Fear grips her heart as she waits for the connection to go through. Not that she doesn’t want to talk to her parents. She does, she’s been longing to hear them again—her mother’s passionate exclamations, her father’s dry cough and reserved questions about her health. She aches for the reassuring familiarity. But what to tell them? She hasn’t been able to string a story together.
I want to go home.
But why? What happened?
I have no money, nowhere to live.
But how can that be?
No matter what explanation she concocts, she suspects the hurricane blast of parental concern will be more than she can bear. She hopes that somehow, through the course of the conversation, the right words will come.
The phone’s metallic cry, reverberating through the cubicle, runs through her like a jolt of electricity. She picks up the receiver. Through the hiss and crackle, she hears her mother.
“Toni? Is that you? Gott sei dank! Thank God, thank God, you called at last. I’ve been trying to reach you for days, but no one could tell me where you were. You disappeared off the face of the earth. I’ve been going crazy.”
“Mama, it’s okay,” Toni says, her voice shaking. “I’m all right, everything’s all right.”
“Oh, my poor child, my poor child.”
“Don’t worry, Mama. Calm down.”
An agonized sob vibrates in Toni’s ear. Toni’s neck prickles at an uncanny thought. Her mother’s sixth sense! Does she know? Has she had visions of her daughter at Hotel Vienna? Impossible! Yet a sick foreboding invades Toni’s gut. Something’s going on.
“Mama?”
“Oh, Toni, Toni.”
The voice fades.
“What is it, Mama?”
Dead air. Toni wonders if the connection has been suddenly interrupted. Then her mother again, loud and clear, though trembling.
“Your father, Toni. Something terrible has happened.”
Who is this hysterical, blubbering creature at the other end of the line? She’s not the mother Toni has known all her life. Why doesn’t her father take the receiver out of her hand? Why doesn’t he do something to bring her back to normal?
Part IV
Loulou’s
chapter 20
Two strange figures await her amid the throng on the other side of the glass partition in the arrivals hall of Dorval Airport. A man’s hand shoots up in a wave. Toni pushes forward through the automatic doors, through the gauntlet of greeters.
“Mein kind!”
A small, frail body collapses against her, arms cling, a head of permed hair shakes beneath Toni’s chin, tears soak through her shirt. Toni awkwardly pats the heaving shoulders. The noisy crying seems to last forever. People are forced to step around the bottleneck created by the long, gangly girl and the little bawling woman. To Toni’s relief, this woman, this mother transformed into a sobbing alien, finally lets go to fish for a Kleenex in her purse. She seems small and crumpled. The man who stands beside her, a burly, sweaty-faced fellow in a dark suit, steps forward, half smiling, half grimacing. His moist brown eyes shine with sympathy.
“I am your Uncle Franz, Francesco they call me in Italy. I wish I could have met my dear niece in better circumstances.” He speaks a carefully enunciated English. The accent is similar to that of her parents. He encloses Toni’s hand in his two big paws and squeezes so hard it almost hurts. “Be strong,” he says hoarsely. “Your mother needs you now.”
Her mother has covered her wet eyes with a pair of white-rimmed sunglasses too big for her face and a bad match for her smart black dress. The choice of accessory is so unlike what she would naturally wear that Toni wonders if she picked up someone else’s sunglasses by mistake. Now the drawn face with the large dark shades tilts up at her, looking almost comical, like something out of Mad Magazine.
“I’m afraid we have to rush, dear. Franz will take your suitcase and get the car. I brought you some clothes. From Mrs Shmelzer. She picked out what she thought suitable from her racks. Very kind. Hopefully they will fit. You’re thinner than I remember, but the tan is nice. We’ll both go together to the ladies room. Come!”
With each sentence Lisa seems to recover her composure a bit more so that the last word, though a croak, sounds almost like her old self. She hooks her arm in Toni’s and, half-leaning on her daughter, half pulling, leads her down the hall toward the washroom. Behind the locked door of the cubicle Toni unpacks a large paper bag with tissue-wrapped parcels: a black wool jacket and skirt, a satiny gold blouse, pantyhose. The shoes are in a separate plastic bag. Dress flats with a satin bow. Vaguely she remembers them and the last time she wore them, at her high-school graduation. Her mother must have dug the shoes out from the back of Toni’s closet.
