They see Emma, their mother, every weekend. They play tennis for an hour at the Mayfair Club on Chesswood Street—an hour that is increasingly an indirect and merciless measure of their age—and then they see Emma. They don’t remember when they began to call her Emma, but it was a very long time ago, long before they came to Canada, probably during their early high school days. She had been quite a strapping woman then, tireless, shrewd, keeping the family afloat. It was expected of her and she did it quietly, without complaining. Their father was always at work—six, sometimes seven days a week. He would come home late in the evening, eat, and then snooze in an armchair with a book fallen open on his knees. Prodded by Emma, he would ramble off to bed and would be snoring a few minutes after switching the night lamp on, the same book fallen off, his glasses still on. He had his moments of exuberance—he liked dinner parties with friends, good food, a few drinks—but work and worries had sapped him dry. He worried about work. He worried about being a Jew and about being demoted.
Book 1
Lollipop
Miss Katie and the vacuum cleaner are engaged in their usual struggle. They are evenly matched in size for Katie is small for her age and the vacuum cleaner is a huge old monster, heavy and own-way. Besides, Katie is only just getting used to electricity and is scared every time she has to plug anything in. When she turns the beast on, it roars and buckles out of control. Sometimes it reduces Katie to tears. But she doesn’t give up, ever. She spends a lot of time washing up and cleaning and scouring and tidying. Every day. She wants her mother to know she has a useful daughter, one who knows how to do things and not one come to suck her blood, as she says every time she is vexed.
Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 1. Purchase the book to read the full piece.
Fake Za’atar
In a city where the Za’atar is fake, We are a genuine family But not complete. We are assembled from fractures of families who think That farther is better Conducting a Passover Seder without saying God And believing That next year We will be in Toronto, which has been Re-constructed. Knowing that even if it were completely rebuilt, It will still be a night’s sleep and a little bit of a day away from Israel . . .
Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 1. Purchase the book to read the full piece.
Waiting
Time is the roman numbered clock at Union Station. The one that I ask you to meet me at the first time —the one you can’t picture in your mind but find anyway. The crowd on the street is as fleeting as the excuses I made for you to meet me, to love me. The light is golden and I long to be encased— with you in the inbetween of these city streets. Normalcy closeting a vast architecture of the potentially complex. Your lateness soothes my devastation, for ultimately, it is presence. You are light and laughing and I will do anything to be interesting enough to keep you—with me . . .
Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 1. Purchase the book to read the full piece.
Toronto locations referenced in this piece
“Time is the neon signs flashing digital reminders along the arteries of the Gardiner. You are a portrait of deafening red tail lights, foreboding the emptiness that ensues with your absence . . . ” —Gardiner
“Time is the roman numbered clock at Union Station. The one that I ask you to meet me at the first time—the one you can’t picture in your mind but find anyway . . . ” Union Station
The Russian Riviera
“Some businessmen” was the way Skinny Zyama had described the two gangsters from New Jersey.
—You want me there for a meeting with businessmen? Kostya had asked.
—You have other plans on a Wednesday afternoon?
—No.
—Wear a jacket, Zyama had said.
Now, stationed as instructed beside Skinny Zyama’s mahogany desk, Kostya appraised the gangsters. Zyama had placed two leather armchairs in front of his desk—chairs calculated to diminish anyone who sat in them—but only the smaller of the two had consented to sit. The larger one, the one doing all of the talking, had turned his chair sideways and perched himself on its arm. Instinctively, Kostya gauged both men’s weights. They were both wearing suits, but that made no difference. Kostya had proven many times that he could guess a man’s weight within one kilo even if he was dressed in heavy winter clothing. It was one of his few demonstrable skills, which—like his other skills—had brought him little profit. In Siberia, his father would occasionally take him to the bar to amuse his friends and to wager skeptical strangers a bottle of vodka.