I Don't Want to Know Anyone Too Well, and Other Stories

by Norman Levine

“Five hundred dollars?”

  “Seven hundred and fifty,” she said with pride.

  Chuck was left with us. He didn’t like to go outside. He was frightened of steps, of a hill, and the beach. The first time he saw the sand he couldn’t understand why we didn’t fall through it. And when he was left on his own he would talk in these two voices. One was high, the other low. He would talk rapidly, in a singsong. High. Low. I couldn’t make out what he was saying. The first time I heard him I asked.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Talking to myself,” he said quietly.

  He liked to watch television. The Americans were sending two men to land on the moon. And Chuck knew all the astronauts’ names and what they had to do. He knew every stage of the journey into space. He rushed in.

  “Halfway—moon gravity—”

  He would stand in front of the television, only a few feet away. When he became excited he would bring his hands up by the side of his face, fingers wide apart, and they would quiver.

  On days that it rained we sat around the breakfast table listening to the noise on the roof while Mona told the kids’ fortunes in their tea leaves. She had complete faith in doctors and tea leaves. And mother asked Emily for the recipes of some of the things she had baked—cakes and desserts—so that she could make them for her golden age club when she got back. She showed us photographs. They were of elderly ladies sitting, all dressed up, by long tables with white tablecloths.

  On the fourth morning it was drizzling. I was coming down the stairs. There was a nice smell of cooking from the kitchen. I saw Chuck at the bottom.

  “You’re fame-us,” he said to me as I came down. “Me see you on TV fame-us.” Then he looked at his face in the hall-mirror and said to himself “Fame-us. Fame-us.”

  Inside the front room Mona continued to chain-smoke. Mother was in a chair by the window, looking out. She looked at the valley of granite cottages, the houses on the other side of the hill.

  “I like this,” she said.

  It was a summer light rain. It gave the slate roofs of the cottages a blue colour.

  “Could you live here?” I asked her.

  “It’s nice. But not for me. I’m used to a different life.”

  She looked around the room, at the shabby furniture, the damp walls, the shelves of books, the worn red carpet.

  “Did you ever think of changing your job?”

  “And do what?”

  “You could work yourself up and become a journalist.”

  “Journalists come down to interview me.”

  “But what have you got?” she said. “No home of your own. No new furniture. Children need nice clothes. Appearance is important.”

  I didn’t think it mattered much. But perhaps it mattered more than I ever admitted. Else why did I always meet people who came from Canada, to see me, in a pub. Then take them for a conducted tour of this seaside town, ending with a call on a rich acquaintance who had a large granite house with a drive, wide lawns and gardens, above the bay. So they could go back with that. Was that so different from what she was saying?

  “You remember Lionel?” Mother said.

  I said nothing.

  “I betcha he makes thirty thousand dollars a year. Maybe more. And his brother, Jackie, the one you played ball with. He makes forty thousand dollars, at least.”

  And Mona said, “Cousin Lily’s daughter got married. You should see what they got. They have black leather Mediterranean chairs and settee. They have a new sports car. They pay two hundred dollars a month and they have a swimming pool. And it’s so nice. Music comes in all the rooms—all the day.

  “It’s wonderful,” Mother said. “I’m telling you—it’s wonderful.”

  Emily had come in to join us. I wanted to change the subject. Mona had put out a cigarette and lit up yet another.

  “Why don’t you ease up on the smoking,” I said to her.

  “I tried. But I can’t. It’s my nerves. I need a cigarette. I tried candies but they don’t work. What can I do?”

  “Many men smoke,” I said. “But Fu Manchu.”

  Only Emily laughed.

  “You should go and see Israel,” Mother said. “It’s wonderful. For three hundred and fifty dollars you stay at the David Hotel. You have a table full of fish. You take what fish you want. You pay no more. No tips. Nothing. It’s wonderful.”

  “But you haven’t been there,” I said.

  “People who have tell me,” she said quietly.

  I went out of the room and when I came back Mother was saying: “I have had two proposals so I went and asked the doctor. He said what do you need another man to get sick on you and you have to look after him. I’m sixty-seven but I look sixty-one or sixty-two.”

  I didn’t expect to be but I was taken back by this.

  A few moments later tears appeared in her eyes. “Next year will be the fiftieth anniversary of my getting married.” She rubbed the back of her hand against her eyes.

  “How old is Chuck?” I quickly asked Mona.

  “Twenty,” she said.

  “What are you going to do when he gets older?” Mother said.

  “What do you mean?” Mona came back.

  “You should get out of Meridian,” Mother said. “Go to Toronto—you might meet someone there. You ought to marry again.”

  Chuck came in very excited.

  “Landed on moon. Landed.”

  Then he went back, to the other room, to watch television.

  “What do you and Gordon do, Emily, on Saturday nights?” Mona asked. “Do you go out?”

  “We stay in and watch television.”

  “That’s just like Chuck and me. That’s what we do, every Saturday night.”

