by Nora Gold
Cindy, listening raptly, nibbles on her maple donut. Aliza, looking around the table, pauses for suspense, and continues: “So the first dog, a golden retriever, steps forward. ‘You are the most bewitching dog I have ever seen,’ he declares, ‘and I want you more than the earth and sky.’
“’Zeez eez very nice,’ the poodle says. ‘It is also romantique. But you deed not use zee words liver and cheese. So I cannot go out weess you.’
“Then the second dog, a huge St. Bernard, comes, kneels in front of her, and says ardently, ‘I love you so much, I love you more than liver or cheese.’
“’Merci, zat eez very nice, too,’ the poodle says. ‘But eet eez not creatif. So I weel not go out weess you.’
“Now the third dog, a tiny chihuahua, leaps toward his two competitors, wagging his tail and yelping at them both in his high-pitched chihuahua yelp: ‘You liver alone! Cheese mine!’”
Their table explodes in laughter, and the surrounding tables turn and gawk. Pam goes off into her shrieking monkey sounds; Cindy, giggling, covers her mouth because it’s full of maple donut; Aliza smiles quietly at everyone else’s pleasure; and even Judith laughs.
“That was so good!” she says as everyone’s laughter begins to subside. “It’s so good to laugh. There’s this Yiddish writer, Sholem Aleichem, who said, ‘Laughter is good for the heart.’”
“It is,” says Aliza. “But first you have to have a heart.”
And as if this were another joke, the table breaks up all over again.
Eventually they calm down, and just sit awhile in silence, glancing at each other with leftover smiles still in their eyes. Then they chat about the papers they handed in to Greg today. Aliza didn’t hand one in. She was throwing up all day yesterday and is hoping to get an extension, if she can catch Greg now during his office hours. So she stands up to go back to FRANK, even though there are still fifteen minutes left in the lunch break. Judith notices again how pale her face is. And thin — almost skeletal. She can see the fine bones under her skin.
“You don’t look well,” she says.
“Thanks.”
“No, I mean it. You should see a doctor.”
“I’m fine,” Aliza says testily, adjusting the red cap on her head. “I just need some makeup.”
“Well, don’t put it on now,” advises Cindy. “Let Greg see you without it. You’ll look sicker and he’ll feel sorry for you.”
Aliza laughs. “Good point, Sherlock.”
Cindy happily takes another bite of her maple donut. All this time she’s been nursing it, and it still isn’t even half-finished. She’s the slowest eater Judith has ever seen. Pam stands, saying she’ll walk back with Aliza and save seats for them all in Suzy’s class. Once they’re gone, Cindy and Judith sit in comfortable silence while Cindy leisurely polishes off the rest of her donut, wiping her mouth with a napkin after each bite. After the very last one, she says, “Don’t look now,” and they avert their eyes as Lola, Althea, and Roberta pass their table on their way out. When they’re gone, Cindy says she has to go to the bathroom. Judith doesn’t need to, but considers joining her anyway. Bobby always laughs at this: how if one woman gets up from the table to go to the bathroom, almost for sure the other woman will stand and say, “I’ll come, too.” “As if,” Bobby said, “going to urinate or defecate were a social event. A guy would never do that.” So now she just says to Cindy, “I’ll wait for you at the front.”
