I Don't Want to Know Anyone Too Well

by Norman Levine

  “Was Sarah here in the morning?”

  “Yes.”

  “How is Sarah?”

  “Hysterical. She looks at me and laughs. Then she cries.”

  We were silent. “Help me up.”

  I put my hand behind her back and eased her forward. I was surprised at the thickness of the spine, how much it protruded, and how light she was. She sat, with her head down, as if waiting for strength to return.

  “I can’t eat,” she said in despair.

  There were small cardboard containers on the table by her bed. “Would you like this?” It was prune juice. “This one?” Orange juice. “This?” A white-purple thing labelled Ensure. She answered by an almost imperceptible movement of her head. I put in a stubby straw, bent it near the top, and held the Ensure while she sipped it all. Then she reached, slowly, for the box of Kleenex on her bed and, carefully, dried the corners of her mouth.

  Again we were silent.

  “You will stay in the apartment?”

  “Yes.”

  With a finger she pointed to the dresser by the wall. I opened the top drawer and saw a large beige purse.

  “Take the keys . . . Have you got the keys?”

  I showed them to her.

  “In the fridge . . . help yourself. There is coffee. Eat whatever you like. You have my permission.”

  “I’ll water the plants.”

  “It would be better if I didn’t have them.”

  “How much water do you give?”

  “Not too much. Every two or three days.”

  “Anything you want me to bring?”

  “The small key is for the mailbox . . . See if any mail. In the dining room . . . in the drawer . . . are two cheques. Six hundred dollars and something. Take the bank-book . . . pay in my account.”

  I said I would.

  She wanted to be eased back to the way she had been.

  “Mrs. Tessier, across the hall, takes in the Citizen. Tell her you are in the apartment and you will have the paper. I have paid three months in advance . . . I don’t think I’ll go back there. I’ll go to some other place for a rest.”

  The large blue eyes. The grey hair, usually neatly combed up, was loose on the sides. She did not have her teeth in and her mouth looked small. I thought of her independent nature, the quick intelligence, and how she coped with things.

  “I’m all played out,” she said. “But I’m not tired of living.”

  She watched the blood and the water drip.

  “It’s working,” I assured her.

  But she continued to watch.

  “Another doctor came,” she said. “A young doctor. He asked me questions about my operations. He said I had some kind of anaemia that only Jews from East Europe have. Did you know about that?”

  “No.”

  “He said the mother passes it to her siblings. Does that mean daughters?”

  “Sons and daughters.”

  We were silent.

  “Do you want to see anyone?”

  She said no with her head.

  “If anyone phones. If anyone in the building asks. Say I have gone in the hospital for tests. Don’t say anything more. Just tests.”

  “Yes.”

  Again we were silent.

  “I’m going to close my eyes now,” she said.

  The closed eyes made the socket bones more visible. Faint sunlight was on her face and on the far wall. I knew nothing of her life in Poland except what she told me. “I liked a young man, a red-head. He was a scholar. My mother and father didn’t think he could make a living . . . At my wedding they threw money in pails . . . We had a large house and a servant. When I was coming to Canada she begged me to take her.” Then the difficult early years in Ottawa that she doesn’t want to be reminded of. And for the last twenty-one years on her own, in a senior citizens’ building, opposite a small park. I thought again of her generous nature, how independent she was, and how she came out with unexpected things.

  Her eyes opened.

  “I need a bed-pan,” she said in a low voice.

  A white flex, with a white button on it, was held to one of the pillows by a safety pin. I picked up the flex and pressed the button. A snapping sound and a slight electric shock.

  “When the nurse comes I’ll go,” I said. “And I’ll come tomorrow. Sarah said she would be here as well.”

  I went over and kissed her on the forehead. “With jaundice I don’t think you should kiss.”

  I opened the door of her apartment. In the half-light I could see the three small rooms. Brought the suitcase in, quickly drew the curtains, and opened the windows. All the clocks had stopped.

  The place looked as if it was left in a hurry. In the kitchen, dishes on the draining board were upside down. In the bedroom the large bed was not made. A dress was on the back of the rocking-chair. Two-tone beige and brown shoes were under the bed. The calendar, by the window, had not been changed in two months.

  She had kept everything neat and clean. Now a thin layer of dust was on the furniture and on the wooden floor. And on the leaves of the plants in the front room. The earth was dry. I watered the plants. Looked in the fridge. A few potatoes were sprouting. The pears were bruised and had started to go rotten. I couldn’t understand why Sarah hadn’t tidied up. There was some half-used cottage cheese, a bottle of apple juice, a tin of Ensure. The cupboard by the sink was packed with tins as if for a siege. I made a cup of coffee, brought it into the front room, sat by the table, and started to relax.

