White Walls

by Judy Batalion

  “Let’s get some air,” Andy said. Was he flirting? He was six foot two, aqua-eyed, and everyone’s crush. I was still the Woody Allen of women—self-deprecating, nerdy, insecure about my chubby body and mismatched features. Glasses galore. I followed him to the garden and we sat on a bench, his knees jetting out way past mine.

  “Want a smoke?” he asked.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “I don’t smoke,” he said.

  “Me neither,” I answered.

  We laughed and he suddenly kissed me, tenderly, as if the jokes we’d shared in class now mingled in our mouths. Andy liked me!

  “Come back to my place?” I couldn’t believe I offered. He got our coats. “Let’s keep this a secret,” I blurted out, not wanting to confuse business with pleasure, not wanting to risk another public rejection.

  “My lips are sealed,” he answered. “On yours.”

  The next morning, he mocked me for having so many toilet rolls, and pretended to search my apartment for my imaginary husband. I cracked up. I didn’t know what was more surprising—his advances, my compliance, or that he texted me sweet messages all day, especially considering we’d slept together on our first, well, conversation.

  • • •

  ANDY’S AND MY differences, which went well beyond the physical, were exhilarating. He was twenty-three, four years my junior, and was not only a charming Adonis, but dedicated to his art. He refused day jobs that didn’t relate to his passion, performed every night, and was never rattled by failure. When we started going to see shows together, Andy schmoozed his way backstage to introduce himself to his famous comedian idols. I spent hours composing an e-mail requesting five minutes of stage time. I still worked at the museum and on my PhD and was chasing my dreams on weekends, stuck in the safety of classes. I wanted to walk in his extra-large footsteps. I longed to stand next to him and glow in his charismatic halo. When we met for drinks at a massive subterranean Aussie pub in Soho, it felt like the opposite of my world, as if, if one were to dig a hole from my parents’ house down into and right through the earth, you’d end up at Wallabies.

  Andy laughed loudly at my jokes in class—my stamp of approval. When I was born, I pissed all over the OB. My mother was so embarrassed, she pulled me aside right there in the delivery room and said: Judy, if you’re gonna urinate on the doctor, he’s not gonna ask you out. . . . My father has reached an age where a lot of his friends are dying. I find it very sad, but he doesn’t, because he’s competitive. I’m like: Dad, I’m so sorry that your lifelong friend Mel died. He was only sixty-seven. He’s like, Judy, I’m sixty-eight! He encouraged me to try an open mic, listened as I over-rehearsed, gave me space as I paced the aisle (by aisle, I mean the vestibule at the entrance to this club, which was a cramped, beer-soaked, cigarette-infused basement room of a pub that used to be the meeting room of right-wing intellectuals during World War II) and then clapped through my set, assuring me when I worried I hadn’t been good enough, happy when a comedy promoter approached me after the show. It was happening! I was happening! Together, we brainstormed and postmortemed, our clothes smelling like the alcohol-soaked floorboards of the pubs where we performed.

  Andy became a fixture in my tiny apartment, which was larger than his damp room in a house share. He used my towels, dishes, pens, and borrowed thick handfuls of my CDs. I stocked food. He couldn’t afford to take me out for dinner, or drinks, but I didn’t mind. In exchange for his humorous aura I would finally be the Domestic Goddess.

  • • •

  MY OWN SPORADIC gigging led me to the heat of a women’s comedy competition, the UK’s largest. Sixteen of us were on that night, this time crowded into the back area of another subterranean pub in the “green room” that was curtained off by a sheet. Considering I was on twelfth in the lineup and having trouble schmoozing the drunk-on-rosé insurance company sponsors, my expectations were low. Indeed, when I was finally called up, the mic broke, hanging flaccid on its edge. I gestured to it in disgust.

  People went crazy, guffawing. I couldn’t believe it.

  “Use the other mic,” someone heckled. My stiffness appeared as nonchalance, and I shrugged and picked it out of its stand. I was totally exposed, no stand however tiny to cover even a slice of me.

