by Renee Rodin
Shoplifting, part of the retail turf, didn’t happen often. Once, after I’d waxed enthusiastic to someone about a particular novel, he swiped it. I was annoyed, but also a bit chuffed that he’d trusted my opinion.
Occasionally I had items that could have fetched serious money, but I had no idea of their value. A local antiquarian book dealer once pounced on some terrific deals. Later, he said if I put possible collectibles aside, he’d help me price them. But if he found my mistakes already on the shelf it would be his prerogative to buy the books no matter what. Fair enough.
In the end, I had neither the acumen nor the ambition to run the store as a viable business. All I really wanted was to be surrounded by books and in the company of readers. And you don’t have to own a bookstore to have that.*
* For a list of participants at R2B2 please see the section “Participants at R2B2.”
Glass
In anticipation of the upcoming holiday, everyone’s in an exceptionally good mood. My boss is breathing easily for a change—during this is make-or-break season, sales have been brisk. The staff is upbeat because she’s upbeat and because tomorrow is a paid holiday. Customers are making a concerted effort to be convivial.
At fifteen minutes to closing time, this unusually harmonious atmosphere is suddenly disrupted by an insistent banging on the glass door. I peer out to see a person in a wheelchair, frantically gesturing to me for help. From across the large room my boss yells, “Don’t answer it, don’t let him in.” But even if it weren’t Christmas Eve, it would be impossible for me to not respond.
I’ve seen this man at the federally run residence for ex-soldiers next door. He’s usually sitting outside on the sidewalk with others in chairs. Some sit on benches, their crutches propped beside them, smoking and staring at the parade of life passing them by. Their expressions range from boredom to bewilderment. If they weren’t shell-shocked before they got here, they are shocked now at how they’ve gone from the hell of war to the hell of spending the rest of their lives on this patch of concrete in the city’s core.
With the recent escalation of property prices in this area, the tension between the haves and have-nots has been steadily rising. In a surge of determination, long-time residents, artists, entrepreneurs, developers and drug addicts are all fighting it out for their piece of turf.
Except for slow variations, I’ve seen the same group of vets for years, and some have taken to smiling or nodding hello when I walk by. But not this old guy with his cadaverously thin face. His icy inspections usually make me wince and glance away.
Now I’m having trouble manoeuvering his chair to let him in and can tell from his boozy breath he’s driving drunk. When he’s stuck halfway through the door, blocking the entrance, I give up. In tones swollen with intimidation he demands,“I want Mein Kampf—in German.”
“This isn’t really happening,” I rationalize, “he must want the book for research.”
“What’s your problem?” he asks. Not looking at him, I lie: “It’s how your chair is, I can’t close the door.” He mutters something to me in a language similar to the one my parents spoke when they didn’t want me to know what they were talking about. But my honest “I don’t understand Yiddish” is met with his derisive laughter.
I can’t even begin to find my voice. All I want to do is crawl out of here into the cloister of my home, holed up with books I can open and shut, DVDs I can turn on and off to feed the illusion that I can control my world. I already find it difficult enough this time of year dealing with the endless wishes for me to have a “Merry Christmas.” My response is either a tiresome explanation that not everyone celebrates the same holidays, or, capitulating, “Thank you, the same to you.” Neither satisfies me.
Meanwhile my boss decides to treat the vexsome vet as a potential customer and delves into the inner recesses of her extensive operation. She reappears at her desk, behind a barricade of precariously piled, gravity-defying books. Her cheeks are flushed from the exertion of having been made to dig through her inner sanctum of “collectibles”; she waves me over to fetch an ornate edition of Mein Kampf—in German.
The vet’s hands are as knotty as the branches of a ravaged tree, but his fingers become light as feathers as they trace the embossed gold letters on the book’s leather cover. Nearby I fiddle, straightening shelves, waiting while he deliberates and then declares: “Sure is worth it, just don’t have this kind of money right now.” With a show of reluctance he returns the book to me, and awkwardly makes his way out backwards—this time without my help.
