“Here,” Kovi said, when Ava arrived. He leaned over to sniff the baby, sleeping in her mother’s arms in the rocking chair. Ava leaned over too and she caught it, that sweet, perfect scent shielded from the rot outside. Kovi’s mother said something to him in Russian. Kovi said, “Your grandmother, she knows where you are?”
Ava shrugged her shoulders. How far could she get on her bicycle anyway? They didn’t know where her mother had run to. Everything was relative.
That summer, Ava’s ten-year-old brother, Adam, stayed inside and played video games on the Wii all day. Ava believed he was afraid of the wasps and that’s why he didn’t come out. She felt brave riding around on her bike, even though she kept her mouth shut, her lips clamped together in case a wasp might fly in and sting her throat. Her brother said that could happen. He didn’t even take his eyes off the TV when he said it. Ava thought she was so much braver than he was, and yet, she believed everything he said.
Ava and Adam’s grandfather, Oscar, used to sell office furniture, until the Parkinson’s made it so that he couldn’t even shave himself. Every room in their grandparents’ house had a rolly chair that spun around. There were desks tucked into corners — one in the living room where Ava’s grandmother sorted the mail, one in the family room for piles of magazines. The only room that didn’t fit the pattern was the kitchen, where there was a large L-shaped desk that they used as their kitchen table.
Before Ava’s grandfather took sick and Carly took off, there were plans to renovate the kitchen. Elaine had wanted an island. Having an island in your kitchen meant you had a large, loving family that came together on Friday nights and holidays for dinners so extensive they had to be served buffet. Elaine never gave up hope that her daughter would return, act sane, and that the whole family would all come to her for brisket on Rosh Hashana. That she would end her evening wiping the gravy stains off the granite counter; the creamed cheese and lox platter already in the fridge under Saran Wrap for the next day’s lunch, when they would be back together.
Even at eight years old, Ava was learning the dangers of holding on to goals you had no control over. Her grandmother gave up her kitchen set long before she should have. She probably gave away the table and chairs to a family like Kovi’s — Russian-Israeli immigrants escaping to their third attempt at an easier life by landing in Toronto. But then Oscar suddenly faced an early retirement. And when it was clear the renovation was off, he brought home the L-shaped desk with two guys from the warehouse to put it together. The children had to sit with their knees sideways on the one side because of the wood panelling to the floor on the other. Their grandfather, the former king of office furniture, sat on the inside, leaning over his soup. He dripped soup down his stubbly chin. Elaine sat beside him and wiped him up, every drip. She had been his secretary at the company, so every part of her life was about filling in his gaps, before and after he was retired. He didn’t actually retire — the company retired him. And Elaine had to give his speech at his office goodbye party because even by then, the Parkinson’s made him mumble. His chin quivered, as if the words he wanted to say were being mixed in a blender before he could spit them out. Like when he spat out his soup. Elaine would catch each word and rephrase before he made a mess of whatever was flowing from his mouth.
Kovi had an uncle back in Israel who was a magician. He also sold sunglasses on a boardwalk by the beach. Before they moved to Canada, Kovi spent his summers helping his uncle with the sunglasses, and then learning card tricks. In his bedroom, he showed Ava pictures of him and his uncle wearing big, dark glasses, straw hats with brims that made half-moon shadows on their faces, people crowding around their table and Kovi standing on a folding chair with his arms out wide, as if about to gather the whole crowd for a hug. There was something about his confidence and control that made Ava wonder, If I stood above the crowd like that, would anyone notice?
“My uncle got on Israel’s Got Talent. He was semifinalist!” Kovi looked for a deck of cards to show her the trick that got his uncle that far. But he could only find part of a deck. On the back of the cards was a picture of the Rocky Mountains. Ava knew from the world atlas on her grandparents’ bookshelf that the Rockies descended from Alberta all the way down to New Mexico. She knew this from tracking her mother’s escape route with her finger across that map: Toronto to Las Vegas, where she went to be a hairdresser for beautiful people. Ava skimmed over those mountains like stepping over a sidewalk crack (don’t break your mother’s back).
