by Liz Levine
Lex called me in August, freaked-out. He told me that Tamara had been terminated from her job for reasons unknown but that from what he could discern it had something to do with lying about being HIV positive and ordering antiviral drugs. Apparently, there was a bizarre insurance claim, and Save the Children wanted their relocation fees back.
All that was insane enough, but none of it was the reason Lex was really disturbed. Tamara had reached out the day before online to tell him she had lost her job but was going to travel for a couple of weeks to take advantage of being in Australia. Then she would come home. But the next morning, she was already back in Toronto and had left a package at Lex’s front door with gifts for the kids. The kids he was trying to protect from her.
So Lex reached out and agreed to meet Tamara at a restaurant, far away from his home and his children. He told Tamara she was “not in her right mind,” and that she should check in to a hospital. She finally agreed, and he hoped it was the start of the cure.
Later that day, my mother called. “Tamara isn’t well,” she said.
It was the call I had been waiting over a decade to receive.
There it was: hope.
Now Mom would fight for her.
Now that her psychotic break had happened, we were finally all on the same page.
Now it would get better.
C
CANCER
A serious disease caused by cells that are not normal and that can spread to one or many parts of the body.
The fourth sign of the zodiac, which comes between Gemini and Leo and has a crab as its symbol.
CHLORINE
I’ve been told that Judson and I met at a swim meet. I’m sure that is true, but I don’t remember which meet. It doesn’t matter anyway—the Truth changes after someone dies; the relationship changes. There is no one to confirm your tales, but no one to deny them either. The relationship that lives in your head is actually the only one that exists.
I associate my early teen years with the smell of chlorine, with the echo of the swimming pool, the churning of my prerace stomach and my hair frozen into icicles as Judson and I walked home together. Hand in hand, flirting with pneumonia and love. He was my thirteen-year-old “love affair” (meaning we kissed but mostly just held hands and talked). And he changed me.
He was so tall—even back then, he was over 6'4". I liked the way he bobbed his head down towards me to show that he was listening, and I liked his big blue eyes that said more than even his fast-talking mouth. He had giant hands, and when he took mine in his, my hand would disappear into his glove, and I would be warm even in the biting 20 below. I don’t know if I was too young to feel the cold back then or if I just didn’t notice the bitter winds. Most nights we said our goodbyes on the corner one block from my house and two from his. It was all snow-jacket hugs and runny-nose kisses and the obligations of family dinner.
He was the first person I remember talking with—not talking to, or about, or being talked at—but the first person who heard me. We talked a lot about swimming, competition, and our siblings. How much we loved and hated them. We talked about Tamara. He understood, but also, he didn’t. Because I didn’t, and my parents didn’t. We talked about our parents—our fathers, lawyers, and our mothers, mine a psychologist and his in real estate. We talked about how they shaped us, if we would be them when we grew up, about what it meant to be the eldest and what it did to us. Would we be better adults as a result, more equipped for the “real world”?
Our conversations took days. To school, through spare periods and lunch breaks, on long telephone calls, at the pool and all the way home. Sometimes we were focused on one idea or one conversation for weeks on end. Other times we would have six conversations on the go, all at varying stages that would weave in and out of our daily existence like the air we breathed. Slamming locker doors at lunch to get out to the lawn and make that point that had been sitting in my head since we parted before first bell. Picking up the phone as soon as family dinner was cleared to add some detail or ask some question. We even had the occasional midnight visit—whispering under the light on his front porch or mine, when the next thought (one I could not remember now if my life depended on it) could not wait until the following morning.
We talked about ideas. I learned that the things that were stuck in my head were not stupid. Sometimes they were cool or smart. I was addicted to ideas, to my first brush with wonder and awe. I learned that he had stuff like that in his head too. I learned that it was endlessly fascinating to just gaze into his big blue eyes. I could have done that forever. I learned to give space to let people be who they are, and I learned about the size of the human heart.
Our parents were thrilled—although they didn’t tell us that then. This was IT. IT was part of the package: the Private School, the University Degree, the Career Success, the Marriage, the Children, and the Fulfilling Retirement on not-for-profit boards.
They would cluck with feigned concern when we were late for dinner or curfew. My mother would often remind me that it was OK to “date,” but when anyone else showed up at the door she’d ask, “Where’s Judson?” Our fathers worked in the same law firm. Our mothers went to the same PTA meetings. Our younger brothers were the same age. If I was ever going to marry the Jewish doctor of my father’s dreams, this had to be IT.
But IT wasn’t. We were just kids, after all.
It was easy, though. We weren’t really alive then. I don’t remember us thinking, or fighting, or forming identities beyond the ones we were given, but it doesn’t mean we weren’t happy. We didn’t have reason to take sides because life was long. It was forever. We were still safe and swimming. Following the black line at the bottom of the pool—straight ahead to the finish.
He was a lifeguard that first summer that we were together. He worked in High Park. It was all the way west on the Bloor Street subway line. He wore a red tank top with LIFEGUARD in bold white letters and red shorts. He looked important in that lifeguard chair, and that made me feel important. I could feel it from the moment I stepped onto the subway, looking out at the world with my Walkman playing in my ears.
