You Are Not What We Expected

by Sidura Ludwig

  “They have each other. Like we did.”

  “What if something happens to me, Isaac? What if I’m the next one to go?”

  “Are you sick? Lainy, what are you telling me?” Be it God, karma, or the universe, Isaac had had enough of the injustices lobbed at his sister, a woman who did nothing but make sure the people she loved were looked after. When would she be rewarded?

  She’d stopped crying and taken a deep breath. Isaac heard her exhale slowly. She took another breath and cleared her throat.

  “I’m telling you that I need your help. For just a little while. You don’t have to live with me. My seamstress has a basement apartment. But you could be here for meals. Maybe you could take the kids out every once in a while.”

  “You want me to move there?”

  She went quiet. He imagined her in her kitchen, her table covered in the morning’s newspaper, the kids’ breakfast dishes still in front of their seats. Elaine with one hand holding the phone receiver to her ear, the other holding her forehead.

  “Isaac, I’ve never asked you for anything.”

  When their father was sick and Isaac was in Australia, she never once said, Why aren’t you here? Isaac still owed his father money, and if Elaine knew, she never asked where it was or when he planned to pay back the estate. She never once questioned when he would settle down, never implied — as others had — that his solitary life was somehow worth less than hers.

  “I just can’t imagine what I could do to help.” But then again, he knew he owed it to her to try. Not that he ever felt he owed anything to anyone. Nor could he explain why he felt that way now.

  * * *

  “Now you need to drive your car,” Ava tells him.

  “And just where am I supposed to go?”

  “I don’t know. You were supposed to figure that out. We can’t go home yet. Bubby’s not going to let me in with a dog. And even if I hide him in my room, Adam will tell on me.”

  “You haven’t thought this through.”

  Cookie wiggles out of Ava’s arms. He whines, stretching his neck toward Isaac. Isaac’s throat begins to tighten. He wishes he were back in L.A. Or Melbourne. Or New York City. Or any of the many places he’s lived or visited alone in his seventy-two years.

  On top of Cookie’s whining, Ava has started to cry. Her face is buried in the dog’s back. Now Isaac can see what he hadn’t noticed before: They look alike, their scraggily unbrushed hair/fur, oily and knotted, hanging in clumps. Their thick bellies, their begging eyes. Ava says, “Uncle Isaac, please. We need to look after him. You need to help me.”

  Driving, Isaac thinks of Elaine. When she’s dealing with Ava and Adam, she looks so much like their mother did — her wrinkled forehead, the lines by her eyes and mouth turned down when the kids tattle on each other. He thinks about his niece, Carly, who was raised in this supposedly good neighbourhood. But even people from good neighbourhoods make shitty choices. He thinks about how Ava probably cries at night in Elaine’s house, in Carly’s old bedroom, how there are nights he finds himself crying too, up late watching something on the History Channel. Like the documentary about the Gimli Glider, the story of a plane in 1983 going from Montreal to Edmonton that ran out of fuel and the pilot glided it safely onto the runway of the tiny airport in Gimli, Manitoba. There he is, bawling like a baby at the pilot’s bravery, his heroism. How he could step up at just the right moment. By the time he’s reached his apartment with Ava and Cookie, he’s wondering why she shouldn’t have some happiness. And maybe that’s why he’s here.

  * * *

  Isaac’s Russian landlady, Mona, is away for the weekend, so when Cookie barks and runs around the basement, Isaac turns to Ava and says, “I’ll take you home and he can stay with me for one night. But by tomorrow you have to have permission to keep him.”

  “I will,” she says. “Bubby said we could get a dog sometime. And I’m gonna train him. She won’t even know he’s there.”

  Before Isaac takes her back home, Ava sits on the floor and rubs Cookie’s tummy. She tells Isaac about her gymnastics class on Sundays, about how she’s in the most advanced level with all the older girls. Back in L.A., Isaac had some friends with grandchildren. They talked about their levels — in school (the reading!), in music (Mozart! At her age!), in swimming (in the deep end! She’s only five!). One had a granddaughter who was Olympic material. Isaac thinks, Hey, look! Me too! Did you ever think?

