I sang “Come, O Sabbath bride” on Friday nights with a bridegroom’s fervour.
—Yehuda Amichai
1
According to the gospel of Mordecai Kaplan, modern Jews live in two civilizations. On the one hand, they swim in the swirling waters of mainstream society. On the other, they cling with varying degrees of tenacity to the shores of their idiosyncratic particularity. Overall, Rabbi Nate enjoyed this tension. However, as his eyes skimmed over the gathering in his dining room from his spot at the head of the table, he reflected that it was a little trying when New Year’s Eve happened to fall on a Friday night and January 1st on a Saturday. Tomorrow morning he would have to preach a sermon about the millennium—as fundamentally un-Jewish a concept as could be invented. Tonight, arrayed around his lace-covered table, bathed in soft incandescence, were eight guests assembled—as it were—by the dybbuk of Y2K. Although, of course the invitations had been issued by no other gremlins than himself and Reisa.
How was he to have known that she was asking Abigail Rosen at the very moment he was on the phone with Moish Stipelman? Reisa should have touched base with him before placing that call! He distinctly remembered having a discussion with her about the invitations. They agreed two weeks ago that it would be a mitzvah to have a set of old-timers for Friday night/New Year’s Eve: the Stipelmans or Abigail. Naturally they were motivated by a spirit of chesed—loving kindness—though, to be honest, neither he nor Reisa would have been broken-hearted if turned down.
Both Moish and Abigail had accepted with alacrity, Abigail requesting to bring along her daughter visiting from Victoria. Moish was of course accompanied by the stern and censorious Sylvia, now glaring at Abigail across the table.
If Reisa’s head weren’t perpetually in the clouds of Jewish mysticism—she taught a course on Kabbalah at McGill—she would have recalled that in the interlude between Moish’s first marriage and his second, well before Nate’s connection to the shul and her own, Moish and Abigail had had a torrid affair, the steamy details of which were to be found in “Song of Delight,” a sonnet interred in Part One of Abigail’s Collected Works.
Grinning unnervingly at some private joke of their own (or perhaps merely relishing the image of Moish’s and Abigail’s intertwined limbs and hearts with which the sonnet had ended), Helen and Jeff Stern sat together, on Nate’s left. Helen was wearing a most peculiar outfit, black elephant pants crowned by a strapless spangled top demonstrably contrasting her white chins with her bronze head. Wiping the smirk off his face with difficulty, Jeff began interviewing Abigail’s daughter Cynthia about her job in market research. A heavy-set woman with big hair and dark bulging eyes, Cynthia responded in monosyllables while turning her fork over and over with one hand.
Thank God for Susan and Aaron Leibovitch, without whom this evening would be nothing but a penance. The original idea—and it had been a good one—had been to invite a few young (okay, youngish) congenial couples like the Leibovitches and Faith and Al Rabinovitch. In their midst, Moish or Abigail would have been quite neutralized. But then Faith begged off, citing family obligations. (A likely story.) As for the Sterns, they were a political afterthought. Since they’d thrown their collective weight behind the building project as few others had, it was wise to cultivate them. Reisa hadn’t thought they’d accept, but clearly they didn’t have more exciting plans.
“Nate, darling,” Reisa said gently, “don’t you think we should start?”
Nate started from his reverie and gave a nervous tug to his beard.
“Yes, yes, please join in everyone,” he said and began singing, “Shalom aleichem.” He beamed at Reisa, as if seeing her for the first time that day. She looked more than usually pretty, her face serene and her eyes bright. She smiled back at him and joined her voice to his, and the others around the table took up the melody.
The repetition of the timeless words about the angels of peace conveying the blessings of the Majesty of Majesties was balm for Nate’s spirit, the tune like a soft breeze wafting in from some preternatural source of comfort. Ah, Shabbat, Shabbat the queen. You kept this, the most beloved of days, because you were so enjoined; it was a central commandment. But more importantly you kept it because it kept you. The millennium celebration would be over in the small hours of the morning, but Shabbat would return to restore your parched soul until the end of days.
At the conclusion of the last ha-kaddosh baruch hu, Moish, his voice full of emotion, asked if he could say a shehecheianu.
“Of course, of course,” Nate waved expansively. “I should have suggested it myself.”
Pushing his chair back, the old man creaked slowly to his feet. Sylvia clucked and fussed until Nate got up from the table to fetch Moish’s cane from the hall. Since his accident a year ago, Sylvia seemed bent on turning her husband into an invalid. Nate thought the stick was more for her than for him, but Moish obligingly leaned on it when it was handed to him.
