Your Sad Eyes and Unforgettable Mouth (15 page)

Rosie was expecting, therefore, only the usual Saturday-night party on the week of her fifteenth birthday. My job was to keep her at my place while the balloons and streamers went up. When I brought her back, the windows were dark and Rosie panicked. Her father must have had a relapse, she said—we had to hurry to the hospital. The door opened, the lights came on, and everyone shouted, “Surprise!”

There were piles of presents. I remember a Mother Goose cereal bowl, a sexy nightgown, an anti-war T-shirt (
Nixon, don’t make the same mistake your father did, withdraw before it’s too late
), chocolates, candles, incense, and a red-and-white life preserver from Avi—either a private joke or a nostalgic nod towards the summer, when he’d watched Rosie from his lifeguard’s perch. Convinced that it would do her good to break away from the Michaeli tradition of bare walls, I gave Rosie two Toulouse-Lautrec posters for her bedroom. The gift that attracted most attention, and which oddly paralleled Avi’s, was a diamond and ruby ring from his adversary, Jeff. Jeff’s father was a jeweller, but even so, it was a charged gesture, and one that ended unhappily. When the party was over and only Jeff remained, Rosie told him she couldn’t accept the ring. He threatened suicide, Mr. Michaeli laughed at him, and I
was dispatched to give solace as he wept in the bathroom. “Maybe you should go away for a while,” I suggested. He was older than Rosie and would soon be graduating. “Yes, yes,” he sobbed. “I’ll go to Morocco. I have a friend who’s already there.” He was sitting on the edge of the bathtub, and like someone groping in the dark he reached out for my belt. “Please,” he whispered.

“No way,” I said, removing his hand.

Jeff didn’t mind. “I know, I know,” he sighed. “I just wanted to save the little that’s left of my masculine pride.”

Rosie’s party satisfied my birthday-celebration needs, and when I turned fourteen I chose to mark the occasion Michaeli-style. Bubby baked a two-layer chocolate cake, and my mother, dressed in a silver satin dress that made her look like a stuffed toy elephant from the Far East, ceremoniously presented me with a four-speed record player and three records. The records had been enthusiastically recommended, she assured me, by the salesclerk at Sam the Record Man. We plugged in the record player, slid one of the records on the turntable, and the three of us listened to Creedence Clearwater Revival; Bubby seemed quite taken by “I Put a Spell on You” and bobbed her head to the beat.

The following day, the Michaelis gave me an illustrated edition of
War and Peace
, and that’s what I was reading in Rosie’s room that Sunday. Rosie lay sideways on her bed, leafing through teen magazines and an assortment of comic books:
Archie, Supergirl, Casper the Friendly Ghost
. Dvora, whose collection was the envy of many, had been forced by her mother to tidy up her room, and the next day Raphi had dropped by with a bagful of comic-book treasures. I sat on the floor with my new book, sucking on the pits of plums until their sugary insides leaked out, my back against the bed. Rosie had a habit of wriggling her feet as she read, and every now and then her toes brushed my upper back.

“Is he good?” Rosie asked me, referring to Tolstoy.

“Yes. I like reading about desperate people. I’d like Archie comics if Archie was struggling with heroin addiction.”

Rosie smiled. “Is everyone desperate in
War and Peace
?”

“Pretty much. Desperate or foolish. I can relate to the desperate characters and I get to feel superior to the foolish ones.”

“Listen to this. ‘Dear Dianne, My boyfriend’s hair reaches down to his shoulders. I’m afraid to ask him over because I know my dad will make fun of him. We’re very serious and have been discussing marriage. What should I do?’”

I said, “Dear Dianne, I feel very guilty because a boy liked me and I didn’t like him back, and I should have told him right away but I didn’t, because I liked his records and chocolates. What should I do?”

“Don’t feel bad about Earl,” Rosie said. “I think it’s working out with him and Naomi.”

Things had come to an abrupt end with Earl. I’d finally refused, one Saturday night, to dance with him. Rosie came over to me and pleaded on his behalf. “Maya, please talk to Earl. He’s really upset.”

