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Circle. In the name of horseplay, they strangled each other in wrestling holds, and couldn’t walk within swinging distance of each other without grabbing and twisting whatever limb swung free. They found thisfun, giving it or taking it. In the lake they’d race, thrashing and grunting, with the loser then attempting to drown the winner. Separately, each could be civilized; but together, they were a two-man litter of puppies, nipping and yelping and rolling around on each other’s food.
    When I brought up the subject one night—How can you stand them? Why do they have to crack every knuckle separately? Why don’t your parents do something?—Robin said her parents yelled at Jeff and Chip at home, and made them shake hands and go off to their separate rooms and cool down. But here, her parents needed a vacation. They dumped the two boys in one room, figuring they’d kill each other or get it out of their systems.
    I said, “They can’t get it out of their systems. It’s hormones.”
    “It is?”
    “It’s teenage-boy hormones. Why do you think they’re always wrestling and rolling around on top of each other?”
    Robin, wide-eyed, shook her head.
    I told her it was like girls getting our periods: Boys got hormones. I asked her again: Why didn’t her parents
say
something? It looked to me that her brothers didn’t get yelled at or punished, no matter how much they horsed around and got the lifeguard angry.
    “They’re showing off for the people on the dock and for you,” she stated calmly.
    “For me?” I asked.
    “That’s what Mrs. Berry said.”
    I asked her when Mrs. Berry had offered this opinion.
    “When you were swimming out to the raft and I stayed on the dock. She said to me, ‘I guess your brothers are showing off for your little friend.’ They were doing cannonballs from the raft trying to hit you.”
    “And what did you say?”
    “I didn’t say anything. I was shivering. And she was just walking down the dock to tell Nelson something.” Nelson Berry, the oldest of the three Berry children, was the exasperated lifeguard caughtbetween wanting to banish the Fife boys from the waterfront and needing to maintain good guest relations. Robin and I liked him.
    I said, “Mrs. Berry doesn’t like me because I’m Jewish.”
    “How does she know you’re Jewish?”
    “She just knows.”
    “What’s ‘Jewish’ again?” Robin asked.
    “Jewish means you go to temple instead of church.”
    “Oh,” said Robin.
    “You know lots of Jewish people.”
    “I do?”
    “Janet in our bunk was Jewish. And Melody.”
    “The counselor Melody?”
    “Yup. And you know famous Jewish people,” I said: Sammy Davis, Jr. Lorne Green. Marilyn Monroe’s husband. Ed Sullivan’s wife.
    “I think my senator was Jewish,” she said.
    I couldn’t resist the opportunity, Robin being as much of a blank slate as she was. I said, “We’re God’s chosen people, so Mrs. Berry has no right not to like Jews. Especially now. The law says you have to like everybody equally if you own a hotel.”
    She asked me if I thought Nelson went to church or to temple. I explained patiently that religion ran in families; there was no way Nelson Berry went to temple.
    “Good,” said Robin. “I mean, I’m glad he’s the same thing I am.”
    I asked her if she had seen
The Diary of Anne Frank
, with Millie Perkins, the model, because that explained what happened when things got out of hand.
    She said she’d heard of Millie Perkins, but not Anne Frank.
    I shut off the lamp between our two beds. After a minute, I whispered, “Robin?”
    “What?” she asked groggily.
    I said, “Don’t say anything to your parents about Mrs. Berry not liking me because I’m Jewish. People hate it when you think that, and she’d say it wasn’t true.”
    “Okay,” said Robin.
    •  •  •
    T he next day, at breakfast, Mr. Fife asked me if I wanted to take a little ride with him to the grocery store. He was going to buy a newspaper and