Part One

The Jewish people read Torah aloud to God

all year long, a portion a week,

like Scheherezade who told stories to save her life.

By the time Simchat Torah rolls around,

God forgets and they can begin again.

—Yehuda Amichai

1

“It had to be a man who dreamed up Simchat Torah,” Rhoda said.

“Well, obviously,” Faith said. “The entire religion thing is rooted in patriarchy.”

Rhoda continued as if she hadn’t heard. “No woman is stupid enough to invent another holiday on top of four weeks of breast-beating and gorging on brisket and honey cake.”

“But Simchat Torah isn’t at all about breast-beating,” Erica said.

The three friends were walking along Netherwood towards the Baily Road shul on a crisp October evening as fast as the considerable foot traffic allowed. Statuesque, silver-haired Rhoda was in the middle, with Faith and Erica hustling to keep up with her long stride.

“It’s a holiday designed to make everybody look like a fool.” Rhoda was on a roll. “Hakafot!” She practically spat out the Hebrew word. “Please! All those self-important machers parading around with the Torah, and the kids running wild with their flags, and those half-hearted horas. As for the rabbi, don’t even get me started!”

“We won’t.” Faith smothered a full, cherry-lipped smile, catching Erica’s eye. “He was in good form,” she added.

“He was drunk,” Rhoda said, but she did drop her voice. It was one thing to criticize Nate to Faith and Erica, another to be overheard by the general public.

“You’re supposed to be a little high on Simchat Torah,” Erica said. She had her reasons for being partial to Nate, who had been exceptionally understanding at the time of her mother’s death.

In a rare blaze of intra-denominational goodwill, this year the Rabbinical Board of Montreal had decreed a community-wide Simchat Torah celebration, centred on the Baily Road shul, the biggest synagogue in the twin boroughs of Hampstead and Côte St. Luc. Each congregation in the area had been invited to bring over Torah scrolls for a street festival.

The three women crossed Harrow Crescent and nearly tripped over Jeff and Helen Stern. “Ah, our three lovely Graces. Thick as thieves as always,” Jeff muttered under his moustache, as the trio stepped off the sidewalk to pass. It was Jeff, the former president of Congregation Emunath, who had once dubbed them the Three Graces at a party, and the moniker had stuck.

“Putz,” Rhoda cracked, when they were out of earshot. Beneath her prickly shell beat a loyal heart, and she still nurtured a grudge against Jeff Stern, for ignoring Faith’s very presence at the annual general meeting. The one investing her as the new president. Caught off-guard by Rhoda’s expletive, Faith gave a rich belly laugh, while Erica shook her head in mock disapproval, her auburn curls shaking.

“We have to behave,” Faith said, wiping her eyes.

“Only you have to behave, Madame la Pres,” Erica said. “The rest of us can be as bad as we want.”

“Hello, Faith. Hello, Rhoda. Hello, Erica.”

“Hi, Marty,” the Graces responded in unison as Marty Riess, one of the stalwarts of the shul board, came up behind them and then pulled ahead.

Faith waited for Marty to be swallowed by the dark. “Odd to see him without Leona,” she observed.

“What’s odd about it?” Rhoda arched an eyebrow. “Hershy didn’t see fit to come. And, for that matter, neither did your Al.”

Faith stopped midstride for a moment, placing her hands on her hips. “They weren’t sitting together during the service, either,” she said.

“Maybe Leona was with friends,” Erica said.

“Leona doesn’t have friends,” Faith retorted. She and Leona Riess had had a spectacular run-in a year ago when Leona was the editor of The Shul Monthly. “I still think it’s very odd. It’s not like them at all.”

“You’re such a yenta,” Rhoda scolded, just as they reached the shul. Outside her flesh and blood, Faith was arguably Rhoda’s favourite person in the whole world.

A crowd was milling about in the street, people’s breaths forming small clouds in the brisk night air. A cluster of women spun madly in the middle of the road, surrounding a girl clutching a Torah to her breast, as if afraid someone would pluck it from her arms.

“Look at all those guys in their black hats and white leggings up there on the stairs. I think they want to tear her limb from limb,” Faith said.

“Oh, but there’s Nate with Rabbi Shulman!” Erica exclaimed, giving a little wave.

“Don’t tell me they’re going to let Nate speak here,” said Rhoda.

“They’re not,” Faith said. “He’s standing up there with the dignitaries, but they’re never going to let him open his mouth. They think Reconstructionists are heathens!”

Rhoda sniffed. “I smell weed. I wonder who’s responsible for that?” She paused and then asked, “Faith, how much longer do we have to stay? Surely we’ve shown our faces long enough.”

Erica’s toes were tapping. “I want to dance,” she announced. “You’re supposed to dance.” Having come to Judaism by a roundabout route, Erica was big on tradition.

“Go right ahead.”

Erica hesitated, shy of breaking into the circle without her friends. A writer isn’t a natural joiner by habit or temperament, but she was a good dancer and she had taken a stand. Pulling back her narrow shoulders in resolve, she approached the dancers, a slightly built, almost dainty figure melding into the ring.

“You’re being way more of a curmudgeon than usual tonight,” Faith said, crossing her arms beneath her generous bosom. Short and stout, she was a good head shorter than Rhoda. The two of them continued to appraise the scene, slightly to the side of the crowd. Reisa Kaufman, Nate’s wife, her head wrapped turban-style in a scarlet kerchief, was beckoning them to join a new band of twirling women.

“My tolerance for glorifying a piece of parchment dressed in old velvet has just about run its course,” Rhoda said.

“C’mon, we’re supposed to dance!” Erica had broken free and now grabbed Faith by the arm, tugging her towards Reisa’s group. “Am Isroel, am Isroel, am Isroel chai!” The people Israel lives, Erica sang, linking hands with Leona Riess. Torn between Rhoda’s truculence and Erica’s enthusiasm, Faith wavered before allowing herself to be pulled into the circle, her face lit by a huge smile.

Rhoda moved out of the way of the dancers, casting a sceptical eye on a knot of kids from the shul youth group. They were clustered around a banner held up by a girl on one side and a boy on the other. By the gleam of the street lamp, she recognized the girl as Ilana Stern in a tarty miniskirt and bomber jacket. The boy had an earring and a two-day stubble, and was in shirtsleeves despite the chill, his head covered by a baseball cap worn backwards.

Is Faith right that I’m being a killjoy?

It was an article of faith with Rhoda to be strictly, maybe even brutally, honest. Direct and outspoken, she didn’t hold with the current wisdom that being judgmental was a bad thing. She rather prided herself on judging and pronouncing. But it wasn’t her intent to be a party pooper; certainly not to rain on Faith’s parade. Her sense of fun was at least as well developed as Faith’s and Erica’s. So why was she being such a wet blanket? The thought popped into her head that she’d once been a rabble-rouser marching against a war—not towards a synagogue. And in the same era she had taken part in a sit-in for McGill français. She didn’t want to do the arithmetic on how long ago that had been. The war she had protested was Vietnam, and she’d never actually voted for the Parti Québécois. But now here she was, toeing the line of convention and tradition, a three-day-a-year Jew rubbing elbows with a crowd of religious fanatics. Not that Faith and Erica were religious fanatics (though Erica with her peculiar, crypto-Jewish background did try too hard sometimes). Nor for that matter were Rabbi Nate or Reisa. But these guys with the tzitses and the payes and the white stockings and the air of superiority—what was she doing among them?

Rhoda reminded herself that she wasn’t here for them. She was here for Faith.

And Faith was here because she was the new president, and the presidency had its price. Sure, it had its public highs, which clearly she enjoyed, her smile enormous as she hauled the Torah around the sanctuary at Shabbat services. Or when she addressed the entire congregation in full motivational flight on Rosh Hashanah. She had been so engaging and effective that, besides harvesting many compliments on how well she had spoken, people were now calling the shul office to volunteer to serve on the new committees she had urged them to join.

But there were other duties Faith found onerous, tonight’s street festival being a case in point. She had declared she couldn’t face it without Rhoda and Erica.

Friendship too has its price, Rhoda said to herself. So why then be so grudging about this nocturnal expression of loyalty? Perhaps she ought even to look on the bright side and acknowledge that the weather added a sheen of grace to the proceedings.

Rhoda loved this time of year, loved the distinctive sweet fragrance of decomposing maple leaves. She inhaled deeply and threw her head back to gaze up at the stars that were beginning to glitter.

The singing stopped abruptly, and a flock of black hats began mounting the podium. Rhoda’s moment of bliss dissipated. Faith had promised they would leave before any speeches, but clearly it was too bloody late for that.

2

Faith stood in front of the full-length mirror in her bedroom, looking wistfully at her image in bra and black tummy-control Spanx panties.

“I’m putting on weight again.”

“No, you’re not.” Accustomed by long experience to Faith’s losing battle with embonpoint, Al didn’t take his eyes off The National. He himself was on the bulky side, a rumpled giant with a weakness for junk food. As a professor of political science, he considered his preoccupation with the politics of the presidential penis a professional interest.

Faith sucked in her stomach and shifted position so she could view her form in profile. “I look four months pregnant.”

Al tore his eyes away from the image of Monica Lewinsky. “You look adorable.”

“Oy, Al!”

“I mean it. Come here and tell me all about your evening. How was the street festival? How was shul?” He rummaged about Faith’s side of the bed, clearing away an empty bag of potato chips along with the Gazette, the Globe, and Sunday’s New York Times to make room for her. He muted the volume with the remote, silencing Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr mid-sentence.

“It was okay, considering the venue. Rabbi Shulman actually invited the other reboinim to say a few words.”

“That must have been very interesting.”

Faith laughed her rich belly laugh. “It wasn’t very interesting, but it was good PR. Rabbi Shulman’s pretty liberal for the Baily shul. Speaking on the same podium as a Reconstructionist must have been a big step for him.”

“One small step for orthodoxy, one giant step for mankind?”

“Well, but what do you think he makes of our stated lack of faith in a supernatural God?”

“I don’t know what to make of it myself. It is a concept that’s a little hard to wrap your mind around.”

Al pulled Faith close to him, and she snuggled in, molding her body against his. He gave her waist an affectionate squeeze. “So it went well? There was a good turnout?”

“Very good! The street was packed with people from all over. Al, you’ll never guess. Marty and Leona Riess weren’t sitting together during services, and then they both went to the Baily separately.”

“So?” Al pivoted around, presenting his broad back. “Would you mind scratching my back?”

“I think they’ve split up.”

“Marty and Leona? They’re together a hundred years!”

“I’ve always heard it was a horrible marriage.”

“Really? Well if that’s what you’ve heard, it must be so. Uhmmm, that is so good …. And so, how do you feel now that the holidays are finally over? Has a great weight been lifted off your presidential shoulders?”

“What a question! I suppose I do feel a bit relieved that we’re back to normal, whatever that is. But I’m sure Nate’s going to throw me a new kink soon.”

“In other words, you’re loving every minute of it. Faithie, have I ever told you that no one in the world can scratch a back like you?”

“And who else has been scratching your back lately?”

3

Erica sat up in bed, heart pounding. There were tears in her eyes, and she couldn’t tell if she was hot or cold. Her toes felt frigid, but her armpits were clammy with sweat.

The digits on her alarm clock blinked 2:42. She had gone to bed a couple of hours earlier, having put in some time at her computer after coming home from the Baily. Now she tried to collect her thoughts so that the hammering in her chest might slow. The dream that had woken her began to play back in bright swatches of colour. A restaurant decorated with swag drapes in burgundy velvet, the table set with white cloth and silver, a man in a tux holding a glass of red wine, as if for a toast.

Erica reached for the switch on the bed lamp. She groped for the Tanakh on the night table, almost knocking over a glass of water. She willed herself to resist following the dream to its source, her extravaganza of a fiftieth birthday celebration. If she went there now, she’d never get back to sleep.

The Bible fell open at Psalm 116.

Once, in an unguarded moment, her father had let slip that her grandfather used to recite the Psalms in times of trouble. When his creditors were pressing him hard. When her grandmother was fighting for breath during a bout of pneumonia. Erica had tucked away this rare piece of lore about the ways of the orthodox. After she and Ricky split up a year ago, it had taken weeks before she could sleep through the night. She got into the habit of reading Psalms to calm herself when she woke from a nightmare.

No orthodox Jew would have called Erica observant, and she would have felt silly applying the label to herself, but it felt natural, even soothing, to fall back on tradition in a crisis. When she began to feel more settled, she had put the Bible back on the bookshelf in her office. But then, last spring, she’d been diagnosed with a malignancy.

Return, O my soul, unto thy rest;

For the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee.

For Thou hast delivered my soul from death,

Mine eyes from tears,

And my feet from stumbling.

The language was beautiful and apt. She particularly liked the part that came next, about walking in the lands of the living. Of course it was overdramatizing to imagine she’d been delivered from death, when it was just of a small nodule on her thyroid. The next verse also fit. Sort of. “I said in my haste: ‘All men are liars.’” She didn’t think that all men were liars, just because Ricky was one. (But he was a barefaced liar, a jerk. He had toasted her in front of everyone at the party; he had made a glowing speech. All a sham, and she like a fool had lapped it all up.)

Stop it! Erica said out loud, “Stop it right now.”

She snapped off the light and began deep breathing. In. Out. Inhale s-l-o-w-l-y. Exhale. Release tension in shoulders against pillow. Allow legs to feel heavy. Breathe in. Breathe o-u-t. Concentrate on feeling better than ever before. Concentrate on the breath. Inhale through the nostrils. Exhale.

4

Rabbi Nate Kaufman dialled Faith’s work number and got her on the first ring.

“Developmental Psych.”

“Faith, is this a bad time?”

Faith rolled her eyes. Nate called her several times a day, both at home and at work. It was seldom a good time.

“How did you think it went last night?” he asked. “The turnout from the shul was poor,” he added, without giving her a chance to reply.

Faith could just picture him furrowing his brow and wringing his hands. Literally, not metaphorically, wringing. “I thought we had a very good turnout,” she said briskly. “And I liked your speech.”

“Which parts?”

“Uh, well, you know … the bits about building bridges and finding common ground. And Rabbi Shulman made the right sorts of noises, too. I mean for someone orthodox.”

“But not everyone who was at Hakafot showed up.”

“Well you can’t expect everybody to be as enthusiastic as you are about this sort of thing. Nate, I’m seeing a client in five minutes.”

“I actually called to ask you a favour.”

Faith smothered a sigh.

“Would you come with me to see Melly Darwin about the capital campaign?”

Faith prided herself on having an intimate and encyclopedic knowledge of her community, but was momentarily at a loss for words. Accustomed to anticipating Nate’s agenda well in advance, she was caught completely off guard. Melly Darwin was one of the shul’s wealthiest members. Enlisting his help for financing a possible new building before canvassing the rank and file was a foxy move. She was quite chagrined at being taken by surprise.

If you had asked Faith why she had accepted the mantle of the presidency—and pressed her to be serious about her answer—she might have said something about liking the idea of being a small cog in the large wheel of Jewish continuity, of helping in a modest way to perpetuate the positive values of Judaism. Not the stupid, nitpicking, obsessive-compulsive minutiae of kashruth or Sabbath observance, but the institutions of synagogue life and, yes, the tribal closeness of a people that had foundered for millennia and yet had stubbornly persisted in—being. Just being Jewish. It was her way of doing her bit for her people. That’s what she would have said as to why she hadn’t turned down what she knew was bound to be a demanding job.

She probably would not have mentioned that there were intangible perks to the office of the president. It was a truism, practically a truth universally acknowledged, that no one knew as much about a person as did their lawyer or their accountant. Maybe not even their shrink. But a shul president was also advantageously positioned to obtain some fine insights. Performing the mitzvah of visiting a shiva house, she might bear witness to the most astonishing family meltdowns. Reviewing a report from the membership chair, she had privileged dope on the deadbeats: the members, not necessarily of the ranks of the impoverished, who shamelessly drifted from year to year mooching off the public weal, without paying their fees.