  “Can I show you my splits?” Ava asks, and then she stretches her legs out, but she’s no gymnast. Her back leg is bent; she’s high off the ground. Isaac can see that she’s as far down as she can get and she’s holding her breath so that her face turns red from trying.

  “Hey,” he says. “Yeah, that’s really good.” She just needs to practise. Everyone starts out somewhere. Isaac once saw a cover of a notebook that said, Don’t compare your beginning to someone else’s middle. He should show Ava that. In case she’s been comparing.

  Ava sits back down on the floor and Cookie puts his head in her lap. She smiles up at Isaac and says, “You’ll come to my show at the end of the year. The parents come to watch us do our gymnastics. Grandparents too. But I’ll be the only one there with an uncle!”

  “Sure!” Isaac says. Maybe he’ll even take a picture on his cellphone. Send it to the friend of the future Olympian.

  The next morning, Elaine pounds on his door at 9 a.m. Since coming to Toronto, Isaac has not woken up before eleven. Cookie snores in the bed beside him. He sounds like he’s growling, like he could wake up ready to attack. Elaine is screaming.

  “Isaac! Open up right now! I know you can hear me!”

  He has never heard her under the influence of such fury. He sits up in bed before opening his eyes. His heart beats in his chest in sync with Elaine’s fist at his door. But the actual sound of it all is muffled, as if she’s screaming at him through a pillow.

  On the other side of the door, Isaac finds not only Elaine but a sobbing Ava, her arms crossed, her nose blotchy red and running.

  “For heaven’s sake,” he says. “You want to wake the neighbours?”

  Elaine looks down at Cookie, wagging his tail, jumping up on his hind legs. “Oh my God.”

  Ava, despite her tears, falls onto her knees and smiles as Cookie licks her wet, salty face.

  “See?” she says. “I told you he loves me.”

  “I can’t believe you went along with this,” Elaine says. She doesn’t take off her coat, or move from the entranceway at the top of the basement stairs. Isaac’s feet are cold from the linoleum floor, the late-November air coming through the side door, which was not closed properly. He shifts his weight from side to side, stepping up and down, like a runner warming up on the spot. She sounds so much like their mother yelling at him about the money he owed. His tongue feels just as heavy now as it did back then, the weight of all his excuses.

  “Honestly.” Elaine keeps talking. “What were you thinking? What were you going to tell the cops when they came to arrest you for stealing?”

  “This isn’t stealing,” Isaac tells her. “It’s rescuing.”

  “Oh my God!”

  “The dog was outside all on his own. It’s better than me taking him to the pound. It would have been irresponsible for us to just leave him there.”

  Elaine walks into the apartment, past Ava and Cookie and over to the small folding table and chairs Isaac has set up in his main room. She sits down and leans forward with her elbows on the table, her head in her hands. She rubs her forehead with her fingers. From behind, it looks as if she’s nodding her head.

  “Have you lost your mind?” She sighs, turning around, her head tilted to one side. She looks at him like she does at her grandchildren — tired, fed up, those sagging cheeks, her downturned, disappointed mouth.

  Isaac did not ask to be tested like this. He never loses his mind. In his experience, pe
ople only say that when they refuse to see your point of view. Elaine had to know all along that Isaac was never coming here to conform. She asked for his help, which he can only give in his way.

  “This isn’t about me,” he tells her. Didn’t Ava tell him the dog was in danger? Practically homeless? “This is about doing what’s right. It’s about saving this dog from getting hit by a car!”

  “Uncle Isaac.” Ava says his name and then hiccups. “Bubby said if I take Cookie back and apologize, we can talk about getting a dog of our own.”

  Elaine stretches out her arm toward Ava with the red leash dangling. “Ava, take Cookie outside to pee before he messes all over your uncle’s floor. You can wait for me out there.”

  After Ava leaves, Isaac says, “So why are you letting her get a dog, then? Where’s the lesson in that?”