  I had not been here on my own before. How small and still. And full of light. The chesterfield set, from the house, was too large. She brightened the settee with crocheted covers—bands of red, yellow, green—that kept slipping down. And cushions with embroidered leaves of all kinds. The same was on the chair, by the side of the window, overlooking the street and the small park. (The Lombardy poplars are gone. But the gazebo is there. And kids throwing a ball around.) On the other side of the window, against the wall, a large black and white television was on the floor. No longer working. Its use, to support the plants on its top. Beside it: the glass-enclosed wooden cabinet with her best dishes, best cups, saucers, the Chinese plate that goes back to my childhood, the Bernard Leach mugs and bowl that I brought back on visits from St. Ives. On top of the cabinet a family tree. Small, round, black and white photographs in metal frames hung from metal branches. Father and Mother, in the park by the river, some fifty years ago. Sarah and I . . . when we were around ten and eight . . . the people we married . . . our children . . . with their husbands their children . . .

  The room’s centrepiece was the nickel-plated samovar on the long wooden dresser, against the far wall, with the mirror above it. Two silver candlesticks were on either side. A brass pestle and mortar. A silver tray. And more plants, lots of them, just leaves in various shapes and sizes.

  Above the settee, two small paintings of people at the Wailing Wall. Beside it a framed diploma-looking paper with a red seal at the bottom.

  First Distinguished Service Award

  Presented to

  The Dedicated Men and Women

  Past and Present Of

  The Ottawa Burial Society

  “What do you do?”

  “Sew shrouds.”

  I had said nothing.

  “It’s an honour,” she’d said indignantly. “Not everyone gets asked.”

  On the wall, a watercolour of St. Ives (signed Holland). It was done from the Malakoff, overlooking the harbour, before TV aerials were on the cottages. I grew up, in Ottawa, with this watercolour. And in all those years we didn’t know what it was. In 1949 I left for England. Five years later I made my first visit back. Paid the taxi, walked into the house, kissed them, and saw the watercolour.

  “That is where I live in England.”

  No react
ion from either of them.

  The phone rang.

  “Hello.”

  “Annie?”

  “No, it’s her son.”

  “Where’s your mother?”

  “In hospital.”

  “Not again. What is it this time?”

  “They don’t know. She has gone in for tests.”

  The telephone was loud. I had to hold it away.

  “Who shall I say phoned?”

  “Tell her that Phyllis Steinhoff called. We belong to the Golden Age Club. We go and play bingo together.”

  “I’ll tell her.”

  Silence.

  “Your mother is a lovely woman. She is intelligent. And she is nice.”

  I went to the door, directly opposite in the hall, and knocked. Mrs. Tessier, small, gentle, dumpy, with brown eyes and glasses, opened the door. She always looked cheerful.

  “Hello, Mrs. Tessier. I came because my mother is in hospital.”

  “How is your mother?”

  “Not well.”

  “What is wrong?”

  “They don’t know. She is in for tests.”

  “You want the paper?”

  “Yes.”

  She disappeared.

  “You want the others?”

  “No, just today’s.”

  “How long you here?”

  “Two or three days.”

  “I hope your mother comes home soon.”

  I decided to change the bed linen. The linen cupboard was packed tight with neatly folded sheets, pillowcases, and towels. I was taking out a couple of pillowcases when I saw a used brown envelope. It was unsealed. Inside were dollar bills. Twenties, tens, fives, twos and ones. I counted. It came to a hundred and eighty dollars. When I took out the sheets I saw more used brown envelopes, unsealed, also with money. I counted all the money. It came to $2,883. I put my hand between other sheets, pillowcases, towels. No more envelopes but a small battered cardboard box held together by red elastic bands. Inside, large silver coins that I remembered as a child. A double eagle on one side, two heads on the other. She had brought them over with the samovar, the candlesticks, the pestle and mortar, the silver tray.

  It was humid and hot. I had a bath. Then phoned Sarah. She was staying with her daughter Selina and her family on the outskirts. I asked Sarah if she knew about the money.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know how much there is?”

  “No.”

  “Two thousand eight hundred and eighty-three dollars.”

  “It’s for her funeral. She told me what to do when she dies. I have to call Pettigorsky from the burial society right away. She wants no autopsy. The coffin must be the Jewish way. No nails. Shiva she wants private. At her place. Only the family. And she wants me to get someone to say Kaddish for her. I’ll pay him from that money.”

  “She hasn’t mentioned any of this to me.”

  “When I’m with her that’s all she talks about.”

  Next day I walked to the bank on Rideau near the market and paid the government cheques into her account. Then to the Rideau Centre, got on a bus to the hospital. Sarah was sitting in a leather chair by the bed. Mother was asleep. She was having another blood transfusion. The water was dripping as well. Sarah saw me. “Hi,” she said and smiled. We both walked quietly over and kissed.

  “How is she?”

  “Most of the time she sleeps.”

  “Has the doctor been?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said, ‘“We are not going to let your mother die.’”

  We were silent.

  “She doesn’t have cancer,” Sarah said.

  Another silence.

  “Why didn’t she keep the money in the bank?”

  Mother opened her eyes.

  “I couldn’t put the money in the bank,” she said slowly. “If I did I would have to pay more rent.”