  “Well, that’s my whole seven minutes,” I said, not thinking, to uproarious applause. Somehow, my honesty in the moment had connected me to a crowd in a way I’d never before felt: so plugged in. Then I started: Before I begin, I just wanted to remind everyone to please turn off your phones. Because if you don’t, my mother will call. Another round of applause. From there, my set—about living in the East End, types of joggers, a surreal piece about breaking up with my brain (it’s not you, it’s me)—just got better, the crowd clapping and whooping. I was attached, linked through gesture and laughter and in complete control. I created those seven minutes, managed the mood, set the pace, for everyone around me. In turn, the audience saw me, knew me, took me in. I was them and they me and I was in myself so much so that every cell of me belonged in the moment.

  That night, Andy sat next to me on the top of the double-decker bus, our thighs touching, his enormous hand clasping my small clammy one. He cheered, his booming voice proud. We rode east, to my perfect little apartment, where I served Andy coffee like Evan had showed me as if passing on a wild sex trick, and my limbs were burning and even shaking in delight.

  • • •

  A WEEK LATER I got the call that I’d made it to the semifinals. “Congratulations!”

  “Thank you,” I croaked from my bed. It turned out those euphoric tremors had also marked the onset of a high fever, as if the experience of fitting in, of existing within my own skin, was too overwhelming to bear. Andy had come over to nurse me, and though I’d requested Gatorade and Tylenol, he’d arrived with ingredients for an Irish meat stew and three documentaries about vaudeville. I wasn’t feeling particularly carnivorous from my drenched sheets, but hearing the clattering of pots and his humming, I reminded myself that he hadn’t done a one-eighty or run away, that he was still here for me even in a difficult time, even when I wasn’t fun or funny.

  “Great job,” the production assistant said over the phone. “You’ll take part in the showcase next month. In Manchester.”

  Manchester? But I was too excited to question why, especially as they offered to pay for my train and budget hotel room. I was in the semifinals! My name would be on a Web site—as a comedian. Audiences liked me, Andy liked me. Life was making sense.

  • • •

  I ARRIVED AT the Manchester club thirty minutes early to find out I was on last, then walked ten miles in nervous pacing. Andy had decided a few days earlier that it was best he didn’t come, just in case he got a last-minute gig, even though I’d offered to pay for his train. We didn’t always go to each other’s shows—he never demanded I come to his—and I reminded myself that this was work. But still I felt untethered—a new city, alone, as foreign as I could be (I couldn’t understand even the poshest Mancunian accent). I tried to channel Andy’s careerist bravado and confidence but knew no one in the Northern comedian clique and the MC pronounced my name incorrectly. The gig was not terrible—I did not die, but also, did not kill. I’m unemployed, I have a lot of free time. Which is good, because I can’t afford any other kind of time. I held back tears as I left the stage, then ran from the club burning in shame.

  I tried to reach Andy by text, and finally, after two large glasses of yellow white wine from my budget hotel’s bar, I called him wailing. “I’ve ruined everything.”

  “You screwed up,” was what he said, seemingly distracted. “Don’t take it personally. Just do better next time.”

  I hung up feeling hollow. I’d needed him to say that I’d been great, the audience was stupid. But, I reasoned, he was probably right. I felt like I’d let the stage down, let him down, ruined his belief in my potential. I was
so entwined with him, yet so alone.

  It wasn’t for a few days that I got the phone call. The ring itself was shrill. “Judy.” It was the producer. “I mean, I love your act.”

  I knew it was bad.

  “But you’re way too Jewish for most of England. That’s why we sent you to Manchester—to see how a Jew would go down in the North. I mean, if I was booking bar mitzvahs, you’d be first on my list.” My ear burned into my cell. I’d wanted feedback, sure, but this was not in any universe what I’d expected. There was not a word in my set about my religion. I stared out my kitchen window, through the translucent red sun decal Evan had bought me, and saw the world in red shafts of light, as if it was revealing its true colors to me for the first time. “Plus, your face is much too Jewish for British television.”

  Too Jewish. All these years, I’d wanted to be seen, and now I was. But for being Jewish?

