“They call me Ratzo,” he said sadly to me one evening, just as they were leaving for the night, “and they push me. I don’t push back ’cause they’re bigger.”
“Bad little bastards,” I muttered. “Don’t worry, you’ll have the last laugh. You’ll be a famous doctor, and they’ll be driving hack or washing dishes like Alistair.”
Zoly smiled wanly, not fully taking in the possibilities. “I just want to buy a house for Mama, a big stone one, with a garden out front with flowers.”
“And I’m sure you will,” I said, blinking hard and trying to sound convincing.
“He does all excellent but the English,” complained Magda. “He hate it, but it important for grade average.”
“How do you like Hamlet?” I asked, seeing his paperback textbook on the table one slow, stormy evening.
“I hate it. He can’t make up his mind to kill his uncle for murdering his father. Such a jerk. Just sitting around making speeches about whether he’ll do it or kill himself instead.”
“Some critics say he was secretively in love with his mother, so his uncle only did what he’d been wanting to do, so it made it difficult for Hamlet to kill him.”
“Wow,” he said, “that’s really awesome—and awful. I love my Mom, but not in that way.”
“I could,” I said, “write your Grade 12 term paper on Hamlet. I sucked at math, but I used to do really well in Shakespeare. I was supposed to be ‘highly original,’ whatever that means.” It was a safe offer, news of the notorious Sonja Danychuk had hardly reached Jarvis Collegiate.
“That would be truly amazing, Sonja, but I can’t let you do that.”
“Why not?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“Because it wouldn’t be my work, it would be yours. And you can’t pass something so valuable onto someone else.”
I looked away and heard Ma say, “But, Sonja, they make your work like their own. You think that good?”
I was shamed by Ma, who I hadn’t listened to, and now by a bullied high school student from Jarvis Collegiate whose sense of morality was so much superior to mine. It had more of an impact on me than anything Professor Latham said, or all the articles in the Toronto Star, or the letter from Imperial Oil.
I pushed aside his yellow bangs and looked into his solemn green eyes shining behind the thick glasses.
“You’re a wonderful boy, Zoly,” I whispered, “and ignore those other little creeps. They couldn’t stand me in high school either, they thought I was a fat smartass fart.”
We laughed together about that and many other things. We really liked each other. He was like the little brother I wished I’d had.
“You’re a lousy waitress, the world’s worst,” sputtered Peter after he’d watched me clean up the spill I’d made pouring coffee, which had followed on my tipping over one of his vodka martini masterpieces the night before. “Not of the ilk, not one iota of competency, clumsy as a cow. Find something else, girl, for the love of Jesus.”
I gave a sigh of resignation. He was right. I was clumsy and slow, unable to mimic Magda’s brisk efficiency. And I found it difficult to be sunny and ingratiating, taking the diners’ criticisms of the food, which were often warranted, much too personally.
“What crawled up her ass and died?” asked a swollen fellow to Magda. He had an East Coast accent and bulged from a turtleneck sweater. He’d made some crack about my possible bra size and the possibility of my dropping one boob into his glass of draft, and instead of the expected smile, I’d frozen him with a glare.
“She a college student, real clever, they have different sense of humour,” said Magda. “I serve you. My boobs no laughing matter.”
Before I knew it, they were laughing together. All so demeaning, I thought, but I liked Magda and I knew she meant well, trying to be a buffer between me and some of Matheson’s raw-mouthed customers.
“I can’t eat this gah-bage,” drawled a well-dressed lady with a New England accent after tasting Edmund’s soup. She was, I thought, probably here visiting one of her kids at university.
“Can I offer a substitute?” I asked, thinking of the joy of pouring it over her obviously freshly done hair, although Edmund’s soups were on a downward trend.
“Anything would be an improvement,” she sighed.
“Customer says she can’t eat your garbage soup and wants a substitute,” I told Edmund, knowing it would incite him into an entertaining outburst.
“Open a tin of cream of mushroom, luv, and add a cup of coffee cream, and stir the hell out of it, and we’ll give her a bowl of rare homemade soup right from the can. But not before I clear my throat and christen it with a big fat gob of snot.”
