You Are Not What We Expected

by Sidura Ludwig

  “I don’t feel like it.”

  “Tough. You’re not allowed to be out of bed.”

  “I can’t lie still.”

  And Isaac gets that. The hardest thing about moving here is the feeling that everyone is lying still because there’s nowhere else to go.

  The next morning, Isaac walks to Sobeys. He’s had an issue with Sobeys since he moved here. There’s a sign on the side of the grocery store that claims it is the largest kosher supermarket in North America. In North America! This was the basis of one of his first arguments with Elaine:

  “That’s impossible. I lived in L.A. Pico Boulevard has kosher grocery stores five times the size of Sobeys! And in New York. You’ve never been to some of those suburbs. They make Thornhill look like a quaint town. They have kosher bakeries bigger than Sobeys. Liquor stores!” By the time he was picturing all the alcohol, Isaac was roaring. As if he were preparing to lead an army of kosher wine bottles into the Sobeys to protest. Elaine shook her head, which Isaac took as an argument. But really, she just didn’t care. She said, “So take it up with head office. I’m sure they have their statistics to back it up.”

  “It’s simple square footage! You don’t need statistics. You just do the math! How big is the space? And if it’s not bigger than the largest kosher grocery store in L.A., then your marketing is false. And there are standards in place to deal with that. False advertising. This community should be up in arms that they are being lied to and they are falling for it and paying for it every time they walk into that store and buy a package of overpriced chicken.”

  Elaine was making a said “overpriced” chicken for supper. She was rinsing the pieces under cold water while Isaac spoke with such passion that he spit out the word priced. She said, “Isaac, of all the issues in the world. Really?”

  Isaac strides across the Sobeys parking lot and prepares himself to demand a meeting with the store manager. He wants to know the exact square footage of the store. He enters armed with that information from the largest kosher grocery store in L.A. When he called them, they were happy to give it to him over the phone. In fact, the manager was shocked to hear that a store in Canada was claiming to be larger.

  “Be’emet?” said the Israeli-sounding man. “There are that many kosher Jews up there? I don’t believe it.”

  “Neither do I,” Isaac mumbles as he marches into Sobeys. Oh, he promised that store manager a full report. They spoke for forty-five minutes. That was a man who understood customer service! He said, “You come visit me when you’re back in town. I make the best schnitzel in L.A. Freshest. You’ll have lunch on me.”

  Isaac’s mouth watered at the thought. He could start a class-action lawsuit with the pending information. Overpriced food supplementing false claims. And the community pays for it! He would use his take from the results of the suit to finance his trip back. He would say to Elaine, after the legal proceedings were all over, “What did I tell you? You don’t need me here anymore. You and your Elaines can thank me for saving you hundreds of dollars a year in groceries!”

  He walks up to the customer service desk and he announces, “I’m here to see the manager.”

  The woman behind the desk, Asian, small, is helping another customer buy a lottery ticket. The customer is an elderly woman dressed in a heavy fur coat with a blue knit hat. Her white hair sticks out from below it in tufts like dandelion seeds on the verge of being blown away. The customer looks over at Isaac and says, “Wait your turn.”

  Isaac spots a Russian accent. He says, “Nyet, nyet. This isn’t communist Russia! She can call the manager while she sells you your sorry excuse for life savings. This woman is smart enough to do two things at once.”

  The clerk looks up at Isaac. “I’ll help you in a minute.”

  Isaac yells to no one in particular, “How hard is it to get service when you’re preparing a lawsuit?”

  The power in that word. He’s convinced even the music through the store speakers (1960s forgotten hits) halts at his proclamation. A man with a white-and-green badge on the lapel of his suit jacket comes over and stands behind the counter. He crosses his arms. Isaac knows body language. The crossed arms. Feet shoulder-width apart. Chest puffed out and face frozen. The man says, “What are you looking for?”

  Isaac points at the manager, leaning on the counter. He says, “What is the square footage of this store?” He’s salivating from the excitement of his pending free lunch. He smells roses and lilies from the florist counter next to customer service. And stale coffee from the machine offering a cup for a loonie. It’s the scent of victory. He doesn’t need the caffeine. Isaac is buzzing with righteous indignation.

