You Are Not What We Expected

by Sidura Ludwig

You tell Shalom my husband knows lawyers.

  Reen? Where are you? Why won’t you answer?

  Rina’s sister was named Simi. Her husband called her by her first syllable, Sim. As in simply. Simply wonderful. Simply beautiful. They had five children and they lived in an apartment in Modi’in where they shared Shabbat dinners and lunches with friends in their building. Simply joyous. Simi covered her hair with tie-dyed scarves and wore long, dangling earrings. She had her Ph.D. in genetics. Three years ago, Rina had been nineteen, on a gap year in Israel at seminary, dreaming of her sister’s life. When she brought Shalom to meet them, he told a joke about Moses and Jesus playing golf and everyone laughed. Afterwards, Simi said, “He fits right in.”

  Now, Rina lay next to Sarah and listened to Shalom and her in-laws stepping back and forth across the main floor. Her mother-in-law’s voice was shrill, loud enough that Rina could hear when she was speaking, but not enough that she could make out the words. Just the tone, high-pitched and overbearing — the one she used when offering excuses. She talks back to me. And you see how she hides the girl. Shalom, that baby doesn’t even look like you. I can’t have a daughter-in-law who makes me a fool. She couldn’t hear if Shalom was responding. He was so soft-spoken. Rina used to say he centred her.

  Now she closed her eyes and said the Shema before going to sleep. Hear O Israel, the Lord Our God, the Lord Is One. She was floating in this dark space, saying words she didn’t believe anyone else would hear. This wasn’t a commandment. It was a plea. Please hear me. Please don’t let me fall away.

  The next morning, Rina’s shift started at ten. She mixed Sarah’s cereal with some applesauce and scattered a handful of Cheerios on her high-chair tray. Upstairs, doors opened and closed. The chime of the alarm system. Someone stamped as they put on their boots. The mother-in-law called out to the father-in-law about something he was supposed to bring home from the office. The squeal of the automatic garage door, the levers and pulleys stretching and grinding to carry the door up. Rina listened for Shalom’s soft steps coming toward the basement door. She kept expecting him to come down the stairs, walking lightly on his toes, his finger to his lips, his other arm outstretched toward her. Tucked in his pocket would be three plane tickets to Israel.

  You see, he would say, without even having to speak, I have been saving all this time.

  Sarah banged on the tray and her Cheerios jumped like crickets. She laughed and banged again. Rina put her finger to her lips to shush her, but Sarah flapped her hands in front of her face and shook her head no. And then Rina realized that everyone upstairs had left. Even Shalom, getting a ride with his father to the subway station rather than taking the bus. Rather than at least coming down to say good morning to Sarah, or even to figure out the day. Would you pick her up at daycare? What time is dinner? Would you give her a bath tonight? I was too tired last night to do it. I had a really bad day. Maybe we could have some time tonight, just the two of us? I’m feeling so closed in. Rina kept looking at the stairs while Sarah shrieked for her attention. Sarah seemed to understand. Hey, Mum, remember that separation? Guess what? It starts now.

  Rina dropped Sarah at Bryna’s and remembered to go to the side door and not the front. When she signed Sarah up, Bryna told her no parking on other people’s driveways, and don’t come in and out the front door where everyone can see. I don’t need the neighbours calling me out. The houses on Esther Crescent were built so close together, Rina could touch the wall of Bryna’s neighbour while waiting for Bryna to open the side door. There were already twenty kids playing in the basement. A tower of blocks fell. Someone had a croupy cough.

  Bryna’s teenaged sister opened the door. “Sarah! Are you ready to do painting today? And songs at lunchtime? She’s so cute. She loves when we play ‘Bum, Bum A-Rolly.’ Has she shown you?”

  Rina peeked inside and saw Bryna changing a diaper on the floor. Another adult downstairs told two girls to share nicely with the dolls. Rina did the division in her head, the adult-to-child ratio, and like every morning concluded that it’s the loving home environment that counts. She said, “I may be late today, alright? You’ll tell Bryna?”

  “Aw-righ,” the girl imitated, but not cruelly. She sighed, “You have the coolest accent.”

