by Méira Cook
“What the heck?” Mr. B would yell, running from his room.
But it was too late. The posters were down and the window plants had shrivelled. Kids were standing at their lockers, watching: Courtney Segal and her besties, Jackson Riley and his gang, the cool chicks, the cute dudes, the loners, the stoners, and the losers.
What was left of Mrs. Boychuk would be twitching on the floor when all the little zombie girls and zombie boys filed out of their classrooms and gobbled her up.
Lazar closed his eyes and tried to imagine the scene. But it was no good, it had never been any good. His imagination couldn’t follow where his nerve wouldn’t go. The only thing he could do was nothing, which he accomplished handily, standing there and staring into space for about an hour until Mrs. Boychuk lumbered up, her large, shapeless face hovering in front of him like a dirigible.
“Are you in there, Lazarus Binder?” she kept going.
He had to say something, didn’t he?
That’s how Lazar landed up back in Mr. B’s office, back with the padded beanbags and plants and the poster of Ronaldo in his Nikes, heading a soccer ball. For once Mr. B was angry and out of sorts, as if someone had just yelled Risotto! and hauled him out of some other story. He didn’t say “How can I help you, son?” or “Where would you like to kick back, buddy?” He just took a seat behind his desk and nodded for Lazar to lay ass in the chair in front of him.
“What’s the story, young man?” he asked.
But Lazar had no idea why he’d suddenly begun ranting at Mrs. Boychuk in the school corridor, or what he’d said to make her eyes pop and her cheeks flush and her head spin. There was nothing he could say so he went on sitting there, gazing into space as if he were waiting for enlightenment.
Summer
Five
Inspirational Living Centre
On the way back from the Inspirational Living Centre some of the girls said theirs were “cute,” and Courtney Segal even said hers was “adorable.” See, that’s why I’ve gone off girls, and Courtney Segal most of all. Old is what they were, and wrinkled, mostly, and, every now and then, a bit yellow. Mine was the worst though. Even that lame-ass, Sami Fisher, couldn’t have made a case for cute when it came to Mr. Morgenstern.
I started to tell Sami about Mr. Morgenstern, but Courtney leaned over the back of her seat and said, “Shut up, Daniel,” so that was that.
The thing is girls are always going on about cuteness, posting pictures of puppies and babies on Instagram and writing cute notes to each other with their cute fluffy pencils about the cutest boys in the grade. So: puppies, babies, notes on scented paper, fluffy pencils, hot guys, and Holocaust survivors. Which of these is not like the others?
“Mine is so adorable. I just want to hug him,” said that airhead, Courtney Segal, and guess what? Half the girls chimed in and claimed theirs were adorable too. There was even some thoughtful nodding on the part of the guys. Well, not all the guys, obviously. Just the cute ones.
For the record I’m not and never have been cute. Not the baby type of cute — just ask my mother (if you can find her, which nobody has, yet) — and not the hot guy type either. Not being cute is actually my secret superhero power, like being invisible, and even if you’d prefer a different superhero power, like say flying, which is totally the domain of the cool kids, you have to remember that you don’t get to choose your superhero power. And, truthfully, being invisible helped a lot when it came to Mr. Morgenstern. In great bullshit lies great responsibility.
Why we were on the school bus, driving away from the Inspirational Living Centre, is a story in itself (world events class is why; Holocaust studies in general, and Mrs. Boychuk’s particular conviction that if she doesn’t repeat herself then History will do it for her). And I could tell you all the things Mrs. Boychuk told us about how to behave with the Holocaust survivors. The Protocol, she called it. No cameras, no phones, no devices of any kind, she said. Respectfully address your survivor by his or her last name during the interview, but when you write up your notes, for purposes of anonymity, simply refer to him or her as “my Holocaust survivor.”
I could tell you about how much I hate Courtney Segal and every other girl in grade nine, but mostly Courtney. Hating her was like an arrow in my heart. I could tell you all these things, and what it felt like to be jerking through the city in the afternoon rush hour with the kids ramping up their sugar high from the iced tea and cookies that the volunteer from the centre had laid out for us to share with our Holocaust survivors. Her name, by the way, was Mrs. Harvey Silverstein but she said we could call her Mrs. Silverstein, no Harvey necessary. She said a lot of other things as well, about her late husband, her Harvey, and her daughter, Leah, who she didn’t understand, God bless her, but loved anyway, which we’d all understand one day, for instance when we had children of our own.
