Splitsville

by Howard Akler

  The stink of charcoal and stogie. A fleck of tobacco on Larry’s tongue yet he continues to gas on about a missing shipment of carburetors.

  And now they can’t find the invoice! Can you believe that? I’ve been doing business with Artie Dunkleman for what? eight, nine years? This isn’t the first time he’s screwed up. What am I going to do? My customers are waiting.

  Sachs flicks Lily a look. She sits in the grass, her back turned to him. An oppugnant tilt to her shoulders. He looks the other way and sees Aitch pick a blade of grass, a blade, another blade.

  He’s in one of his moods again, Min says. She flips the dogs. Moves them from grill to platter and carries the whole shebang, buns and all, to the picnic table positioned in the backyard’s shadiest spot.

  Two minutes in the sun and the kid’s a pastrami, says Larry. Me, I love it. I end up looking like a schwartze.

  Larry! says Min.

  What?

  We don’t say that anymore.

  Listen, they say much worse about us.

  Sachs squeezes the relish. He’s heard it all before: his sister and her gnattish suggestions, her husband’s nattered rejoinders. The social niceties of their class erode more and more until Lily notices Aitch’s absence and the gate swinging wide open.

  What the?

  Easy, take it easy.

  Where’d?

  Can’t be far.

  Min, on the front porch, stands lookout. The others split up: east to a nearby park, south behind a neighbour’s bush, west around the corner, where Sachs comes across an abandoned shoe and sock. He follows the clues: the second shoe, a mustard-stained tee. Shorts. Underwear. He closes in on the little nudist.

  He found you. Your mother always colours this story with unequal daubs of humour and concern. But what could have happened? You had tried to escape into a cul-de-sac. Where else could you have gone?

  He found you. And you have not been able to return the favour. You have teased out every tiny moment, considered all the evidence. He remains the family ellipsis, a middleaged simulacrum insulated from the jolt of reality you are only now ready to accept.

  ◊

  The city on edge. There has been no news from the premier’s office. Nothing but speculation from the city hall beat, the trio of local papers circulate rumour both more and less credible. J. J. Robinette appears on camera, somehow both long-winded and mum. Blatnyck has no inklings. Lily says little. In this absence, Joe’s opinions gain fresh solidity:

  This town has two speeds. Slow and slower. Eventually, we’ll have to catch up to the present.

  Sachs pounds the pocket of his mitt. Just throw the ball, he says.

  Joe throws.

  Sachs catches. They start with a short toss. Then, once their arms are stretched out, they take a step back, another, until the distance is covered with just enough effort.

  Think about it, says Joe. What happens if the province says no? We never get to make our own decisions. We never get to grow up.

  Nnff, says Sachs. He moves to his left and nabs a onehopper. Over cocktails at a semi-detached on Robert Street, some STOP side jock pitched a friendly softball game: Huron-Sussex ratepayers versus the Spadina Businessmen. Just a little levity while everyone waits on the big decision, just a little fun. Sachs cajoled into it. He hasn’t picked up his glove in years, so time for a little practice before game day. He scoops a grounder. Fires. Joe fires back. The throw is errant, wide, and high so Sachs backpedals. Over his shoulder, he gets a bead on it. The ball, at perihelion, begins to descend.

  Pretty good wheels, says Joe, for an old guy.

  Another late night with no word from her. Sachs adoze on the sofa, book open on his chest. The gentle rise and fall disturbed by a knock, knock, knock. His lids twitch. KNOCK. And he’s on his feet, cautious down the darkened stairs, even more cautious as he gets closer to the knuckle rap on the other side of the door. He opens it a crack, aldehyde breath.

  Shorry, says Lily. Losht my keysh.

  He goes back up the stairs, but this time with a sinking feeling.

  A little worse for wear the next morning. Lily takes her time. A long shower, then a short stroll to the Crescent Grill, where she scarfs lipids and gathers enough oomph for an afternoon visit to the nursing home. She is, of course, gentle in her ministrations, though a strain in mind leaves her slightly absent.

  Your hair used to be so black, Gram. Remember? So glossy.