Gaining unexpected entry into the Darwin household as an incidental perk?

“I guess I could come,” she said slowly to Nate, with an unusual note of indecision in her voice. She didn’t know Darwin to speak to, although he came from the same town in Poland as her parents did. Outside of the High Holidays, she had never seen him in shul.

She had always been curious about Melly. Slightly resentful of him, too. It would be intriguing to pay a call on him on shul business. Especially if they were to visit him at home. Melly Darwin’s colossus of a house was a landmark in New Hampstead, an area not renowned for restraint in architecture.

“So I’ll set up an appointment with him for the two of us?” Nate pressed.

“Just make sure it’s in the evening. By the way, Nate,” Faith couldn’t resist asking, even though she heard voices in the waiting room. “Leona and Marty weren’t together at Hakafot. Or at the street celebration. Do you know what’s going on? Or is this something confidential?”

Nate gave a small, discreet cough. “Well, I don’t believe it’s a secret any more, They’re separating.”

“I knew it,” Faith said with satisfaction, not because she rejoiced at marital break-ups but because her hunch had been dead on. “I just knew it.”

5

Email from faithrabinovitch@mch.org to rhoda.kaplansky@lbpsb.ca

October 13, 1998, 12:55 p.m.

The Reb has confirmed that Leona and Marty are fini. What do you think of him as a candidate for Erica?

Email from rhoda.kaplansky@lbpsb.ca to faithrabinovitch@mch.org

October 13, 1998, 12:57 p.m.

Why don’t you get a life? What exactly do you know about Marty? Even if Erica wasn’t still stuck on ridiculous Rick, what makes him suitable? A Y chromosome?

P.S. Don’t you ever work?

6

Melly Darwin lived a ten-minute walk from Congregation Emunath, in a mansion that stood at the corner of Hillpark and Briarcliff on what must have been at least a triple lot. Faith pulled up and parked on the opposite side of Hillpark. Waiting for Nate, she dimmed her lights but kept the engine running because of the evening chill. As always when she saw this house, she felt a mixture of envy, admiration, and scorn. What gave Melly and Bubbles Darwin the right to live in such opulence, while her parents, who were of the same generation and background, had always struggled to get by?

In its oversized boxiness, the three-storey brown brick building looked more like an embassy or even a small synagogue than a private residence. Arched windows edged a huge skylight above the burnished wood squares of the front door. Every detail shrieked money.

She and Nate had decided in advance that he would do the talking, which meant she could sit back and take stock of the meeting. This was something she was used to doing at work and knew she was good at. In fact, she tended to do it automatically, managing to observe a great deal more than a particular situation required and squirreling away surplus information to mull over later. She did this without premeditation or ulterior motive. She had a vast curiosity about the world and the people around her, and she genuinely enjoyed sharing the knowledge she acquired through a kind of recreational sleuthing. So when she saw Nate pull up behind her, she was as astonished as she was annoyed to find her pulse quickening.

She scrambled out of her car and waved to him. “I can’t believe it,” she said softly as they walked up the flagstone path, “I’ve actually got butterflies.”

Darwin answered at the first chime of the bell, as if he had been waiting by the door. He was burly and bull-necked, a seventyish man of medium stature and florid complexion, exuding both authority and urgency in his jerky movements. He had a head of wiry iron-grey hair, a humped nose, and fleshy lips over prominent, very white teeth. In his short-sleeved polo shirt and dark cotton pants, he looked as if he were about to play golf rather than conduct a meeting. Faith wondered, not for the first time, what had attracted him to Congregation Emunath. Perhaps it was merely his home’s proximity to the shul. He didn’t strike her as an ideological Reconstructionist, inspired, like the founding members, by notions of social justice and the overarching importance of Jewish culture.

“Come in, come in.” He greeted them with a geniality at odds with the searching beam of restless brown eyes that darted away quickly after taking their measure.

“You want we should go to the conference room, or maybe first a tour?” His accent reminded Faith of her parents’ idiomatic English inflected by equal measures of Polish and Yiddish.

“The conference room,” Faith blurted, “unless of course you’d rather—”

“Yes, yes, it would take too long to show the whole house,” he gestured grandly with both arms. For an instant she caught a glimpse of a smear of blue on his left forearm.

“Perhaps you could just show us this floor,” Nate said. Faith, still unsettled by the sight of Melly’s number, felt her jaw drop as she stared at the rabbi. Isn’t that just like him? He’s as much dying to see the place as I am, but I’m too embarrassed to say so. And he isn’t.

“On this level we have three thousand”—he pronounced it t’ousand— “square feet. I’m not boasting— a businessman always thinks numbers. Numbers like dollars, naturally, but also numbers like square feet. Altogether this house is ten thousand square feet. It’s a nice property,” he added with a sudden, almost ingenuous smile. “Mine wife says I shouldn’t blow mine horn. I’m not, I swear. I’m just giving facts. How d’you like so far? Here’s the living room—it’s big enough for a party for one hundred.”

“Who plays?” Faith asked, eyeing the grand piano in the corner wistfully.

“Mine wife used to. A bit. But now she’d rather play cards with the book club ladies .… And this here’s the dining room. I like everything should be solid, real substantial. Like it’s been here forever. I don’t want people should think I’m—how you say?—nouveau riche. This here table’s solid oak. Custom built for me. I’m gonna tell you something, Rabbi, around this table sometimes we get t’irty people for the Seder, no extension needed!”

For a moment his voice wobbled. “Though I don’t want you should think anything can replace all mine family that died. Never.”

He fought to regain his composure, the bull neck stiffening, his colour high.

“But I made a new family here in Montreal and now we are—like it says in the Bible, nearly as numerous as the stars in the sky.”

His face cleared, and he managed a brief smile, his teeth flashing.

“This here’s one of the guest powder rooms. We got six bathroom in the house and four powder room. And this here’s the den. How do you like the plasma screen? The ainecklach when they visit, I got a whole entertainment centre for them. DVDs, a sound system, a videocam. Mine kids call it the House of Fun.” This last was said with less bombast and a sudden disarming modesty, as if the good opinion of his children were a validation of a special order.

“And the kitchen—with the big island and all the conveniences for mine wife. Not that she spends too much time in here. We have the help for that. So come, come, we go to the conference room so we can talk.”

They retraced their steps in the direction of the entrance. Darwin paused for a moment at the foot of the curved staircase and leaned on the balustrade to yell upwards. “Bubbles!”

There was no response. He drummed his fingers against the shiny block of wood and called out again, “Sweetheart! The Rabbi is here!”

There was the sound of a door opening upstairs and then the click of high heels above. “I’ll be down soon,” a contralto voice sang out.

The conference room was across the hall from the living room and looked out on the street through one of the arched windows Faith had observed from outside. It was simply furnished with a long table in rosewood, surrounded by a dozen chairs. The artwork in the room was at odds with the utilitarian furniture. Oil paintings of classical female figures draped in flowing, gossamer garments vaguely evoked Aphrodite. Alongside the sylphs and goddesses hung photographs of stripmalls and shopping centres. Faith recognized a new mall on the South Shore that had been profiled recently in the Business Section of The Gazette. The mall was notable for containing both a Chez Darwin, a new addition to the line of women’s wear shops that had initially made his fortune, and a La Lace boutique, his subsequent wildly successful lingerie franchise.

In a corner by the window, just behind the chair to which Melly now headed, stood a striking bronze bust of a man gazing into the distance. An excellent likeness—the hawk nose and fleshy lips were dead giveaways—it projected an image of decisiveness and strength.

Darwin took the chair at what was clearly the head of the table. He gestured to them to sit on either side of him.

“Would you like something to drink? Ginger ale? Tea?”

“No, no,” Nate replied. “We just ate.”

“I will ask the obvious question: why you want to put up a new building?”

Nate leaned forward to rest his elbows on the table and laced his fingers together. He cleared his throat and shot a tentative smile at their host.

“I’ll give you the obvious answer, Melly. We’ve outgrown our building. It was put up nearly thirty years ago when our community numbered sixty families. As you know, we added the library and the balcony ten years later—by then we were two hundred families. Now we’ve got four hundred families, and we’re bursting at the seams. We anticipate much growth in the years ahead. It’s only natural, since we’re expecting Reconstructionism to gain strength among Jews with time. Even as it is, we can’t accommodate our membership adequately, let alone new members.”

As Nate warmed to his topic, he began to talk faster, and his timidity evaporated. “On the High Holidays we’re obliged to hold extra services at the Y, because we can only fit about six hundred people into the building. We need better facilities for programming; we need a proper social hall, we need air conditioning—”

“Pardon me for butting in, Rabbi. I’m gonna tell you something, Rabbi—I’m not sold on this idea of growth. You know I’m a plain man with no education. But mine eyes are sharp. Here where I live, I watch mine neighbours. They’re all frum, and they seem to be getting frummer all the time. They don’t come to our shul, even though they live around the corner. On Shabbos they walk to the Baily or the Adath. What I think is this, it’s the Orthodox that are growing by—how you say?—leaps and bounds, not us.”

Nate furrowed his brows and swallowed. He wished he’d asked for something to drink after all. He had to tread carefully. It was only a foolish or inexperienced rabbi who came hat in hand to his richest congregant and then made mincemeat of his arguments.

“When it comes to demographics,” Nate said, taking a deep breath and smoothing his trim goatee with one hand, “of course the numbers can be interpreted in a variety of ways. With all due respect, though, Melly—and you may have little education, but you’re one very smart man—with all due respect, I would argue that the trend is towards the expansion of liberal Judaism. You are quite right that the ultra-Orthodox are gaining ground and that there’s also a resurgence in the modern Orthodox movement. But the mainstream movements—Conservative and Reform and traditional Orthodox—all of them look tired today. For thoughtful, contemporary Jews, our movement has so much to offer. Things like full egalitarianism for women and girls and dynamic, participatory services. And of course our emphasis on Jewish culture instead of blind faith—these are just some of the values that make us so special. And,” added Nate, pleased with his eloquence, “if we had a new, beautiful building, with appropriate function rooms, I believe we would attract many more young families with children who will need bar and bat mitzvahs. In fact, I have many, many ideas on how Congregation Emunath could become the leading synagogue in the city. But of course first we must have better facilities.”

“It all sounds very fancy,” Darwin drummed his fingers on the shiny surface of the table. “How much d’you think it’ll cost?”

Nate tugged at his beard nervously. “Five million, maybe five and a half, according to our preliminary feasibility study.” He expected an outburst from Darwin, but when none came, he pushed on. “We are certain we can raise half that from the membership at large. We also believe it’s very important that the members feel a sense of ownership, of proprietorship. So we’re only going to propose that you help us with the other half.”

Darwin screwed up his face and slapped himself on the forehead dramatically. “I’ve got to hand it to you, Rabbi. You’ve got more chutzpah than me—and that’s saying something. One moment please.” He strode to the door and almost collided with it, as it was thrown open from the other side. A tall, handsome woman in a flowing black lounging costume swept in. Every black hair of her upswept coiffure was glued into place. Her air of assumed majesty implied that, at the very least, a fanfare of trumpets was in order.

“There you are, Bubbles. I was just going to get you.”

“I told you I was coming. You’re always so bloody impatient, Melly!” There was no immigrant accent in her diction; she wore the smug confidence of the born-and-bred Montrealer who, half a century earlier, had traded on her sex appeal to land a greener who worshipped her and who had fortuitously fulfilled his part of an unwritten contract: he had made good. “Excuse my language, Rabbi—how are you? And how are you, Faith? No, no, don’t get up. I’ll just sit here next to you, Rabbi. So, what have you decided amongst yourselves?”

“You know, sweetheart—,” Melly shot her one of his mercurial glances before training his eyes back on Nate, “our Rabbi’s a bit of a joker. He’s asked us for nearly three million dollars. But perhaps, Rabbi, you are not really a comedian, just a very able negotiator. Perhaps you’re asking a lot more than you expect to get?”

There was a pregnant silence. Somewhere in the house a clock chimed the quarter hour. Nate wondered if he should say something. Faith sneezed.

“Gezuntheit, gezuntheit,” Darwin said heartily, then turned to his wife once more.

“What should we say to them, Bubbles?”

Bubbles studied her flawlessly manicured coral fingernails, then propped her chin on her hands.

“Rabbi, as you know, we have a beautiful family. Our girls, God bless them, we couldn’t ask for better. Besides both of them being in the business—and so good at it—they’ve made fine marriages: two doctors, Rabbi, imagine! One’s a pulmo … pulmonologist, the other’s an intensivist, that’s intensive care, you know. Charlene has two children and Anita, so far only one, but we hope for more. Now our son, Glen, he’s also quite wonderful, but maybe a little bit unsettled, a little rebellious. He and his wife are expecting their first baby in the spring. You know, Rabbi, I think if you could persuade our shiksa daughter-in-law to convert by then, Melly would be more inclined to help you out.”

“Now, Bubbles! Hold on, hold on, under no circumstances I pay for half the building! Conversion, no conversion, I’m not the only member with some change. So what do you say Rabbi?”

Nate’s eyebrows had shot up and his freckled cheeks had turned pale. Faith had only seen him ashen like this after the Avoda service on Yom Kippur.

“What do I say to what?” he asked faintly. “You’re not seriously suggesting that I should convert someone who’s reluctant? You surely don’t mean that I should take this on as some kind of challenge? In Judaism, we discourage Gentiles, we turn them down three times. A rabbi doesn’t make deals.” He tugged at his beard. “Perhaps I misheard you, Melly. Maybe you’re asking me to comment on other large donors?”

Again there was a long pause, during which the rabbi blinked furiously. Faith had never seen him so off balance.

“We’re saying,” Darwin finally spoke, “that there are many considerations here, many services for exchange.” He cocked his head in Faith’s direction. “I heard you had a friend—what’s her name, Bubbles? She writes in the paper.”

“Molnar,” Bubbles drawled.

“That’s it. Erica Molnar. Is she a friend of yours?”

“Yes,” Faith said, nonplussed. “Erica’s a very good friend of mine.”

“She writes some kind of stories or something?”

“She writes a column, Melly,” Bubbles dripped sarcasm. “A literary column.”

“But she writes books too, no? Am I not right she writes books? Tell your friend, I want her to write a book about me.”

“Erica’s a professional writer.” Faith fairly bristled with indignation. She automatically drew her hands to her hips, a pose she usually adopted when on her feet and in a combative frame of mind. “Erica doesn’t come running just because someone asks.”

“I’m not someone. I’m Melly Darwin. Meyer Melech Darwin. That’s what I want, a professional. Bring her to me. I have a story like she’s never heard before. She makes up stories, right? Mine story she couldn’t make up! No one could make up a story like mine. Right, Bubbles?”

7

Nate unbuttoned his shirt slowly, then slung it in the wicker hamper in the corner of the bedroom. He sank onto the bed, reaching for his folded pyjama top beneath the pillow. Without bothering to button himself up, he slid under the covers next to Reisa, unclipped his kipah, and took her into his arms. “Unbelievable,” he sighed into her neck. “Quite unbelievable.”

“But I’m still not clear what happened,” Reisa said, extricating herself from the embrace, and sitting bolt upright against her pillow. “Did he turn you down or did he say yes?”

Nate rolled onto his back and stared up at the ceiling, painted navy with little silver stars. Maybe that was a touch too eighties? Maybe they needed to repaint, redecorate?

“Bubbles muddied the waters, first by bringing up the issue of the conversion of Glen’s wife. And then he implied that if Erica wrote a book about him, he’d be more amenable.”

“Are they playing good cop, bad cop?”

“They’re both bad cops. Erica isn’t going to write a book about Melly. And I can’t convert Glen’s wife.”

“I don’t see why not. If she came to you and asked, you could and you would.”

“A, she hasn’t come. And B, I don’t do conversions on demand. You know people study for years with me!”