  “I’m not authorized to provide you with that information,” the manager says.

  “I’m not asking for something top secret. You have a store here. It’s a certain size. You have hundreds of customers every day walking these aisles. So what do you say, fifteen thousand square feet? Twenty?”

  Isaac has done this before, demanded information, watched his target grow pale with nerves. Isaac is not a tall man. The manager is much taller than he is. Isaac is stout. Round. His glasses are always foggy and Elaine bugs him to clean the lenses. But Isaac sees everything clearly — the manager’s Adam’s apple bobbing at his throat as he swallows, stalling for time; the Asian woman frozen beside him, unable to predict what Isaac will do next. When he lived in Australia, he once got an audience with the postmaster general over the unfair distribution of collectible stamps. In New York, it was with the manager of the bar that Woody Allen liked to frequent. They were claiming to sell Glenfiddich, but Isaac can taste a J&B from just one sip. They all responded to him, every time. The customer is always right.

  “You are committing false advertising,” Isaac continues. He shakes his finger at the manager’s face. “There is no way this is the largest kosher grocery store in North America. No way! Haven’t you been to L.A.? New York? Their kosher communities would eat yours for breakfast. But you know you can tell the Jews of Thornhill anything and they will believe the almighty Sobeys. Well, you can’t fool me! And I won’t allow this kind of deception to continue!” His voice rises on deception. With his peripheral vision he can see the heads turning. The truth unfolding and all these shoppers, their minds blown.

  The manager says, “If you have an issue with our advertising, you will have to take that up with head office and the marketing department. Those decisions are made at that level. I can assure you that our store provides a service to this community that is not matched anywhere else — ”

  “Stale bread!” Isaac yells. “Rotten prepared food! This is not a service. This is a food-safety catastrophe waiting to happen! It’s a wonder you haven’t been shut down by the city. Your store is the laughing stock of all the other grocery stores in a five-kilometre radius.”

  “You need to leave now,” the manager says.

  “You cannot keep me quiet. I will fight for customer rights! We have a right to fair and honest advertising — ”

  “You need to leave or I will call the police.”

  Isaac has also been here before. When they threaten with the police, it usually means they have nothing in their artillery to argue back. He sees this as a sign that he has won and leaves willingly. Isaac does not need to be dragged out of a kosher grocery store. He knows everyone is watching him. The silence is so obvious as he leaves, it reminds him of resounding applause.

  “Ain’t that the truth,” Isaac mutters. He detests daytime television, but Dr. Phil is telling it to him like it is.

  “You’ve got to pull yourself together. You have responsibilities. It’s time now to grow up and take control of your life. Because you matter to other people. Now, I know you don’t believe me. And we’re gonna get you some help so that you can start to understand these messages I’m telling you. But you do matter. And this self-destructive behaviour, well, it just has to stop.”r />
  All the time the camera is on the woman whose face is streaked with tears as she hiccups back her sobs. Isaac had turned on the TV hoping for the baseball game, while waiting for the Sobeys marketing department to call. They will be checking their facts and then ringing him up with an apology. Perhaps a token for his troubles. He might even refer the customer service rep who calls to Dr. Phil by saying, “You know, no one gets ahead by ignoring the truth.”

  Isaac used to have a therapist who sounded like Dr. Phil. Back in L.A. A man with a soft Southern drawl who said stuff like “You have to think of your mind as not something that controls you, but as something that you can control. So turn it off when it’s too loud. You’re the one with the finger on that switch.”

  His therapist had the relaxed manner of someone who drank tap beer. Isaac didn’t drink beer, but he trusted a man who did. His therapist was shorter than Dr. Phil, and he never mentioned God (thank God for that), but he was bald. At their last session together, Isaac noted how the sun came in through the window and hit the shiny skin across his scalp, not like a halo but like the marking of a hole where a beam of light might one day come shooting out and upward. The therapist said, “I believe that change is good. This move. I think you’ll find the change of scenery will give you a change of perspective.”