“My dear friends,” Moish began, his voice still thick with passion or phlegm, “I’m an old, old man of waning powers, so bear with me if I ramble. At this stage of my life, every day is a bonus. It’s an extraordinary thing for someone born in the horse and buggy age to reach the end of the century and the millennium and be obliged to worry whether his computer’s going to crash at midnight.” A delighted ripple of laughter rewarded this preamble and Moish, encouraged, cleared his throat.
—He’s off and running now, thought Reisa. There goes my roast.
“It is, as I say, an extraordinary gift to reach this marker and to do it with my dear wife by my side—”
At this, Abigail, as if on cue, began coughing and spluttering. Sylvia fixed her with a scornful look, but it remained unacknowledged. Abigail’s explosion was nearly drowning out Moish, who—either oblivious or deliberately offensive—was insistently carrying on with his peroration.
“—and here with my surrogate son, Nate, and dear Reisa, and other dear friends—”
On either side of Abigail, Cynthia and Nate were offering her glasses of water. Abigail, her rouged and weathered face turning purple, grabbed Nate’s drink from him, splashing some in his lap. She took a theatrical sip and, with dramatic heaves of her bony shoulders, gradually recovered.
“I was thinking, as we were singing Shalom aleichem,” Moish continued, unperturbed, “that I must not only thank God for allowing me to reach this historic turning point, but I must express my gratitude that we’ve arrived at a juncture when we may indeed dare hope that God’s angels of peace have alighted upon the face of the Earth, since peace seems to be breaking out all over it. Most especially and importantly in that little corner of the universe that is so close to all our hearts. I’m thinking of the resumption of talks between Israel and Syria after a hiatus of many years, so that at long last there are some real hopes for peace in the Middle East. Let’s also pray that with the gradual subsiding of the crisis in the Balkans, we may look to—as our Christian brethren like to say—peace on earth and goodwill to all men. And there are more grounds for cautious celebration, here too in Quebec, since the tide of separatism seems checked, and so the prospects look encouraging for more of our young people choosing to stay and make their futures here.
“Not of course that there aren’t huge challenges ahead for the world, but the lull in hostilities will allow leaders and statesmen an opportunity to concentrate on creating conditions for social peace, and attempts to assuage environmental distempers and fight the scourges of poverty and dislocation and intractable diseases.
“And so I thank you for your indulgence and ask you to join me in a shehecheianu, as once again my heart overflows with thankfulness that the Eternal has brought me to this day. Baruch ata Adonai, Eloheinu melech ha-olam shehecheianu v’kiemanu v’higgianu lazman hazeh.”
2
“I’m not sure how I got here,” Rhoda said. Sporting a striped Paris-Bistro apron over her jeans, hair pulled back into a neat ponytail, she was rolling out filo pastry on the kitchen counter.
“As in what’s the meaning of life?” Hershy rinsed one of the champagne flutes he’d bought that afternoon at IKEA. It hadn’t been as insane a project as Rhoda had predicted. The expected monster crowd hadn’t materialized; the store, in fact, had been like a ghost town. On the afternoon of New Year’s Eve, consumers had finally stopped shopping and were hell-bent on preparing for the blowout of a thousand years.
“No, idiot,” Rhoda grinned sidelong, exposing her crooked uppers. She stuck her pinky in a bowl of spinach filling and licked it before waving the pepper mill over the bowl. “I just meant, how did we come to be hosting this party when I hate New Year’s? I’ve never been able to understand why people go into an orgy of celebration over turning a page on the calendar. Everybody’s got this idea we’re on the verge of something wonderful. When the reality will probably be something quite nasty.”
“Oh, lighten up, Rhode! This doesn’t even qualify as a party. Just Erica and this editor of hers and Faith and Al. And you and me. And the only reason we got to be hosting it is because you and Faith have taken it into your heads to be matchmakers. And also because Al’s too cheap to treat Faith to a big night on the town.”
Rhoda burst out laughing. “With the teensiest encouragement she’d be seeing in the new year on a volcano in Guatemala, like she says The New York Times recommended. Or at the very least an evening at the Ritz.”
“That’d be the day. Al, the great ex-hippie, forks out a couple thousand bucks for Dom Perignon and truffles and the big band sound of an orchestra you’ve never heard of? I don’t think so.”
3
Erica squinted at her image in the mirror as she carefully applied mascara to her (ever thinning) lashes. The trouble with having once been beautiful was the dimming of your allure. Age was a great leveller. Take Rhoda, who had been so skinny and gangling when they first met, but who, over the years, had grown into such a handsome woman. Her hawk-like features had softened, and her silver hair set off her unusual combination of blue eyes and olive skin far better than her original dark locks had ever done.
