Dad became the coach of my colitis, for three years schlepping me across Montreal to every doctor he knew, following my blood test results as if they were stocks. Layers of my colon disintegrated like snakes shedding their skins. We debated the cause: Was it autoimmune, my self-conscious body attacking itself? Or was it, as the old theory went, a stress response, channeling my amorphous dread and anxiety into a physical organ? Finally, a soft-spoken surgeon with deep blue eyes promised me salvation by removing my entire colon—which Dad thought was barbaric and insane. I begged for that surgery like most teenagers angled for a late curfew.
It was that dashing surgeon (or “henchman” to use Dad’s term) who had told me earlier that day that I had to have a cesarean; even Dad agreed. Unlike most of my friends, I didn’t mind. I was drawn to the idea of a planned, ordered delivery. I didn’t want to make a mess of my insides. I didn’t want pain. I fainted putting in contact lenses; the idea of labor terrified me. “Oh,” was all I could muster as the guru felt up my back.
“You should do all my classes,” she said. “Also, I run a doula service. Come to my seminar, I’ll find you someone for your birth.”
“Actually, I’m having a C-section,” I blurted.
“A C-section?” She looked aghast. “Why?”
“Medical reasons,” I said, but it came out sounding like a question.
“Well, I guess that’s OK. But remember to refuse the Demerol!” she proclaimed. “Women in Europe don’t take painkillers.”
“OK,” I said meekly, though I wanted painkillers just thinking about it. Even Jon did. Then I looked around at all the warrior mamas collecting their fairly traded maternity coats, probably preparing for their pool births and placenta brunches, stocking up on diapers made of recycled sweaters. Bubbie had delivered Mom on the refugee run, in a makeshift hospital inhabited only by a cleaner who was mopping the floor. When I was a newborn, Bubbie locked my babysitter in the bathroom so she could do everything herself. “Bubbie’s strength made me feel strong,” Mom had told me many times.
I grabbed my jacket, dizzy and flushed. I’d thought I was strong for executing cat-cows and demi-planks, but was now wondering if I wasn’t the weakest one here. Perhaps I should refuse the drugs, insist on a natural birth, fight. Perhaps I was chickening out, doing everything wrong wrong wrong.
How would I remember to find myself in this whole new world, one of infinite all-important decisions? There were no right answers, no scientific codes for raising kids. The “results” of parenting would appear decades later, and even then, it wouldn’t be clear whether showing a child too much Sesame Street is what led to their tendency to date self-effacing commitment-phobes. Would I ever be strong enough to just go with my gut?
TELL KAUFFMAN
Montreal, 1991–92
“Man alive, it’s cold,” my father said. His breath emanated from his mouth like a smoking chimney, white wisps curling up from his plaid woolen scarf—an accessory reserved only for the most pungent days of Canadian winter and which clashed in every way with his puffy purple ski jacket, black Russian hat, and rubber overshoes that formed cocoons for his brown Wallabees, the same type he’d been wearing since the 1960s. Dad was committed to his footwear. Whenever he saw this shoe in stores, he bought at least two pairs. Stock up on things you like, he said. They’ll be discontinued. “Wowee, cold,” he now insisted. But he was not complaining. The chillier, the better—not for his nose, which ran on its own accord, clear fluids dripping from one oversize nostril as if it was a broken kitchen sink—but for his pride.
“Minus seventeen today,” I said from beneath layers of wool and Thinsulate.
“Minus thirty-eight with the windchill, don’t forget,” he added, gleefully.
We were on our weekly workout walk in the wealthy neighborhood of Westmount, climbing up Mount Royal, the mountain that formed the center of our city, the apex upon which French Quebec was crowned, the height from which you could see New York state, Vermont, the North. Dad was born in Montreal, making him—despite his wrinkled brow, balding head, unabashedly Jewish nose, droopy ears, and Yiddish mother tongue—all Canadian. His parents had come over from Poland in the 1920s after anti-Semitic attacks, after my grandmother whipped out a butcher knife and threatened to commit suicide right in the immigration official’s office if he didn’t grant them a visa tout de suite. Dad’s parents arrived to the shores of Halifax with seven dollars, and his father, Zaide Abe, religious and scholarly, worked around the clock fixing sewing machines, through the Depression, even on Shabbat, until he was able to start his own sweater business. We didn’t know anything more about Zaide Abe’s family. As a teenager, he’d run away from his small town and drunk father for Warsaw. Then he and his wife left for Canada and within twenty years, every other Batalion had been killed.
