Plan Z by Leslie Kove

By Betsy Robinson

A Trip Down the Rabbit Hole of America--Winner of Mid-List Press First Novel Award

As a little girl growing up in Squitchit, New York, Leslie Kove doubtless imagined that she and her two siblings would one day marry, have kids, and make ordinary productive lives for themselves. But by 1970, her brother, Peter,

• Language: English
• Publisher: Betsy Robinson
• Release date: Jul 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9781087917276

Betsy Robinson

Betsy Robinson writes funny fiction about flawed people. Her novel The Last Will & Testament of Zelda McFigg is winner of Black Lawrence Press's 2013 Big Moose Prize and was published in September 2014. This was followed by the February 2015 publication of her edit of The Trouble with the Truth by Edna Robinson, Betsy's late mother, by Simon & Schuster/Infinite Words. She published revised ebook and paperback editions of her Mid-List Press award-winning first novel, a tragicomedy about falling down the rabbit hole of the U.S. of A. in the 1970s, Plan Z by Leslie Kove, when it went out of print. Her articles have been published in Publishers Weekly, Lithub, Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Oh Reader, The Sunlight Press, Prairie Fire, Salvation South, Next Avenue, Lit Mag Roundup and many other publications. Betsy is an editor (former managing editor of Spirituality & Health), fiction writer, journalist, and playwright. www.BetsyRobinson-writer.com

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PLAN Z BY LESLIE KOVE

a novel by Betsy Robinson

__________

First published by Mid-List Press

As winner of First Series: Novel award

2001

Copyright

Plan Z by Leslie Kove

Copyright © 2001 by Betsy Robinson

E-book published by www.BetsyRobinson-writer.com

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the publisher. For information, address

[e-mail]

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover and back matter art: José de Creeft, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Central Park, 1959

Cover design & photography: Betsy Robinson

Dedication

To all my helpers

Introduction

I am not a pretty girl. I mean woman. I am fully grown, so I am not a girl, and I would like to be accurate. I’m not ugly, but I’ve got a large nose. Also no talent, a loser personality, no job, insomnia, and a lot of very bad feelings.

At about three a.m. everything got to be too much, and that’s when I thought of the library. Just because I don’t read books doesn’t mean other people don’t, and despite my looks, my story could be of interest. So that’s what I’ve decided to do—write my story and put it in the library—because God knows nothing else has worked out, and this is the only Plan Z I’ve got.

The Background

I was born in Squitchit, a small town outside of New York City where my mother was a secretary who worked in a place that sold magazine subscriptions, and my father was a sometimes salesman who died.

I had a childhood. Then I grew up.

Toward the end of high school people kept asking me what I was going to do with my life. What was my plan?

My sister, who’s two and a half years older, went to college after she graduated from high school. Her name is Susan, but she changed it to Sabra-Sou when she went to Bennington.

Actually that’s where this all begins—at my trip to Bennington, which led to my eventual downfall, which led to my choice of writing this book or I don’t know what. The details are a little hazy now, but maybe that’s where I should start.

My Trip to Bennington

It was 1970, and I was a senior in high school. I never liked school, so when everybody started applying to colleges, I mostly didn’t see the point. If I was school smart like my sister, Susan, it would make sense. But I’m not. And if I don’t see the sense in something—say for instance algebra—then I just can’t get myself to do it, and I flunk.

Susan did lots of senseless things. For instance, cheerleading: She went out in the cold in a tiny little skirt and yelled Yay team with seven other girls while a bunch of boys in stretch pants and shoulder pads ran around a field beating each other up.

She decided to go to Bennington because it was non-traditional and they gave her a scholarship—some special one for children of secretaries. Also she liked dancing which was kind of like cheerleading, and they did that a lot up there and, at the end, you got a diploma.

Anyway, it was some high school vacation; my brother was dead, my father wasn’t, and Susan invited me to spend a week with her. We’d never spent much time together, but she was taking a psychology class that said families are important, and I was kind of sick of Squitchit and listening to my mother, so I said okay, a week in Vermont might be fun.

To be exact, it was May 3, 1970, and the reason I remember I’ll get to in a minute. (The main thing to writing a sensible story is to tell it in order.) I rode the train from Squitchit to New York City where I left my keys in the Port Authority ladies room. From there, I got a bus to Bennington, then hitched a ride to the school where I got lost in the woods looking for the dance studio until a girl in a leather cape and moose antlers told me to go to Commons. Commons was the building where everyone hung out and ate meals. Odds were, said moose antlers, if I sat in the middle of it long enough, eventually Susan would come along.