I had tried to be a good friend at least to lanky, hollow-cheeked Earl. He had so much already: a bunk bed, an extended family, an American mother with a Brooklyn accent, a father who was born in Winnipeg, a shelf of ping-pong trophies. Why did he need more? And why me, of all people? In all the hours spent listening to music and eating Black Magic chocolates in his clubhouse basement, we had not succeeded in moving beyond his craving and my resistance. He wanted my female body, but his desire only made me protective of that body, and it was Earl’s shyness, though he may have cursed it when he was alone in his bunk bed, that made it possible for me to hang out with him as long as I did.

I took Earl to Rosie’s room, shut the door. He sat on the bed and I sat next to him. “Earl,” I said, “You have to stop calling me.”

“You’ve met someone?” he asked suspiciously.

“No, of course not. It’s me, can’t you see? Look how long we’ve known each other—and we’ve never even kissed.”

“Can we kiss now?”

“Okay.”

But when I felt his restless tongue against my mouth I drew away. “I can’t, Earl, I’m sorry. It has nothing to do with you. I’m never going to have a boyfriend.”

“You’re just trying to get rid of me.”

He stormed out of the room, and a few minutes later left the party with Naomi, who spent her free time browsing through bridal magazines.

That was three weeks ago. Earl hadn’t spoken to me since.

“I think—” But before I’d finished my sentence, the doorbell rang.

“That’s Patrick,” Rosie said. “He usually comes on Friday, but he had to switch. He’s really funny.”

I never visited Rosie on Fridays. Friday was her dating night, and also the day I was held food prisoner at the Levitsky Institute for the Work Deprived. The food tournament got off to an early start. At seven in the morning Bubby entered the kitchen and shut the door, dismissing me with a firm wave of the hand. By the time I came home from school my mother had joined Bubby. The kitchen remained off-limits until six o’clock, when I was called in for a multi-course meal, complete with tapered white candles, a bottle of oxidized red wine the three of us pretended to sip, and musical accompaniment in the form of an obscure melody hummed with vague urgency by Bubby.

In order to give either herself or my mother a break, Bubby would not allow my mother to leave the table once we were seated. The serving of this meal proceeded at a leisurely pace, and between courses my mother lifted my feet onto her lap so she could massage them. I felt ridiculously spoiled.

“Funny in what way?” I asked Rosie.

“Oh, it’s how he says things. He hates piano, and he’s always arguing with Daddy. Want to hear?”

We peeked out as Patrick made his way to the music room. Straggly chestnut-brown hair, Nelson Algren sweater, wire-rimmed glasses, hunched shoulders—Patrick seemed to be aiming
for as low a profile as he could manage, but he radiated a dark, intense energy that was impossible to ignore.

Rosie and I slid to the floor and tried to hold back our giggles. From the doorway we could hear without being seen.

“So, Patrick, here we are again,” said Mr. Michaeli.

“Yes,” Patrick sighed. A heavy, histrionic sigh, part parody, part resignation.

“So, let’s hear the Bach.”

Patrick played a short piece. When he was through, Mr. Michaeli said, “Good, good, the fingers are definitely on the right keys. So what is the problem?”

Patrick sighed again. “You don’t like it.”

“And why?”

“Not in conformity with your concept of aesthetics?”

“Yes, correct. So maybe today we will conform more and give consideration to bringing out feeling?”

“How am I supposed to bring out feeling from a box of mechanical hammers hitting a bunch of steel strings?” Patrick protested. It was a stand-up comic’s act: pointing out some essential, absurd injustice with ironic exasperation. But his was an introverted version of a comedian’s routine, and seemed almost involuntary.

“Ah, yes—maybe it’s the piano. That reminds me of a joke I now forgot.”

“I wouldn’t mind moving on to a new piece.”

“Absolutely,” Mr. Michaeli said. “Enough Bach.
Adios
, Bach. We are tired of you. Here we have some Liszt.”

“I’m not up to Liszt.”

“So, who do we play next?”

“I didn’t say I didn’t want to play Bach,” Patrick said. “You could let me demolish another Bach prelude.”

“If only you will try, you will not demolish.”

“I told you, I don’t have an aptitude for this.”

“You are soon sixteen, no?”

“In two weeks.”

“Maybe the time has come to tell your mother?”

There was a long pause. “All right,” Patrick said. “I will.”

“I don’t believe it!” Rosie whispered.

“Good,” Mr. Michaeli said. “We are ready at last to be free. Go home, and come back any time, we can sit and discuss philosophies, and I will pretend I read those books.”

“I’m sorry I’ve been such a bad student.”