“Some people study for years with you, and others do it more quickly. There’s a lot at stake, Nate.”

“You don’t have to tell me that!”

“And as far as Erica is concerned, everyone has their price. I’ll bet you she has hers.”

8

Thursday evening after supper Faith held a debriefing for the Graces at Rockaberry’s on Queen Mary Road.

“Nate’s got to have it,” Faith said, sipping her latte and shaking her head. “He’s had a bee in his bonnet ever since he got back from California. Nice job, Rhoda.”

Rhoda grinned, revealing the crowded uppers that gave her smile a charming irregularity. She inclined her silver head modestly. She had just finished carving one slice of very berry pie and another of apple crumble into three surgically equal slivers. “This isn’t San Diego,” she said, passing the plates around. “And anyway we’ve got an entirely acceptable building.”

“That meditation retreat in California had a huge impact on him,” Faith mused. “Maybe it’s some kind of mid-life thing, y’know what I mean? He’s meeting up with his classmates from rabbinical college after something like twenty-five years, and they’re probably all showing off with their big fancy American shuls. What a come-down our little hovel must seem after all that!”

“I don’t think it’s about his trip to California at all,” Erica said, pouring tisane into her cup from a green ceramic teapot. “I think it really is about the building. My kids call it a barn. And, Rhoda, it’s not true that it’s perfectly acceptable. The roof leaked badly last winter.”

“So fix it! Patch it or do whatever you’re supposed to do with a roof! And what if it is like a barn? It’s supposed to be. The original design was modelled on a French-Canadian farmhouse.”

“It costs way too much to renovate,” Faith said. “And it’s not worth it. The feasibility study said so.”

Rhoda put down her fork, wiped her lips, and arched a finely-shaped eyebrow. “Take us out of that building and we’re going to be like every other synagogue in Montreal. Full of ourselves. Stuffy. Self-serving.”

Faith scanned the diners at the neighbouring tables, nearly all of them boisterous teenagers. A grey haze enveloped the room, even the No Smoking section where they were seated. She lowered her voice and leaned forward conspiratorially. “This is in the strictest confidence.”

The other two nodded gravely, deliberately avoiding each other’s eyes. If they didn’t snicker or otherwise throw Faith off course, a juicy tidbit was likely to follow. Faith turned towards Erica. “You’re in for quite a surprise. The rabbi’s going to put the touch on you to write a book about Melly.”

“Are you crazy? I’ve never laid eyes on the man.”

“Well, he’s heard about you. He has you in mind for his biographer.”

“C’mon Faith, what you been smoking?”

9

A couple of bearded blackhats were leaving the butcher shop by the back door when Erica entered by the front. At the counter, Noam, the butcher, a burly fortyish man with a slight stoop, dressed in blue jeans, a lumberjack’s shirt, and a diminutive kipah, was fingering the blade of a cleaver and grousing under his breath. “The Va’ad’s going to be the death of me.”

It wasn’t clear whether his dark musings about the Jewish Community Council’s kosher supervisory arm were being addressed to a young woman at the counter or at Erica behind her.

“That’s the third time they’ve come to check me out this month. Twenny years in the business, they think I dunno how to salt a chicken! What can I do for you today, Bella?”

“I don’t know what to feed them already,” the woman called Bella whined, as she balanced a baby on her hip, while a little girl at her knee tugged on her stylishly cut mid-calf skirt. Erica couldn’t decide whether the blonde hair beneath the dark snood was real or a very good wig.

“Avrumeleh wants only chicken fingers,” Bella sighed dramatically, wagging a finger at a boy of about five who had his nose stuck against the glass door of one of the freezers by the wall. “Avrumeleh,” she pleaded, “If I buy some minute steak, will you eat?”

“I hate steak!”

Bella gave another long-suffering sigh. “See what I mean? And my daughter won’t touch chicken fingers.”

Noam stared impassively in front of him. Erica cocked her head to catch his eye.

“Shall I come back later? I just need a couple of things.”

“I’m almost done,” Bella said. “So throw in three pounds of chicken fingers, I’ve got to feed them something! You’ve no idea what a struggle it is. I don’t wish it on anybody. And my husband won’t eat either,” she added, a helpless look on her blandly pretty face. “And after yontiff they’re more picky than ever.”

Erica watched Noam’s reddened fingers dance over an assembly line of boneless chicken breasts on the stainless steel counter, turning glistening slabs of meat into a mound of neat slices in seconds. With economy of movement, he divided the pile in three, heaping each onto a styrofoam tray, then sealing it in plastic wrap.

Erica was fond of Noam and his shtick. He spoke a smattering of oddly-inflected Hungarian which he liked to practise on her. Born in Israel, to parents who, like hers, were Hungarian, he was Lubavitch without being stridently so. She got a kick out of his earnestness and the homespun bits of philosophy he dished out along with the best kosher meat in town. Or at least Faith and Rhoda said it was the best, and she ceded to their expertise. Having come to kashruth by the back door relatively late in life, she herself had no basis for comparison.

As Bella and her brood trooped out, Erica gave Noam a sympathetic smile.

“Szervusz, Erica.”

“You’re a patient guy, Noam.”

“What am I gonna do? They’re my bread and butter. And the Rebbe, olav ha shalom, when I used to visit him in Brooklyn, he used to say what’s the point in davening, if we can’t get along with each other? God must get awfully bored listening to us every day the same thing, if we don’t do the right thing. Maybe the Moshiach won’t come until Bella finds something to serve her husband and kids that they’ll eat.”

“I guess you’re doing your bit then to make him come.”

“I’m trying. Don’t joke about it, Erica. This is serious. The Rebbe said that what God wants most from us is in the work of our hands, that’s the way we’ll fix the world. And the Moshiach will come only if we’re all doing the mitzvot.”

Erica thought she’d better order before Noam got himself truly worked up about the Moshiach.

“Two chickens cut up, no skin, please. And could you please give me some soup bones and chicken bones as well?”

“And a little liver for Cinnamon? I figured you’re due to come in, so I’ve been putting some aside. How’s he doing, by the way?” Noam hated cats, and his solicitous enquiries about Erica’s geriatric pet were always couched in tones of tender scorn.

“Holding his own pretty well for an old gentleman.”

10

Erica backed out of her driveway on Saturday morning in some haste. It was five past ten—she would have to hustle to make it. Since Faith’s investiture as president, this had become their routine. Instead of lingering over the fat Saturday paper, catching up on phone calls, or doing the groceries, they were off to shul together.

Erica had learned to be on time for these outings; Faith was starchy if kept waiting. “On time,” though, meant a calibrated degree of lateness. Services started at ten, but being there for Mah tovu, the first of the morning prayers, showed greater eagerness for religion than Faith deemed necessary. On the other hand, she considered arriving after 10:20 bad form for her new presidential status. A decorous entrance before the Amidah, the standing prayer, was just right.

Erica pulled up in front of Faith’s brick and stone split-level on Rosedale, just as Faith, who’d been watching for her from inside, came sailing down the stairs.

“A new outfit?” Erica asked her as she buckled up.

“Rhoda and I found it on sale at BCBG. It was a steal.”

“That leopard print is very you, but however do you manage on those spiky heels?”

“They’re not that high, Erica, really. Not when you’re as short and round as me. How was your Friday night?”

“Just Tamara and my father. The usual.”

The usual now. Erica allowed her mind to wander. It used to be both her parents and Raichie and Ricky as well. But her mother had passed away, Raichie was working in Toronto, and Ricky—Ricky was gone. What was his used-car heiress serving him on Friday nights? Lobster bisque? Steak tartare? The heiress, the kids had let drop, was a very good cook.

Erica transported herself back from a vision of Ricky feasting on a heaping platter of verboten shellfish, an oversized serviette tucked into his starched white shirt. Faith was asking her something that she hadn’t heard the first time.

“Melly Darwin? Are you still riding that hobbyhorse?”

Faith chuckled from the depths of her belly. Erica’s arcane turns of phrase gleaned from who-knew-where were a source of merriment to her and Rhoda.

11

Erica and Faith entered the sanctuary just as Rabbi Nate was intoning the yotzer. The square room was hinged towards the east, its focal point a row of slender stained glass windows above the Aron Kodesh. Through the narrow panes the sun cast prisms of colour onto the bimah, both illuminating Nate’s face and tingeing it with a hint of mystery. His expression flickered in an almost imperceptible greeting—from past experience, Erica knew that after the service he would be able to give an exact accounting of who had been present, even on Shabbatot when there were a couple of hundred congregants in attendance.

She was faintly surprised when Faith took her arm to steer her towards the central section of the sanctuary rather than their habitual spot on the left side. “O God, you have created us in your image and have made us to share in your work of Creation. You have given to each generation the task to shape the future of humankind,” the rabbi was reciting as Faith made a beeline for seats directly in front of Marty Riess and Abigail Rosen, checking to make sure that Erica was in tow. Erica’s puzzlement grew. Why had Faith brought them into such proximity with Abigail, who as Faith was well aware, was no fan of Erica’s.

A poet of uncertain renown, Abigail, in fact, disapproved mightily of Erica, for having merely congratulated her on the publication of her latest collection, instead of rushing to interview her for The Gazette—as she clearly believed was her due. That had left Abigail with no alternative but to call Paul Ladouceur, Erica’s editor, who in turn wounded her by being unfamiliar with her name and oeuvre.

Even worse, Ladouceur then assigned the collection to young Guido Vincelli, who mustn’t have had a dram of poetry in his punk soul. In an omnibus review, the wretched Vincelli had dismissed Abigail’s years of effort in one line (“Reaching the Pinnacle strains for the heights but scales no peaks”).

Abigail had had to content herself with a rave review in the Canadian Jewish News (“Abigail Rosen wears her Jewish heart on her sleeve and brings to life the joys and sorrows of a Montreal-Jewish childhood”) and the triumphant satisfaction that a Spanish publisher had not only bought the translation rights but had invited her to attend the launch in Madrid the following spring.

Having located the exact seats for her purpose, Faith nodded briskly at Erica, and the two of them sat down, Erica still wearing an expression of bemusement.

12

Bent on a little clandestine matchmaking research, Faith wondered what Marty was doing next to Abigail, who was at the very least eighty-five and neither charming nor beautiful. Was it his well-known and unabashed admiration for the arts? Did he have a mother complex? During the Shema, she noted that he had a pleasant singing voice and good Hebrew pronunciation. At the same time, she was taking mental stock of those in attendance.

It was a surprisingly large group, for the Shabbat following the holidays. In the front row on the right hand side, ancient and bent, Moish Stipelman, founding rabbi of Congregation Emunath, with Sylvia, his battle-ax of a second wife. A few rows behind them, the sleek blonde page boy of Leona Riess—that was it! Leona had staked claim to the family pew, forcing Marty to relocate beside Abigail. Then there were a few youngish couples, all accompanied by prepubescent children, the next crop of bar and bat mitzvah candidates. Faith made a mental note to greet and welcome each of them at the kiddush after services.

“The Shatzes are here,” she whispered to Erica.

“Uhuh,” said Erica, her nose in her siddur.

“Haven’t you heard?”

“What?” Erica, apparently lost in prayer, sounded vaguely exasperated.

“The son’s having an affair with the Golda character in Fiddler.”

“What?” Erica nearly dropped her siddur as she turned to stare at Faith in a most satisfying display of attentiveness

“You do know the Yiddish Theatre is doing Fiddler?”

“Yeah. So?”

“So Jason Shatz, and the father—Mike Shatz—and his father, old Solly Shatz, are all in the play. And Jason’s sleeping with Barbara Walfish, the woman playing Golda.”

“So what?” Erica’s voice kept rising as Faith expertly reeled her in.

“What d’you mean, so what? He’s twenty-four and she’s forty-seven! And married! Or was, till recently. Apparently she’s having to give back the Mercedes.”

“I should think so!”

“The Shatzes all think it’s great, Jason having the sexual prowess to satisfy a sex bomb like Barbara.”

Erica’s shoulders began to heave with the effort of suppressing the storm of laughter that threatened to erupt at the idea of puny Jason Shatz in the guise of Don Juan. Faith was quite content at the effect she had produced. But before she could supply another lubricious detail, Erica’s features contorted in a grimace of pain. Startled, Faith snapped her head around. Abigail’s arresting liquid brown eyes—her one fine feature—were burning at her with wrath. She wagged a bony finger—the one that had just poked Erica between the shoulder blades—in her face.

“Grow up, you two,” Abigail hissed amidst a scraping of feet as the congregation rose for the Amidah.

13

Nate was about half way through the d’var torah when a couple of the stranger members of his flock began filing in.

Each year it was a challenge to come up with a fresh reading of the Creation story, particularly after the exertions of the High-Holiday sermons had, as usual, leached him of his best ideas. And yet each year he loved this moment of wrestling with the ancient and majestic text—it was too inflated to compare himself to Ya’akov and the angel, but still .... Engaging with the thinking of the great rabbis through the ages, hoping to come up with some small fragmented truth of his own that might speak to a questing mind or two, these were the reasons he had entered the rabbinate.

He was warming to his theme that the parsha presented two Creation stories, one centred on God and beginning appropriately with the birth of heaven, then of earth, and the second focused on humans, reversing the order. “That magnificent sentence introducing Bereishit,” he was saying, “that sentence we can all quote: ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,’ speaks first of the creation of the sky, hashamayim. But when the story is reprised in Genesis 2 and God forms man from the ‘dust of the ground,’ the order of the words is inverted and we learn that this was the day on which God ‘made earth—haaretz—and heaven.’

“The late great modern-Orthodox rabbi and philosopher, Joseph Soloveitchik, gives a brilliant and profound interpretation of these two Creation stories in his classic essay The Lonely Man of Faith. In it he says that the answer to why there are two different accounts isn’t because of, what he terms, an ‘alleged and imaginary dual tradition.’ Rabbi Soloveitchik, as an Orthodox rabbi, doesn’t examine the Torah as a literary text that can and often does incorporate different sources from different eras. He sees it as the actual revealed word of God. Thus for him the two accounts arise directly out of what he views as a real contradiction in the nature of man.

“We as Reconstructionists are of course open to the study of the Torah as a rich compilation of various texts from different eras. But we are also at liberty to study the gleanings of Soloveitchik and to learn from them.”

Nate was an unassuming speaker, not given to oratorical flourishes, but his voice inadvertently grew louder as, looking up from his notes, he observed Rozalee Zelniger and Simon Herscovitch making their entrance into the sanctuary, more or less together. Rozalee, her fronds of dyed carrot hair more than usually dishevelled, was pushing a steel frame walker in front of her. Why the walker?—Nate puzzled to himself, momentarily distracted from his sermon. Rozalee wasn’t especially old, maybe in her mid-fifties. To date, she had merely declared herself blind, not halt, a claim bolstered by the coke-bottle lenses of her horn-rimmed glasses, but open to challenge, since she also professed to be a visual artist and had occasionally been sighted behind the wheel of a car. Thin to the point of gauntness, chin thrust forward, Rozalee was proceeding down the aisle with a normal gait, but as she neared the centre of the front row where she insisted she needed to sit on account of her impaired vision, she gathered up the walker in her arms and fairly sprinted to her seat. Simon, her octogenarian husband, dressed in a faded but freshly pressed Mao jacket from the 60s, was making his stately progress several paces behind her, dragging one leg and using a cane.

Nate took a deep, steadying breath and resumed speaking. “So that in Genesis 1, we read, ‘And God created man in His own image…; male and female created He them. And God blessed them; and … said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the fowl of the heaven and over the beasts and over all the earth.’

“The Rav calls the Adam of Genesis 1 Adam the first. This Adam is—we are told—created in the image of God. Rabbi Soloveitchik suggests that humanity’s likeness to the divine expresses itself in our striving and ability to be creative beings. The first Adam is boundlessly curious in his mission to subdue his environment and to gain control of nature.