  “I won’t stay there long,” Isaac told him. He said it like a promise. His therapist looked at his watch and then folded his hands. He replied, “I wouldn’t put a time limit on it if I were you.”

  Isaac’s home phone rings before he can switch the channel to baseball.

  “Right on time,” he mutters, taking in a deep breath, pulling back his shoulders.

  “Hello,” he answers, fully expecting the manager of customer service to say, “Isaac. Thank you for bringing this to our attention.”

  But instead it’s Elaine, breathless.

  “Isaac? She’s yelling at me all over Facebook. How does that happen?”

  “Who?”

  “Carly. She’s blaming me for not telling her about Oscar. She’s been AWOL for almost two years, and now it’s my fault?”

  Isaac tucks his portable phone between his ear and his shoulder. He turns his back on the commercial for Pop-Tarts, which are exploding over the screen in cartoon strawberry jam. He reaches for his laptop computer. He says, “Hold on, let me see here.” He can feel his sister’s panic like a clothes dryer cycling up, the high-pitched whirl of a spin that will tumble everything until it blends together and the sum is indistinguishable from the parts. He has cycled like that before. Years ago it took his own mother months before she sent him a letter telling him his father had died. Isaac was in Singapore. The letter started, I would have told you sooner, but I didn’t know where you were. For sure he wanted to blast her for that. He would have sent a tsunami over the ocean, if he could have, just so his mother could be soaked with a fraction of his grief.

  When the Facebook window finally loads, Carly’s post is right there at the top of his feed. Go to hell, Elaine Levine! You are dead to me. What kind of mother doesn’t tell her own daughter that her father died? There is a special place in hell for people like you.

  Below the post some friends have answered with: ???; Are you alright, hon?; I’m here if you need me; Sorry for your loss.

  And then, below them all, an Elaine Levine who is not Isaac’s sister writes, You’ve tagged the wrong Elaine. Please remove this tag.

  Elaine says to Isaac, “I haven’t even told the Elaines about Carly. She’s too much to explain. They’re all coming over to me tomorrow. I was going to tell them soon, but now I guess I don’t have a choice.”

  Carly’s tagged Isaac too. He can see his name in blue even though she doesn’t mention him in her venom. But it’s like a jab or a bump in the ribs. I see you too, she’s saying. Don’t think for a second that I don’t.

  “Yeah, Lainy,” he says, closing the screen. Dr. Phil’s baritone is still in the background. Isaac feels an adapted Southern twang on his tongue when he says, “The truth is out.”

  Isaac goes over to Elaine’s the next day when he knows the kids will be at school. She’s usually out — Elaine and her learning projects. A tech course for seniors at the Beth Tikvah congregation. Mah-jong. Her shift in the kitchen at that centre for adults with developmental disabilities. Elaine blasted him recently when he used the word retarded. There had been a group of those kids at the pizza place learning how to order lunch. He said to her how nice it was that these retarded kids could learn important life skills. She told him she would hang up the phone if he ever used that term again.

  “You of all people should understand how important it is not to label.”

  Isaac took issue with that. He of all people. But she’d moved the conversation on before he could ask her what label she would slap on him.

  He’s thinking about Elaine’s Tim Hortons coffee and maybe a slice of that chocolate loaf she buys from the Israeli bakery in between his place and hers. He’s hoping the Sobeys office will try his cellphone when they decide to reach him. He gave them both numbers, home and cell. He’s imagining the call coming in. How his phone will display the caller so he can be prepared before he answers.

  When he rounds the corner and sees all the cars in front of Elaine’s house, he’s so lost in his fantasy that he has forgotten what she said about her doppelgänger club meeting today. There are at least five cars parked on the driveway and by the curb. For a minute he is overtaken by clothes-dryer panic that she’s enlisted an army of people to help her push him out.

  He opens the front door with the flourish of someone arriving to stop a pending disaster.

  “Elaine!” he calls out before he’s even taken in the scene before him.