  Rina learned from her mistakes. Today she was being extra careful with the hot chocolate. The man with the tremor was back and his wife had ordered him the drink before settling him into one of the plush armchairs while she went to Sobeys to do her shopping. After paying Rina for the drink, she handed her a tip, placed it in the palm of her hand, the one that Rina had burned the day before. The woman said, “For yesterday. I know all this isn’t easy.”

  Rina’s mouth went dry. Did she know? Did everybody know? Was this crazy, insular neighbourhood so inward-looking it could see right through her?

  “Your hand,” the woman said. “Oscar was so concerned. People don’t appreciate the risks in this kind of work, do they? Anyway, treat yourself. Later today. From the two of us.”

  There was a tip jar on the counter, but the woman motioned for Rina to put the money in her pocket, a twenty-dollar bill. Priscilla wasn’t looking up, her head bent over her textbook, her hand holding her hair off her face so that it stuck out around her head like a crown. Rina thought, Priscilla, Queen of the Night School.

  As she carried the drink over to the man, Rina was thinking about skipping the Shabbat circle time tomorrow at the Promenade Mall drop-in centre. She didn’t think she could sit amongst the other mums, the nannies, the woman at the keyboard with her frosted big blond hair, her thick Russian-Israeli accent and her mix of Hebrew and English. “Okay, yeladim! Mee rotzeh to be sleeping bunny?” She felt like putting Sarah in her stroller, taking the subway somewhere far away from here, walking in one of those downtown neighbourhoods that the morning radio host described as bustling. Was there a shooting in one of them last week? Rina couldn’t be sure. Parkdale, the Danforth, the Annex. The names all blended together for her as places other people went to. But now, left in the basement as she was, Rina had the sudden thought: Was she other people?

  As Rina set the hot chocolate down on the coffee table in front of him, Oscar put his trembling hand on her arm and applied pressure as he stood. She lost her balance, and with his other hand, he steadied her shoulder. For that moment, they were supporting each other.

  “Bathroom,” he whispered. The word came out wet, some spit dribbling out of the side of his mouth. Rina recoiled; the dribble and the request made her think of the man peeing.

  “It’s right there. Around the corner,” she told him, backing away. He leaned toward her, his arm outstretched as if they were attached. His face was unevenly shaven, like his uneven speech.

  “The corner?” he managed. Rina nodded and pointed. He smelled like dry mouth. His grey eyes widened as if he were afraid of everything around them.

  “I’ll save your spot for you,” she promised him, even though the café was almost empty. “Take as long as you need.”

  Priscilla looked up, frowning. The man manoeuvred himself around the furniture, dragging his right leg behind him, gripping the backs of chairs, and then the wall. Priscilla stood up and walked over to offer him her elbow. He pushed her away, perhaps unintentionally, but Priscilla stepped back and turned toward Rina, pointing. “He wanted you to help.”

  Rina’s phone pinged. A WhatsApp from Simi. You have to do something.

  She was about to tell Priscilla to mind her own business when the man turned the corner toward the bathroom, wobbled, and then fell forward. He called out “Elaine!” as he went down. His head and torso smacked against the doorframe, the sink, and the banging sounded like the entire café was crumbling. Rina’s mouth was still open, prepared to lash out at Priscilla, but instead she said, “Call for help!”

  Blood pooled on the ground by the man’s head. His mouth was twisted and one eye squeezed shut, as if he didn’t want
to see. But then the other was wide open, as if he couldn’t help himself. He couldn’t help himself. Rina didn’t know where to look. She didn’t know how to breathe. In the background she could hear Priscilla yelling on the phone, “Yes! An ambulance! Don’t you understand me?”

  The man moved his open eye to Rina’s face and she knelt down toward his lips, which were moving. His breath came out shallow and fast. He reminded her of a fish on the floor of a boat, begging to be thrown back in the water.

  “You’re not alone,” she told him. “I won’t leave you.” And yet, even as she said it, she heard the hollowness of that empty promise. She would leave him. As soon as the paramedics arrived, she would bolt up from her spot on the floor as if to tag them in a sick game of relay. She would move past Oscar’s wife, who would be standing near the front door, her bags of groceries scattered over the floor, the red sauce from the prepared chicken leaking everywhere.