“The creation of the second Adam is quite different. The text in Genesis 2 speaks of God breathing the breath of life into Adam’s nostrils and giving him a soul. This Adam doesn’t create a world of his own or dominate nature so much as he looks with wonder upon God’s garden and nurtures it.

“So we can view the first Adam as a social, creative being, who emphasizes the artistic aspect of life. Rabbi Soloveitchik also points out that this Adam is never alone, not even on the day of creation. He emerges into the world together with Eve, while the second Adam stands alone and is spiritually oriented.

“I am simplifying the Rav’s thesis, but let me now conclude with my view that the Torah, including the Creation story, is not an either-or proposition. Rather it gives a rounded picture of the world and of our own human nature within it. We are neither the first Adam nor the second. We are both practical and spiritual, creative and nurturing.”

Nate looked up from his notes to scrutinize his congregants. There were fifty or sixty people in the room, a respectable number for this particular Shabbat, though as always he wished that the fervour of the High Holidays would carry over into better attendance in the new Jewish year.

“Are there any comments or questions?” he asked diffidently, though he was quite pleased with how he had developed his tentative thoughts.

Rozalee bounded to her feet before the words were out of Nate’s mouth. Thin chest quivering, she throbbed with indignation. “As a vegetarian and a Reconstructionist, I wish to disassociate myself from the idea that we as humans are superior to the members of the animal kingdom. When God tells Adam and Eve to rule over the fish and the birds and the other creatures, that’s the beginning of all evil in society! I myself am a vegan and I think the fact that Shabbat kiddush includes eggs and fish, and even cheese from time to time, is an implicit act of aggression towards the creatures who we share the earth with. And cruelty towards animals begins right here in the Torah, in Bereishit.”

“Thank you, Rozalee,” Nate said, looking around the room for help from any quarter.

“Rabbi,” Abigail sang out, without standing up. Her sonorous voice could carry from any part of the room.

“Yes, Abigail,” Nate said, bracing himself. Participation by the congregation was a fundamental tenet of Reconstructionist Judaism. He believed in it wholeheartedly. Why was it, though, that the most trying individuals tended to hog the discourse?

“I find the title of Rabbi Soloveitchik’s book really evocative, Rabbi: The Lonely Man of Faith, that’s wonderful. As a writer myself, I know how difficult it is to choose a really good title.

“I remember reading the book some time back. The part that especially spoke to me was the personal element. He wrote about his own loneliness. I was surprised that a man of such piety could sound so tormented, could feel so alone in the world, abandoned by all, even by God. Why do you think that is, Rabbi?”

In the row in front of Abigail, Faith and Erica exchanged a long appreciative look.

“You got to hand it to her,” Faith whispered.

Erica, forgetting Abigail’s recent attack for an instant, nodded. “I bet she’s the only one here besides Nate who’s read Soloveitchik.”

Nate leaned forward on the lectern, cupping his chin with one hand and stroking his beard slowly. “I think, Abigail, that in today’s secular society, having faith is to feel at odds with the rest of the world. But paradoxically, a feeling of loneliness can also send the man or woman of faith towards God, through the avenue of prayer. And feelings of loneliness can propel you towards others, as a way of creating connectedness as well as community.” Nate glanced sidelong to his right, where his cherished Reisa was sitting in the front row. “There’s an essential loneliness to living, but it’s mitigated by the profound loving connections we are capable of forging. The first Adam is not alone for even a single day. He and Eve emerge into the cosmos together. And let’s not forget either that the Rav dedicated his book to Tonya, his wife of many, many years. Despite his feelings of marginalization, he was far from being alone.”

“But that’s not really the point, is it?” Abigail persisted. “That’s about subjectivity, but I was talking objectively, or existentially, if you prefer.”

Nate scanned the room to see if there were any other hands in the air. But Abigail wasn’t done.

“Rabbi,” she called out. “I want to add one more point, Rabbi. If we’re going to be subjective.” She paused for effect. “Again, that haunting title. I really think it fits you to a T, Nate. I’ve always thought so. The Montreal Jewish community is one big Orthodox sea. That leaves you a very lonely figure. I mean, the way you don’t fit in with the other rabbis in town. And I just want to say how much you mean to me: you are in your own way a heroic figure.”

A subdued titter rippled through the room.

“God, she’s impossible!” Erica mouthed to Faith, rubbing the shoulder that was still tender from Abigail’s thrust. Faith rolled her eyes in response. “She makes a great point and then she blows it.”

“Well, thank you, Abigail,” Nate said. He tugged at his beard, looking unsure as to whether he wanted to burst out laughing or weep. Surveying the room once more, he glanced up at the balcony, and then said perfunctorily, “If there are no more comments or questions, then let’s return the sefer Torah to the Ark.”

14

The folding screen separating a spartan social hall from the sanctuary was pushed aside for kiddush. Conversation hummed briskly around tables set with the usual array of Shabbat fare: gefilte fish and herring, party sandwiches, pita, hummus. Marty Riess juggled a plate of gefilte fish and purple horseradish in one hand and a glass of red wine in the other. He cocked his head from his great height towards Erica.

“I was quite embarrassed by Abigail’s behaviour,” he said apologetically.

She looked up at him with a wry smile, revealing a small dimple on her left cheek. “I wasn’t behaving particularly well myself.”

“I was thinking about you during the d’var torah,” he said, his expression earnest and his deep-set eyes serious.

“You were? Why?”

“A creative person like you must feel like God, no?”

“Like God?”

“You know, writing, making up stories, bringing things into the world that weren’t there before.”

“It’s really just what I do, my work.”

“I’d like to ask you more about it some time.”

“Well, okay,” Erica said, offhand. She had once served on the shul program committee with Marty and found his ideas deadly dull. She turned away, and, for want of something to do with herself, reached for a celery stick.

“I understand we’re in the same boat,” Marty persisted.

“What boat is that?”

“Leona and I are separating. I heard you and your husband also.”

“I see. That boat.”

“And—I was sorry to learn that you’ve had an operation.”

“Thank you.” Really, did he have to rub salt into all her wounds? “Would you excuse me, Marty? I wanted to say something to Nate.”

Erica spun around and scanned the room for the Rabbi, who was trapped in conversation with Rozalee. Rozalee had exchanged the walker for Simon’s cane, and was making a point by bashing it into the floor. Nate appeared grateful when Erica materialized at his elbow.

“That was a very interesting d’var torah, Nate.”

“You think? Have you read the Rav?” He looked sorrowful when she shook her head.

“At least now I’ve heard of him. I found your summary of his ideas fascinating.”

“Well, thank you. I’ve been meaning to call you, Erica. Do you know Melly Darwin?”

Oh, God! I escaped Marty only to land on this particular mine.

“No. But I’ve heard about him too.”

Nate frowned. “From Faith, I suppose.”

“Wasn’t she supposed to say anything?

“Did she tell you he wants to speak to you?”

Erica was silent.

“Okay, I guess if I’d called you earlier, you wouldn’t have heard it from Faith first. Melly Darwin has a writing proposition for you. A business proposition that he was, uhm, shy to bring you himself. Can he call you about it?”

“What kind of writing?”

“A biography or something like that. He’s an unusual man who has had an extraordinary life. You might both benefit from collaborating with each other.”

“It’s not my sort of thing at all,” Erica said with a hint of irritation. “I’m a novelist. Or at least I was one once.”

“Maybe it’s time for you to branch out?”

15

Marty nodded at the liveried doorman wishing him “Bonsoir.” In theory, he didn’t mind the idea of a doorman—if one were obliged to give up one’s home, it might as well be for a place with a touch of class, like the Rockhill. The gold-braided uniform, though, was not his style at all. Marty shrugged. He wasn’t going to stay here forever, solo in a studio apartment.

At the elevator he ran into Kim Tran, his next-door neighbour. They smiled at each other. Dressed head to toe in black, Kim was carrying a couple of plastic grocery bags from Épicerie Atlantique. He guessed her to be in her early thirties, perhaps a bit more; he found it hard to tell with Asians. Very attractive.

Marty had met her when he moved in a couple of weeks ago and she’d brought him a pot of green tea as he was unpacking. Now as they rode upstairs together, she asked if he was all settled in.

“More or less. But I don’t feel comfortable until everything is where it’s supposed to be, and I’m not quite there yet.”

“I know what you mean.”

They got out on the fourth floor and walked to their apartments in silence. Placing her groceries on the carpet, Kim rummaged in her purse for her key and, just as Marty was about to step inside his place, asked in a burst, “D’you have plans for dinner?”

Marty sucked in his breath in surprise. In his new life, he had resolved not to lie about anything, not even the tiniest white lie. But he suddenly was overcome by the feeling that if he told the truth, he would slide off a precipice straight into some kind of trap.

“Actually, no. I was going to maybe order in.”

“I just picked up a few things for supper,” Kim said, craning her neck back to meet his eyes, her own wide and limpid. “Why don’t you come over, and I’ll make us something simple.”

“Well, okay,” Marty said. He realized he must sound churlish. “When should I come?”

“In half an hour? Maybe we could have a glass of wine and you could give me a hand?”

“Well, okay,” Marty repeated, and dove through his front door.

She’s feeling neighbourly, he told himself, hanging up his coat and throwing his gym bag into the cupboard. He was so distracted, he forgot to take out his shorts and wet towel. Neighbourly, that’s all. She couldn’t be much older than his boys. His heart was thumping.

What was he going to take her? You couldn’t go to someone’s house empty-handed. His mother had drummed that into him along with social pieties like “Always wear clean underwear.” Marty blushed, chuckled, told himself he was crazy, as he lunged into the bedroom and yanked a fresh pair of briefs from a drawer. Changing underwear was of course only a precaution, but while he was at it, it wouldn’t do any harm to shave as well. He was prone to five o’clock shadow. Claiming he was too scratchy, Leona had occasionally kicked him out of bed to shave in the middle of love-making.

Working up a good lather with his shaving brush, Marty stared at himself in the mirror. He grimaced at the sight of the dark pouches beneath his eyes, took stock of his beak of a nose and thinning crown. A ruin, positively cadaverous. He screwed his face up against the mirror, searching for evidence of nose hairs. Cheered that he couldn’t find any, he sucked in his gut and tried a sidelong boyish smile. Really, his remaining hair was mostly dark. And he had his own teeth after all. He didn’t need to wear glasses if he wasn’t fussy about reading street signs (he didn’t need to, since he knew them by rote anyway). He dabbed his face free of cream, patted on some aftershave. In your early fifties, there was still time to compensate for the failures of the past, self-actualize, like Dr. Winters kept on harping about.

Marty tapped on Kim’s door and, when she answered, handed over the bottle of Beaujolais that he’d settled on from his small supply. (Leona liked Chardonnay.) Again that cheery smile. She had reapplied her lipstick and was wearing Asian pyjamas, black with burgundy trim. She was pretty in a petite and unobtrusive way, her makeup flawlessly applied, her body slim. She had beautiful heavy black hair, cut blunt to shoulder length, and straight bangs that gave her the air of a serious child. But beneath the bright chandelier of her hallway, he could detect two jagged frown lines in her wide brow. Perhaps she was a bit older than he had initially thought.

“Do you like shrimp?” she asked. She had a clear little voice, slightly tinged with an accent. “I bought fresh shrimp.”

“Love it.”

“Come and give me a hand then.”

Her place was bigger than his studio, with two closed doors that he assumed were bedrooms off a long corridor, and a spacious living room and minute dinette, both sparsely furnished. She shepherded him into the small square kitchen.

As if she were reading his mind, she said, “My boyfriend and I split up last month. He took most of his stuff with him to Toronto.”

“I’m sorry,” Marty said, feeling awkward. “Were you together a long time?”

She handed him a corkscrew and gave him back the bottle of wine.

“A couple of years. Long enough. But it’s okay. If something isn’t meant to be, it’s not meant to be.”

“But how do you know it isn’t meant to be, if you don’t work at it for longer than that?”

“I go with my gut feeling. That’s what Oprah says.”

Marty poured wine into the two glasses sitting on the counter. It was a philosophy that might have saved him a lot of grief in his marriage. Only he couldn’t remember ever having clear gut feelings. More like major pain in the belly.

He wondered if he should clink glasses with her, thought better of it, lest it seem too eager or romantic. What was he doing here with this unknown woman anyway? He took a gulp of wine, then watched her purposeful preparations, rinsing the shrimp under running water, chopping ginger and garlic, fluffing rice with a fork. Apparently her comment about his helping had been rhetorical. Just as well, since he was a total klutz in the kitchen. He offered to set the table, a small civility he no longer bothered with for himself, but that had been one of his favourite domestic tasks in his former life. She waved him in the direction of a cupboard.

Over dinner—which was very good, a stir-fry of shrimp, bok choy, and snowpeas—he asked what she did for a living and learned she was a hairdresser. She had recently bought the Westmount salon where she had been working only a few months. Before that, she had spent several years in a bigger place in the Town of Mount Royal, where she learned the ropes and built up a sizable clientele that followed her to the new place. She became quite animated when describing her work, said she had lots of plans for the business. Her face clouded over when he inquired about the boyfriend.

“I don’t talk about him. We were partners in the store, and then he left for Toronto. He said he wasn’t going to play second fiddle to any woman.” Marty realized that he had been extremely tactless.

“Where are you from?” he took another tack.

“Why do people always ask that? Just because I’m Oriental!” She had trouble pronouncing the word, skipping the “r.” “I came in 1979.”

“You mean from Vietnam?”

She nodded.

Marty said, “I used to work for a needle-trade company that sponsored a family of boat people around that time. A very nice family, the Phams. They’d gone through some tough times, but they adjusted really well to life here.”

Her face grew stony. She glared at him.

“I’m sorry. Did I say something wrong?”

“I never talk about those things.”

“Why not?”

“Too sad, too hard to think about. No point.”

Marty began to wonder how he could gracefully make his exit. He supposed he ought to offer to help with the dishes, but he suddenly felt bone tired, probably from the wine. Or maybe because he was altogether too familiar with the process of trying to pull teeth from an uncommunicative woman. No thanks. Been there. Done that.

He stood up. So did Kim. She closed the gap between them, rose to her toes and drew his head down, her hands cupping his ears. Their lips met. She tasted sweet and sexy. He struggled with himself for a second. It was so deliciously voluptuous to have those small breasts pressing against him. He pulled back, letting her go.

“What’s the matter? Don’t you like me?”

“How can I not like you?” he said, gallant. “It’s not that I don’t like you. I don’t know you. And I have a feeling you may be younger than my children.”

“How old are they?” she asked, tapping his cheek with a finger, her eyes mischievous. She was clearly enjoying herself.

“My older son is almost thirty-two,” Marty said. “My younger boy’s thirty.”

“You’ve just made my day! I’m thirty-nine.”

“Oh well, in that case…,” he said, and they both laughed. His last thought before entering the bedroom was that he was a lucky man. Being single was a whole lot easier than he had anticipated.

16

“That’s him,” Faith hissed, “That’s Melly Darwin!”

Three Graces accompanied by two husbands were queued up at the Egyptian for Life Is Beautiful. Because Rhoda was a stickler for punctuality, they were near the head of the line, which snaked some distance behind them.

“Who the hell’s Melly Darwin?” Hershy asked. Balding and barrel-chested, he was half a head shorter than Rhoda, a Mel Brooks to her Anne Bancroft, with a zany sense of humour to match.

“A member of our congregational family,” Al said under his breath, “and one with a lot of chutzpah at that.”

Darwin, in blue jeans and an expensive-looking trench coat, was dragging a reluctant Bubbles by the sleeve. In a seamless manoeuvre, he shoved her forward to the head of the row. There was a slight commotion, but then the line opened up to accommodate them.

“Did you see what he just did?” Faith placed her hands on her hips and nudged Erica with her elbow.

“Uhuh. And this is the guy you and the Rabbi have in mind for me?”

