You Are Not What We Expected

by Sidura Ludwig

  You seem like a good person. Young, even, with the beard. Like that guy. When he was lying on the ground crying at me, I was like, Oh my God, he’s probably not much older than I am. He has something like seven kids, and I bet he’s not even thirty. That’s what Ava said to me the last time we spoke. She said, “He’s not even going to be able to support his family now.”

  I know that. I didn’t care then. I was so out of it, I wasn’t thinking of all the links. When I knocked on his door and he came out of the house, I saw the seven kids behind him. He was smart enough to close the front door so that they didn’t see anything. He must have known why I was there. Or at least he got it by the sound of my fist pounding against his door frame. He lives in one of those townhouses where all the frummies and their extra-large families hang out. Those houses look like they’re going to collapse in the next windstorm. When I banged on the door, bits of blue paint fell off like dried skin.

  He said to me, “I’m very sorry. I really didn’t see her.”

  I said, “You were talking on your fucking phone!”

  He said, “No. I’m sorry. She walked in front of my car. She was talking on her phone. I couldn’t stop.”

  Yeah. I couldn’t stop either. Anger burned blue all the way through my veins, right into my fingers. Aching like when I was clutching that shovel. I went for his nose because the blood would come gushing out of his nostrils and I wanted it painted all over his starched white shirt. I wanted him to see what it was like for his blood to be splattered across the pavement. Maybe even so bad it came out of his ears. It’s not like she asked for that, my grandmother. To have her blood painted all over the bakery parking lot like spilled evidence. There’s something in your Torah about an eye for an eye, right? I think even God understands about revenge.

  I mean, my sister’s a soldier. She’s gone off to protect the Jewish people. If they get bombed, they bomb right back. It’s not personal; it’s just the way it is. You have to look out for your people. You have to believe in something strongly enough that you’re willing to put yourself on the line. I get it. There was nothing left in our family for her to believe in, so she had to go somewhere else. But then it’s just me. I’m like the last man standing.

  I couldn’t just leave things the way they were, because otherwise no one would remember my grandmother. And now, whenever that guy looks in the mirror at his scars, he will think of her. His scars can be her scars, living on. Ava serving in her army, fighting for some ancient right handed down by God. She’s so busy following orders, she probably doesn’t remember how to think for herself. And even if she could, I bet she doesn’t give five minutes a day to remembering our grandmother. Ava’s not like that. She’s always about moving forward.

  But maybe you could reach her. Send her an email. Maybe she would listen if it came from you. I’d appreciate that, you trying. If you could tell her I’m doing a lot of thinking, then maybe she’ll understand.

  The Happiest Man on Sunset Strip

  Ava never wanted to come home. Right now, she is supposed to be getting her hair done with a bunch of the girls and telling Shira that she looks stunning on her wedding day. But instead, Ava’s wrestling her great-uncle’s wheelchair into the back of her rented sedan. He’s sitting in the front passenger seat, snapping, “Faster!” Behind them is his care home, where Ava couldn’t breathe. The whole place smelled like piss, except for Isaac’s room, which smelled like shit because he shared it with a man who had been lying in a soiled diaper for hours. When Ava tried to open the window, which was on Isaac’s side of the room, it wouldn’t budge. He said, “They’re afraid we’ll escape. And there’s the train tracks behind. Someone could get hurt.”

  Ava tugged upward anyway, but it was no use. She said, “No one here could climb out a window.”

  He said, “Until one day.”

  And Ava could see right then how he spent his days imagining an open window, an agile body, the grace of an acrobat or dancer, barely touching the ground as he slipped his way beneath the panes, somersaulted onto the bushes below, twisting and bending until every part of him was out of the building and he could see his still, empty bed from the freedom of the front lawn, the way the image of the bed disappeared as he backed away from the building. And then the farther he got, the more he would just see the reflection of the grass, bushes and sky in the glass, until it’s as if his room didn’t exist on the other side at all.

  She’d taken him outside in his wheelchair and they were only going to visit for a few minutes in the courtyard. The hairdresser wasn’t far from the home. Ava told the girls, “I just need to see my uncle. I’ll meet you there.” Isaac sat with his head tilted to one side, his eyes squinting against the high sun. Ava said then, “The girls are expecting me.”

  The left side of Isaac’s face hung lopsided because of the stroke. He could speak, but he slurred his words, as if his tongue were swollen and heavy. He said, “This is the first time I’ve been outside since moving here.” This became dish. Firsht. He-yah.

  Ava said, “You tell me when you’re ready to go back inside.”

  Isaac opened one eye. “I’m not.”

  Isaac wants McDonald’s. He’s craving salt. Ava has figured out the folding wheelchair. She’s closed the car door and she’s driving out of the parking lot with her great-uncle beside her, his head leaning against the window, and he’s saying, “Fries. Not mashed potatoes.”

  “Do I have to have you back by a certain time?” Ava asks him. She hasn’t seen him in seven years. She was only going to visit for half an hour at the most. She’d brought him some postcards from Israel that he could put up somewhere in his room. One of the Western Wall with the gold Dome of the Rock in the background. Another of the Dead Sea and someone floating on his back in the black water, reading a paper. In another life, Isaac had lived on a kibbutz, ate in a communal dining hall for every meal, got filthy working in the fields, attending to sunflowers. Ava didn’t know him then, but she remembers his stories.