  “You are not alone,” she whispered again, but she knew the words were barely audible. She could barely hear them herself. She held the man’s hand and she counted in her head until she could hear the siren in the distance. Either the siren or maybe Sarah calling for her. Wailing.

  “We’re almost there,” she said, this time a little louder. She squeezed the man’s hand and he seemed to breathe slower. Rina too. Pretty soon she’d be able to leave. Someone swung open the front door. There was yelling and chairs scraping across the floor. Pretty soon she’d have no reason left to stay.

  The Elaine Levine Club

  Isaac eats a cereal called Harvest Fibre Plus, the one that comes with dried blueberries that taste like jellybeans trying to have blueberry flavour. The taste is so sharp it settles beneath his nose. If he were to eat a handful of those so-called blueberries he would get nauseous. But sprinkled amongst his bran flakes and maple oat clusters, it’s just enough of a treat to feel like he’s cheating at breakfast.

  Isaac has a bowel movement before 8:30 a.m. every morning. That’s how he knows the cereal is working. Everything in moderation.

  Since he moved back to Toronto, his sister Elaine has offered to do him little favours here and there. She’s smart. He knows what she’s up to, looking after him so that he’ll stay. She calls him in the morning and she says, “I’m doing a Costco run. Do you want me to pick you up any of that cereal you like?”

  He has plenty already. There are three unopened boxes in his closet because Sobeys had it on sale last week. But still, he’ll say, “Sure. Pick me up a box.” In L.A. no one ever called offering to do him a favour. Elaine doesn’t frame it in this way. She tells him, “I’ll give you the box tonight when you come to watch the kids.” She’s weighing him down here in boxes of organic flakes and he doesn’t even care.

  Elaine is meeting her doppelgängers tonight. Her Elaine Levine Club — a bunch of senior women who like to get together because they happen to have the same name. When Isaac comes into the house, he smells his sister’s rose perfume. Their mother used to wear a similar scent when she would go out on a Saturday night. Isaac is dizzy from the memory of her sitting at her vanity, the scent lingering around her like a cloud and floating slowly toward him as he stood in the bedroom doorway. As Elaine now rushes down the stairs, Isaac sees his mother, her scent billowing behind her legs like a wave, reaching for her stole over the banister. He blinks and she’s gone. It’s just Elaine waving at him as she applies her lipstick in front of the hall mirror. She purses her lips together and then relaxes them into a smile, leans in to check her teeth.

  “I made the kids one of those pizzas. There’s enough for all three of you. Don’t let Adam have any more Halloween candy. He has trouble sleeping.”

  Isaac says, “I thought grandparents were supposed to let their grandkids eat all the junk?”

  Elaine eyes Isaac’s reflection in the mirror. She looks so much like their mother did — eyebrow raised when Isaac went too far, which was always; wide nostrils that made her appear more handsome than pretty. Isaac never noticed a mother-daughter resemblance with Elaine’s estranged daughter, Carly. Perhaps that’s not a coincidence.

  “How did you find this group again?” he asks.

  “Facebook. They’re nice women. We’ve been messaging.”

  “Clubs are for hobbies. What could you possibly all have in common?”

  “I like the company.” She throws on a blue scarf with embroidered flowers that match her lipstick. The colours flash like blinking lights as she turns toward the door. “I won’t be late. Make sure the kids are in bed by nine. Maybe Adam won’t fight if it’s you.”

  Isaac snorts. He takes off his shoes and heads for the newspaper still folded on the kitchen table. That’s another thing — Elaine won’t get rid of her subscription because she knows Isaac comes over every day to read it.

  “I won’t be late!” she calls again, the grandchildren not responding but playing video games in the family room. Isaac settles down to read about world tragedies, a couple of tourists gone missing in Mexico, a mass shooting in Texas and not everyone accounted for, a child kidnapped somewhere in Ohio. All these people missing, he thinks. Maybe they just don’t want to be found.