Ava thought Kovi’s room was stuffy; the air was thicker than outside. The walls were cream-coloured with black smudges from when they moved in the furniture. He had a bunk bed and a desk they got from a cousin who had already been here for five years and had now moved into a house. A small black bookcase with sagging shelves held Hebrew books piled on top of English picture books. There was a magic kit that came in a tin box. It had metal rings that linked together and came apart without any break. Kovi knew how to do that trick, but he wouldn’t show Ava.
He said, “My uncle’s going to try for America’s Got Talent. If you win, you go to Las Vegas.”
“My mum’s in Las Vegas!”
“They could meet!”
“Yeah!”
They were sitting on his floor and Ava’s legs tingled from falling asleep. The magic rings lay between them, separate. Right then, Ava believed that Las Vegas existed only so that her mother and Kovi’s uncle could fulfill their dreams and find each other and then their way back to Thornhill. Full circle.
Kovi said, “If he goes, my father says we will visit.”
Ava said, “Me too!” Like it was something her grandparents had already planned. “We’ll fly together!”
Kovi picked up the rings and hit them together so that they linked. “If he gets audition, he says I can be assistant. He will make me disappear.”
Then he said, “Poof!” and spread his fingers so that the rings clattered to the floor.
Kovi’s mother’s name was Elena. His father was Michael and they called the new baby Nicole because Elena wanted something Canadian. Sometimes Ava stayed for dinner. Elena made oven fries and fish sticks. Or homemade pizza. If Michael was home and not on a shift, then she made chicken schnitzel and the whole apartment smelled like burnt garlic powder and hot oil. At home, Ava’s grandmother made her take a shower before bed. But Ava would close the bathroom door and just run the water, sitting on the toilet while the bathroom steamed up like a cloud. Then she would come out in her pyjamas with a towel wrapped around her head. She would fall asleep with her arm across her nose, breathing in the leftover scent from Kovi’s place. Her grandmother’s house smelled like puréed soups — usually split pea and potato leek. And artificial citrus, because her grandmother was always disinfecting the door handles.
Her grandmother and their neighbour, Mrs. Gilani, complained about the stench as they watered their front lawns.
“I can’t even bring Oscar out in this,” her grandmother said. “Migraines. His tremors. My house is filled with air purifiers.”
“It’s unsanitary!” Mrs. Gilani said. She had long black hair down to her waist that she wore back in a silver clip with etched designs, like a spider web. Ava drew with chalk on the driveway while they spoke, each standing on her own property. She drew pictures of giant sunflowers with faces, with wide, oversized smiles. Mrs. Gilani’s flowers were much prettier than Elaine’s, and it made Ava mad that her grandmother couldn’t grow anything beautiful. Mrs. Gilani grew impatiens and lilacs and orange tiger lilies that never seemed to shrivel up and die, leaving grey single stems. She had little wire figurines hidden in her garden — two frogs, a cat with glass eyes, and a rooster with its head cocked upward and beak wide open toward the sky. For years, Mrs. Gilani was awarded a City of Vaughan Garden of Distinction award. And still Elaine would stand out there with her hose, a nozzle with all these different ways of spraying water — mist, shower, straight, f
lat — and she would water the Japanese maple that she always complained wasn’t growing quiet right, and the petunias that wilted every afternoon.
“It’s the stench,” she said. “It’s killing my garden.”
“It is,” Mrs. Gilani agreed. Although Ava knew that couldn’t be it, because Mrs. Gilani’s garden was fine. She must have been lying, or withholding a magic trick, a special potion she added to her water. Ava got onto her bike to ride over to Kovi’s, smudging her sunflower face.
Her grandmother called, “Be back before supper! They don’t need to feed you all the time.”
Ava didn’t reply, but she heard Mrs. Gilani say, “You shouldn’t let her play over there. With all the garbage, that building will be filled with bugs.”