  Seven women turn at the sound of their name. They freeze as if Isaac has pressed the Pause button on a remote, tea mugs to lips, hands stopped midway from rubbing off crumbs. There is that chocolate flaky loaf he loves on the dining room table in front of them. Coffee already made. He steps back into a relaxed stance because Elaine, his sister, is using their mother’s good cocoa set, which means she’s not planning to go anywhere. Not with all the washing-up to come.

  “This must be Isaac,” one of them says.

  “Yes,” his sister answers. “My brother. Isaac, this is the Elaine Levine Club. I thought I told you they would be here today.”

  “Well,” he says loudly. Affronted. “I guess that’s not the first time you forgot to mention something important.”

  His sister’s face goes from white to pink, like a wine spill crawling up her neck and across her cheeks. She says to her group, “As you can see, my daughter, Carly, isn’t the only one in the family who can be difficult to love.”

  The other women look nothing like his sister. They seem to vary in age anywhere from fifty to seventy years old. Although truth be told, he was never good at guessing women’s ages. One reminds him of his mother’s old friend from Trinidad, short frizzy hair, skin like creamy coffee, a splatter of freckles up and down her arms and across her soft, wide cheeks. The last time he saw her was at his mother’s funeral. She said, You should have been nicer to your mother. All your gallivanting.

  “Some people can be,” that Elaine says, while the others nod as if washing their support all over Isaac’s sister. Waves and waves with every tilt of their chins.

  “So what?” he says out loud, although the women aren’t paying attention to him anymore. What did that mean anyway? Easy to love. He walks into the kitchen with Dr. Phil in his head, saying, “Love’s not supposed to be easy. No one said you get a free ride with love.”

  He pours himself a cup of coffee and ignores the newspaper waiting for him on the table. Instead, he moves to the doorway of the living room, where the women have now moved on to talking about something else. Carly already forgotten. He says, “You know, chances are, none of you are easy to love.”

  Th
ey stop talking to look over at him with mouths open, ready to rebut but at a loss for words. He is about to continue to deliver his sister’s message about not applying labels to people (how would she like that!) when his phone rings. The ring tone sounds like a 1980s desktop phone, a bell so loud you could hear it from anywhere in the house. The digital display shows SOBEYS NA INC, and he holds up the phone to show Elaine, nodding his head, pointing. You see? This is what happens when you dismiss me. Isaac taps to accept the call. He is fully aware of all the silence around him when he says, “Yes, I’m here.”

  Escape Routes

  It’s been so long now that Ava has to pause before she remembers Kovi’s name. Even though for one summer he was her best friend, and even though she almost killed him. But she has no problem remembering the smell of the garbage. That was the summer of the strike in York Region, so shiny black bags piled up on the hot pavement, leaned against each other like tired old men, like her grandfather propped up on the couch but also slouched over because of his weak right side. That was the summer Ava and her brother, Adam, moved in with their grandparents, waiting for their mother to figure stuff out. When Ava sat next to her grandfather on the couch, she smelled his sour breath. But then, it was no better outside. Outside, she’d breathe in the scent of rotten scraps from last night’s dinner, forgotten fruit from the corners of the neighbourhood refrigerators, soft bruised apples, shrivelled lemons, bananas so ripe they folded into their brown selves and leaked out of those garbage bags all over the pavement. Ava has willfully forgotten Kovi because he left, didn’t he. Eventually the garbage got all cleaned up, and Kovi with it.

  Ava was eight years old when she rode around on her mother’s old bicycle, candy apple red with rust in the corners and joints like copper shadows. There used to be streamers hanging from the handlebars, but they’d almost all fallen off. All but one string on each handle, drooping like Kovi’s mother’s thin braid that hung down the middle of her back until right above her bum, the end shaped like a fingernail, pointing. Ava used baby oil to keep her pedals from squeaking, and so even amongst the stench of the garbage, when she would ride to Kovi’s apartment building, her feet smelled like baby. Like the top of Kovi’s baby sister’s head.