Waiting at the cash, she eyes all the varieties of candy and gum, and then looks around this new restaurant. Adjacent to the front door there’s a beaverboard with dozens of notices pinned to it. They’re different sizes, shapes, and colours, and from a distance look like a collage. She approaches it and browses. There’s a typed ad for a part-time babysitter with the bottom of it chopped into tear-off ribbons, each with a phone number. The orange index card in the middle of the bulletin board is someone trying to sell a motorcycle, and next to that a guy named Fred is looking for a free ride to Mexico over the Christmas vacation. Fred writes, I’ll do half of the gas. She laughs. Does this mean he’s offering to do half the farting? Now she sees a little alcove with another notice board. But this one is entirely filled with one big black-and-white poster. There’s a picture at its centre, but it’s hard from this distance to make out what it is. She steps closer, squinting. It’s a group of people standing in a circle around something that’s burning. A cloth of some kind. No … it’s an Israeli flag. The Jewish star in the middle is half-eaten by flames. She reads the words above the picture:
RALLY IN SOLIDARITY WITH
THE OPPRESSED PALESTINIAN PEOPLE
END ZIONIST IMPERIALIST AGGRESSION
AND THE APARTHEID JEWISH STATE
Judith feels like she has to shit. Put an end to the “apartheid” Jewish state?! This poster is a call to destroy Israel. The picture was obviously taken outdoors and at night, and the people burning the flag look like university students. Their faces in the firelight are savage and full of an almost erotic passion for the flame and its destructive power. They remind her of Lord of the Flies and frighten her primordially. Instinctively she turns away from this picture and toward the words on the poster, as if words are inherently more civilized. The words under the picture read:
SPONSORED JOINTLY BY THE DUNHILL STUDENTS’ UNION (DSU) AND
STUDENTS FOR A LIBERATED PALESTINE (SLAP)
FREE REFRESHMENTS! BRING YOUR FRIENDS!
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 18TH, 5 P.M.
IN THE QUADRANGLE IN FRONT OF FRANK.
SEE YOU THERE!
November 18, she thinks. That’s just a week from today. But it’s good it’s five o’clock. Suzy’s class ends at three-thirty; I’ll be far from Dunhill by five o’clock — probably back in Toronto by the time this rally begins. And if I don’t see it, it’ll almost be like it’s not actually happening.
All this goes racing through her mind. But the rest of her is just standing frozen in front of this poster, aware of nothing but the hate in these faces. They want to destroy Israel. Which means they want to destroy her. She stares mesmerized at the burning flag. It’s impossible what she’s seeing. The Israeli flag cannot burn. It’s like the burning bush in the Torah: It burns but is not consumed. She reaches her hand toward the flames in the poster. Then she hears a voice behind her. A voice saying brightly, “Ready to go?”
As if awakened by this voice, she sees herself now, standing in front of a poster with her hand almost touching it. Slowly she retracts her hand and presses it against her mouth.
“Ready?” she hears again, this time from much closer — so close she can sense the warmth of Cindy’s body. Cindy is standing beside her, but still Judith can’t speak. She just turns and looks at her. Whatever is in her face makes Cindy frown and look at the poster.
“Oh, no,” she says. “Come on, Judith. Let’s get out of here.” She leads her away.
— 8 —
In Suzy’s class Judith sits dazed. As deeply submerged inside herself as if she were underwater at the bottom of the ocean, in a strange deep place where everything happening above the surface of the water, up there in the sunlit world, seems far away and unreal. When the class is over, she wants to just go home. But when she reaches the front of the room, Suzy asks, “Do you have a moment?” and she says yes. She follows Suzy down the deserted labyrinth to her office. Once inside with the door closed, Suzy says she can’t tell anyone else, this is top secret, but she learned on Friday that on January 1 there will be some major budget cuts at the school. Judith, picturing the school without Suzy in it, asks, alarmed, “Will these affect you?”
Suzy grimaces. “Last in, first out, as they say. But Weick said he’d fight for me. He’s planning to tell the dean I’m ‘indispensable to the smooth functioning of the school.’”
“You are,” Judith says ardently.
Suzy laughs. “Whether or not that’s true, I do hope to keep my job. But seriously, Judith, not a word of this to anyone. It’s strictly confidential.
”
“Of course not!” She feels flattered at being trusted with this secret and wishes she had a secret to share in return.
“I know you wouldn’t. I’m just a little, you know —”
“Of course. Who wouldn’t be? I hope it all works out.”
“Thanks. So do I.”
There’s a moment of silence and Judith, glancing down, notices the deep white carpet. “I love this carpet,” she says. “Every time I see it I want to rub my toes in it.”
Suzy laughs. “Then do. Take off your boots and do it.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
She unzips her fleece-lined boots and removes them self-
consciously. She looks up shyly at Suzy, who smiles back encouragingly, and peels off her white cotton socks, inserting them neatly into her boots. She worries momentarily that maybe her feet stink. But then she wiggles her toes in the carpet, laughing with pleasure.
“It’s so soft!” she cries, and laughs again.