Unfortunately the key case I lost was the new snap-open one with the secret compartment for money that my mother had given to me the previous Christmas. So I was broke. This was doubly unfortunate because there was a snack bar in Commons, and I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. I was standing next to it inhaling hot dog fumes and eyeing the racks of cheez doodles, corn chips, and Hostess Twinkies, hoping Susan would find me, and that’s when I met Robin.

Hungry? she asked.

Yeah, kind of, I answered. I haven’t eaten since breakfast in Squitchit.

What’s Squitchit? she asked, leaning up against the snack bar and polishing her granny glasses. Sounds nauseating.

It’s where I live, I answered, trying to sound twenty. It’s just temporary though—until I find my own place.

You live with your folks? She smiled and picked the broken cuticles on her massive hands.

Yeah. Just until I find my own place though.

That’s a drag.

Yeah.

I’m Robin. I’m into sculpture.

I’m Leslie Kove. Nice to meet you. I stuck out my hand, and she laughed.

How old are you? she asked.

Nearly eighteen, I answered. How about you?

I love it, she laughed, a virgin.

Just then the lights went out and a high female voice announced Capitalist Consumer Pigs Drown in their Slimy Swamp of Ill Gotten Possessions and the room exploded with Mick Jagger yelling how he couldn’t get no satisfaction. Robin laughed again, and the lights came back on—pink this time—pointed on six girls in the middle of the room dressed in bikini bottoms and sunglasses doing strange twisting movements and then lots of little hopping steps, not quite in time to the Rolling Stones. Then I noticed that one pair of bikini bottoms looked awfully familiar. This was because I had their matching top in my dresser drawer at home in Squitchit and had been looking for them for two weeks so I could sunbathe. I would have gotten angry except that I was so surprised to see them on Susan, who wouldn’t even undress in the same room with me, jumping around in the middle of this room full of people with her naked breasts bobbing up and down not quite in time to the Rolling Stones.

That’s my sister, I gasped. What’s she doing?

As the counter girl turned to see my sister, Robin leaned over the snack bar and grabbed a Hostess Twinkie. Here, she said, passing it to me. Have some lunch.

Huh? I said.

It’s a Hostess Twinkie, said Robin. On the house.

No, I mean what’s that? What is she doing? I said, pointing at my undulating orange bikini bottoms.

Modern Dance, yawned Robin as she stuffed half a bag of stolen corn chips into her mouth. They do it all the time here.

Oh, I answered and bit into the Twinkie.

There were no dorms at Bennington. The students lived in white shingled houses with names. I don’t remember Susan’s house’s name. It started with a B. Barnum. Or Bailey. I really can’t recall. But that’s where we went after the naked dancing. Susan said I was awfully uptight for a kid my age, and if I called her Susan instead of Sabra-Sou once more in front of one of her naked dancing friends, she’d send me home on the next bus. She said my possessiveness about my bikini bottoms was a sign that I was uncentered and far too involved with meaningless tangibles and that unless I refocused my karma, my life would become a trivial desert wasteland ultimately signifying nothing.

I said, all that aside, I still wanted my bikini bottoms back.

We ate in a blue dining room upstairs in Commons. Actually, I ate. Susan was a waitress. The waitresses ate earlier and then, at the normal dinner time, took orders for coffee, tea, water, and regular and chocolate milk from the other students who had already gone through a cafeteria line getting their solid food on trays. I didn’t understand why—if they were going to get their food on trays in the first place—why at the same time they couldn’t pick up their drinks, but Susan said shut up and eat before someone noticed that I wasn’t a student and was eating stolen food. I offered to pay if she’d lend me the money, but she told me to shut up again and smiled at the other girls at my table like what can you do when you have such a dumb little sister.

After dinner, Robin wandered over to my table and told me there was a movie of some French guy and did I want to see it. I said I would adore to normally, but I was sure my big sister would be terribly hurt since she’d been missing me so much, being away at college and not seeing me for so long, and probably she’d want us to sit together and have sister-talk all night, so maybe another time.

Susan gave me the keys to her room since she had a naked dance rehearsal and then worked until midnight in the library. She’d borrowed the cushions from a couch in the Barnum & Bailey living room and they were hidden under her bed. She said if I wanted, I could use the bed, just to leave my sleeping bag out so that when she came in, dead tired from the library, she could unroll it on top of the lumpy cushions. She could be really nice when she wanted to be.