Erica ran a comb through her curls which, unlike her lashes, were luckily still abundant. She was deliberately going easy on the makeup—a bit of foundation, a touch of blush, some copper eye shadow. And she was dressing simply: velour pants and a turtleneck. The idea was to be warm—it was going to be freezing on the mountain later.
And anyway, why dress up for a house party with your buddies?
Even two years after the fact, the memory of her fiftieth birthday party still stung like a slap in the face. That particular occasion had cured her of getting excited over extravagant festivities. Now, in front of the mirror, she bit her lip in an effort to hold back the stupid tears that would ruin her mascara-thickened lashes. What an idiot she had been, missing all the clues—Ricky’s crazy hours and his sudden zeal for showering in the middle of the night when he came home, supposedly from the office. And yet he’d gone to such great lengths to organize a beautiful event for her, inviting everybody they knew to Chez Lévêque for the evening. There was sensational food, flowing booze, impeccable service. He had planned all the details, down to the party favours of gilt quills and miniature dictionaries.
She had had no idea that her birthday party was in fact a swansong for the marriage. Two days later, she intercepted an email between him and the used-car heiress, a client whom he’d helped part from her ex.
“But why, why did you make this party for me?” She couldn’t take it in. Stingy Ricky, spending a fortune on her while shtupping Sandra.
“Because you deserved it,” he shrugged, a breathtakingly double-edged answer.
“But why did I deserve it, if you want to leave me?”
“You weren’t supposed to find out, and I don’t want to leave you. You’re throwing me out.”
It was like a bad play, a soap opera.
“So go already. Go.”
But he wasn’t in a hurry to go. He moved into Raichie’s old bedroom—a feminine bower, all pink frills and ribbons—and then, when Erica objected to sharing the upstairs bathroom with him, down to the basement. Every nerve in her body jangled when she heard the front door click open in the middle of the night, as he nonchalantly returned after tomcatting with the Queen of Refurbished Jaguars.
She sought legal advice, and the breezy female attorney told her there was no way to make him leave and that fighting the nastiest family lawyer in the city was going to be uphill work. That little jab got under Erica’s skin. No one except her was allowed to say bad things about him.
The day she came home to find his side of the bedroom closet entirely empty, she stared at the hole he’d left behind—the bare scuffed wall at the back of the cupboard, the narrow strip of hardwood where his shoes had sat—and howled. Not since giving birth to Tamara had she made a noise like the one that emerged from the back of her throat. She frightened herself with it; if she wasn’t careful, she’d disintegrate altogether.
She tried to work, but the columns she churned out were insipid. Was it any wonder, considering she was staring at the page of a book or at the computer screen without noticing that a couple of hours had elapsed? To her amazement, Paul didn’t complain about her copy.
And yet there were good things in her life as well. Her friends, her father, her sister, the kids, all treated her with the tender solicitude reserved for a sick child. Somehow she managed to get through the days, even if by evening her vocal cords were strained from too much talk, her eyes red from too much crying. But at night she lay rigid and wide-awake, primly keeping to her side of the bed. She refused to admit to herself how much she yearned for the animal comfort of Rick’s body next to her, spoon style. The only person who could really have comforted her was the one who had shoved her into this hackneyed, preposterous, totally unacceptable predicament.
Then her cancer diagnosis completely eclipsed the divorce. At first she couldn’t believe that life could outdo art so extravagantly. What self-respecting novelist would have stooped to such a cheap trick, piggybacking malignancy onto heartbreak? The day her endocrinologist called saying the biopsy showed suspicious cells vaulted to the top of her short list of worst days of her life.
And so, for a while at least, cancer cured her of Rick. It put his betrayal in perspective. So he preferred a wealthy woman for whom he’d arranged a handsome out-of-court settlement to herself? Let him. Consumed by blood tests, ultrasounds, and visits to the surgeon, she had no time for his tawdry tricks. After the surgery there were post-op appointments and scans by large-eyed machines scrutinizing her body for more rogue cells. When none was found, she was pathetically grateful to the technicians, the doctors, God.
Whenever and wherever she thought of it, she prayed. Out on a walk, she’d furtively check that there was no one nearby, then approach a solid looking tree and touch the veined bark for luck. Dear God, give me back my old life, it’s not as bad as I thought it was.
“Let me live that I may praise You.”
I’ll deal with the shambles of my marriage, just don’t abandon me.
“Do not hide Your face from me, or I shall become like those who descend into the Pit.”
From being a desultory worshipper, she became a regular at shul. She joked that synagogue attendance was the high point of her week. At the very least, it anchored her weekends. The structure and predictability of the service, the rabbi’s attempts to decode the rich and problematic text, the kindness of strangers—were these prosaic but actual experiences of the divine?