“I can’t let you do that, Edmund,” I hissed, clearly alarmed although enjoying the prospect.
But Edmund had just started. “Do you know what Luther Olmstead used to do at Jake’s Steakhouse when they’d send back their steak? He’d whip out his wanger and piddle all over it before he’d put it back on the grill. Then they’d ooh and aah about how much better it tasted and ask what he’d done to it. Nothing like a stream of piss to improve a tenderloin. These people aren’t gourmets, luv, or they wouldn’t be coming here.”
I would, I decided, never return food when eating out.
A little later, the soup gourmet cooed, “Tell the chef he really excelled with the cream of mushroom. I’d love the recipe if he’d part with it.”
“I’ll tell him you enjoyed it,” I said, “and you won’t be charged for the substitution.”
“Aren’t you a darling,” she replied, and I looked forward to an extra tip, hopefully in American dollars.
I kept my tips in a large glass jar under my bed in the residence but refused to count them. It was all degrading enough. I was living my worst nightmare, but at least I had Magda and Zoly as friends, and Edmund and Peter for comic relief.
It was week three and Zoly had been moping all week, refusing his dinners and coughing a lot. His condition was thought to be typical of a winter cold, or a flu bug, prevalent at this time of year. He did not turn up on Wednesday afternoon at four o’clock as usual.
“Where’s Zoly?” I asked Magda.
“Home. He say he feel sick this morning, and his head was hot. Would you do a big favour? Bring him over a bowl of Edmund’s soup, it not bad today and a plate of the lunch special. I pay for the cab, and, no offence, I be missed more than you if I leave.”
“Oh, you really know how to hurt a girl,” I mewed. “Are you saying you’re a better waitress than me?”
A smiling Magda didn’t even answer.
I OPENED THE door of one of the few brick duplexes on Huron Street that had escaped gentrification and headed downstairs to the basement, as Magda had instructed. The house was cold and airless, with the stifling stench of damp carpet and stale urine. I opened the door with number 8 on front with the second key. The room had two narrow beds, a small fridge, a hot plate, a rickety wooden table, and no television. Through an open door I glimpsed a sink and toilet. There were no windows, and the air was as putrid as that of the rest of the house. The walls, covered by what had originally been cream paint, were stained, moist, and peeling.
Zoly was lying on one of the narrow beds and seemed to be gasping for air. He coughed from what sounded like a phlegm-packed chest, and I noticed that the mucous-soaked toilet paper lying by his pillow was an ugly dark green. I went over and pushed back his bangs with my hand. His forehead was a furnace.
“Zoly,” I murmured, “You’re very sick. I’m taking you to Emergency at Sick Kids.”
“What will Mama say?”
“She’ll be fine with it.”
There was actually a phone in the room and I dialled Matheson’s. Greenley answered and I asked for Magda.
“No Magda for you—we’ve a filled-up dining room and one waitress. Nice of you to sneak off with no notice to anyone.”
“Tell her Zoly’s very sick and I’m taking him to Sick Kids.”
&nb
sp; Greenley banged up the receiver. I knew I should have told her I was leaving, but I knew she would see it as yet another opportunity for me to dodge work, like the lazy new Canadian I was.
I ordered a taxi and helped Zoly get dressed in his threadbare jeans, down jacket, and wool cap, noticing again his thinness. As we drove down University, I reached for his slight hand and it burned in mine. My heart thudded with concern. Was this, I asked myself, what it was like to be a parent? And why was Magda living with Zoly in an airless mildewed dump in a basement tenement on Huron Street?
He was admitted, diagnosed with double pneumonia after an X-ray, and placed in the intensive care ward on a course of antibiotics.
“You won’t leave me?”
“No, I won’t leave you.”
Three weeks, and I was closer to him than I’d ever felt to anyone, except perhaps Miss Steinbrink, Ma, and Carl.
The hours ticked by, he drowsed, and when he woke up I gave him sips of juice through a straw. A doctor came and administered a shot of penicillin to the cheek of his small white bum, the sight of which made me want to cry. He should be bigger, I thought, my mind clouded with concern.