  At 9:15 p.m., Isaac looks up and realizes that the kids haven’t moved. He can’t remember being so still at that age. Adam is eleven, cross-legged on the floor in basketball shorts and a T-shirt for the Toronto Blue Jays. He’s playing some military game on the TV with headphones. There are silent explosions everywhere. Ava, nine, lies on the couch with an iPhone close to her face, watching some sitcom. Isaac thinks about all the wannabe actors in L.A. coffee shops, the ones chasing careers on the big screen, and how everything boils down to this — a performance that can fit in the palm of your hand. If entertainment is supposed to be an escape, how can anyone get lost in a dream that small?

  “Hey,” he says, and then clears his throat. “Hey! Your grandmother said for you to get ready for bed now.”

  Ava doesn’t look up. Adam definitely doesn’t hear him. Isaac says “Hey!” a little louder and Ava mumbles, “Just a minute. It’s almost done.”

  When he was little, Isaac never contradicted authority or tried to bargain. He certainly was never allowed to just sit there when an adult was speaking to him. You got up when an adult entered the room. You said, “Yes, sir.” You put your book away. (That’s right! Whatever happened to good old-fashioned reading?) And you were in bed by eight, lights out. Your mother made sure you had a good night’s sleep. Isaac can’t decide whether to rip the electronics out of their hands and tell them just how spoiled, entitled, and doomed their generation is, or whether to afford them some sympathy. Because when he was a kid he knew of no one whose mother dumped them with their grandmother and then took off.

  “Assholes,” Isaac says out loud, though he doesn’t realize it. Only when Ava and Adam look over at him and Ava says, “Did you just swear?” Adam starts laughing, even with the headphones on.

  “He did! He totally did,” Adam says, too loudly because of the explosions in his ears. Isaac wonders if the Wi-Fi in the house is somehow connected to his thoughts. Is Adam hearing everything through those blasted headphones?

  “That’s right, assholes!” Isaac says. Now he’s smiling too, as if he’s cracked the code for getting this generation to listen. “I said bedtime!”

  After the kids wash up, Adam calls down. “Uncle Isaac?”

  Elaine’s couch sags in the middle, so that’s where Isaac sits, in the dip just the right depth and circumference for his behind. He’s closed his eyes and is meditating on not being pissed off at his sister for tricking him into babysitting for the price of a jumbo box of cereal. He can’t even work her goddamn TV because Adam’s always got it hooked up to that Xbox/Wii-thing. X, indeed. When he was little, X stood for nothing. That nothing box.

  “Isaac?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Can you come here?”

  “I don
’t know,” Isaac mumbles. His legs are half asleep. It will take three tries before he can swing himself out of this couch hole. He was going to just sit here until Elaine came home, fall asleep, maybe wave her away when she tries to wake him and instead accept the blanket she tucks in around him, settling fully once all the lights click off.

  Isaac leans forward for momentum, but Adam is now standing in front of him. He’s still dressed in the shorts and T-shirt. He needs a haircut. His brown hair is thick and sticking out in tufts around his head. If he were a girl, he would be wearing it in long waves down his shoulders. People would be envious of his hair.

  “Uncle Isaac,” Adam says, this time whispering because he’s right there in front of him. Elaine’s mentioned how worried she is that he doesn’t sleep. ADHD, anxiety. Well, is it any wonder? Isaac reads in the paper all the time about how to set up kids for success. Structure, rules, responsibility. Nothing about pity, that’s for sure.

  Adam says, “When are you going back?”

  “Going back where?”

  “To L.A. Isn’t it sunny there, all the time?”

  “Yeah. It’s nice. It’s hot. It’s not like here, I tell you.”

  Adam shifts his weight back and forth from leg to leg, like a downhill skier. He’d make a good athlete, Isaac thinks. All skinny like that. All muscle.

  “I wanna move there. When I’m older,” Adam says. “I wanna be a gamer. Or, like, an action actor. Or maybe a stunt man. I can do stunts. Awesome stunts.”

  “Sure you can,” Isaac says. Now he wants Elaine home this minute. Now everything about this house feels stuffy and closed in. Everything about this Toronto suburb, built in the boring, safe eighties, when no one took risks. I was travelling the world, Isaac thinks, while Elaine and Oscar were buying this house off the builder’s plans. Who wants to be in the same place for thirty years? Stale, that’s the word. Elaine begged him to come here and it’s like she’s served him stale food. His mouth feels pasty. He says, “You’re supposed to be in bed.”