I am going to see my BOYFRIEND.
He is a LIFEGUARD.
He SAVES LIVES.
Where are you going?
One day I got to the pool and he was behind the lifeguard shed, pacing. I thought he might be sneaking a cigarette. We flirted with cigarettes then. But he wasn’t smoking.
It was all an accident, and it was not his fault. Of course, fault rarely determines impact. It would change his life. And mine.
There are a lot of rules to shift change at the pool—you have to climb down from the lifeguard chair while the replacement guard stands beside it and watches the pool. Then you have to watch the pool while your replacement climbs into the chair. Once everyone on deck is replaced, a whistle blows and the guards off shift can take a break. But that day someone looked away or laughed with a friend. Any good lifeguard knows that it only takes a moment for a head to slip under the surface, that the splashing of other swimmers and the glaring sun can make it almost impossible to see the bottom of the pool from the lifeguard chair.
According to the paramedics, the kid was on the bottom of the pool for two minutes before Judson saw him and pulled him out. Judson had stretched him out on the deck and frantically began pumping his chest, forcing his own panicked breath in to the child’s lungs, trying to make his heart beat or lungs breathe. His body must have felt so fragile compared to the plastic blue dummies at lifeguard training. I wondered what it sounded like when Judson broke the boy’s ribs performing CPR. He said it was nothing like the synthetic cracking sound that the dummies make. It must have felt soft. The paramedics said it was only three minutes, but it must have seemed like hours before they arrived and pulled Judson away. Off the body.
So he was shaking behind the guard shed when I arrived. EMS later explained that the shaking was leftover from the rush of adrenaline. They kept Judson about half an h
our and then told us to go. The pool was closed until further notice.
We took the subway home. I tried to hold his hand, but he pulled it away. He didn’t want to be comforted. I understood this somehow. We went to his house and waited by the phone for the news. The boy died before he reached the ER. And with him, the innocence of that first summer job, when work meant sunshine and pocket change. We knew that we had never taken the job seriously until then, that we had not really taken anything seriously, not love or even life.
So we became serious.
We over-thought everything. He had tried to save someone. He had touched someone who was dead, dying. Maybe he had touched him in the moment of death. This conversation lasted for almost two months. What was the moment of death like? Was it wonderful or terrifying? Did that kid know he was dying in those moments? Does anyone?
That summer we both started thinking. But we were thinking small for the first time since we had met. We were being reactive to death. Living in spite of it.
This just served to reinforce the idea that my parents, power lawyer father and superhero shrink mother, made über kids, built of Teflon. I will not cry, I will not crack, I can withstand anything.
The world was not a fair place, and we knew it. Our new personalities hung out on Frybrook Road during lunch break and smoked cigarettes in our spare periods. We drank under the bridge in Sir Winston Churchill Park. We made out in public. To the rest of the world we were teenagers, but to us… we were taking shape, and taking shape together.
I remember kissing Judson under that bridge. I remember he always smelled like chlorine back then.
CHRISTMAKUH
By blood, we are Jews. By upbringing and education, we are Anglican. By tradition, we try everything.
My mom is remarried—her husband, Allan, has two children of his own, both of them married, and my stepbrother has three kids. My father is also remarried—his wife, Donna, has four children, most of them married, and many of them have kids.
This makes the holiday planning in our world more than a little bit confusing, and our traditions confounding to most. But in the end, things are the same as in most families: food, laughter, and a little bit of drama and eggshell walking.
The setup looks similar every year, but, in 2011, there was this slew of emails.
To: Dad, Dawn, Liz, Pete, Tamara
From: Lex
Date: December 13, 2011
For anyone who hasn’t yet got this on their calendar, I’ve been nominated to send out a reminder and/or first notice about a holiday dinner with Dad before he and Donna go south.
The date is December 20th, which also happens to be the first night of Chanukah.
As such, we were thinking that we could perhaps have everybody (significant others included of course) by our new place at 6:30 p.m. to light the first candle of Chanukah (in the glow of our Christmas tree, no less). Then we could go on to dinner from there. Also, instead of an uberfancy restaurant, we were thinking about something a bit more casual this year.
So, in that spirit, we’re asking you to vote for one of the following dinner options on the Danforth:
I would like to have a traditional Jewish meal, and so I pick Chinese Food
Since we are on the Danforth, we should eat Greek Food
I would prefer to have something healthy, and so I would like Sushi
I think that this whole idea is stupid and crazy and I want to have a fight about it.
Please pick from choices 1 to 4 above and email a response. If no option receives 50% of the vote or more, we will have a run off. Couples get one combined vote, or a 0.5 vote each, and Dad breaks any ties.
Lex
Which led to the following slew of responses, the first from Lex’s wife, Dawn:
I’m a “when in Rome” kinda girl… I choose Greek.
Xoxo
Dawn
I’m a “when on the Danforth” kinda girl… So I choose Greek too!
L
Well, I’m with Pete. We need to get back to our roots. Chinese food is my vote.