It was nine-thirty when Magda finally arrived.
“The bitch waited until nine to tell me,” she hissed. “She could have closed, said it was a staff emergency.”
I shook my head and didn’t answer. I hated Greenley, and I knew Magda was frantic with concern and guilt.
Later, while Zoly slept, we sat close together in the cafeteria.
“Why,” I blurted out, “are you living in a mould-ridden dump like that? No wonder Zoly got sick. I lived in the worst apartment in Davenport, but it’s a palace compared to yours.”
“It only four hundred dollars a month,” she stammered and then bit her lower lip and I saw the chipped tooth.
“Four hundred too much.”
We both sat silent.
“You could have lost him. That beautiful bright little guy.”
But I didn’t continue as she’d burst into tears.
“Magda,” I said, my love for Zoly making me bold, “you can’t go back there. Zoly can’t go to medical school if he’s dead. You have to get a decent apartment. How much do you have in the bank? I’d offer to share one, but I’m broke.”
She pulled a tattered tissue from her purse and blew her nose loudly before answering and again bit her lower lip. I smelled her breath. It was as brown and as tired as her filmed eyes.
“Twenty-five thousand,” she whispered, “for university and medical school. It was all for Zoly.”
I was so angry I was speechless, but it didn’t last. She meant so well.
“Then you have more than enough for a one-bedroom, that’s what I share with Ma, and you can buy oranges and oatmeal for Zoly for breakfast. You can even get him to a barber: looking like Little Lord Fauntleroy doesn’t help the bullying.”
For the first time a smile flickered across her face.
“Oh Sonja,” she said, “you so funny.”
She sounded like Ma.
“And tell Greenley you want more than seven dollars an hour; you want at least ten. You carry that damn restaurant, but for you she’d be stuck with the waitress of the year, like me.”
She leaned over and took my hand in hers. I felt its harshness, and I saw her arm muscles move beneath her long-sleeved black T-shirt.
“You save him, Sonja, you know that. I do what you say.”
She would stay with Zoly for the night, and I would cover for her the next morning.
“Tell Greenley if she fire you, I leave,” were her parting words.
THE SNOW HAD started, small silvery scales swimming around the street lights, floating down and disappearing on my black duffle and on the pavement. It was eleven, so the traffic was now light. I trudged toward the residence, breathing in the grey cool, thinking of Zoly, with his phlegm-packed lungs, soon to be vacuumed out by the dedicated efforts of the staff at Sick Kids. And then I thought of my future. It had been three weeks and in another week the administration would give its verdict on my expulsion. It had to be unanimous, but there was no doubt as to the result. I would be expelled. There had been too much publicity to ignore. And what if there was a holdout? With my scholarship gone, I couldn’t continue anyway. And Greenley was just waiting to fire me from Matheson’s, notwithstanding Magda’s support.
I entered the residence, signed in, and went to my room. I reached under my bed, pulled out my tip jar, and poured its contents on the bed. I counted every quarter, loonie, toonie, and crumpled bill. One hundred and forty-three dollars and sixty-three cents, for three weeks of being the worst waitress in Toronto, just slightly more than seven hours of payment for tutoring Carl Helbig.
Tomorrow, I would get up at seven and trudge to Matheson’s. There I’d attempt to paste a plastic smile on my tired face as I served the early morning crowd over-easy fried or scrambled eggs with sausages or bacon, and with what had been concentrated fresh frozen orange juice, now well diluted, together with white toast. And keep topping up cups of Timmy’s Java to those as comatose as myself, but without the plastic smile and only the occasional muttered “thanks.”
But Zoly would get better, and that made my heart sing.
10
BERTIE AND PRISCILLA
IT WAS NEARING THE END of my fourth week at Matheson’s and my waitressing had improved, possibly because of Magda’s constant mentoring. She feared my dismissal as Greenley had not yet forgiven me for my unauthorized departure on Zoly’s sick day.
