Kicking Tomorrow

by Daniel Richler

  He loses track of time. He must have been there munching the same soggy mouthful for at least twenty minutes now, for suddenly the record is going scrrtcch scrrtcch. He gets up to change it, then returns to his Krunchies ’n’ Hash. Stares at the watercolour gallery. SHERT. PANTIES. RED SOX. Dirty sox, he thinks, smelling his own fiendish feet with his magnified sense of smell. He drags himself up the stairs. Sits on the landing, takes off his socks and leaves them on the hallway carpet. Kneels in the bathtub, staring at the water rushing from the faucet, the level rising fast. He imagines himself a mercenary knight in rusting spiky armour, trying to forge a brook on his way to Agincourt, the water past his knees. If his horse falls, he wonders, will he be able to unhitch his heavy skin in time, or will he drown with his helmet on?

  Scrrtcch scrrtcch. Chrissake. He hates the house so quiet. Only the sound of this roaring brook, and the record like crickets chirruping. He stamps down the stairs, leaving spludgy footsteps in the carpet behind him. In the den, intending merely to turn the record over, he’s distracted by his own reflection in the TV screen – as if in a foe’s dull breastplate. He unbuckles his Harley-Davidson belt and shakes it at the box, one of the first on the market with remote-control, which bursts into life. An evangelist is doing his hilarious sin and repentance number. Robbie jangles his belt again. And lo, if it isn’t Hello World!

  He’s just in time for the regular Environment in Vogue bit. This week there’s a sequence, edited to jaunty music, of women in the street balancing themselves with briefcases or shopping bags as they lift their heels to inspect fresh runs in their stockings; women in Washington and New Orleans are complaining about damage to their nylons, apparently in greatest numbers after wet and windy days, and this is now being linked to the high saturation of sulphuric acid in those cities’ atmospheres! Amazing, but true! After the commercial, Mom comes on, and there’s some kind of kerfuffle. The camera pulls out to show she is hugging a tree. In fact, she’s chained to the tree. The camera’s bobbing violently, jostled by a crowd. It’s still so close up it’s hard to tell how many people are there, but glimpses of white scaffolding in the background tell Robbie exactly where she is before she announces it. He sinks to the soggy carpet to watch.

  “Planet Earth is 4,600 million years old!” Mom has to shout over the roar of a chainsaw. “To get a clearer picture, imagine Earth is a forty-six-year-old person! We know nothing about her childhood, the details of her youth are sketchy, but we can deduce that she began to blossom at forty-two!” The camera lurches wildly. For a moment, there’s sky and a great spread of branches and leaves. The chainsaw bites into wood. It sounds like screaming now – the camera tilts down, and Mom’s talking a mile a minute. Robbie stares, picking cereal from his teeth. “Dinosaurs appeared a year ago when Earth was forty-five. Mammals grazed on her front lawn eight months ago. Man-like apes dropped around for cocktails the middle of last week! Last weekend everyone stayed indoors for the Ice Age!” Mom’s voice is shrill and distorted now; people are booing, and the tree begins to crack. As it falls she’s pulled up and over with it, her hair in her mouth, sawdust covering her clothes, her skin, and the black foam rubber of her microphone. Three pigs are pulling her feet first from under the chain. As they haul her off to a waiting cruiser she just about shrieks, “Modern man’s been in the neighbourhood for four hours! An hour ago he discovered agriculture! The industrial revolution began one minute ago! In those sixty seconds of biological time we have made a toxic garbage dump of –” The door of the cop car slams shut. The microphone cable goes taut as the cruiser moves off, then limp, but she rolls down the window and hollers, “Have yourselves a fine Labour Day weekend! See you next week same time same channel! I’m Abigail Bookbinder for Hello World!”

  Robbie shakes his belt again. The screen crackles with static and falls silent. Poor reporting, he thinks, she never mentioned noise pollution, like she always does to me. So what is that, anyway, the third time she’s been arrested? Second time in front of EPX, at least. She oughta get a real job.

  He slips his belt through the loops on his jeans, shaking his head. Decides to return to the Townships, help bail Mom out maybe. On the way, he might even look up Rosie at the club where she works, bring her to the cottage for the weekend. Farm out concept! He exits the house barefoot. Leaving the front door wide open behind him and the bathtub taps on full.