Well, hardly. And now there was the Marty factor to contend with as well. Far from divine Marty. She avoided him; not that he was seeking her out. She wouldn’t stop going to shul because of him; how would she explain it to Faith? And she’d miss it too much. Just her luck. The one guy who’d asked her out since Ricky was as kinky as a skein of unravelled wool. Maybe that’s all there was out there, seriously flawed people. Like Rick, once a runaway yeshiva boy in search of a mixed-up Jewish shiksa. And now a warped real estate agent who settled scores with his wife by trying to get laid in massage parlours.
Getting laid was becoming an issue for her too. Since Ricky’s departure, she had more or less convinced herself that she’d be unable to function with anyone else. But two weeks ago she had a disconcerting experience at the annual Quebec English-language literary gala. Covering the event for The Gazette, she ran into Gilles Lemay, the literary columnist of La Presse. Literally. Dashing towards the phone to call in her quotes to the night desk, she collided with Lemay in the narrow indoor corridor linking the nightclub in which the award ceremony was held and the adjoining bistro. “Pardon!” they both exclaimed and laughed, embarrassed. With an innate courtesy Lemay grabbed her lightly by the shoulders to keep her from falling. The embrace lasted perhaps ten seconds before he’d righted her and they each hurried off in opposite directions.
Phoning in her story, Erica felt the imprint of Lemay’s fingers on her arms as if he’d handled her with hot tongs. “I was practically swooning,” she later told Faith (who naturally reported it to Rhoda). “It suddenly came to me. I haven’t been touched by a man in nearly two years.”
The dream she had the night following this collision she disclosed to neither Faith nor Rhoda. (There were limits.) She was in shul, the Torah reading had just ended, and Marty was called up for the honour of hugbah, to hold aloft and exhibit the sacred scroll to the congregation. Only men with broad shoulders and strong arms were equal to this task, the scroll not only being heavy, but at certain times of the year, dangerously lopsided. Marty, outfitted in a beautifully cut chalk-stripe suit, braced himself on the bimah, bending from the knee slightly to lever his load. Hoisting the twin spools high in the air, he turned to face the Ark, flinging his arms apart as wide as they would go so as to show off the text. As he did so, there was the sound of fabric ripping, and his jacket disintegrated into jagged strips to reveal a back ropy with muscle. The congregation was singing lustily. La mazikim bah, v’tomcheah m’ushar. “A tree of life to those who grasp it; those who uphold it are made happy.” Everyone except Erica appeared oblivious to Marty’s straining, sinewy bare torso.
At this point Marty’s trousers slipped down to his ankles. He was wearing paisley print boxers and black knee socks. What was visible in the expanse between briefs and socks was quite promising—sturdy looking legs dappled with dark curly hair that wasn’t even slightly repulsive.
In the morning Erica lay in bed replaying this scene. It wasn’t erotic, she told herself, not at all. It was a dream in which she exposed Marty for all the world to see. But the world, or at least the part of it represented by Congregation Emunath, remained unruffled. They were paying attention to the word of God on display, no one but herself distracted by Marty’s nice broad shoulders and paisley shorts.
4
Marty—in serviceable white cotton briefs and undershirt beneath jogging suit and warmest parka—was dousing four Hygrade frankfurters with mustard and relish. Inside the oversized van parked at the corner of Ste. Catherine and University, it reeked of hot dogs, cigarettes, and b.o.
Actions speak louder than words, his mother used to say. Apparently this had been a cornerstone of the thinking of Poppa Joe Teoli’s mama too. That coincidence had been a little surprising the first time he’d spoken to Poppa Joe. Of course it was nothing compared to the amazement he felt at conversing at all with a bona fide Catholic priest. And at being face to face with the founder of the Alley Mission.
Marty harboured a deep distrust of the Catholic Church, if not actually of Catholics. He knew better than to say that some of his best friends were Catholic, especially since none were. Over the years, however, there had been colleagues and acquaintances (his trusted dentist Denis Vaillancourt, his barber Johnnie Miceli) who adhered at least nominally to the Church of Rome. But the idea of Catholicism and the reality of occasional attendance at Catholic weddings and funerals conjured up in Marty a race memory of auto-da-fés, the smell of burning flesh, and the tainted odour of the crypt.
He had been drifting more or less since the disaster with Erica. During the course of innumerable sessions with Dr. Winters, he beat his breast over his sullied past. He raged at Erica for opening his letter. He vowed never to go near her again. (Winters was in wholehearted agreement.) And then he beat his breast some more.