Zaide Abe had died of lung cancer two years earlier. The black hole of our history had been pulling on Dad, and he’d become obsessed with the rare name Batalion, which was particularly unJewish. He’d written to genealogists and historians, trying to make sense of our roots. “Batalion is Polish slang for undomesticated animal,” was our only concrete answer. Zaide made it up, he guessed, at immigration. They said what’s your name? He said, eh—Batalion. Who knows? Dad said.
You never asked? I never asked.
The air was heavy, solid with cold, its electrons too frigid to keep circulating. Gum hardened and tasted mintier. Though it was just three p.m., the blinds on all the houses were drawn, as if the homes too were wrapped up. The odd car passed us by, and Dad imagined what the passengers might be saying about us: “What meshuggeners! Who walks outside on a day like today?” Eli was at a friend’s house, as on most Sundays. This trek was mine and Dad’s insanity. Needless to say, we were the sole pedestrians.
The sidewalks were caked with snow. As we walked, I could feel my cold feet slip within my boots, my boots slip on the ice. Simply stepping involved resistance.
“Can you believe I’m shvitzing!” my father huffed with delight.
“Me too,” I said, noting dampness in my armpits and inner thighs under the three layers of pants and sweaters. I feared the amorphous, ectopic moistness. Sweat was suspect—it could transition to ice at any second, your body’s regulating system turning against itself.
“This is the best route for this weather,” said Dad, the urban orienteer. He’d mapped out four different itineraries for our Sunday walks, which we took religiously. Each one started near Carlton, and all ended downtown. The routes, like our family’s houses, had names: Westmount, Outremont, CÔte-des-Neiges, and the Hospital. It was like the joke Dad endlessly told, about the family who numbered each gag, so to garner a laugh they only had to call out its digits. (Forty-two! attempted a guest, but no one guffawed. It’s the way you tell them. . . .)
As for this quest, it manifested Dad’s philosophy. His competitiveness, unusual for a bald, chubby, five foot six at the height of his height Jewish doctor named Hyman Simon, was not about excelling at school, but battling the elements, defying the physical, controlling decay. He’d dedicated his life to prolonging life so much that he developed a long career as a geriatrics doctor just so he could always seem young compared to his patients. The trick to Dad’s extreme-living game was that it had to be done naturally. No pills or potions. The point was winning by suffering. Tylenols were distributed to me only if my fever was above a hundred and four (and that’s Celsius). The body was a temple that had to be glorified through exertion and self-control.
We reached the top of our climb, and stopped in front of a mini-mansion for a mini-moment to acknowledge the expensive houses and the vista: the whole city—its majestically rusted green-and-gold buildings and the 1950s low-rise apartment blocks—all covered in white powder. Snow was an equalizer, a foundation that evened out the urban skin, covering messes, balancing sides.
“Beautiful,” my father said, proud of his city, or perhaps, soo
thed by covers.
Côte Saint-Luc, our suburb, was far away and I couldn’t make out our house, where my mother sat and seethed. I wondered if she was still having the tantrum that had begun as we left, her latest hysterical accusations that we were going off without her, leaving her, leaving her out. Our invitations. Her “you don’t really mean it, you just like Dad better.” My biting of my tongue (I wonder why). I pushed aside the thought that I was indeed leaving her, somehow stealing Dad, guilty as charged. The irony made my insides clench. I thought of how, when I was young, I crawled into Dad’s sofa bed, carefully maneuvering around the metal grates of the foldout mattress—Mom’s queen-size bed, of course, had no room. Her piles pushed me away, pushed the rest of us into small spaces together, resulting in bonds that then made her angry. I wanted to spend time with her, at least a her that wasn’t yelling at me, so her accusations felt doubly unfair.