“Au contraire, mon ami. From you I’ve learned some interesting ideas. And a good ear you definitely have.”

There was a sound of shuffling as Patrick packed his music books.

“Now they fight over money,” Rosie told me. “Let’s go watch. Maybe if we’re there, it won’t be so bad.”

I braced myself for a scene. Mr. Michaeli recoiled from money with even more ferocity than Bubby Miriam on laundry detail. If anyone tried to break through his repugnance, he’d respond with a look of shocked fury, almost of hatred. When his students handed him their crumpled five-dollar bills, he gave them in return toys that had cost three times as much. His salary from Eden was spent as quickly as possible on strange, bumpy fruit from a small, poorly lit Caribbean store on Victoria Street; on stamps sold by an impoverished man who lived in a basement apartment downtown and who kept himself alive by slowly relinquishing his stamp collection, salvaged from the war; and on dinner at The Brown Derby, which recovered for its customers their beloved dishes: schnitzel, borscht, kishke, chopped liver. I was often invited to these urgent sprees. “Order everything! Everything the heart desires!” he’d tell us, though he himself only drank coffee. Obediently, charitably, we stuffed ourselves. What was left after the first round of spending went to Europe, to someone Mr. Michaeli knew there.

Occasionally, I, too, was the victim of his devastating gifts—usually a record he thought I’d like. My forced “thank you” exhausted me, and I wished there were some way to give him something in return. Rosie was the only one who remained
untroubled by her father’s manic saintliness. She laughed at him, sang under her breath,
One for my master, one for my dame, and one for the little boy who lives down the lane
. “I can’t bear all this generosity,” I told her one time. “Don’t feel bad,” she said. “He can’t help himself.”

The two of us strolled casually into the music room. Patrick, bizarrely, didn’t seem to see us. It wasn’t shyness; it was deliberate technique. Patrick, I would soon find out, had trained his vision over the years, had by now achieved impressive selectivity.

He took out his wallet and Mr. Michaeli stepped back, raised his arms.

But I could see that this was the only part of the lesson Patrick enjoyed. Handing over money was the one safe procedure in Patrick’s vexed life. There was no room here for error, humiliation. Unlike Mr. Michaeli, who gave so he could retreat, Patrick wanted only justice, a moment of glorious simplicity.

“No, no, keep for this week the money. We made no progress today, my young friend. Buy for yourself a book on theories in aesthetics, yes? Now you are free as a bird.”

Someone had to lose out. Patrick’s body tensed with predicament. He placed the money on the piano and ran down the hallway and out the door, forgetting everything: his music, his gloves, his cute black beret.

Rosie and I looked at each other and burst out laughing. We knew at once what we were going to do: if Patrick really wasn’t coming back, we’d track him down at his place. He had no hope at all of getting away.

We waited to see whether Patrick would yield either to his mother’s wishes or his own morose compulsion and resume his piano lessons. When three weeks had passed and he hadn’t called, we decided to go ahead with our plan, and early in May we set out to return to Patrick the items he had, like Cinderella, left behind.

It was a chilly day, and the anemic sky seemed determined to sap the colour from everything beneath it. As we waited for the bus, icy gusts of wind swept down on us, and we shivered under our thin spring coats.

“Alpine rescue vehicle!” I cried out when the bus crawled towards us at last.

“I think he’s rich,” Rosie said as we slid into a double seat. “He goes to a private boys’ school.”

“Poor him,” I said. Lindsay Anderson’s
If
had recently been detonated on impressionable audiences, and I had visions of evil prefects, long echoing corridors, rows of demoralized boys in suits and ties.

Patrick lived in Beaconsfield, wherever that was. The trip took over two hours, and when the last of three buses drove away, we found ourselves in alien territory—not exactly the country, but unlike any city street we’d ever seen. On one side of the paved road, stately houses had been erected between tracts of forest as if sent by some distant monarch to impose order on the wilderness; on the other side, a silvery lake stretched out to the horizon like the sea. It had only recently thawed, and a shadowy indigo hue skimmed the water like mist.

“Wow, I didn’t know Montreal had something like this,” Rosie said, casting her eyes on the
terra incognita
of the upper classes.

“We don’t get around enough, Rosie,” I said. I consulted our map, and we set off in search of 4 Hillside Road. I wondered why there were no sidewalks; maybe it was because the population was so sparse, or maybe everyone who lived here travelled by car.