So we are at 1.5 for Greek, 1.5 for Chinese, 0 for Sushi. Tamara, you get to break the tie.
Lex
Can’t I vote? As to our Chinese roots, there were in fact four different waves of Jews in to China:
The Silk Road ending in Kaifung
1841—the settlement of Shanghai by the Hardoons (HSBC) and the Sassoons (British East India Company)—think opium and read your cousin, David Rotenberg’s book—Shanghai
The Russian Revolution
The Holocaust
History lesson over.
Much love,
Dad
Stop trying to rob Tamara of her moment in the sun here!
Dad, you only get to vote if, following the votes of all eligible children, there is a tie. At this stage, a tie could only result if one of the following occurs (a) Tamara votes for Sushi, (b) Tamara votes for #4, (c) Tamara introduces a significant other, and they split their votes evenly between Chinese and Greek, or (d) Tamara elects not to vote.
Lex
Hi,
I am tempted to chose option 4 (what would a Levine family gathering be like if I didn’t add a little spice and melodrama to the mix)…
Ta
CATALYST
It has become a matter of fact to me: anxiety leads to paranoia, and paranoia can lead to delusions.
My mother always said that my leaving Tamara out of things made Tamara more anxious. I don’t think I left her out much more than the average older, irritated sibling of triplets would. But still…
I wonder if it’s all my fault.
CHURCH
It’s Christmas Eve, one month after my sister’s suicide, and my mother needs a magic moment right now, more than she ever has. I pride myself on the ability to construct these moments. To have the split-second sense that I can alter the fabric of the universe, change the energy of a space or of a group of people, for the better. It’s the only kind of magic I believe in.
We are going to church tonight. Tamara used to go with Mom every year, and Lex and I would roll our eyes and make jokes about Jews bursting into flame. Not this year. This year, Tamara is still barely in the ground. This year, we can’t make fun. This year, we will just go. Silent, well behaved, and we will stand on either side of Mom with our arms around her and sing Christmas carols if that is what will make her happy.
It sounds easy enough. But looks can be deceiving. Lex hosted Christmas Eve at his place forty-five minutes away. And it’s snowing. And it’s not easy to get a four-year-old and a two-year-old to sleep when Santa is coming. And there is NEVER parking at Grace Church-on-the-Hill on Christmas Eve. But by some amazing stroke of Christmas luck, or maybe just a reprieve from the more terrible “luck” we have been having, we find a spot less than a block away.
It’s magic, I guess, but not magic enough and nowhere close to fairy dust we actually need right now to make this Christmas possible.
My brother pulls right up to the car in front, and I ask, “What if we want to leave early and the guy behind parks too close? Mom is going to want to leave early. Seriously, just give us some room.” He shrugs, and I don’t fight it. I’m not up for battling with the lawyer tonight.
The church is lovely now that we aren’t ridiculing it. It feels still here, even with all the people. And I’m reminded that I like Christmas carols. But all of this niceness doesn’t seem to be helping Mom. In fact, it’s kind of breaking her.
She is coming apart between us during the service and people around us can tell. We have been here an hour, and as congregants begin to have communion, she suggests that we, the heathens, slip out. As we pass through the church doors and reach the coat rack at the back of the church, she starts to cry again. “We didn’t get to light the candles. It always happens at the end, and I want to light one for her.”
I leave Lex to help her with her coat and walk back through the doors. The basket of candles is placed mid-aisle, and I don’t e
ven think twice. I walk up the aisle in my red ski jacket, take three candles, and then turn and walk back out. All eyes in the church on me.
I hold the the candles out to Mom and Lex as we go out the doors onto the steps. It’s not a cold night per se, given that it’s December 24th in Toronto. I pull a lighter out of my pocket. For the first time ever, my mother doesn’t ask me why I have a lighter on me.
And standing on those steps of the church she has been coming to with my sister for 35 years, we light the candles. Lex watches the wind flirt with the flames and cups his hands around them to keep them lit, like it matters.
“See, Sweet-pea?” my mother says. “We all came here together for you. And you could’ve been here. If you’d just hung on a little longer.” Her voice breaks. “If you weren’t such a bum, we’d be having Christmas now.” She cries. We hug her.
It’s a moment between us. One we need. And for all the pain and insanity that all of this is, I feel a flicker of pride. I make these moments. Always. And now, now I have my hand on that tiny corner of the fabric of the universe, and Lex can feel it too, the energy that can be changed in this space.
And then it is over. We walk back to the car. As we get there, we see that someone has parked less than two inches from Lex’s back bumper. It is going to be impossible to get the car out. I nudge him to look. He pauses, grimaces, and then says, “Goddam proctologist,” and muses, “If only someone could have foreseen this.”
CONDOLENCES
Everyone has that friend. The person who asks you about the things you don’t want to talk about but probably should talk about. I am drawn to those people. I guess they remind me of my mother. I met France a year before Tamara died. It was instantaneous. Soul sister. And her sister was sick too, in very similar ways to Tamara. France and I spent a lot of time talking about our sisters.