One day, Dr. Winters said to him, “Enough of this self-flagellation! Do something.” Then he’d added, “Atonement isn’t just for the Day of Atonement.”
In somewhat different terms of course this was always the gist of Nate’s High Holiday sermons. And though March wasn’t the season of Jewish repentance, it became the time of Marty’s resolve. Erica had blown up in his face like a giant firecracker because of his own fixation on confession and absolution. (And of course because of stupid Mila. Whom, in the event, he didn’t fire.) Maybe Winters was right. Doing something might help—not with Erica, but with the sickness inside him.
But when the idea of taking action occurred to him, he didn’t think of Emunath’s Social Action Committee, or Hanukkah Food Basket Drive. He thought of Poppa Joe’s Mission dans la ruelle, the Alley Mission.
He’d heard an interview with Poppa Joe on the radio. How, ten years earlier, at a time when the priest was considering retirement from active work, he had bought an old Winnebago with a personal loan and with it began ministering to Montreal’s street kids and runaways. How great the need was and continued to be and how, along with filling kids’ bellies, he gave them nurturing and respect. He talked to them, listened to them, “As if they were guests in our home. We give them a little hospitality. Something to eat and drink. As if the van were a family kitchen. And in this modest way, we hope to offer them solace, a sense of acceptance … even love.”
The priest’s words struck a chord with Marty, and before he could change his mind he called Ruelle about the possibility of volunteering. He was amazed when he was vetted by Poppa Joe himself. The priest looked a few years older than in his publicity photos, an aging paesano with more salt than pepper in his handlebar moustache. The brown eyes he trained on Marty were both kindly and sharp.
“Why have you come to us?”
“I want to be useful,” Marty said, keeping to the narrow truth and delighted to find himself free of any desire to bare his soul.
“Tell me a bit about yourself,” Poppa Joe prompted.
Marty sketched a short bio of himself, beginning with his uninspired career as a student. It was a sore point with him, but a sort of point of pride as well. The unspoken subtext—I wasn’t supposed to amount to anything, but I’ve worked to make something of myself—hung in the air, a silent offering to the priest.
“Ah yes,” Poppa Joe said, “I know something of this kind of failure myself. D’you know, I was thrown out of not one, but two seminaries in my time? It’s a dubious distinction in my line of work.”
And so Marty found himself accepted not only as a volunteer but as a real person in the eyes of this down-to-earth, good man. There weren’t many conditions or much formal orientation. You learned on the job, committing to one night a week for twelve months. He’d been doing it ever since, with a double shift the previous week at Christmas, when a Jewish bénévole was a particular asset. Though he wasn’t obliged to cover New Year’s Eve, he was relieved to have a place to go.
“Hey Marty, dépêche-toé! Où sont mes quatre steamés avec relish et ketchup? Il m’en faut trois encore avec mayo et moutar’.”
“J’arrive,” Marty said, stifling a smile. Claudine, who took the orders at the front of the van, was an excitable twenty-year-old student at UQAM. She had a nice touch with clients, but gave short shrift to older volunteers. He slipped the hot dogs into wax paper envelopes and hustled to the front of the bus.
The smell of stale sweat became more powerful as he neared a couple of scrawny boys seated side by side on a bench in the middle of the bus. Marty tried not to breathe too deeply as he passed them, telling himself that if the stink became unbearable, he’d step out of the trailer and let the wind give him an airing.
He handed the hot dogs to Claudine, a strapping young woman as tall as himself. Behind her he caught sight of a girl perched on the stairs of the bus. She seemed like a bird arrested in flight—apparently unwilling to enter all the way in and ready to bolt back out into the cold any second. Her narrow face and slight build made him think of a sparrow.
Girls seldom came to the van. Poppa Joe had told him they were more likely to seek help at Ruelle’s day centre. The fragility of this waif in her black pea jacket open at the neck sent a pang through Marty’s jaded heart. He couldn’t tell how old she was, fifteen or twenty-five. Though he had never picked up anyone underage, a wave of guilt engulfed him, and he was overcome with shame. With all his might and against all reason, he hoped she didn’t work these streets.
Claudine nudged him with her elbow. “Marty, what’s with you tonight? As-tu oublié? Three more with mayo and mustard!”
“Right away. What about … her?” he added, shrugging his shoulder in the direction of the girl.
“Calvaire, Marty! Who do you think they’re for?”
5
“My New Year’s resolution should be about Bridget Callaghan. But I don’t know what to resolve. Actually, I wish I could just start off all over again with her,” Faith sighed, dipping a zucchini stick into the guacamole on the coffee table. There was a holiday sheen about her, from her dangly earrings, to her form-fitting black jumpsuit and pointy-toed stilletos. She had shed twenty-five pounds in the past six months and was looking svelte, seated on the pouffy couch in Rhoda’s living room. Al lolled beside her, one arm draped casually over her shoulder, a tumbler of scotch in his other hand.