“Will someone please tell me what’s happening?” Hershy bugged out his eyes and hunched his shoulders in imitation of a puzzled half-wit. Erica, who had a chronic weakness for his routines, burst out laughing.

“Our Erica’s going to ghostwrite his war memoirs,” Al said, chucking her under the chin. “It should be quite the story.”

“He should be so lucky,” Rhoda said, trying to keep a straight face with some difficulty. “Erica’s a woman of principle.”

The line began to move. “You’re not going to do it, are you?” Rhoda asked after they’d bought their tickets.

“I don’t even know what it’s about! I suppose I’ll have to speak to him.”

“Good luck,” Rhoda flashed her crooked smile. “That should be fun. Do you guys want popcorn? My treat.”

After the movie, they trooped out, pensive. Few subjects dampened their group energy, few topics left them speechless. A movie about the Holocaust could do it, but only if it was good. Faith and Erica were the children of survivors; the other three looked upon the wartime suffering of their families with a reticent respect.

“Coffee?” Rhoda broke the silence.

“There’s Ben’s around the corner,” Al said. “I could go for a smoked meat.”

“Oy, Al, we already ate,” Faith patted her tummy and shook her head.

“Okay, okay, so coffee.”

They emerged at the corner of Peel and de Maisonneuve. The air was nippy, the streetlights glimmered. A car hooted nearby. As they crossed the street, heading towards Stanley, Erica glanced upwards. “That’s the Hermes Building. You know, where Ricky has his office.”

“Ricky Who?” Hershy said, deadpan. The somber mood was instantly shattered. Al punched Hershy’s shoulder. “Good gezucht.” The three women stood beneath the windows of Richard Aronovitch et Associés and laughed and laughed. Tears rolled down Erica’s cheeks.

By the time they arrived at the Van Houtte on Stanley they were engaged in animated conversation.

“My parents loved this movie,” Faith said, sitting down and shrugging off her jacket. “To my surprise. It’s like no other Holocaust film I’ve seen.” She turned towards Erica. “How about your father?”

“Oh, he hasn’t seen it,” Erica said. “Before my mother died he might have gone, but it’s impossible to get him to take in anything to do with the Holocaust now. Speaking of my father, isn’t this the old Tokay restaurant?”

“Yeah,” Al said. “I used to come here all the time when I was at school. You couldn’t get an espresso anywhere in this town except in the Hungarian joints. Here or the Pam Pam, or the Coffee Mill. By the by, I hear you and Marty Riess are in the same boat.”

“God, Faith,” Erica said. “Really, you’re a regular Deep Throat.”

“You’ve only just discovered this?” Rhoda grinned lopsidedly.

“He’s got his eye on you,” Al teased.

“I shouldn’t think so. He’s probably already got somebody.”

“Why d’you say that?”

“Because in my experience that’s what the male of the species does. Dumps his wife of thirty years for someone new.”

“Ouch!” Al exclaimed.

“Present company excepted, of course.”

“You could do worse than Marty,” Al persisted. “I told Faith. Just ask her.”

“Excuse me,” Erica said. “What else do you do besides talk about me?”

“Marty’s a good egg. And he’s a lot more cultured than you think. Faith and I ran into him and Leona at Stratford last summer. You shouldn’t be so snooty because a guy sells real estate for a living. I bet he knows way more than you do about the bard.”

“You’re all ganging up on me!”

“Ricky Who isn’t the only man in the world,” Al said. “Not even the only man in town. When Marty calls, my advice is don’t brush him off too fast.”

“What makes you think he’s going to call?”

“A hunch. Just a hunch.”

17

It was after eleven when Erica got home. Cinnamon Cat yowled a disgruntled greeting and slithered around her ankles as she walked through the door. She bent down to stroke his head and he began purring loudly, pressing his furry neck against her fingers, and then meowing again, this time more urgently.

“You silly animal,” she scolded, but headed for the fridge and threw a few cubes of liver into his dish. “You can thank Noam for this.” There was a note from Tamara on the microwave shelf, saying she was sleeping over at her boyfriend Bob’s place.

Erica smiled wistfully, hearing her father’s voice in her head, “First love, true love.” She pictured Tammy and Bob on the living room couch as she’d come upon them once, cradled in each other’s arms fully clothed, tuckered out, content. She gave a rueful shake of her head. Lucky them.

It was too early for bed. The aura of the film clung to her, the yearning strains of the Barcarolle from Tales of Hoffman still in her ears, the final image of the mother and child united at the end of the war particularly haunting. She thought it an improbable ending; the little boy would never have survived a concentration camp. Yet the film’s point about the power of the father’s love to inspire and keep the faith in his wife and child was incredibly moving. Maybe if she and Rick had lived through those times, their love would have burned stronger, instead of fizzling out. She shook her head—what an insane idea!—and hung up her poncho in the hall closet, then stepped into her office, which opened from the kitchen.

The phone on her desk was blinking. One message was from a deep-voiced male with a Polish accent. “Mine wife tells me that you were at the movies tonight. I would be interested in your opinion about Life Is Beautiful. I would like also to discuss with you a business proposition. Call me tomorrow at home, or on Monday at the office.” He left three numbers, home, office, cell. There was also a call from her father in his usual telegraphic delivery and strong Hungarian inflection. “Thank you for supper. It was vonderrful. As usual. Tamara is a darling. I love you, sveetheart.”

On her desk lay a galley copy of a book for review that she had begun in the afternoon. She really wasn’t sleepy. She could read a few more pages; she was behind schedule, her piece was due Monday afternoon. She carried it to the living room, turned on the light, uprooted Cinnamon Cat from the leather armchair, and sat down. He eyed her, aloof, and began licking his haunch disdainfully. She patted her lap to placate him, and after giving her a long considering look, he jumped up and began purring loudly. She recalled once yelling at Ricky that she got more fulfillment from the cat than from him. Why grieve the loss of such a man?

The novel wasn’t bad. Paul, her editor, had been right when he thought it would appeal to her. The author, a young man, had won a short-story prize a couple of years earlier and had turned the story into a novel. The original version was set in Montreal at the time of the last referendum. She recognized a scene at the Atwater Market that had made the leap directly from the old piece into the new text.

It resonated with her when she’d read it the first time. She shopped regularly at the market and thought she recognized the belligerent farmer with whom the book’s protagonist got into a political slugfest. The author evoked the ambience of that period well, the tension, the anxiety about the outcome of the vote. Also the market itself with its bounty of produce, profusions of bedding plants and cut flowers.

Ricky shared her enthusiasm for markets. Wherever they travelled they sought them out. Arles had been the best, the Boulevard des Lices on a Saturday morning. Years and years ago, Tamara hadn’t even been born, they had left Raichie with her parents to take a fall trip to France. Rick had shot two rolls of film that morning; the slides must still be upstairs somewhere, but she didn’t need them to conjure up the sprawling street bazaar with its flowers and crates of vegetables and olives and cheeses. Meat roasting on spits, stands of baguettes, croissants, melons, apricots, plums. There had been wire cages of squawking chickens and turkeys. People took the birds home live in cardboard boxes, to wring their necks, she supposed, shuddering. What a hypocrite she was, as if meat sprang painlessly on to her plate via Noam’s shop.

On another trip there was the covered market in Oxford with its high rafters and suckling pigs and rabbits hanging from hooks in one butcher shop after another. And the enticing smells of coffee and fresh sage warring with the distinctly off-putting odours of fish and souring produce.

She shut the book with a bang, startling the cat, who bounded from her lap. Why was she mooning like this? The good memories were more painful than the bad ones. And since there were plenty of those, she ought to reflect on them and be glad to be rid of him. Just like Rhoda and Faith said.

Later that night she dreamt she was on a bus riding up Côte-des-Neiges. All around her, the landscape was blanketed by a thick crust of green-grey ice. Vista upon vista, it spread before her eyes, like an enormous glacier, like the Columbia Icefields that she and Ricky had toured when they’d gone out West. The bus ground its way upwards, making laborious progress, its wheels spinning and crunching. At the crest of the hill, pushing through the yellowish boulders, flowers of every kind swayed in the biting wind. She could make out purple hyacinths and red tulips and snowdrops and crocuses as well as exotic blooms she had no names for. She felt a sense of wonder at how they could be sprouting in such forbidding terrain. When she woke up to pee, the images stayed with her, vivid and startling. “But that’s where the cemetery is,” she thought. “Isn’t that weird?”

18

For the past five years, Marty Riess’s week had begun with an eight o’clock session on Monday morning with his analyst, Dr. Willard Winters. Over that period Marty periodically reminded himself of all the reasons he was grateful to Dr. Winters. Guiding him in shaking certain unfortunate habits. Helping to extricate him from an awful marriage. Even encouraging him to join the synagogue that had come to mean so much to him.

Marty had to remind himself of these positive aspects of his association with Dr. Winters, because Winters was no gentle, empathic therapist. Once upon a time he must have studied Freud, Jung, and Adler, but he’d clearly decided to forge his own philosophy of what could best be termed tough love. And Dr. Winters was definitely at his most bloody-minded and intransigent this particular Monday. No sooner had Marty stretched out on the couch—in the past five years he couldn’t remember it being cleaned even once; the tweed headrest stank of decades of patients’ hair oil—and no sooner had he begun his recitation of the events of his Saturday night, than the old killjoy was at his throat.

“What the hell do you think you’re up to?”

“What d’you mean?”

“Is this your idea of how to embark on a meaningful relationship? Is this what you left your marriage for?” The old coot was practically spitting.

“I don’t know what you’re getting at. Kim is lovely.”

“She’s young enough to be your daughter.”

“She isn’t. I told you, she’s thirty-nine.”

“Can you see introducing her to Jason and Ian?”

Marty was silent.

“She’s not Jewish.” Dr. Winters sounded like a prosecutor addressing a courtroom.

“Neither are you. Neither is 99.9 per cent of the human race.”

“Can you see taking her to one of your community’s potluck dinners? Did you happen to mention to her that you’re a grandfather?”

“It didn’t come up,” Marty said weakly. He stayed quiet some more. Then he said in a very small voice, “That’s not the only thing that didn’t come up.” In the cinema of his mind, he unspooled the ignominious moving frames in Kim’s bedroom, the entangled limbs, the mussed bed clothes, his repeated aborted attempts at entry.

He had a near palpable sense of Dr. Winters gloating behind him. He wondered if he was rubbing his arthritic joints in glee.

“No kidding. Sounds like your cock’s smarter than your head.”

“God, what have I done to deserve you?” Marty allowed the words to tumble out. “I can’t believe I’m paying for this.”

Dr. Winters let it go. “Look, correct me if I’m wrong, but the idea was that, besides being one nasty number, Leona was no match for you in intelligence or interests or substance. The idea was that at your age you don’t have a hell of a lot of time to waste. The idea was that you’d look for a worthwhile partner to spend the rest of your days with.”

“Just because someone’s a little bit young and of a somewhat different background doesn’t mean they’re not worthwhile.”

“That’s very true. Do you happen to know anything at all about this… this Kim? If she hadn’t flung herself at you because she was at loose ends on Saturday night, would you have given her a second look? I know you pride yourself on having come a long way, Marty, but boy, do you still have a long way to go!”

19

When the phone rang at 8:45 Monday morning, Erica had already been at her desk for an hour. At that delicate stage of writing a review, when derailment could still happen, she resisted the urge to pick up the receiver. But then of course she succumbed to playing back the call a couple of minutes later. Listening to the voice of Melly Darwin’s office manager, she congratulated herself on not having responded. But then shortly after, Jennifer Blaine, her agent, also left a message, mentioning Melly’s name and asking Erica to call back.

This is one pushy Jew! Erica horrified herself by the thought that had just popped—from where?—into her head. One of her classmates at Sacred Heart, where no one had had the slightest clue about her origins, once said it within her earshot about their bossy Moroccan-Jewish French specialist. And she, like a coward, never breathed a word of protest. And now for such a thought to surface in her own mind? Hers, Erica Molnar’s, author of The Shadowed Generations?

The man was pushy because he was pushy, not because he was a Jew!

But was he ever pushy, to worm his way through a crowd to the head of the queue at the movie. What good could come of associating with such an individual? No good.

She broke into a hot-flash sweat, removed her sweater, and made herself return to her keyboard. At eleven thirty, she saved the completed review to a diskette, popped the diskette into her purse, and got in her car. She had a lunch meeting with Paul to discuss a batch of new columns.

They met at their usual sushi counter on rue Notre-Dame in Old Montreal, a chrome-and-mirrors place that was reasonable enough for the Books Editor to treat a columnist on his expense account the odd time. Paul was perched awkwardly on a high stool at one of the tiny side tables. He was a big man, with broad shoulders, a shock of greying hair, and bushy dark eyebrows. He stood to give Erica a brief hug.

Erica sniffed suspiciously as she emerged from the embrace. Technically Paul was her boss, but they’d worked together several years and become buddies. Her eyes fastened on his shirt pocket, where a box of Marlboros stuck out.

“I thought you’d stopped.”

“I had,” he glared at her, as if daring her to continue.

This of course was the stereotypical Paul Ladouceur, the one who cultivated the air of a crusty misanthrope and whom his colleagues twitted about his oxymoronic surname. Sweet he was not.

“Sorry,” Erica said, looking away. “I thought you’d been feeling better.”

“Let’s drop it for today, okay?”

“Okay.” She felt herself flush. Paul wasn’t usually gruff with her. She bent to the floor, as much to hide the tears that had leapt unbidden to her eyes as to rummage in her purse on the floor. Idiot! Rick was right, you gush like a fountain at the least provocation.

Face recomposed, she surfaced with her diskette. “Before I forget, here’s my review.”

Paul slipped the diskette behind the Marlboros in his shirt pocket.

“Thanks,” he said. He seemed not to have noticed a thing.

They consulted the menu with exaggerated interest, and then noted their orders on the little pad on the table. Erica was wondering how much longer she could avoid looking up, when Paul coughed. His lips formed a wry smile. His dark eyes remained bleak.

“Sorry I bit your head off. The past week’s been lousy. For the sake of my svelte form, I opted for smokes instead of booze. It was going to be one or the other. Just for a while.”

They discussed the line-up of future columns. One of the books on the Giller shortlist had not yet been reviewed. The author of the Atwood biography was coming to town and should be interviewed; so too the gay Jamaican writer whose second novel was three weeks off. Paul had brought her the advance copy. She stowed it under the table.

“I need to pick your brains,” she said to him, as the waiter brought their order. “This brash old guy at my synagogue has some idea that I should be writing a book about him.”

“Which parts of my brain are we picking?”

“I’m not sure. I don’t really know what it’s all about. He’s sent messages through my Rabbi and Faith. You know, my friend Faith. And on the weekend he called while I was out.”

“So who is he?”

“Someone rich and maybe influential. A Holocaust survivor from Poland. Maybe I should pass him off to you. You at least know something about Poland.”

Paul’s mother was Polish and had played an active role in the Resistance. He had a serious interest in the history of World War II, and from time to time brought the wrath of Gazette management upon his head for his generous coverage of books dealing with the war. The powers that be viewed him as an egghead lacking the common touch, more likely to give coverage to Norman Davies than to John Grisham.

“Erica, you started working for me because you were blocked. Maybe writing a book like this would get your juices flowing again.”

Erica bit her lip. Paul hadn’t nagged her in a while about what he saw as her true calling. Ten years earlier, she’d written a novel. The Shadowed Generations had been widely and generously reviewed and, implausibly, sold several thousand copies at home. This was regrettably a little before the German literary public fell headlong into its romance with the Holocaust, but just as America was waking up to its appetite for the subject. There had been a U.S. edition and a British one, as well as a cross-Canada tour. But there had also been major personal fallout.

“You mean,” she said, “that you don’t think it would be like prostituting myself?”

“Prostituting? As opposed to what? The clean-cut, sanitized world of the media?”

“But that’s to make a living!”

“Precisely. If he’s got a good story and he pays appropriately, what’s the harm?”