It was the third week of February, and there was no promise of spring. The days were short, and frozen rain poured, or fat flakes of snow drifted, from the low-hanging mottled grey skies. Matheson’s was doing badly, with Edmund’s luncheon specials failing to lure the usual luncheon crowd. He had been attempting both Thai and Italian, but his Thai was tasteless and his pasta a soggy mess, far from the desired al dente. And there were restaurants serving much better Thai and Italian within blocks.
“Try omelettes,” I advised, “you can’t do much harm with an egg.”
“Cheeky young tart,” he muttered. “Such nerve from someone who can’t fill a glass of water without flooding the table.”
I merely smiled. We were friends, as I was with Peter, who offered me a shot every night at nine, which I reluctantly refused, thinking of Ma’s warning. Even Alistair, the dishwasher, called me “lass” and offered me a swig of Scotch from his mickey, hidden in his filthy apron, which was easier to turn down. We were all united in our hatred of Greenley. Edmund spoke of her under his breath as a yet-to-be-exposed murderess, by cyanide, of her first and only husband. This information had been relayed to him by a “perfectly reliable source,” whose identity he had sworn not to divulge.
“But why?” I finally asked.
“He had a BA,” he rasped, which left me more perplexed than ever.
Then, on a Tuesday evening, our slowest night, a couple appeared, oozing drab respectability. Both wore head coverings: the man, large leather Russian-style headwear, with ear flaps tied to the top; the woman, a snug navy cloche; and their bulky overcoats made them look as if they were heading for an arctic expedition. Greenley hung up the man’s coat and hat and the woman’s coat, but the woman wished to keep wearing her cloche. She seated them directly by the front window to show that not only was the empty restaurant being patronized, but its patrons were respectable and not dishevelled louts from questionable—possibly immigrant—backgrounds.
“They’re all yours, Sonja,” she said, her voice tinged with regret that she had let Magda, who was moving into an apartment in North Toronto, leave. I hardly inspired confidence.
I approached the table, menu in hand. The woman looked English, if there is such a thing. The fitted cloche covered all but some escaped tufts of mud-brown hair and framed a face with pale eyes, very close together, a long nose, and a narrow chin: a face that bore a close, almost startling, resemblance to a sheep. When she smiled, she exposed an
uneven overbite, not because, I felt sure, her family could not afford the services of an orthodontist, but because an emphasis on such things was thought to be superficial—even American.
Sitting across from her was a familiar stooped figure, scrutinizing the menu with gold-rimmed glasses worn low on his nose. I inwardly gasped. It was my nemesis, the head of the English Department of the University of Toronto: Professor Albert Latham.
It was suck-up time.
“Would you like a cocktail?” I inquired. “Our bartender, Peter, makes an outstanding Manhattan.”
Peter was at the moment barely able to stand, weaving behind the small wooden corner bar, but he could always make a drink: years of habit, I presumed, like being able to always ride a bicycle once you’d learned.
“How perfectly lovely,” trilled the woman in the most British upper-class accent. “It’s a Manhattan night, don’t you agree, Bertie? One needs strong drink to propel one through Canada’s dastardly winters.”
But “Bertie” was otherwise occupied, looking at me.
“Is that you, Sonja?” he asked.
“It is,” I answered, wondering if my month of angst and turmoil had drastically changed my appearance.
“Sonja,” he explained carefully to the woman who I presumed was his wife, “was one of my more promising students, quite a talent for interpreting Shakespeare.”
“Delve into something else, Sonja,” said the woman, smiling away, and I noticed a ridge of misplaced lipstick smudged across her uneven top teeth. “Bertie’s trilogy has the final say on The Bard, which he reminds me of on a daily basis. You can’t imagine how vain it’s made him, he can hardly get his head in the door.” She threw her head back and gave an open-mouthed bleat of laughter.
“I’m Priscilla Myers-Lewis, by the way,” she said, extending a slim, cool hand. “I kept my name. It’s more significant than Latham back home.”
“Since our arrival, Priss has managed to acquire the American tendency to depreciate others, quite openly, unfortunately,” commented Professor Latham dryly. “She specializes in denigration clothed in humour.”
Sonja & Carl Page 10