  Ida’s pupils are dark furious dots. The hairbrush is heavy with a solid pewter handle. It belonged to Lily’s greatgrandmother, who passed it on to her grandmother, who has used it for both grooming and as a gavel: so many tablesmackings over so many years. In Lily’s hands, the family heirloom is far less dramatic. She brushes her grandmother’s hair. One long firm stroke after another, scalp to ends, and then she pauses to see what is tangled in the bristles.

  ◊

  He kills the afternoon at the laundromat. Loads the dryer. Presses the start button and quickly gets caught in a staring contest with a commercial Kenmore. Fragments of reflection imposed on the flip-flop of clothes. He sees flecks of his grey hair and her denim skirt, bra strap, and eyes that refuse to blink. Unwavering in the face of his face. Nothing in this visage suggests decorum. He will regret what he does do and what he doesn’t. He leans forward. Looks closer. Clothes tangle and untangle before him. Regret, reflect, reject. It all goes around and around.

  Just past ten p.m. She sits there, underwear around her ankles while Sachs brushes his teeth. He’s shirtless and she follows the familiar route of follicle and mole. Six months of ablutions have washed away the erotic. She watches splotches of paste hit the medicine-cabinet mirror and searches for that one tacit moment, well back, when their touch became about utility. He rinses and spits. Lily grabs paper off the roll, wipes and flushes.

  This is the last time they have sex. Such a sweatless finality. She smokes a joint just to get in the mood. The affair continues to dwindle. He is not without knowledge, pinpricks of certainty down his shoulders and spine. He arranges himself on the bed. In situations like these, the most important thing is to come first.

  ◊

  Blatnyck’s office, Sunday afternoon. Workday cigarette smoke sticks around weekends and answers, perhaps, for the sallowness of a potted fern. A diploma from Queen’s on the wall, the usual sheepskin font with the school’s official seal and the dean’s indecipherable signature. Lily fiddles with a thick rubber band. Stretches it between thumb and forefinger. She stops, looks at her feet, resumes her fidget.

  It’s not B and E, technically, says Phoebe. I still have keys.

  She pulls open a filing cabinet drawer and flips through folders of clients recently busted: possession, burglary tools; possession, firearms; possession, narcotics – that’s a fat one: possession, stolen property. She searches for the name of a reliable crook.

  Trespassing, then.

  Phoebe slaps a page. Whatever, she says. You sure you want to do this?

  Lily nods. I’m sure.

  Okay. Let’s give this guy a call.

  They wait in the shadeless plaza of the Toronto-Dominion banking pavillion. Two dark towers, constructed of black steel and bronze-tinted glass, adhere to the rigid mathematics of space at the corner of King and Bay Streets. Mies van der Rohe’s windswept modernism is the perfect place to hock goods. No one hangs out here after business hours.

  Phoebe points. Here he comes.

  Franco, in a woven Trilby and curlicue of smoke, approaches. He nods. His hat is the colour of a nicotine stain.

  Ladies, he says.

  Phoebe nudges Lily. No pleasantries are on offer. Her fist opens and there’s a pendant and a ring in her palm. Both sapphire, both smuggled by a great-uncle out of Kielce three generations ago. Uncaptured during a pogrom, but there is no escape from penury.

  How much? says Lily.

  Depends.

  On?

  On your story.

  My story? says Lily. What happened to no questions asked?


  Franco flicks away his cigarette and inspects the dangler, the bluish gem reflecting distant light.

  Straight skinny, sister. Where’d you get such hot rocks?

  They’re not stolen.

  No-o-o-o.

  They’re not. They’re mine. They’ve been passed down in my family.

  Franco grabs his crotch. Family jewels, eh? I can dig.

  C’mon, Julian.

  It’s pronounced Hoo-li-an.

  Sorry.

  De nada. Sixty bucks.

  For the pendant?

  For everything.

  Hundred.

  Seventy.

  Ninety.

  Eighty, he says. Take it or leave it.

  Sachs is halfway down the stairs, a Rogin in hand, when Lily appears at the bottom. He stops. So does she, sclerotic seconds before she pulls the four twenties out of her pocket.

  What’s that?

  Money I owe you. The bail.

  You don’t need to pay me back, Lil. You can work it off. You have been working it off.

  Get real, please. You don’t need me there. You barely need you there.

