Barney's Version (39 page)

With a trembly hand, I lowered my coffee cup and lit a Monte-cristo Number Four.

“Have you ever heard of emphesyma, I wonder?”

“You were saying?”

“It must be worse than a hysterectomy, for a man I mean, losing his testicles, never mind what it meant to Gina, his wife, poor dear. You name a Verdi aria and Gina could sing it for you word perfect while she washed your hair. It had already spread, the testicle cancer, and they opened up Mr. Mario's stomach and sewed it up again, nothing to be done. He left behind Gina and two children. The daughter now works at the Lanvin perfume counter in Holt Renfrew, which is why I never go there any more, she's too familiar. I don't care for that. I don't need her squealing out my first name, as if we were best friends, you can hear it from one end of the floor to the other. But the youngest, Miguel, is the chef and I think part-owner of Michelangelo's on Monkland. You know, just down the street from The Monk-land. I saw
Forever Amber
there when I was just a kid, my father would have died had he known. With Linda Darnell and Cornel Wilde, and George Sanders, remember him, I used to think he was terrific. We ought to try Michelangelo's one of these days. The Silvermans were there last week and they said it was both inexpensive and delicious with a decent space between the tables. Not like one of your St. Denis Street bistros, because they remind you of Paris, you go there and it's like you invited the Frenchies on either side of you to join you for dinner, and you start talking loud in English, looking for trouble as usual. Oh, I know how much you enjoy it. Pretending, just because they're eavesdropping, that you have a big fat bank account in Switzerland, and can't understand the menu as it's written in French. What in the hell is pâté you bellowed that time, pronouncing it like it rhymed with wait. You were lucky not to be punched out that night. The guy at the next table was fuming. Herb had the
pasta y fagioli
and then the lasagne Sorrento style. He doesn't worry about his
weight that one, you'd think he would, he climbs one flight of stairs and it's like he had run the Boston Marathon. He suffers from boils. Some of them in the genital area. It's a turn-off, Marsha told me, especially if one pops. Marsha had the antipasto and the veal cutlets Milanese, never mind with those gaps between her teeth, she would never put up with braces when we were in Young Judaea together, little bits get lodged there and I don't know where to look. I was thoughtful enough to whisper to her about it once, we were on a double date, dinner at Miss Montreal, I was with Sonny Applebaum, he wanted to marry me and today, you know what, I could be looking after a guy with Parkinson's. I whispered to her about it and, boy, if looks could kill, so I never mentioned it to her again. But she shouldn't talk with her mouth open. Oh, excuse me. I do beg your pardon. In your eyes she can do no wrong. You danced with her again and again at the Rothstein wedding, I couldn't have slipped a hair between your bodies. Don't think everybody didn't notice the two of you were nowhere to be seen for an hour. I know. Don't tell me again. She was feeling a little dizzy and you took her for a stroll down to the water. Yeah, yeah. But look here, Sir Galahad, Norma Fleischer — it's not the eating that makes her so fat, it's glandular — could faint on the dance floor and you wouldn't lift a finger. Down for a stroll. You took Marsha to the boat house. It wouldn't be the first time for her, anybody wearing pants for that one, so don't count yourself so special. She ought to give you guys postcards, like they do for the ducks in that restaurant you took me to in Paris, the Tour d'Argent.”

—
5 to 2, but it could turn out to be a costly —

“Am I boring you?”

“No.”

“Then put your paper down, if you don't mind.”

“It's down.”

— to be a costly win, because Phil Goyette was cross-checked by Stan Mikita —

“You're reading again.”

“You started to tell me about your dream.”