  Next morning it was bright and sunny. We were sitting around the kitchen table having breakfast. Mother was talking. She was telling the children: “—your grandfather was an architect. He came over to Montreal in 1904. He stayed a couple of years. But he didn’t like the life. So he went back to Poland.”

  When the phone went.

  Emily answered. She spoke quietly, didn’t say much, and hung up.

  “That was my mother to say Florrie died,” she said and went into the back kitchen.

  “I knew someone was going to die,” Mona said. “Because of the birds. They were so loud this morning. They woke me up.”

  “Those are gulls,” I said. “They are with us all the time.”

  “I thought it would be one of us,” she said.

  I went to see Emily. She was standing in the sunny courtyard against the whitewashed wall crying.

  Mother, Mona, and Chuck went with the kids to the beach.

  I remember Florrie. We spent our honeymoon at their farm, about forty miles from here. Emily was evacuated from London during the war. She came to Cornwall with her name on a luggage label around her neck. Florrie picked her out, at the station, from all the other kids because she said she was dressed in a nice fawn coat. She lived the war years with Florrie and her husband, Morley. Helped to bring the cows in, helped with the milking. Bicycled and walked around the country roads, the fields with the derelict mine shafts. “I used to write letters to my parents,” Emily said, “saying I hate it here, take me away, they make me work. Now I look upon it as one of the happiest times of my life. I was lucky—it’s like having a bonus. Now Florrie is dead and something has ended.”

  And I remembered Florrie coming every Christmas with our Christmas goose or turkey. “A dear little family,” she called us. And the last time, when we told her we were all going up to London for a holiday and would be on the Cornish Riviera Express, Florrie said she would come out and wave a white tablecloth. We all stood in the corridor of the train looking out as we came near the place where Emily grew up. And there, in the distance, the white tablecloth moved slowly in the
breeze—as we waved our handkerchiefs back.

  The funeral on Sunday was in a Methodist Chapel. Very plain except for the organ. The chapel was packed. The singing was loud and excellent. And I sang as loud as I could because Florrie was the only one who said I could sing. Everyone else says I can’t keep a tune.

  Then we went to the cemetery. There was this tall church on top of a hill with the cemetery on the steep grass slope. There were fields with hedges and trees on both sides. As we stood by the open grave, a cow was going across the field opposite us. Emily saw faces of people she knew twenty-five years ago. And she showed me the gravestones of Florrie’s father, of Morley’s mother and cousin. Trees, grass, fields. It somehow felt right, here, in the cemetery. And I envied people who knew where they were going to be buried.

  When we came back and opened the front door we could hear singing. Mother and Mona were in the courtyard clapping their hands and singing with the kids.

  Oh, how we danced

  On the night we were wed . . .

  We didn’t want to see them. So we went upstairs to the attic room. Emily went to the window and looked out at the deep blue water in the bay, the stone cottages, the far shore fields.

  “I hate the sea,” she said and began to cry. “I wish I belonged to something. I don’t belong to anything. There’s your mother, your sister, and yourself—you all belong to something. Even if you have run away from it. And there’s Florrie and Morley—they belong to something.”

  I thought, where do I belong? Where does Emily? Mother? Mona?

  Although it was after six in the evening the light was still bright. The sky had high summer clouds. And they were lit up by greens, light pinks, and orange. A gull was making its honking noise close by. And further away it was answered by another.

  I could hear the children, inside, around the piano. They were playing a duet and singing loudly, “Things ain’t what they used to be.”

  There was still another week to go but I was marking off the days. I found myself coming up to the attic to get away from the constant talk they kept up. Even the kids no longer listened to what they were told and had stopped being on their best behaviour. Judith had one of her little bursts of temperament and answered Emily back. When Mona heard this she said, “Judith, you remind me of me. What’s the matter honey? You don’t look pleased.”

  Emily was also becoming edgy. When she asked me to do something. And I said I would do it later.

  “You’re like your mother,” she came back sharply. “You both live as if life goes on forever. But I don’t think that way. I know there isn’t much time. When a week goes by and I haven’t done something, I feel I’ve squandered a bit of my life. But both of you think you have all the time in the world.”

  They could have stayed another week with us. But I told them they ought to see London while they were over here. They didn’t want to very much. I said I would phone and get them a room in a hotel. It had to be central as Chuck couldn’t get on a bus.

  “How about twenty-five dollars a night?” I called from the phone.

  Mona agreed.

  Mother was against it. “Twenty-five dollars just to sleep in a bed?”

  In the end I got them something cheaper.

  “Type me out a list of what to see,” Mona said. “Put, first, Fiddler on the Roof. And I want to travel on the train first class.”

  The last morning came.

  “How time flies,” Mother said at breakfast. “It went so quickly.”

  Mona came in without Chuck. She seemed to shrink physically in size and become anxious. Except for the tan, she looked like she did when she arrived. “I can’t get Chuck out of bed,” she said. “He’s hiding under the bedclothes. He doesn’t want to get up today. He thinks if he doesn’t get up we won’t have to go.”

  “I’ll go and get him,” Mother said.

  And she did. She came walking back with him, holding his arm in a tight grip so that she took most of his weight.