  Elaine doesn’t look at him when she stands up. Isaac feels the silence in his apartment like a blanket settling over his head. Elaine finally says, “She’s the nine-year-old. You’re the adult. I didn’t bring you here to complicate my life.”

  “I didn’t ask you to bring me here!”

  In his mind, he is already reaching for his suitcase to leave before Elaine can tell him to go. That’s how he did it years ago, bag in hand, out the door into a taxi before his mother could hear the front door close.

  * * *

  That night, Isaac watches Rear Window, with James Stewart and Grace Kelly. He loves the shadows in the film, like a puppet show. He imagines Hitchcock pulling the strings of his actors as he dances them across the set, and only James Stewart sitting there the whole time, not moving. An entire movie played from a single chair. That whole notion of seeing something you can’t explain — and having no one to explain it to.

  He picks up the phone and calls Elaine, even though it is after ten o’clock. Tomorrow is the first night of Chanukah. He’s supposed to be with her and the kids. When she answers, he says, “Maybe I shouldn’t come tomorrow.”

  He pictures Elaine lying in the middle of her double bed, duvet pulled up to her chin, watching the news. Every night Elaine watches CBC, even though Isaac’s told her they’re anti-Israel and that she’s better off watching CNN. But she swears by that Peter Mansbridge anchor. Isaac can hear his authoritative baritone in the background when Elaine answers, “If you don’t come, where does that leave me?”

  “I don’t know what you want from me.”

  “I shouldn’t have to deal with all this on my own. And you shouldn’t be alone either.”

  “I never said I was lonely.”

  Except that Isaac has always viewed loneliness as his most constant friend. He always thought the only surety in life was to count on yourself.

  “Do you know what it’s like listening to all my friends brag about the trouble they have fitting their expanding families in their dining rooms for holidays? If you don’t come tomorrow, it’s going to be me making latkes for the kids and that’s it. I wouldn’t even bother setting the dining room table.”

  “I don’t even know what to bring for the kids.”

  “Just get them gift cards to Toys‘R’Us. Or maybe one from PetSmart for Ava. We’re getting a dog in the new year.”

  “You are?” Isaac can only picture Cookie, as if there is no other dog to be had.

  “Yes. Cookie’s owners live right across the street. They were worried sick about him. At least Ava sees that now. I’ll get her a stupid dog. When she and Adam are smiling, I feel like maybe I’m not screwing up their lives.”

  Isaac knows he is not making this any better. He only makes things harder for her. He’ll go over tomorrow, one last time, his suitcase in the car, and they’ll never realize when he drives off at the end what he really meant when he said goodbye.

  “None of this is your fault, Lainy.”

  Elaine doesn’t answer right away. In the background Isaac hears sirens from her TV. They sound tinny — like they’re ringing from inside a can. She whispers, “Thank you for saying that.” She sighs. “You see? This is why I need you here.”

  It’s like she’s taken the suitcase out of his hand. She’s steered him back inside. She’s closed the door behind him and he didn’t even hear the bolt lock click into place.

  * * *

  Many years ago, before he left Toronto, Isaac dated a girl he quite liked. She was bookish. She knew her literature. They watched good films together. There weren’t too many girls he considered his intellectual equal, but she was. And pretty. She had a soft face that rested in a smile when she was listening.

  Once, she invited him over to meet her parents. He remembers that after supper, she went to lie down on the couch in the living room. He brought his plate into the kitchen. Her mother was impressed with his manners. Had he proposed, her parents would have pushed her to say yes. He came out of the kitchen and saw her father kneeling on the floor beside the couch, hand on his daughter’s cheek, as if she were a child about to fall asleep. When Isaac remembers this now, it’s not that he remembers being disturbed. The intimacy wasn’t obscene. But the raw display of affection from both of them, well, it was odd. He knew then that he would never feel that way toward her. More so, he could never be that kind of father, and she would expect that of the man she married.

  The next day he broke it off between them. They went for coffee. He did it nicely — not like they do today with texting. He meant her no harm nor disrespect. He doesn’t remember her crying. She asked him why and he told her straight out, “I can’t be something that I’m not.”

