from working.

Verna’s father was arrested for beating up her mother. It was mentioned in the Police Log section of the Staten Island Advance. Verna wrote to Wendy that he was released a few days later and he was meaner than ever.

Dennis continued writing to Wendy about the local marine life he found on the Staten Island beaches. Generally, this wouldn’t have been a subject she would have been interested in, but Dennis had the gift of making it sound fascinating.

When they returned to school in the fall, she saw both Verna and Dennis again. Wendy was polite, but she suddenly felt embarrassed that she wrote them silly letters in the first place, and that they had shared so much with her.

Dennis was the first boy to ever ask Wendy out. She told him no. She couldn’t explain why.

Although Wendy didn’t go to the same high school as Dennis and Verna, she would hear about them through the grapevine.

Dennis probably should have gone to college to become a marine biologist. That was clearly his calling. But he was from a very religious family that went door to door to preach that the world was ending. Wendy imagined that if you believed things like that, there was no point spending money on college.

She was grateful that her own mother didn't make her go door to door trying to sell anything. A few years before, Wendy tried doing that, when she was in Girl Scouts selling cookies. She wasn’t able to sell any boxes except for the Samoas, which she bought for herself.

As soon as Verna Kerna turned eighteen, she married a soldier stationed in Germany. She became Verna Karapecki, losing the one most interesting thing about her, which was her rhyming name.

When Wendy graduated from high school, she moved to a Brooklyn apartment with a roommate that she found listed in The Village Voice. One reason she moved was, of course, to become independent. The other reason that she was ashamed to admit, even to herself, is that she didn’t want poor, sweet Dennis knocking on her door.

BIO: Susan Alpert’s short stories have recently appeared in Four Tulips, Meat for Tea: The Valley Review, and the Jewish Fiction Journal. She is a past winner of Bethesda Magazine’s annual fiction award. She lives in Brattleboro, Vermont.