  “Think about it. Tell me if you’d like to work with me on production, or finance.”

  “Thanks,” I stammered as I hung up. Finance? I did Fine Arts.

  I went to the mirror to see what the world saw, and found the Holocaust, Bubbie, my whole history, wrapped in my DNA, weaved into my skin cells, in my under-eye bags and dark, wanting brown pupils. I found everything I’d run away from appear right there, highlighting my every inch.

  I placed my hands flat on my cheeks. If I didn’t belong on stage, then where?

  • • •

  ANDY WAS BUSY making his mark, gigging every night, even if he was being paid largely in beer. He stayed over on weekends but stopped coming to parties. Instead, he’d spread his notes across my living room, sprawling out along my futon, his brown socks confidently poking out beyond the metal frame, stretching his arms like a cat settling in for a good lick. One night, it dawned on me that he looked more comfortable in my apartment then I ever did. “Have fun,” he urged as I left for the evening. “I’ll be here when you get back.” This is what it’s like to date a real comedian, I sighed as I stepped into the rainy night, leaving him to hone his art on my appliances.

  The next day, my phone rang. She was breathless. “I can’t go on.”

  I froze. “What are you talking about, Mom?”

  “I can’t see a way out of this.”

  “It’s just an inheritance fight.” I tried to calm her. “We’ll take care of you. Please, don’t talk like this.”

  “There’s no point. I can’t live anymore,” she cried. “I’m going to kill myself.”

  I sat down on my blue wooden chair, gripped the edges. She was shrieking, hyperventilating. “Mom, please. Don’t do anything. I’m going to help you.”

  “You promise?” She quieted, thank God. “You’ll always be in touch?”

  “Of course, I’m always here.”

  “For you, I’ll live,” she whispered. “For you. I love you so much.”

  “I love you so much too, Mom.” My voice was firm but my hands shook. I can help her, I thought. I’m far away but I can help her find a therapist, a good doctor. I can be there for her. I called her back every hour that day. And the next. Until a few days later when she called me like this, again.

  • • •

  THAT SUNDAY EVENING, dizzy with nerves, I trudged up to a cabaret club hidden in one of Soho’s secret winding roads. I’d been forcing myself to keep gigging, and was invited to perform at this West End show. I was both so excited to have been picked and also wished I was doing absolutely anything else than putting myself through this hellish anxiety. Why do you do it? To be seen! Heard! I entered the nondescript door to find a lush red lobby filled with golden chandeliers and a backstage full of pole dancers discussing their various affairs with Russell Brand while sizzling-on fake eyelashes. I took out my comb and haphazardly fed it through my strands and paced, waiting for my turn.

  Only, as soon as I presented my intro line—“I’m a Canadian Jew, which means . . . nothing”—I heard a loud boo. “What?” I asked into the mic, shocked. I was thrown off. I’d added this first joke specifically to acknowledge my identity and show how not-important it was to my set, which usually worked. But tonight, the audience sniffed my fear, and the boos got louder. I might have assumed it was due to my demeanor or poor delivery and tried harder, but this response struck a chord. Since the Manchester disaster, I’d been experiencing increasing anti-Jewish sentiment. “Go Back to Hampstead,” was heckled at me. “Jew play the Jewkaleleh?” was another clever one. “I don’t really like Jews,” a comic said to me—as a joke, his friend later clarified. I was awarded a scholarship from a British women’s academic institution and their annual dinner was sprinkled with conversations about “the Jews who are in it for the money.” The comments seeped under my olive-toned skin. Was I misunderstanding? Overreacting? Underreacting?

  Even when I started commenting back (“um, since I’m here for an art history degree, I’m certainly not in it for the money”), I felt more and more like a visible minority, hyperconscious of how I was being seen—my nose, my American accent, my thick-rimmed glasses. In every interaction, every day, onstage and off, I began to guess at what the person I was with was seeing in me. Who was I to them?