  5

  WEIRD HOW, JUST BECAUSE OF ONE LITTLE OVERSIGHT, YOUR entire life can be ruined. Robbie pondered this, later that same day, as he sat beside Rosie on the bus to the Townships. Short of joining the army, what was he going to do now? He sat paralyzed with guilt, ignoring Rosie’s exclamations.

  “Look! A Madame Patate stand. How LOVELY! Look, a brown brook!”

  His forehead was blistered with cool sweat; he was trying to convince himself that it wasn’t his fault the house in town had been suffering from dry rot. Why else would the piano have fallen through the floor so easily? One little inch of water wasn’t so heavy, surely.…

  Halfway to Rosie’s club, he’d realized he needed his shoes; barefoot downtown is one thing – different strokes for different folks, OK – but in the country it’s impractical; if he was going to give Rosie a tour of the weed-, leech-, and insect-infested countryside, he needed his sneakers. So he’d returned to the house.

  Major bummer.

  The green deep-pile carpet in the living room looked like the Sargasso, with a seaweed-slick continental shelf at the door of the study plunging ten thousand leagues to the depths of the basement den. The house was a dripping lagoon, plip, plip, smelling nastily damp. He had slapped up the wet stairs to turn off the bathtub taps, and sat down on the rim and wept. Bummer of the century! Now he pictured his records floating in the flooded dungeon like vinyl lily-pads, the pellets from the beanbag chairs clustering like white algae; his sketches, too, including some nude studies of Ivy, saturated, blotting, dissolving. And now with the thrum of the Voyageur bus in his ears he was wondering, should he blame it on burglars? Or not tell at all.

  When he and Rosie appeared on the terrace, Grandma Bethel put her hand to her mouth, the lenses of her horn-rimmed glasses magnifying the astonishment in her eyes. Close up for the kiss, her cheek was as soft as the pad in a lady’s compact.

  “I can’t believe he’s so tall. And look!” Robbie obliged her, bowing his head so she could reach and rummage. “You can’t tell these days if they’re boys or girls. Oy, what a kid!”

  “Hey,” Robbie said, seeing Barnabus in a white shirt, and Miriam in a dress. “Why so spiffy? What’s the occasion?”

  “Seder!” Barnabus said. “We almost didn’t have it, ’cause Dad said he was going to leave Mom in prison for the weekend to teach her a lesson.”

  “He was joking, stupid,” Miriam said.

  “Seder in September,” Grandma Bethel said. “God forgive me.”

  “It’s all my fault,” Mom said. “I was just too busy in the spring. That’s when I was arrested for the first time, remember – well, the first time this year. It was a bitch. The network president told me our ratings were slipping. So I said to him, how do you make dioxin in gulls’ eggs entertaining? Anyway, Mother, you know we do this for the kids. It’s better late than never.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about me,” Grandma Bethel said, “I understand perfectly. Do what you think is best for the children. You said it, I’m behind the times. Who am I to want everyone to be as old-fashioned as me?”

  Robbie dressed up. Awkward in his suit and tie, trying to pump the nervous guilty bubbles of air from his heart, he opened the fridge for a beer. He cracked one open and sat back to watch everybody working in the kitchen. In the dining room Dad pored over a brand new Haggadah, stiff scotch in hand, moving his lips as he read.

  “This is not the draft I’m –” he said. “ ‘Non-Sexist, Yet Traditional,’ hmm. Where do the eggs, aum, shouldn’t we crack them open first to see if they’re boys or girls?”

  “Don’t be gross,” Miriam said.
“You dip them in the horseradish.”

  “No, darling,” Mom said. “The eggs are dipped in the salt water when we tell the story of the Exodus.”

  “Oh my,” Grandma Bethel said, one eye uneasily on Rosie, who looked like a death-watch beetle. “I know you don’t need my help, but we’re not meant to eat any eggs at all. There should be just one, roasted, in the middle of the table. You look at it, as a symbol only.”

  Robbie, in his simmering gloom, thought, Don’t lose your shorts over it. The only good thing about tradition is that it’s in the past; the way old people talk about heritage you’d think they did a good job on the world before handing it down. We should just start again, a little nukular war wouldn’t hurt nobody in the long run. But just to be nice, to participate in family life a little – as Mom has demanded not infrequently – he asked, “A symbol of what?”

  “That’s a very intelligent question!” Mom said.