  “Mud in my ears,” he would say. “How does one get mud in their ears?”

  She’d picked out the postcards at the airport, and they were still in her purse. She had thought she would put them up on his windowsill just before she left, so when he looked outside he could picture those places.

  “Cheeseburger,” he says. Isaac holds his left arm over his lap as if it were not attached to his body. His hand and fingers are puffy. With his right hand, he points at the drive-thru on the other side of the street where Ava will have to make a left turn.

  “That’s it,” he says.

  “Isaac,” she says as she pulls up to the intercom, “I’m taking you back right after this.”

  “Large fries,” he says. “Please.”

  Ava’s mother, Carly, had a habit of coming and going. Carly would say to her mother, Elaine, “If you don’t take the kids, I’m going to have to call Child and Family.” Ava’s grandmother would say the same thing, “Carly, if you don’t smarten up, I’ll have to call Child and Family.” Ava often felt like she was dangling by the end of this string called Child and Family and that one day either her mother or her grandmother was going to cut it with a pair of scissors.

  The last time Carly left, she told Ava, “I’m good with hair. I always do yours, right? In Vegas, there are shows where people like me can show off our stuff, right? And someone will hire me from there. And then I’ll send you and Adam plane tickets and you’ll come too.”

  “Make me a French braid,” Ava said. Carly sat on the bed on her knees and tugged at Ava’s greasy hair. Carly said, “It’s better like this. A little dirty. It will hold.”

  The braid held for a week after Carly left. Finally, Elaine yelled that Ava had to take it out or else she would cut it off. Ava sat on the toilet and screamed while her grandmother cut the braid with kitchen shears. Afterwards, Elaine sat on the floor of the bathroom and cried too. She clutched t
he braid, which looked like a squirrel’s tail. Ava stopped screaming once it was done, but she stared at her grandmother. The yelping gave her the same kind of headache she got when she impatiently bit into a Popsicle. She felt the same kind of panic at not being able to make it stop.

  They sit in the McDonald’s parking lot. Isaac asks Ava to rip the french fries in half so that he won’t choke. He has the use of his right hand, but right now he needs to hold the armrest to keep himself upright. He says to her, “You have to feed me.”

  “I should take you back,” she says.

  “Just one. For the salt. There’s no salt there.”

  Ava remembers her grandmother feeding her grandfather like this, the way he would stick his tongue out like a baby bird. She holds up half of a fry but looks away when Isaac leans forward to take it with his lips. They are dry and they scratch her fingers. She feels the tip of his tongue as he pulls the fry from her grasp. She’s not sure why, but she thinks of the goldfish pond in the courtyard, of sticking her hand into the water and feeling the fish swim by her fingers, the scales rubbing across her fingertips.

  “Another,” he says.

  “Isaac, let’s go.”

  “One more. And the cheeseburger.”

  Ava’s fingers shine with grease. After the army, she decided to stay in Israel. Now she works for an event planner who caters to families from North America who want to celebrate their children’s bar or bat mitzvahs somewhere holy. She deals with religious people all the time, caterers, rabbis — her favourite florist covers her hair with three different scarves, wrapped in an enormous beehive, held in place by rhinestone brooches. Over there, Ava keeps kosher by accident. She has not torn at a cheeseburger in years. Even when she is out in Tel Aviv with friends, even when the meat is treif, she won’t have the cheese. Though now, as she feeds bite-size pieces to Isaac, she wonders who she is kidding and why it even matters.

  Isaac says, “You speak to your brother?”

  “No.”

  “At least write him.”

  “I don’t need the headache, Isaac. Don’t lecture me.”

  “We don’t choose our family,” Isaac says. “You, me, him. That’s all.”

  “What am I supposed to say to him? You know what he did to that man.”

  “I know.”

  Ava feeds him more burger. He sighs each time after he swallows. He chews the meat slowly, and he rolls the bread around in his mouth with his tongue. Ava hasn’t had any of her fries yet, or her chicken nuggets. They’ve already grown cold.

  “I didn’t want to come back,” Ava says. “Listen to all his excuses about how we had such a messed-up childhood. He thinks I left him. You know he’ll say that, right? He’ll find a way to blame me because I left him to make aliyah, and Bubby died and he had no one. I’m not his therapist, Isaac. If he screwed up his life, that has nothing to do with me.”

  “How much longer does he have?”

  “Five years? I’m not coming back when he gets out. I’m not throwing him some welcome home party.”

  Isaac points at the milkshake and Ava lifts it to his mouth. She feels him tug on the straw. It reminds her of a calf she saw once, nursing. Tugging and tugging at the teat, though the mother stood still as if she couldn’t feel a thing. Ava was visiting a farm on a school trip. She was little. The cow’s tail swung like a metronome on top of a piano, like a time clock counting down until the calf’s turn was up. Only there was no ending; the calf kept drinking and the tail kept swinging, and it never got down to zero.

