A Sharp Intake of Breath. Джон Миллер

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СКАЧАТЬ average person, to understand what Ari was studying, would have to furrow his brow and set his mind deeply into the words, just as I did, but this was something that came easily to him. Still, I could tell that helping me move had tested the limits of his patience, especially when I started through my old photographs. He only perked up when I told him there might be a picture of Emma Goldman and my late sister Lil in there somewhere, but then when we couldn’t find one, he was crestfallen and fell silent.

      That boy was far too introspective for any person just out of his teens. Over-analyzed everything, and barely ever made a fuss or a peep. There were times I wanted to shake him and say, “Rebel! Act out! What’s wrong with you, kid?” I was amazed that he and I could be related at all, so different his boyhood had been from mine. His personality was in part a reaction to loud, formerly hippie parents. Bessie’s Warren had married Susan in 1970 and they named their son after Woody Guthrie’s boy Arlo, who they claimed had a Jewish mother. Warren was a Bay Street lawyer now and Susan a big-shot journalist, but on weekends, they sometimes pretended it was the old days and lit up a joint.

      I couldn’t imagine Ari ever trying marijuana. He was intrigued by rebellion and protest, but only as ideas to be studied. He was obsessed with Emma Goldman and had been ever since he was a child and Lil told him about when she and Emma were comrades right here in Toronto. I could understand the appeal; I knew Emma too, and she was a formidable woman. She cut a deep swath through our lives, and the brush still hadn’t grown back two generations later. She was tethered to us even in her grave. Ari’s studies had revived her as a name to be spoken aloud, but I had my own reasons to toss her around, privately, during my quietest moments, when I imagined I might have the courage to finally make things right, after all these years. Now that time might be running out, those quiet moments had become more frequent.

      Every day for a week before the movers came, Ari showed up at my old apartment and helped me fold clothing, pack dishware, and pick through tchotchkes. He helped me, for the second time in five years, make a lifetime of memories contract ever further. It wasn’t fair. They said old people’s minds discarded memories on their own; why not let us be until then? I went from a stuffed house to a decent-sized one-bedroom, and now to a tiny bachelor with a closet not even big enough to hide a burglar.

      I shouldn’t complain—I didn’t really have that many clothes, and who had those kinds of closets anyway? They were almost a myth: you saw them in movies and cartoons, bandits standing upright, behind the door between two overcoats, knife poised. From my own unfortunate experience, I knew that even the wealthiest society folk, with their fancy Rosedale homes, might have closets with built-in shelves, or be too overstuffed with clothes to fit a person inside.

      It was ridiculous to be thinking of such things. This was how I measured the worth of an apartment? That it should have a closet a burglar could fit into? Never mind that, in this scenario, I was the burglar. It was all sick, sick, sick. That was just my mind hitting the same detour sign, pointing back, and back, and back once more, in a continuous loop. The critical thing was that Ari had helped me stuff my belongings into this apartment and its tiny, burglarproof closet, and I appreciated the effort. Today, as I crossed the parking lot to visit Bessie at Baycrest, I made a mental note to remind Ari that he should think about which of the things we’d put in storage he wanted to take to Montreal.

      He’d called yesterday to ask if we could talk after he visited his grandma Bessie, as if I were busy enough that I’d need to fit him in. After the move, I’d been certain I wouldn’t hear from him for months, but everyone was making a fuss now. I got more calls from Warren and Susan than I’d had in years, and suddenly Lil’s girls were phoning all the time from the States too. They were all worried for me, worried I was sad and lonely and scared.

      They had no idea. I’d been all those things, and I was done with them. Breathing in didn’t worry me anymore. Exhaling no longer filled me with dread. And as for speech, well, I’d said mostly all I had to say. I’d mastered the words, those small sculptures, but all works of representational art had their limits.

      In the end, people saw and heard just exactly what they wanted.

      BESSIE HAD A PRIVATE ROOM at the end of the hall, and as I started towards it, the smell of disinfectant assaulted me. The walls were painted beige, and the doors to the residents’ rooms, a light peach. A large woman sat on a chair in the hall, her eyes closed, head slumped. One would have thought her asleep had she not been rubbing her wrinkled hands together and muttering something too low to hear. Her skin was ghostly and spider-webbed, and her age wasn’t fully to blame. Old age homes badly need regular lighting. Instead, fluorescent lamps cruelly accentuate our frailty, poor circulation, and peaked skin tone.

      A thick-bodied nurse came out of her station across from the elevators and helped a very short man back into his narrow room. I heard a moan from behind the walls. As I approached Bessie’s door, the sound of the television reached me, and for one blessed moment I thought my sister was alone. But no. Pearl Feffer was sitting on a chair beside the bed.

      Pearl, Bessie’s annoying sentry.

      We’d known each other most of our lives, but for many reasons, we’d not gotten on so well. She and Bessie had fallen out of touch for some thirty years, while Pearl lived out west, but a few weeks before I took my own apartment in The Terrace, Pearl had moved in a floor below me. Bossy like you wouldn’t believe, and honest to God, she was getting on my very last nerve. Every time I went across the way to Baycrest, no matter what the time of day, she’d be there already visiting my sister and reading aloud from the newspaper or some novel. Bessie, poor thing, was trapped in her bed and semi-dazed from pain medication for her own battle with cancer, so I couldn’t even tell if she enjoyed the visits.

      As if that weren’t bad enough, Pearl always gave me a kind of look—judgemental—as if to suggest I should be the one reading instead of her. She never actually said it, but she snorted at me a lot. I’d practised in my mind what I’d say to her if she could be direct enough to confront me. I’d say, maybe I’d visit more often if you weren’t here. Or, mind your own business, ya busy-body.

      Today they were watching the Parliamentary Channel. Pearl had the converter clutched in one hand, pointed to the set. Bessie was propped against the headboard, her bathrobe wrapped tightly under her crossed arms, her short permed curls damp and slicked back behind the ears. Pearl had given Bessie a home dye job and now her hair was a slightly lighter shade of purple than the bathrobe.

      “Toshy, sweetheart, come here, pull up a chair. They’re televising the Sue Rodriguez case at the Supreme Court.” Bessie pointed to the screen. It was nice to see that her face had colour to it, and it surprised me, given what she was watching.

      Pearl uncrossed her legs, stood up, and pulled over a chair for me to sit beside her, but I went to lean against the wall near the entrance. The last place in the room I’d choose to be would be in a chair beside Pearl. She fussed with her silver hair, immaculately groomed so that bangs more or less covered the birthmark on her forehead.

      On television, a lawyer argued his case.

      “That’s counsel for Sue Rodriguez,” said Pearl. “I think he’s just wrapping up.”

      “Did I tell you my daughter-in-law Susan interviewed her last night?” Bessie said to Pearl, her voice full of pride. Susan was the co-anchor of Searchlight, the prominent CBC news magazine, and an occasional replacement for their lead news anchor.

      “How can you be watching this?” I asked.

      “Because it’s historic, that’s how,” said Pearl, butting in. “I’m surprised at you. This is amazing, really, that they broadcast these things nowadays. Can you imagine if we’d had television sixty, seventy years ago? Think about what it would СКАЧАТЬ