“See, I told you,” my boss says, and I am not sure whether she means: “See, I knew he’d be trouble”; or “see, I knew he wouldn’t buy anything.” This is a bookstore, after all. Before I have a chance to release some tension—a scream is tempting—a real beauty, a colossus in his twenties, strides over as if he’s just climbed down from the Alps. He’s carrying a massive pack on his massive back and I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to hear “Val-de-ree Val-de-rah” bubble out of his mouth.
But he’s in no singing mood as he shouts, “How could you carry such an odious book? In my country, in Germany, it is illegal!” All I hear is rank Aryan anger, perverse national pride. How dare he put me in a position where I have to defend the reading of Mein Kampf ? How dare he boast about the moral superiority of his country’s “laws” when their worst crimes had all been “legal”?
In a flash I understand this young man is no more free of history than I am; he is only an innocent taking on the task of re-working the world. “Know thine enemy,” I say, and begin to elaborate on the temptations of forbidden fruit. My theorizing doesn’t placate him, my statements are gibberish. I know full well that to offer any balm is useless, but I can’t resist patting him on the arm and murmuring, “Don’t be upset.”
Until now he’s been polite, probably because of my age, possibly because of my gender. At my touch, he shrinks and stalks out. “Wait, wait,” I want to call after him. But it is the other words, the words that I should have directed at the vet that burn inside me.
On Boxing Day, I’m once more in the store filling the spaces left by books sold out of the window display. It’s early; the area is quiet on this quasi-holiday, except for one burst of activity. It’s the vet wheeling up the street.
Straddled across the arms of his chair is an ornately carved walking stick and I think, “Not only is this guy a neo-Nazi, but a faker to boot.” He moves at breakneck speed, I’m hoping in a rush to get to his residence, but no such luck. As soon as he’s opposite me on the sidewalk, he jerks to a halt so abruptly he almost topples out of his chair.
We are separated only by thin, clear glass but he pretends to be oblivious to my presence as he raises the stick tauntingly. Shards of Kristallnacht lacerate my brain—I am transfixed, a silent, shuddering witness. He brandishes the stick high above his head, twirls it once, twice before bringing it down hard and fast. Down, down it comes until at the last possible nano-second he stops its descent. Taps it gently on the pane.
His chin juts out at an ugly angle; a jeer slashes his face as he looks directly at me. At last something deeper than memory wells up and I am finally able to look right back. He lowers his eyes.
Ready for Freddy
Despite having been diagnosed with cancer several months before, my father continued to feel well. Sandy and I, his only children, had been told he probably wouldn’t last another year but Abe had not wanted to hear the prognosis. He just kept telling everyone: “I’m going to beat it.”
My sister and I live in Vancouver and as the year progressed it became unbearable to think of Abe living alone in Montreal. My job at a used bookstore was more flexible than Sandy’s and though I dislike moving and thrive, or at least think I thrive, on routine, I decided to move back east.
We were able to rent an apartment in the same building my father had lived in for the past thirty-five years. Sandy went ahead to furnish it by scrounging surplus furniture from relatives and m
aking sensible buys at Ikea and the dollar store so when I arrived, weeks later, I could move right in.
After decades of being thousands of miles apart, I was now a flight of ten stairs away from my father whom I idolized and wanted to emulate until I was five. Since his eating habits were the easiest thing for me to copy, that’s when I acquired my taste for pungent-smelling foods such as garlic, cooked cabbage, liver. Also, I’d follow him around our small flat, stick to him like glue.
Until gradually my father’s halo tarnished. His soft nature and malleable style were no match for my mother’s ferocious need for control. She held on to it so tightly, it cracked and left her cracked. He took refuge in invisibility, which left my sister and me at the mercy of our mother. As a teenager I boiled over into confrontations with him, which were never really resolved; we kept in touch with yearly visits and weekly phone calls.