  “Look at us,” she called out. “We are going steady.”

  When the taxi came, Mona and Mother wept as they kissed the kids.

  We went with them to the mainline station.

  “It’s like Europe,” Mother said as the taxi drove through the country. “It looks so nice here, the fields, the trees.”

  Mona and Chuck looked lost. I had a feeling, even then, that they were waiting for me to say: why don’t you stay the last week here?

  But I didn’t say it.

  At the mainline station we had to wait for the train. I walked up and down the platform. Mother came over.

  “You wear your heels down the same way as your father.”

  And when I went to kiss her goodbye she offered me her face sideways—just like Kate, I thought.

  Coming back in the taxi, Emily and I were silent for several miles. Then Emily said:

  “She came too late.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  The hedges, the small green fields, were by us on both sides. Then the first glimpse of the sea and the hovering gulls.

  When I opened the front door one of the kids was playing “Happy Birthday” on the piano. I had forgotten it was Emily’s birthday. The kids had set the kitchen table. In the middle there was a chocolate cake with small candies. And birthday cards were on the dresser.

  We sat in our places around the table. Emily lit the candles on the cake. Judith pulled the curtain across the window. It was nice by candlelight.

  We joined hands and sang “Happy Birthday.”

  Then Emily stood up and took a deep breath.

  “Make a wish,” Kate said excitedly.

  Emily hesitated. Then blew out the candles.

  We all applauded.

  Judith moved the curtain and let the daylight back into the room.

  Then we began to eat.

  THIN ICE

  In the spring of 1965 a book of mine was published. And it got more notice and sold more copies than all my previous books combined. It was translated into several languages. The CBC and the BBC made half-hour films because of it. It went into paperback. Money began to come in from various places. Someone in Madrid wanted to use extracts in an English for foreigners textbook. Someone in Halifax wanted to make a recording of it for the blind. I was interviewed for British newspapers and magazines. Articles were written. I received a number of invitations: to open a new primary school in Cornwall, to give talks, to give readings. And one invitation came from the head of the English department of a university in the Maritimes offering three months as resident writer beginning in January. As I didn’t know the Atlantic provinces and as I wanted to be back in Canada, I decided to go.

  I arrived by plane on January 6th. I was met at the airport, which consisted almost entirely of fields of snow piled high and long drifts. “I can’t remember when we’ve had so much snow and such cold weather,” the head of the English department said. “We’re blaming the Russians.”

  His face reminded me of an Indian chief but he smiled easily and was smartly dressed in a black winter coat, a white scarf, and a black Astrakhan hat that he wore tilted to the side. He drove, in a large low car with chains on the tires, to the best hotel in the city and led me to the top floor, to two comfortable rooms.

  “Will this be all right?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  Suddenly the life of a near-recluse that I had lived before changed. I was interviewed for the student newspaper, the town’s daily paper, the local radio and TV. I was invited to contribute a regular article to the local monthly magazine. The commercial radio station would phone up and ask what did I think of a particular current topic? And what I said on the phone was taped and then broadcast. There was a display of my books and manuscripts (in glass cases) in the university library. The main bookshop in the place filled a window with my books. I gave talks and re
adings to a variety of women’s and men’s clubs. The leading Jewish businessman, Pettigorsky (he owned the largest department store), gave a dinner in my honour at the Jewish community centre. After a filling meal (that included soup and mandlen, chicken, blintzes, and lokshen kugel), and I had made my speech and everyone was standing up and drinking and smoking, Mr. Pettigorsky came over.

  “It will take you a while to get used to living here,” he said apologetically. “The first year you’ll hate it. The second won’t be so bad. After you have lived here three years you won’t want to leave.”

  But I liked it from the start.

  I enjoyed going to the various teas, luncheons, and dinners. I liked being asked to meet visiting VIPs who were passing through. Besides professors and undergraduates, I was also meeting judges, politicians, engineers, surgeons, scientists, army officers, restaurateurs, businessmen.

  And I had this warm office in the arts building that overlooked the snow-covered campus and the city. I would go to the office, twice a week, and there would be people outside the door waiting to see me. I was like a doctor. Undergraduates would come—possibly with their ailments, but they would express it differently. Girls would say: “My boyfriend’s too shy to come, but I’ve come,” and say that he was trying to write a novel.

  I was the first resident writer the university of this town had. And, after the early hectic weeks, it was mainly people not to do with the university who came to see me.

  The first were two Army officers’ wives from the large Army camp some miles outside the city. They told me that they were from Toronto and Vancouver and were only temporarily at the camp. They were going to put on a musical and wanted my approval. They intended to use the tunes of familiar songs—”Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” “You Made Me Love You,” “It’s All Right with Me”—but they would put their own words to the tunes. And these words were to be witty comments on local events, especially Army camp gossip.

  “We thought of beginning,” said the lady from Toronto, “by having a voice come over the loudspeaker. It would be a pilot on Air Canada speaking to his passengers: ‘“You are now approaching the Maritimes—please put your clocks back fifty years.’”