“I should try it sometime,” says Suzy, smiling. Judith wiggles her toes again in the carpet, and stops. Now she feels silly, embarrassed even, to be sitting here barefoot in front of Suzy. It’s like being undressed in front of someone who’s dressed. But it would feel awkward to lean down immediately and put her socks and boots back on.
“How’d you find today’s class?” Suzy asks. “I was worried there weren’t enough examples — that it got too abstract.”
Judith has no idea. During Suzy’s class today, she was deep underwater. “It was fine,” she says. “But I’ve been wanting to ask you something since last week’s class with the pedophile: Do you truly believe people can change? That much, I mean — the way he did in the course of one interview? You did great work with him and everything — I’m not saying … But I don’t know if I believe people can change so fundamentally.”
“I do,” says Suzy. “I think people are full of surprises.”
“For better or for worse,” says Judith.
“That’s a bit downbeat for you.”
“I’ve had a downbeat day.”
“Why?” asks Suzy, looking concerned. “What’s up?”
So Judith tells her everything, just as if she were writing it all out for her in a log. About the terrorist attack this morning. About Lola saying that basically those children deserved to die. About the poster with the Jewish flag in flames.
“Good heavens,” says Suzy when she’s finished. “That’s quite a day. I’m impressed you’re still standing. There are people who’d be in post-traumatic stress after a day like this. What did you do to cope? How do you hold yourself together?”
“Who says I’m holding myself together?” says Judith, and they laugh. It feels good to be laughing with Suzy. But then the phrase “post-traumatic stress” strikes her as very funny, and her laugh starts veering off and getting slightly hysterical. When she finally stops, Suzy is looking at her closely, so she casts around for an intelligent, sane-sounding response to her question. She tells Suzy she has good friends here at school — Cindy, Pam, and Aliza — and their social support over lunch definitely helped. Suzy nods.
“But also …” Judith says, and as she continues talking, she’s aware she’s sharing with Suzy something rather personal. But she wants to, anyway, because Suzy just shared a secret with her and she wants to reciprocate. So she tells Suzy that one way she copes — for instance, in Weick’s classes — is by fantasizing. Usually about Moshe, a man she had a relationship with in Israel. Suzy looks taken aback.
“Are you still in touch with this Moshe?” she asks.
“No,” says Judith. “I haven’t seen him in seven years, and doubt I’ll ever see him again. It’s just, you know … fantasy.”
Suzy’s eyes dart sharply to the side, away from Judith, and she doesn’t say anything. Judith feels her disapproval and is suddenly aware of her naked feet. Like Adam and Eve becoming aware of their nakedness. “Anyway,” she says, to backtrack, “I don’t do this often.”
“But you just said you do. You said this is how you get by in Weick’s class every week.”
Judith feels caught. She blushes. “It’s just so boring,” she says, searching Suzy’s eyes, appealing to her. “It’s not only me — nobody can stand his classes.” She adds, “It’s not like your class at all.” Which is true, but still she feels like a suck-up saying it.
Suzy’s eyes smile slightly, but now there is a watchfulness in them, too. Something’s wrong, thinks Judith. Something’s going wrong here. In her anxiety, she rambles on about Weick, telling Suzy it isn’t just that he’s boring; he also has no control over his class. Like a few weeks back when Mary Martha was ganged up on and attacked by everyone — for a long time, maybe twenty minutes — and he just stood there and did nothing to stop it. He’s so weak that some students call him “Weick the Weak.”
Suzy is frowning, pained, as though it has given her a headache hearing all this. “I like Weick,” she says. “He’s the one who hired me seven years ago, and now he’s fighting Administration to help me keep my job.”
Judith stares at Suzy and then flushes as her meaning sinks in. Suzy is on his side. She’s defending him. Just as a few weeks ago she defended Greg. Judith feels a flash of fear. She has made a tactical error in speaking so openly to Suzy. She also feels acutely self-conscious about her naked feet, and now bends down and starts putting on her socks. She is all thumbs and it’s hard getting her socks to fit back on her feet.