Over the years Abe had periodically asked Sandy and me if there were a chance either of us would ever consider living in Montreal and we’d always answered with an emphatic “no!” Being near him now gave me a certain peace of mind, partly because I figured it would serve as an insurance policy to allay future guilt.
My father seemed delighted but curious that I was there. Since I couldn’t tell him I’d come back because he was close to dying, I told him a semi-truth, that I’d returned to work on a piece of writing. He didn’t ask what it was about and I didn’t say it would be about him.
Abe lives in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce (known locally as NDG) on the west side, in an old working-class building on one of the area’s main streets. Somerled Avenue is a stream of stores from which you can purchase anything from halal meat to upholstery fabric. Its row of restaurants reflects its diverse population.
My father’s daily life centres around Dahlia. They began a relationship when they were both in their early eighties. Dahlia, who was born and raised in Egypt, speaks Arabic and Italian with her family, and with Abe, French, which was his first language, learned on the east end’s Frontenac Street. With her diminutive stature and melting brown eyes, Dahlia resembles a rounder version of Edith Piaf. A plump sparrow. She wears sweaters and skirts to show off her shapely figure, delicate leather shoes. Her dark hair is always coiffed, nails polished.
A few years ago she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and these days, alternates between being as sharp as a tack or else totally bewildered about who or rather “when” she is. Her current memories and identities flow like water through her clenched fists.
Because she wanders and gets lost if left alone, her family has put her into a private boarding house near where they live and not far from Abe. It’s good in terms of location. But the owner’s barely repressed hostility is as eroding to his residents’ spirits as the dingy décor of the place and Dahlia’s family has her on the waiting list for a better home.
Abe’s told Dahlia he’s sick but she can’t remember and has no clues to jog her memory. He looks hale as ever, his complexion ruddy, his blue eyes bright, his snow-white hair thick. Irons all his clothes, except for his jeans. He still drives over almost daily to pick her up to go to Tim Hortons for coffee and donuts, to Adonis, the Middle Eastern market, for feta and tabouli, and then to his house to spend the rest of the day.
My mother, long dead, had been the enthusiastic cook, my father the enthusiastic eater. Abe had a brief infatuation with cooking which began and ended when he was eighty-seven. He prepares hot cereal in the morning, with a spoonful of olive oil (“to keep regular”), and puts together intricate salads with sardines for lunch. His dinners, his biggest meals, consist of frozen or fast foods, which he doesn’t really like.
Though I’m concerned to not undermine their independence, Abe and Dahlia readily accept all my offers to run messages, do chores and cook for them. Whereas I only sporadically accept their invitations to go along on drives and join in on their card game, coquille. I worry about my lack of space from them and their lack of space from me.
Once in a while I know for sure the lovebirds want to be alone, I assume to be intimate, because these are the only times my father makes a point of instructing me to “call first” before I come by, which I always do anyhow, and hope he never drops in unannounced on me either.
He’s far more casual about visitors than I am, gets dressed first thing in the morning, ready to greet the world. Given the chance, I’ll slop around in my nightie, my second skin, for hours. Especially if I’m writing and want to keep the transition from being asleep to being awake as smooth as possible. Before my mind takes over in inhibiting ways.
Finding room at my kitchen table can require an archeological dig, but Abe’s a meticulous housekeeper. Nor does he go into a tailspin about what to serve guests. A cup of instant coffee and a couple of social tea biscuits at his circa 1950s tidy arborite table are just fine by him. And he’s right.
What little writing I do on my laptop reinforces my illusion that I’m here to write, and since it’s focused on my father, I pretend it’s my way of being with him. But really it just gets in the way. The only thing to do is to give up or rather in to why I’m really here.
The more time I spend with Abe, usually in his place where he’s the most comfortable, the more time he wants me to spend with him and I’m constantly on edge if I’m not close by. That he too is aware of how finite this period is I sense only viscerally since neither of us says a word about it.