  Isaac takes long sips of his milkshake and Ava asks, “You want to drive some more?”

  Neither of them has thought this through. Ava takes Isaac back to her hotel. She wheels him up to her room, which has a queen-sized bed, a flat-screen TV. Isaac asks if he can watch golf. Ava sits him up in the bed with pillows behind his head and under his right elbow to keep him propped up. She takes off his white runners. The soles are not worn at all because he has never walked in them. But his socks have holes in the heels, both of them. Ava starts to make a list of things she will have to buy him before leaving for Israel in a few days. Socks. A small salt shaker. Does he need underwear?

  “Take me to the washroom,” he says to her. “The meat and my stomach.”

  “Isaac, I . . .”

  “Just bring me there. You’ll hold me while I sit.”

  “We should just go back,” she says. Ava calculates how fast she can get him home. Fifteen minutes if he co-operates. She won’t stop at the Walmart. She can stop by once more on her way to the airport, when she knows she has a hard stop, not a day so open-ended that she feels like her life and his are spilling out in all directions.

  “Now,” he says. He’s leaning up and over the bed. She has to catch him under his arms; otherwise he will fall. He puts his right arm around her shoulders and drags his left foot behind as she walks him the five feet from the bed to the bathroom.

  “Help me pull them down,” he tells her. He can grab the right side of his pants, but not the left. His face is very close to hers because she’s still propping him up. His breath smells off — sour like old whiskey, though they haven’t been drinking. She turns her face away from his to cough and he says, “I need you now.”

  “Isaac, I can’t do this,” she says, but he’s already shifting his pants over his bum, the elastic waist falling easily over his hips.

  “You have to. Otherwise you’ll be wiping me like a baby.”

  “This was a stupid idea,” she says, but she gets his pants down around his knees. The whole time she’s looking over his shoulder so that she doesn’t have to see his penis.

  “Lower me down.”

  She gets him so that he’s sitting on the toilet, and then she tries to back away out of the bathroom. It’s been newly renovated, sleek granite counter, a grey and blue shiny tile backsplash on the wall. There’s a daylight bulb for putting on makeup, and Ava had switched it on by accident when they came stumbling in. Now she switches it off because it makes everything too bright in here. Illuminated.

  “You finish up and I’m taking you back,” Ava tells him. “I didn’t come here to look after you.”

  He’s shitting his lunch out, the treat that didn’t agree with him. He’s making noises like foghorns rattling in a chamber. He’s grunting while his bowels let everything go. This all goes on for so long that Ava wonders what could possibly be left of him when he’s done.

  “You’ve forgotten,” he says finally, after a deep breath. Ava is standing with her back to the bathroom door, which is open. She smells his diarrhea, the sharpness of it that then dissipates. She imagines the scent floating through the air like a siren; it comes out screaming at first and then becomes a whisper in the background as she gets used to the smell, which happens sooner than she expects.

  “I’m only here because of you,” he tells her. “You know that? Your grandmother begged me. I could be in California right now. She never told you that I came to help look after you guys?”

  “I don’t owe you anything.”

  When Ava is in Israel, there is so much about her old life she just doesn’t think about. She calls Isaac from time to time. Once she heard a yelp in the background, like someone calling out in their sleep. Isaac said, “My roommate can’t control himself. But it’s just noise.”

  When she hung up then, she thought what a shame it was her uncle had to live like that. But that was it. She definitely never imagined she would be waiting outside a bathroom to help him wipe his ass. She had packed away the thought of Isaac with everything else — her incarcerated brother, her dead grandmother, her mother who never ever came back. No matter the promise. The great disappearing mama.

  Ava leans against the wall beside the bathroom door.

  “Get in here,” Isaac says. “I can’t get up.”

  “For God’s sake, Isaac. At least say ‘please.�
�� ”

  “I’m not going to beg you!” he growls. She’s never heard him really angry. He’s an old dog, drooling out of the side of his mouth.

  “Your mother was a spoiled brat,” he says. “You’ve grown just like her.”

  Ava walks into the bathroom. She grabs toilet paper from the wall and rolls it around and around her hand. She holds her breath while she leans forward so that his forehead rests against her shoulder, and she reaches down to wipe him from behind. Ava has never wiped a baby, let alone an old man. She keeps her mouth closed to stop herself from gagging, but she’s also biting her lip because she wants to cry looking at his flat bottom, the white hair growing in tufts from out of his crack and around his tailbone. This is everything she was afraid of about coming back.

  He says, “You’re no different to me than one of the nurses. There’s even one that sort of looks like you. But she smiles more than you ever did.”

  Ava flushes the toilet. “You don’t know any more about my mother than I do.”

  He puts his good arm around her back and says, “Stand me up so you can lift up my pants.”

  She does and she hears his knees crack. She feels his weight on her shoulders, the heaviness of his body as he lets out a long breath while she tries to pull upward on his underwear and pants. She thinks of an eighties movie she watched once with a man who worked in a department store dressing mannequins. One came alive. And of course he fell in love. And she was beautiful. He would carry her around and dress her in all kinds of outfits until he found the perfect one. It was something about how he controlled this statue until she came to life and freed him from whatever was holding him back.