  “Yes! It’s a symbol of rebirth,” Grandma Bethel said, delighted, “and of the burnt offering that was made every day of the feast during the existence of the Temple in Jerusalem.”

  “Far out,” Robbie said flatly. “Thanks a bundle.”

  “Can I wear a hat this year, Daddy?” Miriam called out.

  “Why not,” Grandma Bethel sighed. “It’s a non-sexist Seder. I’m sure God, praised be She, won’t mind a bit.”

  Robbie poured a fresh beer into his mug. Still buoyed up by the acknowledged excellence of his question, he was planning a second. How the family would miss him when he was gone, and wish him back like the prodigal son.

  “Grandma,” he said with the applied earnestness of a student of the Talmud, thumb poised thoughtfully on the cleft of his chin, twirling a strand of hair between his fingers. “I’ve always wondered, and since I don’t speak Hebrew, what exactly ‘coleslaw’ means.”

  “I’m sorry,” Grandma Bethel said, looking at him with her huge eyes. “I don’t understand your joke.”

  Everyone turned to look at Robbie. The ice clinked in Dad’s drink. “What makes you think it’s–?”

  “Yiddish, then,” Robbie said, cross now. The old familiar goatishness growing on him now as palpably as horns and a beard.

  “No…”

  “Well, it’s always in kosher delis, right? All I thought was maybe it had a religious meaning or.…”

  Grandma Bethel’s eyebrows arched like Hallowe’en cats above the rims of her glasses. “Oy yoy,” she said. “No, no, my darling.”

  Suddenly, Miriam slapped her palms on the table top, and howled with laughter. She stood up and danced round the room with glee, wrestling Mendoza to the floor, woofing in his ear, “Hey, Mendoozle, what do you think coleslaw means in Yiddish? Robbie wants to know. And how about pastrami! That’s an ancient Hebrew word, if I’m not mistaken. And carnatzel and rye bread and dill pickle hahahahahahahahaha!” Falling on her back now, hugging Mendoza’s head as the beast scrabbled with his claws on the tiled floor. “And apple cobbler hahahahaha!”

  Mom said, “OK, OK, Miriam. Don’t be cruel.”

  “But he likes it when I wrestle.”

  “No, darling, don’t be cruel to Robbie.”

  Robbie bit his lip to hold back the tears of humiliation.

  “This clam chowder is the best,” Rosie said brightly. “My Daddy owns a diner where they make clam chowder, too. From FROZEN! Although I have to say it makes me queasy queasy queasy. I believe in mermaids, that’s why. I have a very old soul. Did Bob tell you I also have two webbed toes on each foot? If I slit them and then had a baby, I wonder, would she, too? I’m so happy I’m chowing here tonight, I often feel all forlorn. Pass the salt PLEASE and THANK YOU.”

  Everyone stopped to stare at her. Robbie, taking some small consolation that there was one person at the table more foolish than he, leaped up to gather the soup bowls, laid the cutlery for the next course, plonked fresh ice cubes into the water jug, topped up Dad’s glass, and helped Mom go baste the lamb.

  “You’re so charming together,” Mom whispered to him. “It’s lovely the way you just let her be herself. My father was virtually illiterate too, but my mother always made him feel ashamed.”

  And Miriam said, “She’s one scrambled egg, coming up.”

  “Barukh ata aum Adonai Elohaynu aum –” Dad managed. “Melekh ha’olam borei p’ri ha’adamah.” Then everyone read aloud in unison,

  “Blessed are You, Eternal One, Provider for the Universe, Who Brings forth fruits from the Earth.”

  “All right. You may drink the first cup of wine on the – aum – agenda.”

  “Hey, being Jewish is great!” Rosie said.

  “By the way, Robbie,” Mom said. “I can’t tell you how handsome you look in a tie. Will you pass the celery around now?”

  “K,” Robbie replied, “but only if you tell me what celery means in Hebrew,” and everybody laughed with relief.

  “Actually, darling,” Grandma Bethel said, “that’s another good question. The karpas is a symbol of springtime and the miracle of nature’s renewal. The salt water you dip it in represents the salty tears shed by the Israelites when they were in bondage.”

  “Yeah well, I can relate to that at least,” Robbie said, and everybody laughed again.