“Well, maybe that would be just the ticket,” Hershy suggested. “Share that wish with her, and try to win her over.”
“You don’t have a clue what you’re talking about,” Rhoda said. “As usual.”
“Stop it, you two,” Al said. “Faithie, this is no time to be talking shop.
“And it’s not very interesting anyway,” Hershy looked daggers at Rhoda.
“Are we revisiting Bridget Callaghan yet again?” Erica breezed in from the kitchen, bearing a platter of cheese straws. She offered one to Paul. “May I tempt you?”
“Thanks,” Paul said, taking one and giving her a searching look from beneath bushy black brows. “Who’s Bridget Callaghan?”
“Oh God,” Al groaned. “Don’t encourage them! She’s one of their mutual thorny cases that they insist on chewing over ad nauseam. I’ve had her coming out of my ears for the past year. Her and her son Sean and his hair fetishes, and his delays. Why don’t we just change the subject? Erica, how goes it with Melly Darwin?”
“Do you really want to know?”
“I said I did, didn’t I?”
“I’m still trying to prise the story from him. For a smart man, he has an awful lot of trouble being coherent.”
“Isn’t it taking awfully long?”
“Not really!” Erica sounded defensive. “I have to somehow fit my research in with my Gazettte work. And there’s so much checking and double-checking of the war background. It’s a real pain.”
“But don’t you find it interesting?” Paul asked.
“Yes. But it’s also ghastly. It seems like every time I talk to him, there’s some new horror.”
“Like?”
“Like, after managing to scrape by in a horrendous work camp for nearly a year and a half, he’s shipped back to his home town, only to be shipped from there to Auschwitz. And on the cattle car, the poor guy develops an abscessed tooth that drives him insane with pain. And guess what? He’s lucky, he says. Because there’s a vet in the car, and another guy who happens to have a pair of pliers. And so they extract his tooth with the pliers, while everybody holds him down. And he says to me, ‘Such a thing would maybe kill somebody from infection today with all our conveniences. But I survive there, in those conditions, whether I want to or not.’” Erica trailed off, as if she’d forgotten where she was. She gave herself a little shake. “Sorry.”
“I’m the one that’s sorry,” Al said. “As a topic of conversation for New Year’s, even Bridget Callaghan was an improvement.” He looked at his watch. “It’s after ten, you guys. If we’re going to do fireworks, we’d better get a move on.”
“It’s too early,” Rhoda said. “We’ll just stand around, freezing.”
Everybody started to talk at the same time.
“It’s not like you’re going to get a better seat, if you go early. You’re going to be looking up at the sky.”
“There’s bound to be piles of traffic. They’ve closed off the mountain.”
“And you have to find parking.”
“Have we decided on the reservoir, or should we try Fletcher’s Field?”
“Nah, too many trees on Fletcher’s Field. They’ll obstruct the view.”
“And there’ll be scads more people there.”
“Okay, okay. So how’re we getting there?”
“We could all fit in my van.”
“That’ll be too tight. Why doesn’t Erica come with me?”
6
“I didn’t know you even had a car, Paul. You always take the Métro.”
“I do, usually. Or my bike. The car’s a total indulgence.”
“It’s nice. What is it?”
“A Mazda Miata. I got a deal on it. One of the copy editors had a baby. She figured her sports car days were over.”
Light snow was splattering on the windshield. Paul turned on the wipers. “I have a good mind to break away from the others and opt for Fletcher’s Field instead of the reservoir. How about it?”
“I couldn’t leave my friends!” Erica exclaimed. “Don’t you like them?”
“They’re okay. I just thought I’d like to have you to myself a bit.”
Erica stared at the rubberized wipers, hypnotized. They were sweeping the snow off to the sides of the windshield, drawing neat half-moons in the middle of the window. In the sudden conversational lull, they thudded like a noisy heart. She held in her breath, then sneaked a quick sidelong glance at Paul. His eyes were fixed on the road, and his gloved fingers clenched the steering wheel as if his life depended on it.
“Do you always do everything by the book?” he burst out finally, sounding bitter. “No, forget I said that. I like that you’re such a straight shooter. It’s a reassuring thing, predictability in a woman.”
He frowned in concentration. The road was slick and slippery, and he skidded turning onto Westmount Avenue.
“How’re you doing these days?”
“Ask me again next week,” Paul said, his square jaw grimly set.
“It must be just about a year now.”
“Yep. A few days ago…. And you, how’re you doing? Have you spoken to Ricky at all?”