I imagined I saw smoke rising from our roof, not from a chimney but Mom’s psyche. If Mom embodied home, then Dad was the streets. An escape route. A chance at normalcy. I’d spent whole days imagining what my life would look like if Dad had had a different wife, someone skinny, with straight brown hair, clothes she bought downtown, who cooked Shabbat meals and vacationed in Boca Raton. That world was almost possible, just off by a few angles, off by a chance meeting at a party in 1967. He was a doctor, ten years older. Mom was the pretty poet, the patient.
My toes began to burn, and I wiggled them in my boot.
Going down the mountain was harder than up. Dad found us a trajectory with less ice and slope, and still we had to step sideways, our legs crossing awkwardly as we faced the houses instead of the road. We didn’t talk as much as usual. It was harder to discuss punch lines and histology—Dad’s favorite topics—in these conditions. You are not like the girls I knew growing up, Dad had told me a few months earlier on one of these promenades. We’d been analyzing the difference between polyps and cysts. Fourteen-year-old girls just wanted to talk about lipstick.
Ha, I’d laughed. How silly.
I’d been proud that he was proud, but also upset, because I wanted to talk about lipstick, but didn’t know anything about it. But I did know about unusual growths. I took advanced math and biology. I studied my colitis, and together, we reviewed theories of autoimmunity, heavily analyzed my many doctors’ analyses, and debated the benefits of medical versus surgical intervention (no intervention! was Dad’s preference, of course). I could never complain; I hurt more than you do, Dad would reply, and his crinkled brow and sad eyes showed me he did, suffering over his inability to fix what was wrong.
At the bottom of the hill, we hit Sherbrooke, the longest street in Montreal, which stretched right across the island, spanning the French and English sections, relentless fighting factions. Each wanted independence and sovereignty, each wanted its own traditions to rule, neither acknowledging that heritage and language are arbitrary accidents of birth. This dispute, the core of our nation.
Inside a Dépanneur, tears ran from the crevices of Dad’s eyes and then, like pucks on a Plinko board, spread along the deep wrinkles in his cheeks. For a minute, his glasses fogged up completely, and I felt like I was alone.
I got herbal tea. Dad got nothing. No coffee, no water. These would subtract from his solo conquering of physical existence.
“Il fait froid dehors,” I said to the cashier, who was herself bundled in sweaters and scarves. I could smell her cigarette habit from across the counter. She grumbled.
“Central casting,” Dad said as we walked out, using our code for when a character plays to their caricature.
“From another movie,” I replied, our code for when someone is angry from a previous context.
Dad laughed, which was his highest accolade. His only accolade. He was proud, I knew, that I lined up metaphors.
We walked along Sherbrooke, all the way downtown. I thought of how by this time of day, Mom was probably also trudging through kippers of snow, a massive cloud in her full-length duvet coat, bulbous hat, and puffy boots, making her way to visit Bubbie and Zaidy at one of their nursing homes. She was likely schlepping totes and wheeled luggage filled with potato knishes, seven-layer cake, and Klezmer CDs—the many bags that were starting to travel with her outside the house. Bubbie had developed dementia, Zaidy had had a stroke; their former characters and immigrant lives were hidden under unruly facial hair and bloated eyelids. Their faces disfigured without their dentures, like deflating balloons. Though Mom used to fight constantly with Bubbie, forcing her to the psychiatric ward for shots for her paranoid rants about people stealing her houses, she was now obsessed with comforting her; it was her raison d’être. They’re survivors, she said. They deserve it. Each day, Mom spent hours with her parents as they moved between rehab centers, bringing them snacks and Yiddish entertainment as if she was a roving nomadic convalescent home. She organized events and hired a round-the-clock roster of caregivers for them and their houses, including Hutchison, their first home in this country. Meanwhile, every evening after Carlton, Dad visited his mother at a different old-age home. Eli and I spent weekends waiting in the car, bouncing between these hospitals and all the homes—they too seemed like dilapidating patients who needed looking in on.