And it was that night, Sunday, May 3rd, 1970, lying there in my sleeping bag on top of those couch cushions, that I first began thinking about my future: considering Plan A.

Here was my sister, a straight-A student and a head cheerleader on partial scholarship to the most expensive school in the country, waiting on tables and working in a library until midnight every night to pay off her tuition. To do what? Dance around naked in the middle of a snack bar? Even though I was only a seventeen-year-old virgin I knew that there were plenty of places—in New Jersey, for instance—where they paid you to do that sort of thing, and you didn’t have to subsidize it by waiting on tables. I could only imagine what my father would say if he weren’t so busy going bankrupt and having affairs. He’d have driven right up here and said Susan, you idiot, put on your damn clothes, I’m taking you home! I swear I’d have done it myself if I’d been five years older and had a driver’s license. But instead I fell asleep and didn’t wake until Susan tripped on my head getting into bed.

Monday, May 4th was sunny. I had a good breakfast of smuggled brown sausage, scrambled eggs, and chocolate milk, and then went downstairs to the Commons hang-out room to wait for Susan to finish her washing-the-mud-off-dining-room-chair-and-table-legs job. Every day she washed a different room. I wondered how there could be enough mud to make a special job, and Susan said it was because of the L.L. Bean hiking boots everyone wore. So sitting in Commons, I studied shoes. Sure enough, most of the people who wore them wore hiking boots that they rested on chairs, tables, windowsills, and other flat surfaces. Mostly there were girls, but a few boys also. There was one who looked older than the others. He had a large hooked nose, a serious expression, curly black hair, and the most enormous Adam’s apple I’d ever seen bulging over the collar of a black leather jacket. His motorcycle boot-clad feet were planted firmly on the floor, and he was reading the New York Times and scowling.

That’s Zapper, one of the vets, said Robin, sliding down beside me. You like him?

I don’t know him, I answered. Good morning.

Hey, Zapp! called Robin in her loudest bass voice, There’s someone here who wants to meet you.

At least she hadn’t said I was a virgin.

She’s a virgin! boomed Robin.

Leon Zapinsky had served two tours in Vietnam and was going to Bennington on the G.I. bill. He was six five and one hundred thirty pounds.

Are you Jewish? he asked.

Not really, I answered.

What’s ‘not really?’ Either you are or you aren’t.

I don’t have any religion.

Is your mother Jewish?

She was before she got married.

You’re Jewish, he declared.

No, not really, I answered.

By Jewish law you’re Jewish.

I don’t follow any Jewish laws. Are you Jewish?

Leon looked at me like I had two heads. It’s okay that you’re a virgin, he answered and opened the paper.

Robin was making pencil sketches on his business section, and I watched the stairs hoping Susan would materialize.

I was in Vietnam, said Leon from behind the front page. I liked it.

I wondered if there was maybe another staircase and Susan, in her hurry to get to her next job or naked dance class, had forgotten about me.

It made a man of me, he continued, flexing one of his spaghetti arms. You like theater?

We had no theater in Squitchit.

Sure she does, answered Robin. Her sister’s a dancer.

Leon lowered his newspaper. What’s her name?

Susan, I mumbled, wishing on the stairs.

Leon shook his head. I never heard of a ‘Susan’ at Bennington.

Her Bennington name is Sabra-Sou, contributed Robin, tearing off the piece of business section with her sketch on it. She was in that anti-pigs dance yesterday.

Leon looked at me with new interest. You mean the one where they wore no—

She wears clothes at home! I felt like my head was going to blast off my neck. Leon smiled to himself like he’d stolen a secret. "Furthermore those were my bikini bottoms! He smiled bigger. Lord, did I hate him. She stole them out of my bureau and she had no permission! I’d jumped up, almost knocking over the table, but Leon just sat there smiling and nodding like one of those stupid dashboard doggies. I wanted to rip the bobbing head off his shoulders, hurl it to the floor, and watch it splat like a pumpkin. If my father had caught her, boy, would he have given her hell! And what was so great about Vietnam! My brother got killed there!"

A clock ticked someplace.

Leon’s face stiffened. Then without a word, he gathered his New York Times and walked out of Commons. People were staring at me, but nobody said anything.

Getting a little heavy here, aren’t we? said Robin tearing her sketch into several pocket-sized pieces and stuffing them into her jeans.