Then she looked at us sternly over the tops of her spectacles as if to say: But not yet, children. Don’t go procreating just yet. She was a real hoot, Mrs. Silverstein, and I would love to tell you all the other things she said because I really do not want to talk about Mr. Morgenstern except to say that was his real name. Mr. Bernard Morgenstern, for purposes of anonymity.
My dad was away on business for a few days, so I called out for a couple of pizzas even though I wasn’t hungry, but I knew I would be later, after the weed kicked in. This kid I buy it from — the weed, not the pizza — always laughs and says his product is guaranteed to pack on the pounds, bro, which will be good for a featherweight like me. I don’t say, Mind your own business, bro. I don’t say, Looks like you’ve been firing up since your first wet dream, bro. I don’t say, Get blazed, man. I just hand over the cash and grab the baggie. One thing I will say about my dad is that he’s good about leaving me cash, and good about not asking where it’s disappeared to, and good about clearing out of the place for days at a time, no questions asked. We’re like army buddies, my dad and me. Don’t ask, don’t tell.
My supplier is called Gary, by the way. Gary Woo, pass it on. I’d be doing the dude an injustice by concealing his identity for purposes of anonymity because he’s interested in promoting a solid business model by introducing all kinds of built-in perks, like offering “significant discounts to loyal customers for advertising a superlative product.” Unquote, as he would say. Last year he began his “Introduce a Friend” incentive, which gets both you and your friend 10 percent off his best bud, the Zombie Reefer, and for an extra 15 percent off the bottom line on any purchase over the minimum, he’ll deliver right to your door. He’s not really into the drug scene, he once told me. He just needs to make enough dough to get into business school.
Okay, that’s the end of our commercial break. You’re very welcome, Gary Woo. Put that down in accounts payable.
After Gary left I could have called some of the guys to come over. I usually do. This place gets kind of empty after a while, especially on weekends when you can hear the neighbours mowing their lawns, and drinking out on their decks, and waiting for their barbecues to heat up. We don’t have much of a lawn is the thing, and no deck at all. My dad says barbecuing is a fool’s game, and waiting for meat to turn from one colour to another is like watching paint dry, but less of a head rush. You can probably tell that my dad has a problem with patience (hasn’t got any), but that’s okay. I haven’t felt like eating meat for like ever, or much of anything else if it comes to that. In fact, if it wasn’t for the weed, I wouldn’t even be getting my daily pizza calories, so that’s something.
I didn’t call anyone, though. I turned off my phone and I lay on my bed in the dark with my headphones cranked to The Clash and my window cracked to let out the drifting smoke, and after a while I stopped feeling like myself (superpower: invisibility) and began to feel like one of the cool kids (superpower: flight). They say you can’t not think — even if your mind is as blank as last summer, there’s always something going on there. But it turns out
that if the music is loud enough and the weed is strong enough and there’s enough cold pizza to get you through the night, then a whole weekend can pass without one stray thought snagging on the chicken wire of your mind.
I knew I had to go to school after the weekend because, long story short, I’d fought the law and the law won. Basically, I’d run out of ways to avoid Mondays. I’d called in sick, pretending to be my dad; I’d forged doctor’s notes, and my dad’s handwriting, and my mom’s signature, for Chrissake. I’d used every trick in the book but I’d been busted every time, and now I was on probation. Monday was my weak spot, which was why I found myself back at school, back on the bus, and heading for the Inspirational Living Centre with the rest of the grade nines, Mrs. Boychuk presiding. My head was bulging with pain and every lurch of the bus made my stomach contract, which you’d think would block out everything else, but Courtney Segal has this high, girly voice and I could still hear her cooing, “Oh, mine is so cute, mine’s adorable!”