The cellphone the kids give me is great in theory, it’s to free me up so I can leave the building without being petrified that my father might suddenly need and not be able to reach me. But, in practice it’s used only once when I call him from Yagel Bagel to ask, “Sesame or poppy?”
Aside from being a bit slower and slightly less steady on his feet, Abe’s hardly encumbered by either his health or his age. But after several weeks, I start to notice a very uncharacteristic irritability and impatience about him, particularly when he’s with Dahlia whose repeated questions have stretched everyone’s patience but his. It finally dawns on me to ask, “Dad are you in pain?” He nods his head “yes.” Points to his upper back.
It’s been almost a year since he’d been diagnosed with lung cancer caused by his having installed asbestos into the walls of the SS Letitia to convert it into a hospital ship during World War Two. In a month he’ll be eighty-eight.
My father doesn’t cotton to drugs of any sort and rarely admits to pain. When I suggest he take a pain killer he says, “I don’t want to get addicted, suppose I become immune and when I really need it, it won’t work?” It takes a couple of hours before he’ll agree to a regular-strength Tylenol.
Within a couple of days we’re with Dr. Crankstone, his pulmonary specialist, whose office is at St. Mary’s, the local hospital, a shambling structure built in the early twentieth century. Crankstone previously thought of Abe as a medical anomaly because of how well he’d been doing. But now his lung is so full, Abe has to be admitted to the hospital immediately.
The emergency ward doctor, a spry, bespectacled woman in her late sixties with a wren-like quality, climbs onto my father’s bed and swinging her dangling legs says “you’re cute” at which he grins and away they go flirting with each other.
Only when I ask her questions about his condition does she reluctantly slide off her perch to pay attention to me. Her initial reaction to him had probably been a big health boost in itself and I probably shouldn’t have interrupted their little liaison in my misguided attempt to be responsible.
From the stretcher-filled hallways I call my sister at work in Vancouver and cry, “Daddy’s in the hospital. I’m ascared.” Regressed in language and every other way. Sandy also bursts into tears, tells me she’ll be there as soon as she can. We’re suddenly two little girls again, totally dependent on one another. But now we have grey hair and have to look after our father.
Based on all the stories about scarcity of space, I expect Abe will be stuck in Emergency for days but within an hour he’s been brought upstairs into a room where the
re’s a bald-headed person in the other bed. My father whispers to me, “Man or woman?” He’s shared hospital rooms with both. I tell him, “I saw a bra in the closet when I was hanging up your clothes.”
The next morning his roommate, a very muscular woman in her seventies, bristles, “Your father came over and kissed me last night.” She looks tough, like she wouldn’t think twice about belting him if it happens again. But it won’t because he’s now hooked up to a pump and it’s very awkward for him to move around.
With each of its ghastly sounds, we watch the pump as if it were TV, as its transparent container slowly inches up with more pink-tinged fluid.
He complains only of constipation. The staff ply him with laxatives, race to place him on a commode when he has the urge. “Your father’s the talk of the town. We’ll all celebrate when Abe’s had a bowel movement,” a nurse jokes. My father is on a palliative care ward. In the hallway there’s always someone weeping away from the eyes of a dying relative or friend. The sympathy and empathy are palpable. We are a tribe.
A chaplain, in her thirties, elegant enough to have been a model, comes by to offer Abe spiritual solace only to learn that he is Jewish and that his socialist parents had raised him to reject all organized religion, including his own. But he takes pity on her, asks her about herself so she can stay and talk, feel she’s done something to fulfill her function.
Sandy, my daughter Joey and her boyfriend Craig from Toronto, and my sons Noah and Daniel from New York, all arrive the following evening. Abe thinks they’re there because it’s close to his birthday. After three more days, the pump can drain no more fluid. No one says it directly to us, but there is nothing more to be done, and Abe, armed with laxatives and stronger Tylenol, is sent home. The medical staff has told us he will be fine for a few months more. Only I’m convinced otherwise.