“How am I supposed to wear this outfit?” she complains. “It’s gotta be ninety degrees outside.”
Lisa is silent on the other side of the partition.
“Mama, are you still here?”
A loud snuffle.
“It’s the best we could do,” her mother says shakily. “The fall fashions are in. No summer things left. You don’t have to wear them for long. But hurry, please. Ach, Ach! We’re late.”
Standing barefoot on the cool bathroom tiles, Toni wrestles with the pantyhose, tight as tourniquets, while the crotch hangs down to mid-thigh. Nothing else fits well either, the skirt too loose, the jacket too short. The floor heaves up and down with the motion of the plane still lodged in her body. Her mother paces outside the cubicle. Click, click, click, go her high-heeled shoes. Toni remembers being a child in a department store dressing room, forced to try on some hateful new outfit, and not wanting to show herself, as she doesn’t want to now. She just longs to slump down onto the toilet seat, give in to the wave of fatigue. But she can’t, of course. The funeral has been delayed as long as possible. When she does emerge, her mother gives her only one swift distracted glance and Toni is relieved that, for once, her awkward appearance is beside the point. Together they rush to the waiting car.
“I told them you would come,” Lisa says over and over as they drive down Decarie Boulevard to Paperman’s Funeral Chapel. “They made noises that the burial should go ahead without you. I absolutely refused. What is the difference, a day this way or that?”
By “they” she means the rabbi, the Jewish burial society, the synagogue president.
“It is the Jewish law,” Uncle Franz sighs as he steers with one limp hand guiding the wheel. His eyes gaze wearily at the busy road in front of them. He drives the Goldblatt family car much faster than Toni’s father ever did, with a casual nonchalance, leaping from lane to lane. It occurs to Toni they might end up an interesting headline for tomorrow’s newspaper: Fatal Crash on Way to Funeral. Lisa echoes her thoughts.
“This isn’t Rome, Franzel. Slow down before you kill us.”
He smiles sheepishly and eases up on the gas pedal after passing a large, rattling truck.
“Burial must, if possible, occur within seventy-two hours,” Franz continues. “Something to do with release of the soul.”
“His soul will be happy to see Toni.”
Her mother chokes on a sob and can’t continue. She turns around in the front passenger seat and her gaze glues itself onto Toni’s in a relentless, pleading way. Toni coughs hard into her fist so she doesn’t have to keep looking into her mother’s red-rimmed eyes. Just before they arrive at Paperman’s, her mother dons a small black hat with a half veil. Toni is glad because the bottom part of her mother’s face doesn’t look as bad as the top part. The bottom half, with the freshly lipsticked mouth, almost seems normal.
She is amazed at the crowd in the funeral chapel, turns cautiously around in her front row seat. A full house. Who are all these men in suits and skullcaps, women in sober, elegant dresses with matching accessories? Faces she doesn’t recognize. What do any of them have to do with her father? He never had friends. He was an intensely private man. He dealt with clients, exchanged pleasantries with neighbou
rs, patted children and dogs, but that was it. Never did he go to anyone else’s funeral. Yet here are all these proper-looking people, speaking in hushed tones, looking as if they know what to do and how to rise to this grand occasion: death.
The rabbi and the cantor arrive at the podium. The coffin is rolled in and the entire assembly stands in one great rustling motion. When everyone sits down again, the cantor begins to sing. He’s a slight, pasty-faced young man with a trim black beard, a black hat, and a surprisingly powerful set of lungs. He pours out a mournful lament, the high tenor dripping emotion, burlesque in its grief. She wishes he would stop. Her father, were he here, would cringe too. “Weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth,” he would mutter. Beside her, Lisa quietly sniffles with her fist pressed against her mouth. Toni searches for some echo of feeling inside herself. Nothing. Silence.