“It doesn’t feel right somehow.”

“What’s with you, Erica? Are you making such a bundle in alimony?”

Erica laughed mirthlessly. “From Ricky? Please.”

“So treat it like any other gig. It’s not like you not to go after a story.”

“That’s just it. I like going after a story. Here the story seems to be chasing me.”

“And here I thought women were into being pursued.”

She smiled, a dimple appearing on her left cheek. “Touchée. Okay, okay, I’ll think some more about it.”

“What’s this sugar daddy’s name?”

“Melly Darwin.”

“What’s Melly short for?”

“Who knows? Melvin maybe.”

The phone was ringing as Erica unlocked her front door. She caught it on the last ring.

“Erica!” Jennifer’s voice was an accusation. Good heavens, Erica thought. Only the most pressing business would induce her agent to call twice in one day. She visualized Jennifer dressed in some kind of dramatic outfit, a mass of cornrow braids sculpted to her head, grey-green eyes narrowed. Her fingers would be drumming on the desktop.

“I’ve been bombarded by calls about you all day. Why are you incommunicado? How am I supposed to do my job?”

Jennifer was good at her job. She was attentive to her clients, super-efficient, and followed through on the small print. She and Erica hadn’t spoken in a while—they had had no reason to. Erica had forgotten how ruffled Jennifer could get if kept waiting.

“I’ve been out since crack of dawn,” she lied. “I just got in.”

“Don’t you call in for your messages?”

“I’m not usually in such demand. What’s up? How’re you?”

“Okay.” She didn’t ask how Erica was, so she was still miffed. “I’ve had no fewer than three calls about you.” A current of excitement crept into her voice. “Wait till you hear. Both Kaitlin Gardiner and Tamas Esterhase are interested in the story of some Holocaust survivor in Montreal. And then this guy’s secretary calls saying you’re not returning his calls! You can’t live off a broken heart forever, Erica. This could be a big opportunity for you.”

“Slow down! I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You must know who this guy Darwin is.”

“He’s a member of my synagogue.”

“Supposedly, he’s got a story. And he’s got to be very well connected, because Kaitlin says that if you agree to get on board, she’ll publish it. And Kaitlin apparently is all buddy-buddy with Tamas. Who says he’s interested in film rights.”

“Hold on. If Tamas Esterhase wants to make a movie about Melly Darwin, he doesn’t need me.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. Without a book, no screenplay, no film.”

“But why me?”

“Why not you? You’re a decent writer. Don’t blow this off, Erica. Kaitlin says he’s going to offer a low six-figure advance. I might be able to hoist that upward a bit … Are you still there?”

“I am, but my head’s spinning. That’s a lot of money for the likes of me. Did they say what makes this story so extraordinary?”

“Don’t you think you should call Mr. Darwin and find out for yourself?”

“Where did you leave it with them?”

“That you’d call his office and have the courtesy to sit down with him and discuss it. Did I do wrong?” This last was said with a distinct edge.

“No,” Erica said, properly meek. “No, you did not. Thank you.”

20

Rhoda tapped on the door of Lasalle Elementary School’s kindergarten A, and without waiting for a response poked her head in. “Is Sean ready for me?”

“I’m ready for you,” Sherry-Lynn said. “Just look at him.” Rhoda adored Sherry-Lynn, a born teacher, brimming with youth and energy. Her eyes followed the pointed finger. The children were seated on the floor in a circle. All but Sean Callaghan. Wiry, small for his age, and coiled for action, Sean was running his fingers through the hair of a pony-tailed little girl in a pink jumpsuit. As his victim twisted to shrug him off, he got a purchase on her elastic and yanked it from her head.

Pandemonium broke out. Pink Jumpsuit leapt to her feet, stepping on the hands of the boy next to her, who began to holler. Sean in the meantime twirled the elastic—it was one with a shiny red bauble in the centre—in the air and began dashing triumphantly on the outside of the circle, Jumpsuit in hot pursuit.

Rhoda took three quick steps in Sean’s direction and grabbed him, just as he was about to collide with the piano. Over her shoulder, she saw Sherry-Lynn bound towards the screaming little boy on the floor, scooping up Jumpsuit in her arms on her way.

Keeping a firm grip on Sean’s wrist and choking back a surge of hilarity—she always found it next to impossible to keep a straight face in situations like this—Rhoda marched him to her so-called office, a cubby she shared with the school nurse. She braced her back against the examination bed, squatted to his level, and arranged her features into what she hoped was a stern expression. Prising his clammy fingers apart, she extracted the elastic. Sean’s eyes filled with tears.

“Tell me the name of the little girl whose elastic this is, Sean.”

“Sawah.”

“How do you think Sarah feels right now? C’mon, Sean! Is she happy or sad that you took her elastic?”

“Wan’ i’.”

“What do you want?”

“Eyasti’.”

“I can’t give you the elastic because it’s not yours. But maybe when we go back to class, you’ll give it back to Sarah yourself? That might make her feel better?”

He pouted, gazed down at his sneakers, ground the toes of his left foot into the tile floor.

“Know what?” Rhoda said, “Let’s sit down and look at some of our words.”

She sincerely hoped no one would find out what she was about to do, because it certainly didn’t qualify as appropriate pedagogic or speech therapy methodology. She took a pink barrette still sheathed in its plastic wrapper out of the pocket of her denim skirt.

“I’ve got something special for you. If you try extra hard today.”

In the past she had rewarded him at the end of a session with stickers, as she did with all her kids, but stickers did zilch for Sean.

Rhoda cupped her chin with one hand and studied him.

The child furrowed his brow as he concentrated. Slowly, a radiant smile began to light up his face.

Rhoda slipped the barrette back into her pocket and stashed Sarah’s elastic away in the outside compartment of her purse. She zipped it up and stowed the bag in her grey metal locker. With luck, out of sight would be out of mind. For a while anyway.

Sean was repeating kindergarten, and this was her second year working with him. A thick sheaf of documentation attested to the fact that he was an unusual kid with an exotic history. His mother was a large, raw-boned bleached blonde in her late forties. Bridget Callaghan had flown to Bucharest seven years ago to collect Maureen, the daughter she was officially there to adopt. Apparently, at a year Maureen was the size of a six-month-old but somehow the orphanage had managed to convince Bridget that the tiny scrap of humanity sharing Maureen’s crib was her brother. Wrinkled and covered with fur-like hair all over, Sean had small simian eyes and looked more like some small woodland creature than a two-month-old baby. Overcome with pity, Bridget Callaghan had brought both children home.

The first year was a nightmare of colic, ear infections, and night terrors, yet she had, it seemed, not only coped but thrived, her longing for children finally slaked. The problems, however, continued to mount, and when Sean was nearly three and Maureen four, the community clinic where she took them for check-ups referred them to Charles Levitan. A pediatrician at the Children’s, Levitan had begun to build a reputation as a specialist with Romanian adoptees. Bridget took an instant loathing to him because he was the first person to apply the word “delayed” to Sean.

“Ya mean retarded?” She had the shoulders of a quarterback and towered over the doctor.

“That is not a word we use anymore.”

Over time Bridget became a militant advocate for Sean. She got him on to all the waiting lists. She had his hearing and vision tested. She dragged him to rehabilitation centres because she was determined that if he had “delays,” he must catch up before he truly fell behind. After meeting with her, Rhoda felt equal measures of compassion and exasperation. The woman simply would not accept her son’s deficits.

Sitting across from Sean at a child-sized table painted psychedelic orange, her long legs wound around the chair legs, Rhoda wondered if she could have mustered the patience to work with him if he’d been less cute. He really was adorable in his red plaid shirt and brown cords. Very Romanian looking, in what she thought was a classical Romany Gypsy way. Dark olive skin, eyes of an unusual yellowish cast. His hair was still a thick and coarse thatch. You could easily imagine him to have been an exceptionally hairy baby.

To get a handle on Sean, she had repeatedly pored over his chart, gone out of her way to read up on Romanian orphans, and acquired a great deal of anecdotal detail from Faith, who worked alongside Charles Levitan at the Children’s as a child psychologist. It wasn’t unusual for Rhoda and Faith to have overlapping caseloads, since Rhoda’s schools fell into the Children’s catchment area. Having her best friend so strategically deployed gave Rhoda a more rounded view of a child and the opportunity to talk over cases with Faith, whose judgment was keen.

Over the course of the previous year, she had scratched her head as the experts vacillated between flavour-of-the month diagnoses. Developmental delay, pervasive developmental delay, intellectual handicap. The doses of Ritalin varied accordingly. She persisted on working on his articulation, vocabulary, and story-sequencing, and was gratified by his improved concentration, though his classroom behaviour remained disruptive. The obsession with little girls’ hair ornaments was a fresh kink. She had no idea where it came from or what it meant.

Of course he hadn’t forgotten about the elastic she’d confiscated. Three turns at the flash cards (one dog, two dogs, etc.), and he was fidgeting on one leg, then wandering off towards the locker.

“Is i’ time?”

“Not yet.”

They sat down and took three more turns with the flash cards, this time trying to build a story around the puppy. He grinned at her and said, “Doggie wan’ bawwe’. Ge’ my bawwe’ now?”

“Barrette, Sean.”

His sassiness was irresistible. Though there remained ten more minutes to the session, she stood up to give him his reward.

21

Faith was taking the history of a child from a type of family that invariably made her cringe. Orthodox Jews from Outremont, the Fishbeins were decked out in full Hasidic apparel. All Berel Fishbein—the father—needed to make him look at home at the court of the Baal Shem Tov were mid-calf britches and white stockings. Otherwise he was perfectly attired for the part of an eighteenth-century disciple of the founder of Hasidism. He had a shaggy, greying beard straggling down to his sternum, abundant dark payes coiled around his ears, a black top hat squished low over his brow, and tzitzis peeking through his unbuttoned frock coat.

By contrast, Faigie Fishbein, the mother, appeared completely contemporary—even elegant—but for her droopy posture and pained expression. She wore a very good honey-coloured wig in a layered cut and an orange shawl over a camel jumper that was just starting to show signs of what she reported was her seventh pregnancy. They had brought their two youngest offspring—a toddler girl in her father’s arms, and the presenting child, a boy of three, sitting in his mother’s lap and dangling his feet rhythmically against her shin. Yossie was on referral from his pediatrician as being possibly autistic. He had enormous, thickly fringed green eyes that focused just slightly over Faith’s shoulder, no matter which way she swivelled in her chair.

Faith was able to pay close attention to clients while simultaneously conducting a private mental slide show. The Fishbeins lived on Stuart near Lajoie; she had spent her first years of life a few blocks away, on de l’Épée, corner Bernard. She had probably passed by their two-storey 1920s brown brick cottage a half dozen times a day on her way to and from the Girls’ entrance of Guy Drummond School, or to cheder at Beis Sarah afternoon Hebrew School on Bloomfield.

Faith at forty-eight knew she looked a lot like the way she looked at ten. She was still short and zaftig, still had a baby face, hazel eyes, and a smile that spread from ear to ear over large teeth. Only her hair had changed. In her late twenties she had made the decision to fight the premature grey she had inherited from her mother, and now gold streaks frosted the pixie cut of her youth.

For Faith, the Fishbeins, like other Hasidic families that filed through the Children’s, evoked the history of her mother’s family in Poland—the little that she knew of it. Her maternal grandparents had been Hasidic. Faith viewed Radobice, the ancestral shtetl, through unsympathetic eyes, her opinions shaped as much by her imagination as by her parents’ terse accounts. As Berel Fishbein yanked on his earlocks and Faigie responded in sullen monosyllables to her questions about Yossie, Faith wondered if her grandparents might have been a carbon copy of this couple.

There were grounds for this sort of speculation, since not so much as a tiny snapshot remained of them. When Erica’s novel caused such a stir a few years ago, she had shown Faith an album of sepia family portraits extending back generations. They depicted prosperous squires with sideburns and Franz-Joseph moustaches, matrons with elaborate braids, boas, and bustles, girls in buttoned ankle boots and white hair ribbons at garden parties and tennis matches in the Buda hills. Faith was enchanted and much impressed. Afterwards she described the photographs to her parents. Her mother’s reaction took her completely aback. Lips narrowing, Freda Guttman, as a rule so sunny tempered and upbeat, spat out, “Ah, yes, the Hungarian Jews, they at least have pictures.” Faith had stared at her uncomprehendingly. “Their war was a picnic compared to ours.”

But no, Faith mused, of course her grandparents wouldn’t have looked like the Fishbeins, what an insane idea. Faith’s grandfather had died when Freda was five, poisoned, so Freda said, by the stench of the tannery where he had eked out a living. Her grandmother would never have been able to afford an expensive wig like Faigie Fishbein’s. She would have had her head shaved and have covered her stubbled scalp with a kerchief or a coarse headpiece of horsehair. Freda had never badmouthed her mother to Faith. But she had also never let her lift a finger around the house as she was growing up, not even to vacuum her room or dry the dinner dishes. “It’s not for children,” she would say to Ziggie, if he protested that she was working too hard, putting in long hours in the family bakery, then tackling the housework. Freda had been the only daughter in a family of five boys. While her brothers memorized endless Torah commentaries, it was she—a delicately built girl, all eyes and a cloud of hair—who had carted the coal for the stove and shouldered the slopping buckets of water from the well. Like a servant.

Faith slipped her notes on the interview in a file folder, and began writing out referral slips for a barrage of tests for Yossie. In a neat, slanted hand she filled out an appointment card to a follow-up clinic in six weeks’ time.

“But it’s nothing serious, right? He will outgrow it?” Faigie asked. For the first time there was some emotion in her voice as she searched Faith’s face for reassurance.

Faith found this sort of professional moment excruciating. It never failed to remind her of how blessed she was with her two wonderful children, her doting husband, her near perfect life. It wasn’t up to her to say that Yossie Fishbein was autistic. At least not at this time. Depending on what the tests showed, depending on what the team concluded, she might yet have to break bad news to this family. Even if they irked her by token of who they were, she felt considerable empathy for them right now.

“We will do everything we can for Yossie, but we must first obtain a proper diagnosis—”

Faigie didn’t wait for her to complete the sentence. She twisted her mouth into a moue of distaste and shook Yossie from her lap.

“—in order to help him .…” Faith’s voice trailed off as Faigie grabbed the baby from her husband and stuffed her into the stroller. They stormed out of the office without a backward glance and without saying goodbye.

Faith dialled her parents’ number with one hand while unwrapping her tuna sandwich with the other. Freda answered on the first ring. Faith pictured her sitting by the wooden kitchen table, staring into space.

“Hi, Mummy.

“How come you never call anymore?”

The reason that Faith’s life was merely near-perfect and not completely perfect had to do with this apathetic voice and its edge of groundless reproach.

“Mummy, we talked yesterday. And the day before.”

“No. We didn’t.”

“Yes. Remember you told me that Rivka and Anna had dropped by for a visit yesterday?”

Faith felt Freda straining to recollect.

“Oh, yeah.” Was she actually remembering or making an adroit recovery?

“Have you been out?”

“Soon we’re going. Daddy’s cleaning up from lunch.”

“May I speak to him?”

“Okay. Ziggie! It’s … it’s our daughter.”

Oy! This is new. She can’t remember my name.

“Faithie? How nice,” her father boomed in her ear. He sounded delighted to hear from her, as if it were a pleasant surprise, and not a daily event at this time.

“How’s everything?”

“Fine, fine. Mummy ate a good lunch. I made noodles and cottage cheese, and now we’re going for a walk. It’s a nice bright day.”

Maybe if he complained, maybe if he admitted that caring for Freda was not just wearing him down but turning him inside out, she wouldn’t feel such guilt on his account. But if she suggested a day program for her mother or perhaps Meals on Wheels, he acted as if she were criticizing him for the way he was managing.

“Good. Maybe I’ll drop by on my way home. D’you need anything?”