  I sat her up. Got some juice and a straw. She didn’t have the strength to hold it. When she finished and wiped her lips she said, “It is not necessary to put this in a story.”

  “I only write about people I like.”

  She wasn’t convinced.

  “Phyllis Steinhoff phoned,” I said.

  “You didn’t tell her anything.”

  “That you were having tests.”

  Silence.

  “And Dinka called,” I said.

  “Is she in Ottawa?”

  “Yes, for the weekend. Do you want to see her?”

  “No,” she said quietly.

  We were silent again.

  “How old is Dinka?”

  “She is four years older than me and she runs around like a girl.”

  “Did she marry again?”

  “She did. But she asked him to leave.”

  Another silence.

  “In your letter-box,” I said, “you had a notice saying that men are coming next week to clean your windows.”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t want anyone to go in there. It’s dirty. Write on a piece of paper Mrs. Miller doesn’t want her windows washed. Then stick the paper, with tape, on the outside of the door. You get the tape in the dresser of the living room.”

  Another silence.

  She wanted to be eased back, propped up by the pillows. I suggested to Sarah that as I’m here she might like a break and have coffee in the cafeteria.

  When Sarah left I told Mother what was in the news. “Waldheim was elected President of Austria.” She looked surprised. “The Blue Jays are not doing so good. It’s their pitching.” I showed her photographs of St. Ives that I took on my last visit. “Do you remember that summer . . . the two weeks you were there?”

  “It was the best holiday I had.”

  “You used to walk along the beach and pick the small pink shells at the tideline.”

  “I still have them.”

  We were silent.

  “I’m going to close my eyes now,” she said.

  When Sarah came we went out in the corridor.

  “What else did the doctor say?”

  “That she still has jaundice. Why, they don’t know. He said they were thinking of doing an operation to find out. She is all for it. ‘“I don’t want to go on like this,’“ she said. ‘“If they can do anything—let them do it.’” But they think she is a poor risk and wouldn’t survive. She’s not eating.”

  A nurse came and woke her to take a sample of blood. I told Sarah I would go to the waiting room at the end of the corridor.

  On the way I saw a young doctor.

  “They took a piece of her liver,” I said.

  “When was that?”

  “On Friday. How long will it take?”

  “The pathologists are in a class by themselves. They take their time.”

  “I guess we’ll just have to wait.”

  “I don’t think whatever they find will make much difference.”

  In a room with the door open I saw a nurse by the bed of a patient. A tube was being shoved down her throat.

  “Let me die.”

  “Swallow it, dear, as if it is a piece of bread.”

  “Let me die.”

  “I’m not allowed to. Now swallow it for me, dear, as if it is a piece of bread.”

  I returned to my mother’s room.

  “Selina is coming in a half-hour,” Sarah said, “to pick me up for supper. She’s invited you as well.”

  “You’ll go,” Mother said.

  She knew I didn’t want to.

  Whenever I arrived from Toronto to see her, and after we had eaten and had a talk, she would say, “Call up Sarah. Call up Selina.”

  I said nothing.

  “Do it for me.”

 
; Selina had been in Toronto for two days at a real-estate conference. (She is high up in the company.) And was coming from the airport to the hospital. We were walking from the hospital to Selina’s car when Selina stopped.

  “She’s going to die.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  Selina was Sarah’s only child. A tall pale woman with blond hair, a small face, a nice smile, blue eyes. She looked pretty but anaemic. And there was a toughness about her. The few times I did go to their house she inevitably forced a confrontation.

  She had tried teaching, advertising. But she hadn’t found what she was good at until she went into real estate. She was married to George (he was fourteen years older), who smoked a pipe, worked in the civil service, and spoke in a slow, deep voice. They lived in a large new house, in a windswept field, on a housing estate near a lake. The nearest place, Rockliffe, was some ten miles away. Their son, Scott, had his mother’s eyes and complexion. But looked oddly serious. “He’s very clever,” my mother told me. Then, lowering her voice as if she was going to tell me something she shouldn’t, “He’s a genius.” Scott’s favourite reading was stocks and shares. But at twelve he wasn’t allowed to play the market. I once asked him if he played sports. “Football,” he said.

  “What position?”

  “Centre forward—I’m very good.”

  I don’t remember the meal. It was afterwards—when we went into the large sitting room with the Eskimo carvings, the Indian paintings—that Selina started.

  “This is the first time for you. All the other years you weren’t here. We had to take her to the hospital. See her through the operations. While you were away in England.”

  “You’re lucky,” I said. “You know her in a way that I don’t.”

  An awkward silence.

  “Why did you go away?” Selina said.

  “I had to.”

  “You didn’t have to. You could have stayed and got a job in the government.”

  “I had to leave,” I said. “The family doctor told me to get away.”

  “Why would he say a thing like that?”

  “Because of her,” I said. “He told me to get as far away from home as possible. She was too strong. She dominated the rest of the family. Because she could do things well she wouldn’t let anyone else do anything. I saw what she did to Father. And he was devoted to her. She was trying to do the same to me.” I stopped from saying, and look what she did to Sarah.