The rabbi speaks of a good man, a family man, hard-working and successful, though he came to this country without a penny. A man who witnessed the disaster that befell our people in Europe, the greatest iniquity of modern times. And yet this man remained steadfast in his commitment to life and Jewish values. He was devoted to learning and books, amassed a large library. The rabbi fails to mention that not a single religious text graces her father’s shelves. Gazing dramatically left and right, the rabbi continues in this vein, as if he wants to convince everyone, or perhaps just himself, of the logic of his statements.
After the service, Toni, her mother, and Uncle Franz climb into the back seat of the limousine that follows the hearse. There’s just the three of them and the driver and all that empty space in between. They sit in silence, her mother pressed close. Toni wonders that her mother could find comfort in this robot of a daughter sitting rigid beside her. Raindrops zigzag across the limo’s smoked glass windows. The rain seems to pull the heat up from the ground and the oxygen out of the air. A smell of steamy asphalt filters into the vehicle as they inch along. A funereal pace. For the first time, Toni understands what that means.
And now they stand in front of a neat, rectangular hole in the ground with a mound of sodden earth beside it and the coffin suspended on straps above. Black umbrellas have mushroomed all around. The rabbi chants a few more prayers. A worm wriggles near Toni’s foot. The coffin is lowered by two workmen cranking a pulley. The rabbi throws in a shovelful of earth that hits the wood with a dark thud. He passes the shovel to Franz who sweats and grunts as he labours. Lisa totters forward, hoists the shovel with effort and manages to tip a bit of earth into the hole. Her mother’s difficulty with the shovel strikes Toni as almost shameful. When her turn comes, she works with a fury, flinging earth into the grave, and doesn’t stop until Franz gently takes her arm.
Back at the apartment for the shiva, Toni is once again astounded. Her home has been transformed. The living room has been rearranged so that the furniture circles like prowling wolves around two low chairs positioned against the faux fireplace. Platters of food cover the dining room table: bagels, lox, cheeses, pastries, fruit. There are people everywhere. She recognizes a few: Hadassah ladies, a woman from the Y, Mr and Mrs Jacoby who used to come for Passover. Mrs Shmelzer, hands clad in yellow rubber gloves, stands at the kitchen sink, ready to attack a stack of dishes. Mr and Mrs Cheung have wandered up from the duplex below. Their two young boys stare wide-eyed while sticking tightly to their parents’ sides. Uncle Franz booms over the din, “… for a week, yes, only a week. Back to the business in Merano … there are two of us, two brothers, but Wilhelm is not entirely healthy himself.” Strangers jostle in the hall, line up for the bathroom. There are greetings and laughter and a party atmosphere. Her so-very-private father would be appalled. “Ohne mich,” he would say, “without me,” and would sneak off down the stairs. And she wants to follow, to find him, wherever he’s gone. But other than his home and his office, where could he be? He had no other refuge.
Someone guides her to one of the low chairs, the seats of mourners, beside her mother. A plate of finger sandwiches is placed on her lap. “Eat!” someone commands. “You need your strength.”
“Here is Elsa Eisemann.” Her mother croaks like an old lady. “You remember Elsa, dear? She gave you a ride last year during the blizzard. Oh, Elsa, thank you. I know. There are no words. No, I don’t believe the doctors did all they could. I will demand an inquiry … when I’m a little more myself. Quick? Yes, it was quick. Merciful for him. For me, not so. Yes, thank God she’s here. I thought I’d go mad.”
Lisa grabs Toni’s hand and a damp wad of Kleenex presses between their two palms. Mrs Eisemann’s eyes brim with good will.
“If you need anything, dear, you know where I live.”
Toni has no recollection of her whatsoever.
One by one, people come forward to lean over them, to nod or shake their heads or pull some kind of sad expression. Some, the men especially, look like they’re at the dentist. Lisa makes it easier for them. She talks and talks, filling up uncomfortable silences. Although her voice is barely audible and she has to pause for deep breaths, she doesn’t stop talking.
“His heart. Why his heart? He never had troubles with his heart. I found him pacing like a restless tiger, pale as porridge. He thought the burning pain was his ulcer. It would pass, he said. He didn’t want to go to hospital. But when we arrived at the Jewish General, they made him comfortable and were going to do tests. And then, a young doctor comes over, and tells me he’s gone. Just like that. I wanted to speak to the chief physician. That young doctor didn’t look old enough to shave. But they told me it would do no good.”