  Sachs nudges his right shoe to the edge of the riser. What does that mean? he says.

  Nothing, says Lily. Sorry.

  She takes three steps up. He comes down one. You mean business is slow.

  I mean, maybe, it might not get any better. Maybe you need to, y’know, think about what happens next.

  Sachs descends again, a brief pause while he shares Lily’s stair before he squeezes past.

  Maybe, he says.

  ◊

  Game day, at Christie Pits park. Sachs takes strike three. He grabs some bench beside Ray Wiggins. Ray, a ringer from Mobile, an ex-shortstop who now washes dishes in the Paramount Tavern.

  I played in Drummondville, Quebec. I played in Montreal. I played in Trois-fucking-Rivières.

  Uh-huh.

  I once hit a dinger off Gentry Jessup, man!

  He takes a puff on his Export ‘A’. The cig bobs batonwise, matches the tempo of his down-home dialect. Ever make it with one of those French girls?

  Nope.

  Ray reaches for his bat. He has powerful forearms and dishpan hands. They’re just like English girls, he says. Except when they come, they like to say, oui, oui, oui.

  Top of the third. The team trots across the line, from foul territory to fair. Sachs stands in the langorous expanse of centre field and yawns. He glances around. There are some spectators on the benches that run parallel to the baseline, but most sit on the grassy slopes high above the diamond. The field, a former sandpit, is well below street level.

  Lily is not there.

  He works his glove with jangly impatience and when the ball is socked, finally, after seven interminable innings, he lopes after it without dubiety. A pop-up betwen centre and short. Achy hamstrings loosen. A leatherlungs exhorts. He runs and runs, trailing the trajectory of the high fly. He reaches for it, reaches, and then – BONK! – he crashes into Ray. An elbow, a temple. Sachs hits the grass, the ball rolls out of his glove dizzily, like the lone survivor of a three-car pileup.

  ◊

  You ride on: smooching teenagers in a parkette, kfc stink. You speed away from eleven herbs and spices, up a potholed laneway with Day-Glo graffiti on every second garage door: R.I.P. Shi Boi. I EAT DICK. Skill-saw whine, sports talk radio. So receptive to your familiar route, you pedal, ocular, olfactive. Out onto Barton Avenue now. Five minutes from home. There’s sweat under your chinstrap as you get nearer to Christie – the street, after the completion of Spadina, that would have been demolished for another expressway. The light turns yellow, ball field at the Pits in sight. You really push it. You’re almost at the intersection when a Prius driver opens his door and you brake, bomp, and go ass-over-handlebar.

  Sorry, sorry, I’m sorry.

  Uhn.

  I’m so sorry. I’m a cyclist, too. Y’know. I didn’t, I really...

  Urf, you say. You sit up. You’re in the middle of the road. You have all your teeth.

  The driver is on his knees, id spills across his quads. Driver’s licence, membership card from an insurance company. You catch sight of his shopping list. He needs mangos.

  There are pieces of reflector all around. Your bell not just rung. Shattered. Clamp and rivet roll toward the sidewalk. You make a cud-chewing motion to loosen your jaw.

  I’m all right. I live right nearby.

  Lemme call 911. I’m so…

  I’m okay. Really. I just want to go home.

  ◊

  This is where he becomes lost in your thoughts, a terra incognita. Footfalls in your temporal lobe, each one uncertain. Let’s say he walks off the field, up the hill, and out of the Pits. Float your eyes over the intersection. A bus passes. He stands there. His temple throbs down to this toes. There are many steps still to take. Hundreds, in fact; the sun is glarier in this stride, the horns honkier. Ankle ligaments have a weak synaptic snap. In a wonky reverse of the route you just made, Sachs, concussed, cannot shrug off what comes next. A whack on the head is one thing, a whomp to the chest is another.

  Here it comes.

  He makes it back home. Lily is waiting. They stand at arm’s length from each other. She looks at her feet, takes a discreet half-step back. The rug needs a vaccum. A bulb in the lamp has burned out. Alice sits on the sill of the open window, far more engaged in minor activities outside than the muggy language stuffed inside.

  Hal, says Lily.