The survivors were all sitting around in the lounge, just as they had been the first time we’d been introduced. In the next room some old woman wearing stretchy leggings and a huge T-shirt that read #NeverForget was trying to get a group of even older women jiving to Beyoncé. Her T-shirt could have been a reference to the Holocaust or a shout-out to Alzheimer research, it was difficult to know. “To the left, to the left, to the left, to the left,” she was yelling. But two of the women had entangled their walkers and the rest were just pointing and giggling. We all stood in the doorway and watched the instructor trying to untangle them, which was kind of mesmerizing in a zoned-out way. Like getting addicted to a low-budget game app created by some kid in Korea, featuring an angry fish trying to flip out of a fishing net. Whether you’re rooting for the fish or the net you can’t help enjoying the bloop-bloop of bubbles popping on the soundtrack.
The aerobics instructor finally got one woman moving backward and the other forward, and when she looked up and saw us she waved and blew a kiss.
“Right back at you, Grandma,” yelled Jackson Riley, pretending to catch the kiss in his hand and rub it into his groin while making disgusting moaning sounds until Lazar Binder pushed him out of the doorway and said — although you could see he really didn’t want to — “That’s my gran, you asshole.” A lot of us tried to catch a glimpse of Binder’s gran then. The dude’s whole family inspires a kind of rubbernecking fascination, to go with the car crash their lives have become (no disrespect, I’m just saying). But by now Mrs. Boychuk’s super spidey sense was tingling, alerting her to trouble, and she hustled us all into the lounge where our Holocaust survivors were waiting for us.
I had a couple of seconds to observe them before the kids in my class crowded into the room and I tried my best, I really did. But they were just an ordinary group of old people, nothing special, no cutie pies there. Most wore long sleeves and trousers (the men) and skirts (the women), although here and there you could see a woman in elasticized pants, her stomach jutting out, providing a shelf for her breasts to lie on. All the women had handbags dangling from their arms, and the funny thing was that they never put them down, not once. Sometimes they’d open up their handbags to rummage: to show off a photo of a grandchild or offer a roll of Life Savers. The smell of boiled vegetables and meat came wafting over from the cafeteria, but the Holocaust survivors seemed unaffected. It’d been a long time since the camps, so perhaps the smell of food no longer drove them crazy.
I know this doesn’t sound exciting; I’m just saying what I saw.
By this time everyone had found their survivor and I was still standing there, still watching.
“Is something the matter, Daniel?” asked Mrs. Boychuk in a voice that said there’d better not be, so I made my way to my survivor.
Mr. Morgenstern was sitting way in the corner, a skinny guy with a beach-ball stomach and a wispy tonsure. My Holocaust survivor. Like the first time, he was wearing a short-sleeved polo shirt and a pair of stained trousers.
“You vant to see my tattoon, boychick?” he cackled, thrusting his arm under my nose.
“No thanks, Mr. Morgenstern.”
“Vhat, you don’t vant to see my tattoon, boychick?”
“No, I mean you showed me last time, so.”
“Oh, I see,” he said. “You’ve already seen my tattoon, is dat it?”
I had, in fact, already seen Mr. Morgenstern’s tattoo, but the aggression in his voice indicated that this was beside the point.
“Vhatsa matter, boychick? You only vant to see vhat you haven’t seen before? My tattoon’s not good enough for you, is dat it?”
“Okay,” I said, “show me your tattoo.”
He’d done this the first time, too — shoving his left arm at me as soon as I sat down beside him. This whole tattoo thing seemed to be his opening gambit. But as soon as I leaned forward to examine the numbers engraved upon his forearm, he turned churlish and pulled his arm away.
“Nah, I don’t tink so, boychick. No tattoon for you today.”
Everywhere the buzz of my classmates’ enterprise rose and fell. I heard kids asking the questions we had painstakingly prepared in class, their voices followed by the halting replies of the survivors. All around us in the lounge, with its worn furniture and shabby carpet, stories were being told, and they darkened the young and old faces, casting their long afternoon shadows across them. Here and there a survivor wept in the midst of a tale of unimaginable suffering.
When Mrs. Boychuk first told us about this assignment, she’d allowed that some of our survivors might break down, but that as responsible witnesses we must bear the burden of the story, the tragic weight of history. I had prayed not to get a weeper; I knew myself to be callow and fidgety and wholly unsuited to the task of silent witnessing. And my prayers had been answered, for instead of being assigned Mrs. Horowitz who dabbed at her red-rimmed eyes with a handkerchief while Cindy Gershowitz silently held her hand, or old Mr. Salit whose tears followed their well-worn courses down his cheeks, I had been gifted Mr. Morgenstern.