“No, no. Denk you very much. I was already by the bakery. But you come, come, we will love to see you.”

A wave of gloom washed over Faith as she replaced the phone in its cradle. She tossed her unfinished sandwich in the waste bin, disregarding her mother’s voice in her head chiding her about wasting food.

Had she not always had such an enviable relationship with Freda, perhaps she would be able to accept her illness better. But once Faith emerged from adolescence, they’d become as much friends as mother and daughter. They loved chewing over the latest gossip in their overlapping circles, while doing the sales at Ogilvy’s or window shopping at Holt Renfrew. Afterwards, they’d extend the outing with a bite at the Pavillon Atlantique or Chez Pauzé.

When Andrea was a toddler, Faith went back to university to get her Master’s. At around the same time, Freda started night school. It was yet another point of connection between them, breeding a strong mutual respect. Freda had been sixteen when the war broke out. All her life she put personal ambition aside, first channelling it into struggling to stay alive, and then into making a living and raising children. Acquiring knowledge for its own sake was like quenching a deep thirst, and she began to indulge in it in earnest after she and Ziggie sold the bakery. She breezed from high school to college, deliberately trying to compensate for her starved youth by a diet rich in the classics and philosophy. Then, ten years ago, she enrolled in a degree program at Concordia and unaccountably began getting lost on the way to classes. That was the first sign.

And the worst part of it, Faith thought, her lower lip trembling as it always did when she was upset, the worst part was the rage now always bubbling beneath all her interactions with her mother. She was furious at Freda for allowing this to happen to her. She was equally furious with herself—a supposed specialist in the dysfunctions of the mind—for her fury. But she couldn’t help herself. She couldn’t bear to see Freda day after day in the same soiled paisley silk blouse, Freda who had always been so fastidious. Dainty Freda, a stickler about table manners, now wiping greasy fingers on her skirt.

Round face clouded, Faith stared unseeing past the neat pile of patients’ charts on her desk, beyond the narrow window at the smoke billowing from a ventilation stack below. She told herself it was counterproductive to harbour such anger. Even more counterproductive to put the kind of energy she was putting into agonizing over how many years she had left before she began to get lost herself. (Seventeen.) Of course that was not her sole source of worry. She fretted about Al’s asthma and about Rhoda’s blood pressure. She fussed over Max’s psoriasis and Andrea’s cramps. And, although she made the most encouraging pronouncements to Erica about the innocence of thyroid cancer, her heart constricted every time Erica was due for a checkup.

She looked at her watch. She had just enough time to have a quick word with Erica.

But when she dialled, Erica brushed her off. “Can’t talk. I’m about to call your pal Darwin.”

Faith perked up. “Okay! I’ll call you later.”

22

Email from faithrabinovitch@mch.org to rhoda.kaplansky@lbpsb.ca

October 20, 1998, 12:45 p.m.

Erica’s calling Melly Darwin as I write. What do you think?

Email from rhoda.kaplansky@lbpsb.ca to faithrabinovitch@mch.org

October 20, 1998, 3:10 p.m.

I think I hope she knows what she’s doing.

An indelicate question: do you ever work?

23

Melly Darwin clearly didn’t believe in niceties or preambles. That is, judging by his conversation with Erica, which went like this:

Melly: You probably want to know about mine name. Mine name was Wiener before it was Darwin. That means from Vienna, right?

Erica: I guess—I … never thought about it.

Melly: Well I’m gonna tell you I been to Vienna, I lived in Austria after the war. When I come to Canada, I don’t want to be called by those places. I want to call myself Winner but Bubbles wouldn’t hear of it. That was before we were married. I listened to her more then. So around that time I heard about this guy Darwin, you know him?

Erica: (weakly) Charles Darwin?

Melly: That’s the one. He had some theories (he pronounced it teeries) that made sense to me. Survival of the fittest, you know? That’s what I want you to write about, mine story of survival. And the Melly comes from Melech. You know what that means, right? In Hebrew.

Erica: (even more weakly) Yes. It means king. Did you change your first name too?

Melly: Nah. Melech is my real name, my middle name. I was born Meyer Melech. In the camp when I was on by mineself alone I start calling myself Melech. It’s a much better name .... Are you still there?

Erica: I am.

Melly: So do we make a deal? What d’you say?

Erica: But what exactly are you proposing?

Melly: You write the book. I pay. Isn’t that how it works in your trade?

Erica: (laughing) Well, yes. But also, no. The money part you discuss with my agent, and she’ll talk it over with me, and then if we can agree on that, we could go ahead. But before we get to the money question, I need to know more about who you are and what your story is. And why I should be writing it.

Melly: So come over to mine house. Come Sunday afternoon. The whole family is here Sunday. You meet everybody, I tell you a little bit about mine story. And I tell you why you should write it.

24

Every second Thursday, Rabbi Nate met Moish Stipelman for lunch. They took turns choosing the venue. It being Moish’s turn this Thursday, they were at Snowdon Delly, aka Snowdon Dell, or as the official sign put it distinctly in French, DeliSnowdon.

Moish had three reasons for always picking the Snowdon Dell. First, for its haimish ambience of fifties diner: oxblood vinyl booths, paper place mats, shiny metal napkin dispensers, and comfortably corpulent aging waitresses.

Next, he loved the smell. The ripe aroma of cured meat, garlic, and brine, the sweet tang of coleslaw, and above all the clinging, reassuring odour of sizzling fat gave him a buzz. Naturally he never touched the succulent smoked meat, pastrami, rolled veal, or the sublime chopped liver. Not only because it wasn’t kosher—if he’d given in to his cravings, he could have indulged in cold cuts at Ernie and Elly’s, a restaurant that specialized in a hideous combo of kosher deli and Cantonese dishes. But when he’d turned eighty his cardiologist had sworn him off cholesterol. Moish was about to have his ninety-third birthday in three weeks and he wasn’t arguing with success. He was somewhat deaf, a bit lame, and, in the past year, his erections had turned a tad unreliable. Otherwise he was in fine form, thanks—in his mind at least—to the fact that smoked meat hadn’t crossed his lips in thirteen years.

The same could not be said about French fries. The third reason Moish frequented the Snowdon Dell had to do with the fries. They were the best in town, cut in thick wedges, deep fried to golden brown crispness, and—really and truly—they weren’t greasy.

“Joel Jacobson ought to taste these,” Moish said to Nate, referring to his cardiologist. He said it every time they ate there.

Nate smiled wanly. He wasn’t a great fan of the Snowdon Delly for the very reasons it appealed to Moish. The place was about as unhip as you could find, a step up from a fast-food joint. He poked his fork suspiciously into the gargantuan mound of whitefish salad on his plate and swallowed. The truth was—and he always forgot this between visits—the food wasn’t bad.

“I’ve been thinking,” Moish said, dabbing at his little pencil moustache with a napkin. He had a round face dominated by a bulbous nose and jowls reddened by a network of broken blood vessels. The few wisps of silvery hair sprouting from beneath his blue silk kipah gave him a cherubic expression. But the grey eyes behind the oversize bifocals were keen. Nate had chosen Thursdays for their regular rendezvous because he devoted Thursday to working on his sermon. More than once Moish had pointed him to just the right midrash or reference in the Talmud. Not to mention the occasions when he had steered him with shrewd intuition in the right direction in more worldly matters.

“A cocktail party,” Moish was saying, “someone should organize a cocktail party for you.” He tapped the table with his forefinger for emphasis. “Twenty, thirty people. Melly Darwin to be on the guest list, of course. And five or six other really influential guys. And girls, too, of course,” he added with a sly smile. “You’re going to need all the big guns behind you before you float this notion of a new building to the membership.”

Nate nodded. “I know. That’s a good idea, actually. But it’s a little bit awkward. I can’t just ask someone to make a cocktail party for me.”

“No, you can’t. But I can,” Moish said. He patted his moustache again, then added, “I’ll speak to a few people.” By which he meant—and Nate knew he meant—that he’d speak to his daughter. Frances Stipelman was married to Mark Tannenbaum, son of Sam of grocery empire fame. Mark was a most successful corporate lawyer. They entertained lavishly and lived very nicely in an old crenellated high rise perched on the crest of Côte-des-Neiges. The trouble was Frances. Moody and skittish, if she weren’t his daughter, Moish might have called her a witch or worse. He would have to catch her in a rare expansive moment.

The old man gave a belch, smirked, then smoothed his kipah. “It would be a fine thing for you Nate, to have a new building.”

Nate’s sandy eyebrows shot up and his brow wrinkled. He managed to look delighted and anxious at the same time. “It would, wouldn’t it?”

Driving home (badly) in his battered ’87 Ford Taurus—his great-grandkids called it The Heap—Moish reflected that, for a smart man, Nate could be very thick. Imagine enlisting him in the back-room lobby for the building campaign! Didn’t he realize what the building—at thirty-odd years, it wasn’t even remotely old—meant to him? No, of course he didn’t. Because despite his brains, Nate could be so obtuse. And insensitive.

When he had arrived from Toronto in 1980, a callow boy with shoulder-length locks and a guitar slung over his shoulder, Nate was practically handed Congregation Emunath on a silver platter. Dewy-eyed from Rabbinical college, he was embraced as a plucky mascot by the demoralized congregation, then reeling from the defection of a third of its members after the election of the Parti Québécois four years earlier. At a time when Anglos and head offices escorted by Brinks trucks were streaming in panic down the 401, any young English-speaking professional arriving from the opposite direction was acclaimed a hero. The hiring committee lapped Nate up. They offered him the position of assistant rabbi with the understanding that if everything worked out, he would replace Moish within the year.

Which he did, while Moish stayed on as Rabbi Emeritus. Over time, Moish grew quite fond of Nate, seizing every opportunity to declare that he loved him like a son. Which didn’t negate his resentment that Nate had inherited—even after the losses—a decent-sized congregation, a modest but perfectly adequate building, and a whole synagogue infrastructure: a secretary, a caretaker, and a host of helpful volunteers. He had in fact fallen heir to the house that Moish built.

And now he wanted to tear it down.

A mad klaxoning from some crazy driver in a red Mazda heading south on Lavoie alerted Moish to the fact that he’d run a stop sign. He was almost home, but the jolt of adrenaline coursing through him like a shot of schnapps as a result of this little excitement persuaded him that he wasn’t yet ready for home. Sylvia would be at her customary mahjong game with the girls; he was a free man. He passed St. Mary’s Hospital and considered paying a quick visit to Lorne Silver, an old friend laid up with some mysterious ailment, but decided to phone instead. He felt quite energized and ready for adventure.

Moish had been a traveller in his heyday. At one time he’d plied the Caribbean, visiting Jewish communities in Havana and Santiago and Curaçao; he’d gone behind the Iron Curtain with his suitcases filled with mezuzot and boxes of matza well before the followers of the Lubavitcher rebbe had thought of reigniting the faith of Soviet Jewry. It grieved him that no insurance company would give him coverage nowadays if he stepped out of the country. He would have loved to have made contact with the Jews of Bombay and Cochin and poked around China where, according to a recent piece in the Canadian Jewish News, there were still members of the tribe who looked entirely Chinese, yet eschewed pork and shellfish and lit candles on Friday night, without any idea why.

At Côte-des-Neiges, he veered south. The dazzling sunshine blinded him, so he couldn’t make out the colour of the traffic lights, but he decided to sail through the intersection, concentrating on keeping up with the Mercedes in front of him. He crossed Queen Mary with aplomb, and congratulated himself. A destination was taking shape in his mind. It had been ages since he’d visited the old neighbourhood near the river, where he had spent his childhood.

Moish was a toddler when his family fled Kiev in the wake of the pogroms of 1906. He had only the shadow of a memory of a man in uniform on the train from Quebec City, who miraculously addressed them in Yiddish. Sholem aleichem, the newsie said to his father, and gave him, free, a stale copy of the Keneder Adler. That was their first taste of the new country, the gift of a stranger.

They rented a cramped little frame cottage with cardboard walls at the corner of Cadieux and Craig. Dirt cheap because of the unremitting clanging of streetcars from the nearby terminus, it had no setback and seemed to grow straight out of the band of wooden sidewalk.

His dad was a mohel and a shoichet by trade, a scholar by avocation. To feed the family, his mother converted the front room into a grocery store, peddling brown paper packets of sugar and flour and penny candy.

Moish was the golden boy, the only one of four brothers with a taste for both Torah and secular learning. The big turning point of his life was winning a scholarship to the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, right out of a BA from McGill. He wasn’t committed to being a rabbi, just flirting with the idea. At the Seminary he fell under the spell of Mordecai Kaplan, his professor for both midrash and philosophy of religion. Kappy was a lovable megalomaniac, vain, egotistical, brilliant, charismatic. In later life, he looked like Colonel Sanders, with his silver goatee and moustache, high forehead, wire-rim glasses, and cap of white hair. But in the mid twenties, when Moish was a regular at Kappy’s Friday-night table, he was still youthful, full-lipped, handsome, his blazing blue eyes mesmerizing. He had yet to write Judaism as a Civilization, but he was already well on his way to standing Judaism on its head. In his sermons at the Society for the Advancement of Judaism, he was already expounding his theory of God as divine process. It was an astounding concept: God, not a supernatural being, but a dynamic force facilitating creativity, beauty, justice, and love.

Moish’s favourite memory of Kappy from that period was the Purim when he’d danced the Charleston in the uniform of a Ku Klux Klan wizard, a blue Star of David emblazoned on his white hood, and the words Grand Kugel embroidered in red on his chest. That was Kappy for you, always a ball of fire, always irrepressible, stubbornly convinced that the synagogue wasn’t just a place for worship but for every aspect of Jewish life—song, dance, sport, what have you—at least as much as prayer.

In the midst of this mellow reverie, Moish gave a sudden yelp of pain. A cramp torqued his right calf in a vise-like twist, and his foot sprang off the brake. The harsh blare of a horn behind him transformed itself into the blast of the shofar on Judgment Day. The Judgment Day that for him was mere metaphor. His head jerked forward and smacked against the windshield. Afterwards, he’d remember nothing of the accident but a resounding voice proclaiming, as if from a great distance, “We bring our years to an end as a tale that is told.”

25

Erica rang the doorbell of the Darwin residence at 54 Hillpark. She had dressed for the occasion with excessive care: a new loden jacket over cuffed wool pants, a cream sweater set and—way over the top for a poolside invitation on Sunday afternoon—a string of pearls (from Ricky for their twenty-fifth anniversary). She was well aware of the irony of trying to hold her own vis-à-vis Bubbles Darwin, whose husband’s fortune was originally built on fashion, and who, according to Faith, was a fashionista par excellence. But Erica wasn’t above vanity or competition, even if the competition was a millionaire old enough to be her mother.

She pulled her shoulders back and told herself she was dressed for success. This was not a social visit.

No one came to the door. She rang again, then rapped smartly with the lion-faced knocker. It reflected back a distorted image of herself with fat cheeks and a potato nose. She stared at it in indecision, her heart leaping at the idea that she wouldn’t have to face this interview. Her thoughts skittered this way and that. She had no illusions about a commissioned biography of a crass and wealthy businessman. It was a recipe for professional disaster, no matter what Paul and Jennifer said. It would be way more work than anybody anticipated and would end up reflecting badly on her. The critics would eat her alive. Darwin was bound to take advantage of her lack of experience in the business world. And really and truly, did she need another troubling guided tour of the Holocaust? That no one was answering the door was an omen. She should turn on her heel and leave.

But then what would she say to Jennifer? And just think of how disappointed Faith would be if she returned without so much as getting through the door.

She assessed the scene. A tall cedar hedge cut through the front garden on a diagonal. In front of it bloomed a few lingering rose bushes and the neatly mowed lawn sloped gently towards the street. But a gap in the hedge at the side of the house might gain her entry through the rear. Here goes, she thought and squeezed through the opening, shaking her hair free of twigs.