Over and over, Lisa relates disjointed details. To some of the women she relates how diminished her husband looked afterward when they allowed her to see the body, how shrunken, how shortened. “What did they do to him?” she wails and sinks onto the bosom of one of her friends.
Ladies kiss Toni’s cheeks. Men pat her on the shoulder. People tell her she must be strong for her mother’s sake. Toni tries to look strong. She squares her shoulders, clenches her jaw, ignores the cramps in her legs and the wooziness in her head. When she feels the urge to pee, she resists because, for some absurd reason, she’s afraid to leave this spot beside her mother.
An odd-looking little man approaches them. He has soft, pink cheeks, silky grey hair to the nape of his neck, and bangs, like a minstrel from merry old England. A black beatnik beret adorns his head. He introduces himself as Richard Abbott, owner of Browsers’ Paradise, a recently opened antiquarian bookstore on Park Avenue that Toni’s father apparently visited several times in the past month.
“Such a fine man, he was,” Mr Abbott says, clasping his hands together. Heavy rings gleam on the fingers of both hands. A paisley ascot billows from the collar of his pearl-grey shirt. He seems out of place amid all the soberly attired solid citizens in the room.
“I’m new to the business of antiquarian books,” Mr Abbott says breathlessly. “Mr Goldblatt set up my accounts. He told me about the shop he owned long ago in Vienna. I told him we should become partners. He thought I was joking, but I wasn’t. Oh, I would have liked him for a partner. A practical man. But he had his sentimental side too, as all collectors do.”
Mr Abbott hesitates and appears wistful. He waves his ringed hand at Toni. “Do come down to the store sometime, my dear.”
Then he slips away into the crowd. Lisa gazes after him scornfully.
“Your father would have never taken any kind of partner, let alone an odd duck like that.”
Mr Cheung and his tiny wife approach. His English is better than hers and she appears very shy, so he does the talking while she simply nods again and again, a frozen smile on her anxious-to-please face.
“We brought some chow mein. I put in the fridge.”
His round face gleams with perspiration as if speaking these words has cost him great effort.
Lisa thanks him profusely, putting her hands out to both of them. When they have turned their backs, she wrinkles her nose at Toni. Lisa hates Chinese food. She used to c
omplain to Julius about the foreign smells seeping up through the front hall.
A sampling of desserts is placed on Toni’s lap. Suddenly weak with hunger for sugary things, she begins to stuff herself. She can’t get enough. Cherry Danish, fudge brownie, pecan tart. Her mouth is full of caramel cream when she sees a familiar duo emerge from the press of bodies in the room. A jolt of recognition shoots down her spine—the Nutkevitch twins, Angela and Sharon. The sweetness on Toni’s tongue turns to mud. She is trapped with her back to the wall. The twins glide inexorably toward her and then, since all chairs are occupied, they sink to their knees on either side of her like supplicants before a throne. Toni hastily swallows and rubs her sticky fingers together.
“Hi, Toni. Remember us?” one of them murmurs softly.
They are chic and magazine-cover gorgeous as always, in dark, well-cut (but not identical) silk suits, their lovely faces framed by glossy brown shoulder-length hair. Their brows knit with concern. If their purpose is to mock her, they are doing a good job, because the sympathy act appears sincere.
“So sorry about your father.”
“I can’t imagine what you’re going through.”
“Mum reads all the obits. She told us. We couldn’t believe it.”
“No one in our family has died yet. Both our bubbehs and zaydehs are still alive.”
There is a pause as they wait for Toni to respond.
“Yeah, well, almost no one in my family is,” Toni says. “Alive, I mean. Just about everyone is dead.”
She breaks into a chuckle, as if this were a very good joke. The girls’ mouths drop open. They look shocked, but awed and humbled too, as if confronted with a stupendous mystery, a horror they can’t possibly grasp, and are aware of their own inadequacy.
“I’m so sorry,” one of the twins whispers in a hushed voice. “I wish … I don’t know what to say.”
Girl Unwrapped Page 21