“A couple of weeks ago. He wanted some stuff from the house, paintings and CDs, stuff like that. But my lawyer told me not to make little side deals. She said we have to come to a settlement.”
“You know, I still find it hard to wrap my mind around it. You and Rick were together all those years. We had such great times together. When Maryse heard you were splitting up, she said it was like someone had torn a strip off her heart.”
“She was a really fine sensitive person, Paul.”
“Too sensitive…. How’s this project of yours really going?”
“I wish I knew. Sometimes I think he’s toying with me. I’ve asked him about other people to interview. And he says that’s a good idea, and then he just smiles. Sort of blandly. I don’t know whether he’s got something to hide, or whether he’s testing me, to see if I know what I’m doing.”
“And have you found other sources?”
“I’m in the process. There’s someone in Toronto who’s written a self-published memoir of his war experiences that’s actually quite good. I’ve spoken to him. His name is Stein, Peter Stein. And he says he doesn’t know Melly—he insists on calling him Meyer—but he says the person I should be speaking to is a guy called Gershon Lieberman. Someone right here. And I suppose I could speak to Faith’s parents as well. To her father, anyway. Apparently they didn’t know him, but in a roundabout way everybody in Radobice must have known everybody else, even if there were nearly twenty-thousand Jews in the town. I mean, here in the Montreal community we keep on bumping into each other every time we turn around, and we’re five times bigger.”
Paul drove in silence for a minute or two, his jaw even more grimly squared. “I’m not sure why this guy should be testing you and not cooperating. As I recall, he was very eager to engage your services. Has he paid up the advance?”
“Oh, I don’t get it all at once! It’s all in increments for different stages. On signing, on completion of interviews, and so on.”
“And is he paying up on sked?”
“Well, so far, there’s only been one instalment, because I’m still interviewing. And then there will be a separate schedule when I start writing. He was a bit slow coughing up the initial payment, but yeah, he paid.”
On Cedar Avenue, icicles hung from the eaves of limestone mansions, catching the dancing lights from the coloured bulbs framing windows. The evergreens in front of the gracious old homes wore mantles of thick ermine. Clumps of snow lined the crooks and wide branches of the mature maples and stuck in patches to mottled trunks.
“What were Al and Faith carrying on about traffic?” Paul asked. “There’s no one on the road.”
“Not no one,” Erica pointed and laughed. “Look at that couple!” A man and a woman bundled up in parkas and tuques were clambering along on the snow-clad sidewalk in snowshoes. Each had a small child strapped on in a backpack. Erica waved at them and they gave a thumbs-up sign in return. “I wonder if they’re heading our way.”
“We’re going to be way early,” Paul said on Docteur-Penfield. “You’re sure you don’t want to try Fletcher’s Field in the meantime?” He was teasing her now.
“Quite sure,” Erica said firmly.
They found a parking spot easily on McTavish, in front of Thomson House. She waited on the sidewalk for Paul to lock up. He ambled towards her, a portly figure in tan sheepskin, and before she knew it he had clinched her in a bear hug. He kissed her hard, then stepped back. His visored cap was askew, and his dark eyes bore into hers with longing and trepidation.
“You taste like cigarettes, not as if you’ve been drinking,” Erica said, breathless. “But you’re acting like you’ve lost your mind.” Her heart was pounding madly.
“I don’t think I’ve lost it. I think I’ve just found it.”
She stared up at him, flabbergasted.
An errant snowflake lit on her eyelash and she dashed it away, feeling a glow radiate through her body even as her cheeks and fingers registered the brisk cold. Is this how your life changes from one moment to the next?
“Come on, let’s look for the others,” she said, taking his arm.
7
By a quarter to midnight, a camaraderie had sprung up among the revelers gathered in Rutherford Park on the reservoir. Al was bantering with a clutch of students swigging beer and tossing snowballs. Faith, wrapped in faux ocelot, was offering candy from her purse to the cherubic twins of the couple on snowshoes Erica and Paul had passed in the car. Erica and Paul were stamping their feet to ward off the cold and studiously ignoring each other.
“Look!” Rhoda exclaimed. The students had begun to set off firecrackers, little trailing silver rockets pop-pop-popping like an opening act for the main event. A cocker spaniel belonging to a woman in a long black mink whimpered at the noise until she bent down and scooped him in her arms.
“C’est minuit!” someone exclaimed.
The sky above the mountain exploded in a blitz of colour.
“This really was the right place to come,” Erica breathed.
“You can’t see the cross from here,” Paul grumbled. “We’d have been able to from Fletcher’s Field.”
“You and your Fletcher’s Field!”
“Look at that!”