In the back, the lot was enclosed by the same cedar hedge which, though six feet high, couldn’t obscure the enormous brick houses built to the edge of their property lines to maximize every inch of living space inside. One good thing she could say about the Darwins, they had green space. A lot of it. Enough for a central pergola and a nice sized patio. She headed along the flagstone path in its direction.

Mystery solved.

Peering through sliding glass doors that opened to the patio from inside, through a haze of steam, she made out an aquamarine swimming pool and a clump of people around it. A trio of small children wearing floaties were chasing one another round the tiled room.

Erica banged on the glass with the flat of her hand. The children, two boys and a girl, stopped in their tracks to gape at her, as if she were an object of rare curiosity. A tall, willowy woman with an upswept hairdo sauntered over, a long white terry robe loosely belted over her black swimsuit. Appearing mystified, she pulled the sliding door open. Erica recognized her from the movie theatre.

“I’m so sorry,” Bubbles said, as Erica stammered, “I tried the front door.”

“It’s my housekeeper’s day off. We should’ve put a note on the door for you”

She turned her back on Erica and shouted in the direction of the pool, “Melly! Melly!”

A man with a powerful crawl continued his progress until he’d completed the lap. Hoisting himself up onto the side, water streaming from his trunks, he grinned and waved.

“Wanna swim?” he yelled. “We have all sizes bathing suits.”

“No thanks.” Erica unbuttoned her coat. She was ridiculously overdressed. Literally and figuratively. So much for success.

“I come out then.”

He waded to the stairs at the corner of the pool and emerged, shedding droplets of water. Grabbing a towel off a hook on the wall, he wiped his hands, then wrapped it around his middle. Padding over to Erica, he extended a hand and crunched her fingers. She was acutely aware of the matted dark hair on his chest as she felt him inspecting her. For a man of his age, he radiated a startling masculine charge.

“So you came to see me,” he said. The smile was self-congratulatory.

“Are you surprised? You did ask me.”

“A little bit. A famous writer like you.” He looked her up and down. “And such a beauty! No one told me that about you.”

Erica blushed, taken aback by the unexpected gallantry. “I think you know who’s famous here,” she said, trying to regain her poise.

“You mean me? I’m just a little Jewish guy from Poland who made a pile of money.”

“Is that why you invited me here?”

“I ask you here, I want you should meet mine family. Glenny! Charlie! Annie! The writer lady’s here. Where are the ainecklach? Matthew, Chelsea, Ryan, are you hiding? And the rest of you big boys and girls, where are you?” He clapped his hands and screwed his head around. “Where the hell is everybody?”

“Right here, Zaidie,” the small girl in floaties tugged at Melly’s towel.

He bent towards her, beaming as he gathered her in his arms. “This here’s Chelsea, mine Charlene’s daughter.” He patted the fair head of the little boy who had sidled up beside him, hooking his arm around Melly’s knee. “Shake hands with the lady, Mattie. Say hello.”

Mattie hung his head, mute.

Erica crouched to eye level. “Hi Matthew. I’m Erica. How old are you?”

The child held up four fingers, while his head remained bowed, studying his bare toes.

A tall, slender young woman in perfectly tailored jeans materialized behind the child and placed her arm around his shoulders, while extending a hand towards Erica. Erica was struck by her shining black eyes. “I’m Charlene Darwin, Matt’s Mom. And Chelsea’s.”

Erica straightened up; they shook hands. By now others had arrived and introductions were made.

“I got fifteen more laps,” Melly said. “Make yourself at home.” He dived into the pool, spattering her pant legs.

Sweating, she removed her cardigan and piled it with her coat on a canvas deck chair. She sat down, crossing her ankles neatly, as she’d been taught long ago by the nuns at school—a pose she reverted to whenever ill at ease. A pretty young woman with lovely creamy skin and eyes of a deep, almost violet blue, took a seat next to her.

“I’m Margo.”

“Are you a daughter, too?”

“Daughter-in-law. Glen’s wife. I’m their big problem.”

“You don’t look like a problem. Why are you a problem?”

“I’m pregnant.”

“That’s not a problem. Mazel tov!”

Erica’s eyes slid down the girl’s body.

“You’re not very pregnant,” she smiled. Margo looked to be perhaps her daughter Raichie’s age, mid-to-late twenties. Her bright red bikini revealed a great deal of cleavage but only a small mound of belly. “Why would being pregnant be a problem?”

“I’m not Jewish. Glen and I didn’t have a Jewish wedding. His parents want my baby to be born Jewish.”

“For Reform or Reconstructionist Jews, it’s enough if either parent is Jewish.”

“It’s not enough around here.”

“Ah,” Erica said. “You’re the one they’d like to convert.”

They were silent, watching the activity in the pool. Chelsea and Mattie were doing the dog paddle in the shallow end. The little one, Ryan, was on Bubbles’ lap, watching the other two intently, his thumb in his mouth. Melly was on his back now, sweeping his arms and legs in strong Vee formation.

“I’m a convert,” Erica said softly.

“You? I heard you were some kind of Jewish writer.”

“I am. But I’m also a convert. Not many people know.”

“When did you convert?”

“Oh, a long long time ago. Before my children were born.”

“Because your husband made you?”

“No, nothing like that. It’s a somewhat complicated story.”

“What did your family make of it?”

“My mother had a hard time with it. She never really got over it.”

“And have you ever been sorry?”

“No … I don’t think so—”

They were so absorbed in their tête-a-tête that they hadn’t noticed Melly climb out of the pool. Now he stood bending over them, in flip-flops and white robe. “I just need to shower.” He held up his hand for emphasis. “Five more minutes. Margo, take her to the conference room.”

Contemplating the glass of ginger ale in front of her, Erica drummed her fingers on the big rosewood table. Her eyes took in the goddess paintings on the wall and the bust of the master of the house on its pedestal. (What conceit! What ego.) She could just make out the real live Melly on the phone in the next room, his voice muffled by the din of a hockey game on television. From time to time, someone poked a head through the door, ducking out again at the sight of her, alone. What a bunch of boors. She would count to ten and then leave.

At this point Melly and his three children trooped in. They arranged themselves around the table by some predetermined order, with Melly at the head and Glen at his father’s right, opposite Erica. Thickset and fair like his father, Glen had close-cropped dirty blonde hair, a snub nose, and his mother’s dark eyes. He wore a permanent frown, as if it took all his powers of concentration to sustain attention to the matter at hand. Charlene, the oldest child, slipped into the seat next to him. Tall, slender, and immaculately groomed, she had Bubbles’s olive skin and wore her black hair drawn into a ponytail. Anita, the baby of the family, who looked to be in her mid-thirties, hesitated before sitting down next to Erica. She was short and bosomy, with a head of light brown curls, and wire-rimmed glasses. Erica cast her a sidelong glance when she observed her pulling a small pad out of her pants pocket. She began doodling, and in a few seconds the outlines of a flimsy garment began to take shape beneath her pencil.

Glen cleared his throat. “We’re not a literary family,” he said.

“Speak for yourself,” Anita said. She had inherited Melly’s broad and fleshy mouth and his air of coiled energy. “Mom’s a great reader and a regular at her book club. Not to mention that she’s cousins with Leonard Cohen.”

“Third cousins, Annie,” Charlene observed with a small smile. Of the three siblings, she seemed the most comfortable in her own skin. “He has never exactly cultivated the connection.”

“Guys, cut it out. Let me tell the lady what I want.” Melly put his palms together and leaned forward. “I want you should write a book about mine life.”

“I know this already, but why, Mr. Darwin?”

“Call me Melly. Please. I want you should write a book about mine life to teach people. Also for mine family. For mine girls and their husbands, and for Margo, who should know more about the Jewish people. For the ainecklach I already have and the ones I’m gonna have …” He broke off for a minute and looked out of the corner of his eye at his son. “To tell them about where I come from. Radobice. Have you heard of Radobice?”

“A little.”

“Good. Very good. I told you all she’s smart. Most people in Montreal never heard of Radobice, it’s not a big place. How come you know?”

“I don’t know very much. My friend Faith’s parents are from there. I’ve heard them speak of it from time to time. Not with a lot of affection.”

“I want you should write where I come from and about mine beautiful family that they killed off everyone, everyone except me.” He took a checkered handkerchief out of his trouser pocket and blew his nose.

“Daddy,” Charlene uncrossed her legs and in one lissome movement pushed away from the table and darted behind her father, encircling his head with her arms. “Please, Daddy, don’t upset yourself.”

“Charlie, sit. I have to say what I have to say.” He blinked rapidly, then regained his composure.

“I was just a kid when the war broke. And then terrible, terrible things happened—some things mine children know and other things I’ve not told no one, except mine wife. How I was ripped away from the side of mine parents.” He gulped and wiped his eyes. “The best mother, the best father …. How I was by mineself, with tough guys, no one to trust. How a miracle happened to me, a real miracle! And how I escaped with a friend I made, except we nearly died.” He paused again, bored his eyes into Erica’s, and squared his shoulders, “I come out of all that afterwards. I do a little black market after the war is ending. There are adventures, lots of adventures. And then I come first to New York and then here to Montreal because of mine wife, who I meet in New York, but she’s from here, and I work like an animal to prove to everybody that I am somebody. And then I have an idea from which to make a little money and then I start mine first store, and then I have another idea and we get La Lace. And then in the last few years when the children are big and they start to be mine partners, I begin with the properties. And I make a big management company—big property management with stores and commercial and residential. And that way I make a real fortune. That roughly is mine story. But the interesting things is in the details. Which I will tell you later.”

In the oppressive silence, Anita fidgeted in her chair and Charlene extracted a tissue from her elegant jeans. She wiped her eyes surreptitiously.

Glen cleared his throat. “I’m not sure, Daddy, that this is a good idea for you. Stirring up all this old stuff, going back over these terrible things.” He looked hard at Erica on the other side of the rosewood table.

“Tell me something. Do you think this writing project will be good for my father’s health?”

“I have no idea,” Erica said, startled. “I don’t know your father.”

“Well, you should know that he has a heart condition.”

“Glenny, Glenny, you’re such a good boy, but this is foolishness.”

Glen scowled. “All this digging up of the past, what’s the point? It will open up all those wounds again for you. Isn’t it enough that we know that you suffered and that there was nobody left from your family? Why go into more detail? The whole point is, you made a new life here. A really good new life. That’s who you are, the life you made is who you are, Daddy. To write a book about it, you’re going to have to relive every agony, every single loss. I’m seriously worried about what that’s going to do to your heart.”

“That’s enough!” Melly slammed his fist on the table. “I have made a decision about this book. And here now I have a writer. You’re gonna scare her off before she’s even started. She shouldn’t be worrying about mine health. And neither should you. I am with the very best cardiologist, mine two son-in-laws say so. And this discussion has no place here, Glenny. Of course I made myself a new wonderful life. But mine family that was, I want them remembered. And also all that I went through, I want there should be a book. This is worth it to remember forever.”

Erica leaned forward, searching out Melly’s eyes and holding them with her own. “I have a great deal of sympathy for the suffering that you endured Mr.—Melly. More than I can possibly communicate now. My own family—”

“I know from your family. I know. Bubbles tells me you write a book—”

“Yes, but it wasn’t a story like you want. It wasn’t true in all the details. I’m a novelist, I’ve never written along those lines.”

“What’s the use to make up stories to fool the people?”

“Sometimes you can tell a greater truth by saying the story is made up.”

“Are you telling me no?”

“Let me ask you something very crass. There are a great many books written about suffering and survival in the Holocaust. What’s going to distinguish your story from all the others?”

“This is a very good question. I figure you ask, so I already thought about it. One, it’s going to be about mine life. Mine! And two, you’re going to write it. That’s what will to—how you say?—distinguish. That is genick, enough, for me.”

26

That evening Erica met Faith and Rhoda for coffee at Franni’s on Monkland.

“And so then he said that all he cared was that it should be about his life and that I should write it.”

“And then?” Faith leaned forward, her ample chest nudging the sugar bowl.

“There wasn’t too much after that.”

“You mean you folded just like that?” Rhoda said.

“Folded? He made his case. I heard him out and then I left.”

“But you’re going to do it?” Faith asked.

“We’re a long way from that. His lawyer’s going to get in touch with Jennifer. And I don’t understand how come a high-powered screenwriter and publisher are interested in this story. There doesn’t seem to be anything so out of the ordinary about it. We’ll have to see.”

“Did you at least like him?” Rhoda pressed.

“He’s really arrogant. I was pissed off at the way he kept me waiting, and by the way everything revolves around him at home, and probably everywhere else, too. But there was something very touching about how his children rallied around him, kind of protective. And even about the way he presented the outlines of his story to me.”

Faith set her bowl of café au lait down carefully. “You know I’ve been campaigning for you to do this. It’s high time you wrote another book.” Her lower lip began to quiver. “But I think it’s going to really bug me if you write about this guy. I mean, why him? Why’s his story more remarkable than my parents’? The only reason Melly’s going to get a book about him is because he’s disgustingly rich and can afford the services of someone like you. It’s horrible!”

There was a moment’s lull. Then Rhoda cracked her enigmatic sidelong smile. “I love the way that word rolls off your tongue, Faith. No one does indignation better than you.”

“But she’s right,” Erica said. She turned towards Faith. “So you don’t think I should pursue it?”

“Oh, you should. Definitely. Don’t mind me. I must be pre-menstrual or something. In fact, I am. I’ve got this deep craving for cheesecake. Who’ll join me?”

Grinning like conspirators, they pushed their chairs back and filed over to the glass counter at the front of the coffee shop. After a short but passionate discussion over the merits of the four kinds of cheesecake on display, Faith and Rhoda agreed to split a slice of double chocolate, while Erica opted for a carrot muffin. A young waiter carried their order over and set it out ceremoniously on the table.

As always, Rhoda performed the precise cutting ritual, then savoured a mouthful. “Orgasmic,” she sighed.

Erica laughed, a dimple creasing her left cheek. “To change the subject radically, how’s Moish, Faith?”

“Amazing. He’s over the concussion, and the ribs are supposed to heal in a couple of weeks. Nate says he’s in fine form. Doesn’t want to hear of giving up his licence.”

“That won’t be up to him,” Rhoda said, huffy. “The very idea that he should continue driving! Talk of chutzpah. If the old bastard wants to kill himself, that’s one thing. Mercifully, he crashed into the guard rail and not a human being.”

“This might interest you,” Faith said. “Guess who Al and I saw last night at Chao Phraya?”

“Who?” Erica asked, without enthusiasm. Faith had a huge circle of acquaintances, most of whom Erica didn’t know.

“Marty Riess and Carol Cape.”

“I told you he had someone.”

“Erica, sometimes you’re really dense. Carol Cape’s a date, not a someone.”

“I’m sure there’s some deep truth in that, but it escapes me.”

“Carol Cape’s been divorced twenty years. She’s a Westmount real estate agent—and a member of the shul. You’d recognize her. She comes to services from time to time. Tall, quite attractive, brown hair pulled back ...”

“How do you know she and Marty haven’t been conducting a torrid affair for years?”

“The body language. There’s a certain comfort level between a man and a woman who’ve slept together. These two were way too stiff. I’d bet my head they haven’t done it.”

“It’s always an education chatting with you. So much for Al’s theory that he’s going to ask me out.”

“Al says he’s working up to it.”

“Well, I’m not interested. He’s just not my type at all. Physically, I mean.”

“I suppose Ricky with his flat gut is,” Rhoda broke in. “It’s that convent background of yours, Erica. The nuns turned you off the body type of the mature Jewish male.”

“What?”

“Marty,” Rhoda enunciated carefully, as if she were building a child’s vocabulary. “Marty has a Jewish body. He’s got a bit of a pot but he’s still a nice looking man. I mean, for his age. Ricky, on the other hand, has a goyish body.

“For God’s sake. What new theory is this? Rick’s Jewish, not goyish.”

“Yeah, but he’s built like a white-bread boy. All neat and fit and skinny.”