“I know exactly what I started to tell you about, and I'll get to the point in my own good time. I didn't know we were in such a hurry
here. Boy, did you ever make a racket when you finally got in last night. That hockey game must have gone on for eighteen periods instead of the usual three, judging by the time you got in, and how did you tear your shirt I'd like to know. No. I'd rather not know. But that reminds me, your behaviour, there's something I have to ask you. We're going to my parents for Shabbat dinner on Friday night, you're not getting out of it this time. Oh, I know it's a big imposition, you have to wear a suit, but my father always has the very best single malts there just to please you. Oh, I forgot. The new maid served it with ice in your glass last time you came. Off with her head, eh? The truth is I could cut out my tongue, because I was once foolish enough to tell you my mother simply cannot stand whistling at the table. You don't do it here or anywhere else.
Never, never
. But sit down at our family table on a Friday night and before we have even finished the gefilte fish, you could be auditioning for
The Ed Sullivan Show
or something. So this Friday at the table will you please, please, please not whistle ‘Mair-zy Doats' or ‘Bongo, Bongo, Bongo, I Don't Want to Leave the Congo,' or some idiot tune by Spike Jones. You find that funny? Something to laugh about? Well, fuck you. My father is still waiting for the results of that biopsy, and if it comes back positive I don't know what I'll do, I think I'll die. Where was I?”

“Sixteen is where you were, with a pigtail.”

“That was the year of my Sweet Sixteen dinner dance at the temple. I wore a white taffeta dress from Bergdorf Goodman, with matching gloves and silk stockings, and high-heeled shoes. My father took one look and his eyes filled with tears. Mr. Bernard and his wife came to the dinner, and so did the Bernsteins and the Katanskys and —”

“What did they serve?” I asked, my smile menacing.

“
Are you being sarcastic?
”

“I'm interested.”

“In anything that means something to me? Yeah, sure. And you never laid a hand on one of your
shiksa
so-called actresses and you didn't drink a drop last night. Right? Wrong. Well, for your information, it was catered by Monsieur Henri, no expense spared. He was a Sephardic Jew from Morocco, but not one of your greasy ones. He was extremely polite. Very sophisticated. Introduce him to a lady and
he would kiss her hand, without actually touching it. Then it turned out his only son was an epileptic, and it broke his heart. He began to drink and his business went downhill.
Don't give me that look. Spare me
. I know it doesn't interfere with your work. Not yet anyway. In fact, in your case, I would say it's your work that interferes with your drinking. No reaction? What do I have to do to get you to crack a smile? Stand on my head? Take off my panties in Eaton's window? Something that young actress you're so fond of, that Solange woman, could never do. I'm told she doesn't wear any and I'm looking at the guy who I'm sure could confirm that one way or another. Yes? No? Never mind. Back in those days Monsieur Henri's business was burgeoning and he catered a lot of affairs that weren't even Jewish. Old families in Westmount who wouldn't have a Jew, even one as cultured as my father, in one of their clubs booked him for their daughters' coming-out parties and all sorts of events that make the social column in the
Gazette
. Oh, look at you. Impatient already. I'd better stick to the point, eh? Or you'll soon tell me you have to go to the toilet urgently,
taking your newspaper with you
, but I happen to know you've already been this morning,
and how
. So next time would you remember to spray, that's what it's for, you know. Look at it like this. Not every bottle is to drink from. No smile as per usual. No ha ha ha. You don't think that was witty. Only you can make jokes. Okay, okay. Tara-taratara. The menu. We started with
foie de poulet
, served in a cucumber canoe, and surrounded by sour-pickle slivers and flower petals. My Aunt Fanny didn't know what they were, and ate them all, it became a family joke for years. My father would take us to dinner at the Café Martin, there would be a vase with flowers in the middle of the table, and he would wink and say, ‘It's a good thing Aunt Fanny isn't here.'

“At my Sweet Sixteen boys dressed like Bedouins went from table to table with baskets of chocolate-chip and cinnamon and raspberry and lemon bagels, which nobody had ever seen before. It was Monsieur Henri's invention. The soup was some kind of bouillon, but ooh so fragrant, with itsy-bitsy heart-shaped balls of minced veal, wrapped in paper-thin dough, floating in it. Then everybody was served a little peppermint sherbet to clear the palate, and some of the older guests began to mutter, they thought the meal was over, they weren't going
to get a main course. The main course was rack of spring lamb, sitting on a bed of couscous, and garnished with apple fritters. Afterwards there were date squares and pecan fingers and quartered fresh figs and strawberries dipped in chocolate, everything spilling out of a biscuit crust shaped like a hunter's horn.