  “Barukh ata Adonai, Elohaynu Melekh ha’olam shehek-heyanu…”

  Robbie going under now, thinking, Bondage. Picturing the oppressed Israelites building the pyramids for Pharaoh, making bricks in the baking sun, sweating in those grotesque leather masks with zips across the mouth. And thinking, Whoa, where do some thoughts come from? Though he knows: he’s seen ads in Bosom Buddies magazine.

  “I have a question now,” Barnabus said. “Why aren’t girls circlecized?”

  “Oh, brother,” Miriam said, and Grandma Bethel put her hand to her cheek.

  “I have a better strategy for you, Barnabus – “ Dad said. “Page eighteen, The youngest person at the table, OK?”

  “But why aren’t girls circlecized?”

  “It’s very simple,” Mom said. “Girls don’t have penises.”

  “Oh, I see. Thanks,” Barnabus said. And frowned. “What’s that got to do with it?”

  “Excuse me,” Rosie said, “I believe in the Middle East they do circumcise teenage girls. Their clitorises! Picture the mutilation! Men’ll do any thing to put women down.…”

  “What’s a clitoris?” Barnabus said, and now Grandma Bethel put her face in both hands.

  Robbie still seeing that image hovering above the table. He tried to erase it by quickly closing his eyes and shaking his head. The image wavered. That’s all it is, he tells himself, a wavering image, a desert mirage. I’m not responsible. Someone else conjured it up. It’s the devil out there in the dunes, uncirclecized, naked, and cruelly sunburnt; he’s grinding hot sand between his palms and callused shaft and he’s in a rage because it’s getting under his fireskin. When he spills his sulphuric semen in the desert’s belly, lo: Satan’s babies are scorpions. Robbie Robbie stop. But the harder he tries to shake the picture, the harder it clings to his eyeballs.

  When he came to, Miriam was giving him a scornful look.

  “I think someone should take this book back,” Rosie said. “The pages are backwards.”

  “Page thirteen,” Dad said, and Robbie could see he was concealing a grin behind his Haggadah. “Robbie, please.”

  “K,” he replied sullenly. “The wicked child inquires in a mocking spirit: What mean YE by this service? Hey, wait a sec. How come I get this one every year? I notice it’s not wicked ‘son’ any more, so why not give it to Miriam?” No one looked up from their books. “K, OK. Saying YE and not WE, he/she excludes himself from the household of Israel. Therefore thou shouldst turn on him/her and say: ‘It is because of that which God did for ME when I came forth out of Egypt.’”

  “Now, children,” Dad said. “According to the Haggadah, maror means bitter herbs. We eat it as, as – as a year-end review, to recall how the Egyptians edged our ancestors out of
a lot of valuable property.”

  “I love horse relish,” Barnabus said. “I want lots.”

  “Radish, dumbhead,” Miriam said. “And you’re not supposed to like it. You’re supposed to think sad thoughts about your forefathers.”

  “Not to mention your foreskins I should think,” Rosie said.

  “Who are they?” Barnabus said.

  Who indeed, Robbie thought. Let’s face it, Jews are losers. He was thinking of the Hasidim up around St. Urbain Street, boys of his own age all in black with fur hats, even in summer, and side-curls like some dreary parody of party streamers. They weren’t taking part in the world. Not like Robbie was. When they grew up they’d make their wives shave their heads, and wouldn’t touch them when they were on their periods. What would they think of Ivy, the time she showed Robbie her biggest secret, well, one of them, anyway: how she daubed menstrual blood on her lips with her finger for lipstick.

  “OK, Barnabus,” Dad said. “Before we eat, go and open the screen door. That’s to invite Elijah the Prophet in for a drink of wine. See, here we place his executive cup: Later you’ll get up again to close it, and when you come back you can check the level to see if he – aum – skimmed his percentage.”

  “If Elijah was really real and was a ghost,” Barnabus said, “he could pass through the mosquito screen.”

  “Oy,” Grandma Bethel said, pinching his cheek hard, “you kids are so smart.”

  Dinner was served, and the talk turned to politics, which wasn’t Robbie’s thing, exactly. He’d tried to keep up by flipping through magazines, opening them just wide enough to see the colour and type riffle by, but never wide enough to read them. And listening to the parents talk was the same; as if the conversation were being riffled too. “PLO,” Dad was saying, “recognize aum right Israel exist conflict ideological political Jerusalem last year aum.”