Whorls of purple and green chased each other above. Hoisted onto their parents’ shoulders, the twins clapped their hands. The students hollered enthusiastically and guzzled their St. Ambroises.
I’m always going to remember us like this, thought Rhoda. Maybe I’ll tell my grandchildren some day how we were all here together, at this epochal moment—yes, it’s epochal. I’d never say it out loud, I’d sound like Erica, and Hershy would never let me hear the end of it. But here we all are tucked arm in arm, at the instant one century meets the next, at the moment one millennium greets another.
A hush descended on the hillside as an eerie glow lit up the entire sky. On the hump of the mountain the silhouette of each rockface and tree smouldered like embers left in the wake of a great firestorm. There was something awesome, even frightening, in this post-nuclear radiance that lingered for a few moments and then gradually subsided to darkness.
“Wasn’t that something!” Faith said. “I wasn’t sure till this minute that I was really having fun. In case anyone’s interested, I am really having fun.”
“I’ve got some champagne back home,” Hershy said. “I want to see you dance on my coffee table.”
8
In Paul’s bedroom across town in Mile End, Erica kept her eyes squeezed tightly shut against the soft light. I will not think of Rick. He has no place here. This is about me. And Paul. Period. She opened one eye cautiously. Paul was kissing her with an expression of such concentrated absorption that she wanted to laugh. Half naked, she was wedged against his buttoned pillow shams (one of the buttons was digging into her left buttock), while he, propped on one elbow, was stroking her breast through the thin fabric of her bra.
Really, it was quite startling how similar the mechanics of the act were, even when you changed partners. Not that the two men looked the same. She supposed Paul was handsome if you could appreciate a furry, bulging chest and legs like a prizefighter’s, but she felt a wave of homesickness for Ricky’s lean, athletic form. The small imperfections that the years had appended to it—the love handles, the slight stoop—had just made him more lovable, more hers.
By the light diffused through the crimped folds of the lampshade on the bedside table, she saw herself going through familiar motions. It was almost like watching a movie, the delicate strokings, the parting of lips and thighs. It was very odd to be doing this with Paul, whom she cherished in a fond, comradely way. Her anxiety about being able to function with someone new was dissipating as the anticipation of release mounted from the tips of her toes to her taut nipples. She tingled all over. But as she eased off Paul’s briefs, the sight of a foreskin on the emerging and erect penis was a shock. When she reached for it tentatively, he groaned, climbed on top of her, and entered her with a shuddering sigh. Afterwards he was tenderly apologetic.
“It will be better next time,” he said, caressing her cheek.
“Uhm,” she murmured.
He sat back to survey her from the foot of the bed.
“Let me look at you properly at least. You’re gorgeous.”
“There must be a condition called post-coital dimness. Like temporary insanity.”
“What are you talking about? You’ve got a great body. And absolutely amazing red hair.”
“Corinne will be so pleased to hear that.”
“Corinne?”
“My excellent and very expensive hairdresser.”
“What, you have yourself styled and coloured down here?”
She slapped his hand away and yanked the sheet up to her chin.
”I’m a little fresh?”
“Yes!”
He crawled back into bed beside her and took her in his arms. The sheet dropped away as he nuzzled her neck.
“Can you see my scar?”
He propped himself on one elbow, and with his other hand adjusted the lamp to give better light. “Is this it? Or is it a tiny wrinkle? I can’t tell.”
“I had a great surgeon.”
He gave her a worried glance. “But you’re okay, aren’t you?”
“I sure hope so.”
8
“So the man clearly has a weakness for cheese straws,” Hershy said, scooping leftovers into a plastic container.
“You noticed that too!” Al, bloodshot and rumpled, sprawled back in his armchair.
“Yeah,” Rhoda said, “he looked like he was having some kind of revelation. Like he was seeing her for the first time.”
“I think she must have been sending subtle signals his way,” Faith said. “Is there more of this champagne left? I love it.”
“What subtle signals?” asked Hershy, rolling his eyes and swivelling his hips in a grotesque stab at a belly dance.
“I read about it in The New York Times,” Faith said, holding out her champagne flute to Rhoda, who emptied the dregs of the bottle into it. “Women send out these understated scents I guess they must be. Sex hormones. Pheromones, they’re called. We give them off without knowing it, when we’re in a receptive state. If you know what I mean. And men kind of get ideas only after they pick up the message.”
“Woof, woof,” Hershy barked. “Fee fi fo fum, I detect the odour of pheromones.”
“Get up off the floor, you idiot,” Rhoda said, doubled over with laughter.
I won’t admit it to Hershy or anyone else, but this party was okay. Even if it was New Year’s.