— by Stan Mikita early in the first period —

“My father gave me an onyx ring and a pearl necklace with matching bracelet and earrings. I had it valued at Birk's, don't look at me like that, I'm not mercenary, I had to, for the insurance, and it was worth fifteen hundred altogether, and I'm talking 1947, never mind now. He also gave me a sterling silver vanity set from Mappin and Webb that still sits on my dressing-table, and would you please not put down your whisky glasses there any more, it leaves rings on the antique leather, not that you care. My grandmother gave me my first mink jacket with matching muff, who wears them now, eh? But I wouldn't part with it for anything. You're reading again.”

“I am not.”

“Then why did you move your coffee cup just now?”

“Because I spilled some.”

“Tell me something. You go to a hockey game on Thursday night, you see what's going on, you know who scored the goals, but first thing the next morning you turn to the sports pages. Why? You think the score is going to be different in the
Gazette
?”

“You were going to tell me about your dream.”

“You're not interested in my dream.”

“Of course I am.”

“Because it was about you?”

“I didn't bring it up, for Christ's sake.”

“I'll tell you what I'm interested in. Sylvia Hornstein saw you in the lingerie department of Holt Renfrew two weeks ago, and says she saw you buy a silk negligée, and had it gift-wrapped, and then — and this I found interesting — had it wrapped over again in brown paper — as if it was going to be mailed to somebody. So obviously it wasn't for me. Who for, then?”

“As a matter of fact —”

“Oh boy, is this ever going to be good!”

“— Irv Nussbaum's anniversary is coming up, and he phoned me from Calgary and asked me to get it for his wife and mail it to her here.”

“Liar, liar, liar.”

“This is outrageous.”

“Which of your so-called actresses wore it for you last night, you didn't get in until four a.m.”

“As it happens, I was out with John and Zack last night, and you can check that out if you like.”

“You can go straight to hell,” she said, leaping up.

— it was the fire-wagon Habs taking the play to the Hawks. First it was Big Jean Beliveau feeding Dickie Moore in the slot, then it was Boom-Boom beating Glenn Hall on his glove side with a forty-footer the Hawk netminder would like to have back, and then Beliveau, taking a long pass from Doug Harvey, skated in all alone on Hall. Bang bang bang, 5–1 for the good guys
.

The Second Mrs. Panofsky pounded on my shower door. “It's the phone,” she said. “Your father.”

Izzy said, “You were going to take me to the hockey game tonight? Big treat. The fucken Rangers. Probably you couldn't find another customer. Well, I can't go. Neither can you.” Then he paused to blow his nose. “It's over.”

“What's over?”

“Your poor mother's suffering. She passed away in her sleep last night and I'm heartbroken.”

“Don't give me that.”

“Hey, show some respect. You should have seen her when we got hitched. She was a number. We had our little tiffs over the years, who doesn't, but she always kept a clean house. I had no complaints in that department.”

But I had some complaints in mine. My father was seldom home when I was a boy. For supper I ate macaroni and cheese most nights,
but on special occasions my mother boiled hot dogs served with lumpy-mashed-potato pyramids covered with corn flakes. She did do one thing for me, registering me for a tap-dance class with Mr. Jeepers Creepers, who had twice been charged with molesting boys. It was her fondest hope that I would appear on “Major Bowes' Amateur Hour,” and be discovered, but she lost interest when I bombed in audition for a local show. The closest I ever came to her was when she was already out of it in the hospital. I would shut the door to her room, don my straw boater, twirl my cane, and tap-dance round her bed, singing “Shoofly Pie and Apple Pan Dowdy” or “Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Positive,” another of her favourites. She would squeal, and clap her hands, tears sliding down her cheeks, and my mood would seesaw from joy, for having reached my mother at last, to rage at her for being so damn stupid.

Izzy wept at the funeral, if only for the benefit of her two brothers and their wives, who had flown in from Winnipeg where my mother came from. My uncles, whom I hadn't seen since my bar mitzvah, were respectable people. Milty was a paediatrician and Eli, a lawyer, and they both warmed to The Second Mrs. Panofsky immediately. “I understand,” said Uncle Eli, “that your father is a good friend of Mr. Bernard's. He's going to speak at a fund-raiser in our synagogue next week. Tell your father if I can be of any help, I'm at Mr. Bernard's service.”