It was nearly dark now, and Dad and I strolled quickly, until we arrived at our current Sunday night restaurant of choice. Originally discovered by Mom through coupon cutting, La Poissonerie was a small seafood bistro with low lighting, aquaria, fishing nets, and a salty beach smell. Inside, we took off numerous layers, and the maître d’ smiled, as people often did when they saw us together, father and daughter. A fifty-five-year-old man and a fourteen-year-old girl who shared an almost identical countenance. Later in life, this became a slight slight for me (thanks for letting me know that I look like a seventy-two-year-old man), but back then, I was pleased. I had an anchor. I came from something, concretely, the Batalions, My Father’s Side, even if the generations of running had left soft gaps.
My father ordered for us, as he always did. No one in our house cooked; we had a long family history of restauranting, even a happy one. Years earlier, after shopping at Bonimart, we’d head to Pumperniks, a kosher-style Chinese diner with copious early-bird specials and an all-you-can-eat salad bar. We were friendly with the waitstaff and regulars, sharing with them the colored pencils and paper Mom stashed in her purse. One of the waitresses—blond, tall, not ours—smoked in the bathroom. She left her ongoing cigarette in a crevice on the side of the mirror. Each week I checked for it, fascinated by how something so illicit could be going on right there in the cracks, in my small reach, as if signaling a secret warp zone to a different universe. Afterward, friends would sleep over. There were dress-up fashion shows, Care Bear weddings, trips to the video store. On one particular weekend when my mother’s friends from Toronto stayed over, Dad made jokes about Canadian taxation (“GST, PST. Feh. To me it’s all BST”) and I heard them howling over strawberry cheesecake, even from my room, Mom convulsing in fits of delight.
Tonight, Dad ordered us the same meal—the salmon. His with French fries, mine with a baked potato. Dad, the conservative and Conservative, was the world’s most unlikely vegetarian. He claimed his diet was due to his high cholesterol, but I knew it was due to his empathy for the cows. He was a secret softie. He loved telling the story of how he drove a taxi to put himself through medical school. The cab was owned by a Mr. Kauffman, who never maintained it, causing endless problems for the drivers. One day, the next shift’s driver, Mendl Eisner, was bringing Dad home when the car stalled in the middle of one of Montreal’s busiest intersections. Eisner had had enough. He did not scream, or yell, but opened the door, stepped out of the car, and called back to my dad, “Tell Kauffman to go to hell,” before disappearing forever into the traffic. This story delighted my father—sure, the guy had left him stranded in the middle of the road, but he adored that Eisner had simply walked off. Poof. Ta-da. No ties at all. We
used “Tell Kauffman” as code when we wished we could just run away.
At the table, warm over hot white rolls and butter, we launched into a heated conversation about Raynaud’s syndrome, a circulation problem in which one’s fingers and toes become cold and numb with stress. My hands and feet were always icy, and Dad wondered if I might be suffering from this capillary shutdown. I liked the idea of numbness. I liked the idea that my circulation was saving itself for more important things. I liked the idea that Dad was diagnosing me. I showed him my fingers. I kicked my boots to the side of the table, gesturing toward them while talking about how my feet’s vessels had withdrawn, gone on strike. Halted any feeling. This disease seemed like great restraint, one that would make him proud.
The meal arrived, and as always, Dad was in awe. “Such perfect portions,” he said. Usually, he was not one to go for normal amounts of food (what bargain would that be?), but here, he said, it made sense. It left him feeling “just right” full. It was the perfect meal to walk home after.
I liked it too because it was contained. I counted the calories quickly in my head, subtracted what I assumed I’d lost on the walk, and took off a few more for the cold, my usual equations. The math of comfort. I was petite, but still, I’d begun to crave control anywhere I could get it.
When the bill came, Dad was pleasantly surprised. “Your mother knows how to find the bargains,” he said as he signed. Then he looked down, silent, and so did I.
Sunday night. The end of the reprieve.
How I dreaded going home.
Sometimes, we brought Mom a hot meal.
“Should we get Mom a salmon too?” I asked, a yes or no question. But really what I wanted, what I needed, was for him to say something. For him to acknowledge that her yelling was inappropriate, or stressful, or just, her yelling. To say: things are not right. To say, I’m sorry for how it is.
White Walls Page 6