  The cat, all of a sudden, is on all fours. Lean and low, a hunter’s crouch. She has spotted something, something that leaves her appetent and keen. Chirrups and Alice’s low throaty chatter ignored by the two people in earshot. There are stacks of books on the landing, in the limbo between being read for pleasure and being priced for sale. There’s a half-eaten pizza in a box and paper towels, crumpled and greasy, on the table. No one says anything, but somehow there’s a reverb of all the words unspoken. Lily stands still, straight, emphatic as an exclamation point.

  Hal, she says again.

  And then Alice leaps out the window.

  Sachs and Lily clunk heads. Both of them peer over the ledge. No sight of her. How far could she have gone? And how fast? They take the stairs two, three, four at a time and are in a sidewalk muddle of drunks, seamstresses, and noodle-shop workers on smoke break. Sachs asks a Sing Tao seller. Lily checks an alley. The horizon line is pink and smoggy as the first seconds of night settle in.

  They split up. Cover twice the ground in half the time. Still, this takes hours. Sachs up and down Augusta, Kensington. The fruit stands and poultry butchers are closed, so he has few inquiries to make. Pops his head into an after-hours joint, where old Portuguese men play dominoes and discuss Salazar’s most recent demagoguery. No one has seen anything.

  Lily knocks on doors and asks permission to investigate front and backyards. There are alleys behind restaurants with a hundred possible nooks, but all she finds is rubbish and food-scrap rats and the initial whiff of resignation.

  Overnight, Spadina Avenue has grown too wide. There are too many pedestrians, the terrible expanse filled with opportunity for accident and malfeasance. Every sidestep, every horn honk leaves Lily braced for bad news. She has woken Phoebe up early and the pair flour-pastes one telephone pole after another: Missing, Missing, Missing. They have been out all day, searched every which way. Put posters in the windows of delis and jobbers’. Waitress in a Szechuan place shakes her head. They open cans of tuna and wait in doorways, but this only attracts strays, mottled and scabby and ear-bitten. Lily sits down, removes her right sandal, and massages the ball of the foot. Her nose is sunburned.

  Forget it, she says. It’s over.

  Don’t say that, says Phoebe. We’ll find her.

  That’s not what I meant.

  Oh.

  Can I stay at your place tonight?

  Um. Okay.

  There’s a pay phone at the corner. A dime would be the cheapest breakup ever.
She almost stops, but forces herself farther up the block. She walks without apparent weariness, though, in truth, she is already so overwhelmed by the need for respite that she starts to yawn outside the bookshop. Sachs, of course, is inside; there’s no one else. The moment will never be better. The moment will never be right. Lily struggles to speak, palate and tongue are jammed, and when the first syllable comes out, it is brittle, uncomfortable, in a voice that is all elbows.

  Hal, she says.

  She leaves. He remains seated. Browsers come and go. Someone buys something. And then, within the odd confines of reluctance, he is alone in the shop. Him and the books. They speak volumes.

  ◊

  Rundown houses and renos alternate. A pair of schnauzers yip your way. This spate of double vision starts to clear as you limp up Christie. Minutes from home, a good dose of quiddity the closer you get. All these years of riding in this city and you can, finally, celebrate your first door prize. You have three popped spokes. There is something loose in the stem or fork and the handlebar slides parallel with the top tube. You walk your bike and veer, you overcompensate, you veer.

  ◊

  A blade of light slips through the window and stabs him below the left nipple. He flinches. No sleep last night, nothing restful beneath lashes and lids. Sachs pulls on his jeans. Buttons his shirt. Out of habit, he makes coffee for two.

  ◊

  The night spent contorted in a loveseat. An errant spring, a pointed reminder of this shabby pad: empty fridge, full ashtray. In the past six months, she has moved out, moved in with Sachs, moved back. The only change here is who fucks whom. And where. Irving and Claude sleep in her old room.

  Yes, Lily says into the receiver. Tabby. One eye. Anything?

  She winds the phone cord around her index finger. The Humane Society has had her on hold for eight minutes. Phoebe emerges from her room in a man’s pyjama top, fills up a glass of water, and drinks it down. Vern Dyson’s drunken snore rattles the floor tiles. A toilet flushes in the apartment next door. The pipes are hidden within thin, half-plastered walls. A gurgle eddies around the response on the other end of the line.