“So, young man, vhat does your father do?” Mr. Morgenstern inflected the question with an ancient lilt indicative of intimacy. He leaned closer so that I could smell his old man’s breath: the sour odour of mothballs, denture fixative, and empty mornings sagging beneath the weight of schoolchildren and their impossible questions.
“He works for the Hydro, Mr. Morgenstern.”
“Hoo-ha! You’re telling me he veks for de gas man? Ha, dat’s a good one. Hey, Gittelman, did you hear dat — did you hear about boychick’s daddy? He veks for de gas man!”
Mr. Morgenstern had swivelled around and was addressing the noisiest corner of the room. Courtney Segal and Sami Fisher and a couple of other girls were crowded around this old guy in a chair and all of them were laughing at something he’d just said — real laughter though, not the kind Mr. Morgenstern was doing. The more they laughed, the crankier Mr. Morgenstern became, until he was jabbing me in the side with his crooked yellow finger.
“Daddy veks for de gas man, hoo-ha! Daddy turns on de gas at night and all de little gels and boys turn green in dere sleep.”
“Mr. Morgenstern —” I had brought my list of questions and was determined to ask a couple. Our last visit had degenerated into a series of jeers and taunts, but I’d come prepared this time and besides, Mr. Morgenstern reminded me of the Meisners’ dog. I used to walk it for them when they were away. “Just put him on a tight leash,” Mr. Meisner had said. “Show him who’s boss.”
“Mr. Morgenstern,” I repeated, consulting my notes, “when were you born? And also, um, where?”
“Hoo-ha! Does de daddy’s boy have a kvestion? Let me ask you somet’ing, boychick. Do you get your gas cheap, eh, on account of your daddy veks for de old gas man? Big man, your daddy, he must be. Big bad gas man. Must make your mama proud, eh boychick, vhen she svitches on de oven at night to make your supp
er. Hoo boy, all de lovely gas! And for so cheap. Must make your mama feel itchy in de pants, must make your mama vant to grab dat big bad gas man by de schwantz and get him on wit her. Yes? Yes?”
His crooked forefinger outstretched, Mr. Morgenstern accompanied each of these yeses with a jab in my ribs; it was like the yipping of an enraged dog on a leash. And I remembered that the Meisners’ dog had not taken to me, had not in the end taken to his leash, and that the whole mess of a summer had ended with words between my father and Mr. Meisner. My mother had left us in the spring, and then it was the end of summer and I couldn’t even get a lousy dog to heel (Mr. Meisner), but what d’you expect, the boy’s small for his age (my dad).
“Yoo-hoo, boychick!” Mr. Morgenstern had left off his jabbing and begun snapping his fingers in my face. “Vhen vas I born, you ask? Ha, good kvestion. June eight, is de answer. Vot d’you say to dat? Say happy boitday, eh? Happy Boitday, Mr. Morgenstern! And vere, you vant to know? Vere vas Morgenstern born? Vell, boychick, I vas born in de middle of… I vas born in de middle of de wrong century! Hoo-ha! Did you hear dat, Gittelman? Gittelman, did you hear vhat I said to boychick over here? Da wrong century, da middle of da wrong century!”
“Many happy returns, Mr. M,” I said. I wished him good health in the coming year because I knew it would piss him off, and it did.
Later, back on the bus, Courtney Segal glared at me. “Why can’t you keep your Holocaust survivor from bothering ours?” she inquired before skipping up the aisle to join her friends, Sami Fisher and Dee Leblanc. The three of them began to yak about how cute their survivor was and how lame it was (glare) that some people couldn’t leave other people’s people alone (glare).
There was nothing to watch from the bus window except the way back, which made it seem as if we were all on rewind. There was nothing to do either, because we weren’t allowed to bring our phones on account of showing respect. But, like I said, Courtney has this really high, girly voice, and when you almost hate someone it’s hard to tune them out. It turns out Gittelman was a real sweetheart. Now I’m not saying he was adorable, okay, but from the sound of the girls’ stories he was certainly no Morgenstern.