When Michael was home for supper, he told stories about his buddies in Israel. One friend had to settle up with a guy who sold cellphones. The guy wasn’t paying his supplier. Michael knew the supplier. Michael was not a tall man, but he was broad. When he told this story, he held baby Nicole in one hand like a football, ate his schnitzel with the other. She curled over his shoulder and his hand was so big it covered her entire back when his fingers were spread. Her little feet shifted in her pink velvet sleeper. She mewed like a cat when he said, “Kovi, that guy. He don’t listen. In Israel no one listens. They just look. They see big man with big knuckles and they think, ‘You know. I like my face.’ And that’s how we got him to pay. Because he was afraid of my hands.”
Kovi laughed and so did Ava. Kovi looked like his dad — round and wide like a wrestler. They both had a front tooth that overlapped the other, like crossed fingers behind your back when you’re breaking a promise.
Elena said something in Russian and Michael responded, “What? They need to know how good they have it here! You see, Ava? Air raid sirens. Rockets. That’s no way to live, right? That’s no way for a boy to grow up.”
Then, finishing the last bite of his schnitzel, he reached over and cupped the back of Kovi’s head, pulled him in to kiss his forehead. He said to Ava, “You see? People complain all over about garbage. Who cares about garbage! You get used to it. People get used to lots of things.”
Elena said, “Ava, want more?”
She always asked. Ava always said “Yes, please.”
Then Michael said, “You see? We come here. New country, new home. We even have a new daughter! Right, Ava?”
He was referring to Nicole, but Ava let herself believe otherwise.
Ava’s brother, Adam, played Wii Sports on the TV in the family room all summer instead of playing real sports outside. The house sounded like a packed stadium, but staticky, like a car radio in a tunnel. Ava saw a lot of Adam’s back that summer, his white neck, his thin shoulder blades twitching through his pyjama shirt when he swung to hit at a digital tennis ball, or when he was pounding a virtual opponent in boxing, smacking and smacking and smacking at his face.
Oscar sat in that room in the afternoons, when his tremors were worse and he was tired from his body shaking out of his control. He had a recliner chair in the corner where he slept with his head drooped toward his chest, his bottom lip hanging open, the skin on it wrinkled and cracked. On the table beside him was a glass of water with a straw, and his container of pills, divided evenly by the days of the week.
Adam grunted when he played. Sometimes he got sweaty. Ava asked if she could have a turn when his match finished. He turned around. His eyes were red from not blinking. He had a blue stain on the front of his shirt from his Gatorade. She wished she hadn’t asked him. He looked like an animal she’d startled awake. Their grandfather snorted behind them in his sleep and Adam laughed.
“No,” he said. And then, “Fuck off.”
Ava said, “You’re not supposed to swear.”
He looked over at Oscar and then back at Ava. He said it louder, “Fuck off, Ava. Fuck. Off!” He was hissing. They were not supposed to wake their grandfather. If they startled him, he would cry out. He would have no control. Elaine would have to come running. She would yell at them: I can’t do this anymore! I can’t take care of all of you!
Ava held her breath and didn’t move. Adam inched closer to Oscar, tiptoeing and then crouching down so that his lips were close to his ear.
Ava whispered, “Don’t.”
He looked over at her and smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. He said, “Then get out.”
The only time Ava watched TV the whole summer was at Kovi’s when he had reruns of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air on and they shared his couch, watching this black guy from Philadelphia figure out how to live in a posh California neighbourhood. Kovi liked the guy who played the cousin, the one who danced around to Tom Jones. Kovi took a spoon and mimicked the scene, swinging his arms so that he looked like a monkey, bobbing his head like Ava’s grandfather at the end of the day when nothing was under his control. But with Kovi, Ava laughed. She cheered him on, telling him to dance again and again.
Later, from her bedroom and the open window, Ava heard her grandmother and Mrs. Gilani outside, sitting in the backyard. Mrs. Gilani smoked cigarettes, and because they were right outside the window, the scent overpowered the garbage — the mix of smoke with a hint of mint. Ava lay in bed with her mouth open, her tongue stuck out as if she could catch the scent as it blew through the window screen and then settled in her room.