I just don’t like people talking about my sister. I glared at the stairs wondering where the hell she was anyhow.

Who does? said Robin. Well, got a class. See ya later.

See ya, I said and didn’t look at her.

There was no TV at Bennington, so it wasn’t until dinner that we got the news. I was sitting in a corner of the yellow dining room with a mouthful of stolen chicken when a hand gripped my shoulder. I choked, certain that I’d been caught, would be thrown off the campus with no keys, no money, and no way back to Squitchit, and Susan would be too busy dancing and working to notice that I was gone. I’m sorry, I croaked.

What are you sorry for? said Leon, releasing my shoulder and slumping into the chair beside me. I coughed until my face felt blue. Leon handed me his water.

Thanks, I gasped through the chicken stuck in my throat.

They shot some kids at Kent State, he answered. I just heard it from the kitchen staff.

Oh, I said. Who’s ‘they’?

National Guard.

Oh. I coughed. Why?

Leon shook his head.

I was a seventeen-year-old virgin who’d never had a date let alone held hands with a boy, but for some reason I put my hand on top of his, and we sat like that for at least a minute with me coughing up chicken and Leon staring at the table.

From the second grade to the tenth grade, I had been madly, passionately in love with a boy named Dougie O’Hara who was two years older and didn’t know I was alive. He was the kind of guy everyone fell in love with, but he never fell in love with anyone. All the guys liked him too. He was just so nice. He had a way of putting his arm around your shoulder—not my shoulder. Other people’s shoulders. He put his arm around them—not sexy, just warm. He did it when he was having a conversation or if he saw somebody looking lost or sad, like a new kid on the first day of school. He had crazy red hair and so many freckles you could hardly see any normal skin. And if someone mentioned them, he’d say if you connected them with a pen, it spelled the secret of the universe. Then he’d throw back his head and let loose a laugh that shook his whole body. He was on the track team with my brother, and when he graduated I wanted to fling myself off the Squitchit cliffs.

Leon’s hand felt warm under mine. Those kids at Kent State—are they dead? I asked, finally clearing a breathing passage.

Some of them.

Oh, I answered. What’s Kent State?

He squinted really funny. Superman’s alma mater. And he left me with his water.

That night they closed the library, so Susan got back to the room early. I asked if she thought a lot about Peter, our brother.

I don’t know, she answered without looking up from her homework. What’s a lot?

A few times a day? She shook her head. Once a day? I could see her jaw bone rippling the way it did when she ground her teeth in her sleep. Once every other day?

You know what your problem is, Leslie? She slammed shut her notebook.

What? At least she was finally looking at me.

You’ve never joined a club or worked on a committee; your trouble is you have no school spirit!

I was asking about Peter. Sometimes she was really hard to follow.

I’ve got classes! she screamed. I’ve got fifty billion jobs, they closed the library, and I still owe seven hundred dollars of this term’s tuition. When do I have time to think about Peter! She threw the notebook at the floor, scattering homework everywhere.

Hey, will you keep it down, yelled a voice from up the hall.

And you should go on a diet, she hissed. You’re fat.

That still doesn’t give you the right to take my bikini bottoms. I kicked the lumpy couch cushions under the bed and unrolled my sleeping bag on top of her homework. I’m taking them with me when I leave here.

Susan turned her back on me and pretended to study. I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep.

I’d only seen Susan cry once.

When we were little, our father liked secrets. And mostly he had them with Susan.

Their first secret was a code. He’d call her BG and she’d call him DD. That’s how they’d say good-night:

Good-night, BG.

Good-night, DD.

And then I’d hear them kiss. I wanted a secret code, too, so my father said we could say No Number, which would mean there was no number big enough to describe how much we loved each other, but a lot of times he forgot to say it.

When I was six and Susan was nine, she said she’d tell me what her code meant because our father had invented secret places and she didn’t need it anymore. DD meant Dearest Dad and BG meant Best Girl.

Secret places were when on a Sunday afternoon DD would suddenly lean back, stretch and yawn, saying Getting a little stuffy in here, isn’t it? Then he’d shoot Susan a secret look, and she’d stretch and yawn exactly the same and say Gee, I think so. Then simultaneously the two of them would stand and go out for a stroll. I’d ask to go too, but DD always said that Mom needed me to keep her company, but they’d bring me back a surprise. (I don’t remember where Peter was.) And sometimes they’d bring back some flowers or shiny rocks and sometimes they’d forget.

Afterwards