“À propos of Israel,” she hears Suzy say. “I wanted to tell you I spoke to Chris this morning. I asked him to convey to Michael Brier that when he prepares his talk, he needs to take into account the sensibilities of our Jewish students and faculty. That’s how I put it to him. I believe Chris understood what I was trying to say, and he said he’d pass this on, so hopefully this will help tone down Brier. We can’t do anything at this point about the title of his talk, but maybe now the content of it will be somewhat more moderate.”
Judith has finally got her socks on. She slides her feet into her boots and looks up at Suzy gratefully — this feels like the old Suzy again. “Thanks,” she says. ”I hope you’re right.” She zips up her boots and rises. They say goodbye, and things feel sort of okay between them. Not perfect, but more or less normal — just a tiny bit strained. On the drive home, though, she could kick herself. What was I thinking, she asks herself, telling a prof I have sexual fantasies in class? Sure, this was Suzy — Suzy to whom I write my logs, Suzy with whom I have this special relationship. But still, she’s my prof. Plus not only a prof; she’s a religious Christian who goes to church every week. Was I out of my mind? Whatever possessed me …?
Then she realizes with a groan that, in fact, it’s even worse than this. Because Bobby is being mentored by Suzy’s husband, and now Suzy knows that she’s having sexual fantasies not about Bobby, but about another man. Oy, she thinks. Now I’ve blown it. What a stupid thing to do. She calls herself stupid for a while longer. Then, to stop herself from doing this and from perseverating on her conversation with Suzy for the whole drive home, she reaches into the glove compartment, takes out Israel at Forty, and for the next forty minutes lets music drown out the world.
— 9 —
The following morning Judith awakens depressed. Four times in the past three weeks she has experienced anti-Israelism, and three times in the past five days: the SWAC meeting, Lola’s comment at Libertad, and the poster there. Dunhill is beginning to feel not only uncomfortable, but emotionally unsafe. Every week there seem to be more people at Dunhill who hate Israel. It’s like a spreading plague. She won’t be able to endure this place for another six months. She goes to the kitchen, to the Jewish calendar hanging on the wall. This calendar arrives free of charge every year just before Rosh Hashana, courtesy of the Jewish National Fund where her father once made a donation. The top half of the calendar is a picture of a JNF forest planted in Israel; on the bottom half, now showing November, she finds yesterday’s dat
e, November 11, 2002 — Remembrance Day — and draws a big red X over that square. Then in the bottom triangle of the X she’s just made, she writes the number 147. Only 147 days left until she’s back in Israel. Classes end on April 7, and that night she’ll be on a plane. Everything here will disappear: SWAC, Lola, Kerry. All this crap isn’t her real life. This is just a year in galut. Her real life is there.
Calmed by this, she proceeds with her usual Tuesday routine: food shopping followed by a trip to the University of Toronto library. But back home in the late afternoon, she feels depressed again. She curls up on the couch and lies there as the room gets darker and darker. At 7:30 the phone rings. It’s Bobby — he’s coming over soon.
“Sure,” she says. “But in case I doze off, let yourself in with the key in the flowerpot.”
A half-hour later there’s the sound of the key in the lock and in walks Bobby. He flicks on the vestibule light and sees Judith lying on the couch in the dark living room. “Are you okay?” he asks.
“I guess. I’m just not sure I’m strong enough for this.”
They spoke on the phone last night, so Bobby knows what happened yesterday. “Of course you are,” he says.
“I don’t know. I’m not sure.” She’s annoyed he thinks he knows her better than she knows herself.
This time, wisely, he doesn’t argue. He carries a big paper bag to the dining room table and extracts from it three hot, oil-spattered, fragrant cardboard boxes. “I brought some Chinese food,” he says. “Come eat something.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Come on.”
Several seconds pass. Now right in front of her face appears a container of pineapple chicken. It smells wonderful and her mouth waters. She reaches for it, but he pulls it away. “Come to the table. Come on.”
She gets up.
Bobby unpacks paper plates, plastic cutlery, and napkins. The food is hot and good: in addition to pineapple chicken, there’s steamed rice, chow mein, vegetable spring rolls, and two fortune cookies. She’s barely eaten all day and is ravenous. And the more she eats, the more she wants. She takes seconds and thirds of the pineapple chicken, then empties the whole remainder of the box onto her plate and attacks it voraciously.