Mrs. Gilani said, “You are not a nurse. We think we are nurses and teachers and accountants, but we’re not.”
“The wait-list at Baycrest is ridiculous,” Elaine said.
“There are other places.”
“I can’t right now. The kids.”
“And mother and chauffeur and cook. Teach them. They’ll step up.”
“They’re younger than you realize,” Elaine answered.
Ava had heard her say something like that earlier, when she was on the phone to her brother, Isaac, in L.A. They were talking about Ava’s mother, Carly. Elaine said to him, “She’s younger than you realize.” Ava stood next to the kitchen doorway, her back against the wall so that her grandmother wouldn’t see her. She had become an expert at walking through the house without making a sound. Perhaps invisibility was her magic trick. Isaac was talking a lot. Her grandmother kept starting words but missing the chance to interrupt. “Bu . . . Is . . .” It reminded Ava of jump rope, understanding the rhythm of when to leap in.
Elaine finally snapped, “I’m not asking for your opinion, Isaac. I’m telling you that she’s like a child and she needs our help. You call me if you see her.”
She hung up the phone while Ava slid away from the kitchen, imagining herself melting into the wall, disappearing through the cracks of this house, becoming nothing heavier than a deep sigh.
Kovi didn’t think the garbage was disgusting. He told Ava the bins behind his building were the best places to collect bits to make his magic potions. He read the Harry Potter books in Hebrew, which he got out of the library on the other side of the mall. The library had sections for books in Hebrew, Russian, Farsi, Mandarin. Kovi told Ava he heard people speaking Hebrew all over the place here. Thornhill was full of Israelis. In the winter, he knew he was in Canada because of the cold and snow. But in the summer, he said, Thornhill was just like Netanya but without the sea.
“I’m making a potion that can make you invisible,” he said.
Ava balanced on the cement parking blocks. She pointed her toes like a gymnast.
“Me?”
“Whatever. You, me. If you want.”
“You could make me disappear?”
“It’s a spell,” he said. “You would come back.”
More than anything, Ava wanted out. Even if just for a moment. Even if she knew he would never be able to do it. She loved him right then just for trying.
They went back to Ava’s house later with a full plastic grocery bag. He said, “Some ingredients I had to use other things
instead. Because we don’t have dragon toenails. I found chicken bones! My mother come get me after supper. Okay?”
Oscar came around the corner from the family room and waved. The TV was full of bells — short, staccato smacks. Adam shouting out, “Yes!”
Ava said, “Papa, this is my friend, Kovi.”
Oscar smiled crooked. His mouth curled up high on one end so that his left eye squinted. The right side of his mouth stayed drooping. Then he went to climb the stairs, his shaking arm gripping the banister, his head leaning against the wall for more support. He took each step two feet at a time. It was going to take him forever to climb the stairs and Ava and Kovi just stood there watching. Somehow Ava knew that his body and her family were breaking down at the same rate.
Elaine was in the kitchen with her back to them, standing at the sink. The steam from the water fogged the window and blurred her reflection. Ava knew there was a lot Elaine didn’t see, even when she thought she was watching them all the time. Like right then, Adam coming around the corner to use the bathroom, the game still blaring. Adam saying, “What are you guys doing?”
And Ava saying, “Kovi’s making me a potion.”
Adam: “Yeah?”
Kovi: “Yeah! From Harry Potter.”
Ava: “I’m going to disappear.”
Adam looking back at the TV. Looking forward at the bathroom. Looking back at Elaine, and then up while Oscar climbed a mountain to his bedroom. Adam saying, “Cool. I’ll help.”
Of course they let him help. The kids ran down to the basement, laughing and tripping over legs that couldn’t move fast enough. Elaine shut off the water. Kovi squealed. He said, “This is like dungeon!”
You Are Not What We Expected Page 5