  Now, the audience started to chatter among themselves. I couldn’t hold attention. They hated me. Under the gilded dome, in bright West End spotlights, thousands of miles from Montreal, from my history, old genetic terrors festered up. I thought of my fifth grade Yiddish teacher who had pulled me up to the front of the class. “Look at the eyes, the nose—if this had been Warsaw ’thirty-nine, Judy would have been the first to go.” My pulse pounded, my eyes grew watery, the mic slipped in my hand. I ran off the stage at three minutes, straight past the curly girls, under disco balls, through the warren of Victorian staircases, in hot tears. The nineteenth-century walls might have been bedecked in gilded framed mirrors, but all I saw was a haze of brown stringy hair, running, running.

  • • •

  THE NEXT DAY, I noted Andy slipping two of my comedy how-to books into his man bag. “What are you doing?” I asked, as he made for my door.

  “Just borrowing these.” He smiled as always.

  I stared at the gaping hole in my bookshelf. The remaining volumes fell awkwardly into the space on the shelf, which suddenly seemed vast.

  “Have you borrowed others?” I asked, alarmed that I hadn’t known.

  “Just a few,” he said, slinging his pack over one shoulder. “I’ll bring them back, don’t worry.”

  It was one thing to offer, but another to find out he’d taken. He didn’t mind that I was upset. I scanned my minuscule flat—the unmade bed, his dishes in the sink, his pages on my sofa. Then I noted the blank space on my bulletin board. “Did you use the gift certificate I’d been saving?”

  “I got comedy DVDs,” he said. “It was going to expire.”

  My long-held tongue unfurled. “That was mine!”

  “Whoa.” Andy backed up. “You have anger issues.”

  “My anger issue is that I’m angry,” I mumbled. I felt my boundaries being stretched, ready to snap.

  I looked up at his glittering grin, his self-assured poise. He was eternally magnetic, driven, confident.

  He walked out the door.

  Motionless, I looked around my apartment—what else had I not noticed? Andy’s papers sat in piles on the floor, as did mine. Books for my PhD, comedy, the museum, a theater project, Yiddish translations lined what was once my dining room table. My Hoover hadn’t worked properly in ages, and parts of the carpets had crumbs on them, even though I pseudo-vacuumed every week. Free cosmetic samples—in fact anything free—was stocked in the now grimy cosmetics bags in my bathroom. I tried to keep it all tidy and neat, but items had tattered with time, with two of us camped and cramped in here. The sink was filled with dishes. The plant that an artist friend had bought me as a housewarming gift was completely dry but I kept it on top of the
kitchen counter. I felt so poor, so financially vulnerable, that I couldn’t bear to throw things away. I tried to be motherly, but Andy saw me as angry and aggressive. I offered too much of my home, my boundaries were too porous. I felt my jeans press right into my waist: I’d even gained weight.

  I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed my own demise. Why couldn’t I just work at the museum, be content? Why did I always want more, more, more? I thought of my mother’s stuff, which seemed to be her dual attempt at both connection and protection. Was I looking for safety in the stuff and projects around me? I’d wanted to nurture, to be what Evan had dreamed of, but I was a mess. I was hoarding emotions, memories, doubts, self-perceptions, my ambivalent life cluttered with empty commitments and old selves I just couldn’t jettison.

  My fingers automatically dialed my mother, relying on that cord that bound us together while keeping us far enough apart. “How are you?” I asked.

  “Terrible,” she started, her voice trailing off like a coil of smoke.

  I was going to interject and switch the conversation to me, a new strategy that was good for both of us. It got her out of her head, got me some attention. But she launched in first. “They’re after me,” she whispered. “Do you know anything about Fred’s trip to Scotland?”

  Did she mean Scotland Yard? And that her docile philosopher friend who I hadn’t seen in fifteen years was reporting on her? “I can’t deal with this now.”

  “Didn’t I talk you through your problems?” she accused. “What about me?”

  I sighed. She was right. “Fine.”

  She wanted to talk from the other room, people might be listening on the line. They’re coming to get me. “All I ever did was try to help anybody, to take care of my parents.”

  Now I felt guilty, too.

  “Would it be easier for you, for everyone if I was dead?”