  And that’s the thing with Elaine and Ava. They both want him to be this hero. He really thought he could — at least for Ava. Saving that stupid dog. And he liked the way she looked at him, like helping her was as good as saving the world. That was the look the girlfriend had shared with her father. Isaac never thought he wanted to be that person, but now here he was. And for heaven’s sake, hasn’t Ava had enough disappointments?

  It’s the middle of the night, hours since he spoke with his sister. Isaac lies awake and for the umpteenth time thinks how he should never have agreed to come. Now he has to live up to that look, and he never asked for that.

  * * *

  Isaac drives to Elaine’s for the Chanukah dinner with the two cards for Ava and Adam on the passenger seat beside him. They are both light blue and Isaac is wondering why Chanukah colours have to be blue and white, the colours of the Israeli flag. Isaac lived in Israel when he was in his mid-twenties. He worked in the fields on a kibbutz. He ate red tomatoes and green cucumbers for breakfast with white sour yogurt. At Chanukah no one exchanged gifts. They just ate sufganiot, jelly doughnuts covered in white powdered sugar. Back then, it made him think of Canada and the snow-covered sidewalks, his sister Elaine and her girlfriends giggling as they slid along the ice in their wool coats, clutching each other’s arms. But he didn’t miss it. Instead, he felt the soft dough of the fresh pastry on his tongue, the sugar melting as soon as it touched his lips, the warmth of a room full of people with hands stained brown from the sun and the mud, like those Maccabee warriors from the Chanukah story, living in the hills, planning something wonderful.

  When Isaac hits the dog, turning onto Elaine’s street, he thinks he’s hit a squirrel.

  “Shit,” he says as he drives up the road, parks beside the curve outside Elaine’s house. Those damn creatures dart out into the streets always at the wrong time, like they’re playing chicken. He didn’t even have a chance to react. A flash and then a thud and then the slight bump under his tires. In L.A., Isaac once saw a coyote lying by the side of the highway, its fur blown up by the desert wind, its mouth open slightly, as if in mid-snarl. But the rest of its body was flat, as if the stuffing had been removed. As Isaac drove on then, he thought, Well, at least it wasn’t someone’s pet.

  And now, Isaac jumps out of his car and runs back down the icy street, calling, “Cookie!” before he can stop anything f
rom coming out of his mouth. Even at this distance, he can tell that the dog is on his side, his body flattened. Isaac bends down where Cookie lies curled on the road, blood pooling from his mouth and around his tongue, flopped to the side. The blood is dark, almost black against the pavement.

  “Stupid dog,” Isaac says, kneeling down on the ground, putting his hand on Cookie’s back. He can feel the dog’s cracked ribs, and then he notices the way the legs are splayed, twisted like Ava’s splits.

  “Shit,” he says again. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  From down the block, Isaac hears someone call his name. He looks up and can just make out Ava’s silhouette on Elaine’s driveway. She’s frozen on the spot. She’s just in a T-shirt and leggings. Her voice sounds small and light when she calls out, “Is that you?”

  Isaac gets up and calls back, “Go back inside. I just thought I hit a squirrel.”

  “Did you?”

  He stands directly in front of Cookie. “No, it’s alright. I didn’t. Go on back in.”

  He watches her walk back up the driveway, sees the screen door open and then close as she steps inside. He turns back to the dog and takes off his scarf to wrap around the body. He has no idea where to take him, or whose door to knock on. He’ll have to tell Elaine quietly, in the kitchen, away from Ava, who will be playing Lego, using that plastic vet hospital, saving those plastic animal lives. He picks up the dog and moves him onto the grass, burying him beneath a pile of leaves. Cookie’s face is distorted from the impact. His snout is twisted. Isaac’s leather driving gloves get wet and clammy from arranging the pile — dead foliage, dead dog, and now with the wet leather he smells like wet animal. He tells himself that Ava will have forgotten about Cookie with the new dog coming. Kids know how to move on. And he promised her he’d attend that gymnastics recital. She’ll tell everyone there that he’s her uncle. Before he turns away to go into the house, Isaac mutters at the pile, “You should have stayed home.”