“That’s a compliment,” prompted Mike, photobombing the call. “Hi, Nana. What song are you doing today?”
“I’m not sure I’m doing anything,” said Fran.
“Yeah, right. You say that all the time and then you get up on stage and you transform into Tina Turner or Cher. I still remember when you and Zayde performed I Got You Babe at Shelley’s wedding.”
“That must have been something,” said Freddie, imagining the diminutive figure of Nana Fran staring into her late husband’s face, creating a moment of intimacy at her granddaughter’s wedding.
“It was. I have the video,” said Fran. “Mike converted it so I can watch it on my iPad.”
“Aww. He’ll have to show it to me soon,” smiled Freddie. “We’re staying together,” she added. “We’re on lockdown for two weeks. Hopefully, they’ll lift the restrictions soon.”
“How was Plattsburgh?”
“It was Plattsburgh,” shrugged Mike. “I picked up my books at Champlain, we made a run through Tar-Jay and we had a burger at Five Guys. It was good, but I prefer the fries at La Belle Province.”
“Nothing can beat local French fries,” said Fran. “Remember the drives we used to take on Sundays? We’d all load into your parents’ van and we’d go to the chip wagon in Hawkesbury.”
“Yeah. How could I forget?” Crossing into another province just to enjoy French fries sounded good, even though it wasn’t even eleven o’clock. “What time is karaoke, Nan?”
“We have eight minutes. We should go, though. I want to get a Diet Coke. It’s not too early, is it?”
“Depends what you put into it,” laughed Mike. “You’re not gonna spike it, are you? Go and show ‘em what you’re made of. Love ya!”
Chapter 4
“At least our grandmothers are doing okay,” said Freddie. “I worry about them. It can’t be easy, going through something like this at their ages.”
“They were teenagers during the Second World War, so maybe this is familiar territory for them,” said Mike. “They’re pretty well confined to the King Solomon, so they won’t miss getting out and going places, and the staff does take good care of them, so that’s something. You hear such horror stories about old age homes, but I think they’re in a decent place. My other grandmother lives with my dad. They’re in Thornhill,” he added.
“I didn’t know that,” said Freddie. “Why are you here and not in Toronto?”
“I went to McGill and I never wanted to leave,” said Mike with a shrug. He took off his glasses to wipe them with the corner of his green plaid shirt, and Freddie couldn’t help but notice how his eyes looked.
“I went to UCLA,” said Freddie. “I wanted to get into Communication Studies, but more than anything, I wanted to live in Los Angeles. So when I got into Gerontology, I grabbed the opportunity. I didn’t finish my degree, but I will. Some day.”
“And then?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I can get a job at the King Solomon. I love working with the elderly. The stories they have to tell! When I was in CEGEP, we recorded a group of Holocaust survivors talking about when they were liberated. It’s amazing to relive this through them. It makes you believe in the strength of people. Do you know what I mean?”
“I do.” Obviously, the lack of makeup was having an effect on Freddie’s level of tolerability. It was hard to reconcile the woman who was so moved by stories of survival with the overly made-up woman who was panicked by the thought of gluten.
“Why don’t we get Chinese food for ourselves tonight,” proposed Mike. “Rose and Nana will be enjoying it. Why shouldn’t we?”
“Good idea,” said Freddie. “Where do you want to order from?”
“I know this place in Chinatown that delivers. You can order for The Grannies and I’ll order for us. Any food allergies that I should know about?”
“None whatsoever,” said Freddie. “But maybe we should look at the menu together just in case we overlook something.”
“Good idea. I wouldn’t want us to have a FOMO dinner.”
Freddie couldn’t tell if Mike was being sarcastic or not, so she assumed he was. It was probably the best default position, given the circumstances.
The rest of the day slipped by, as days in quarantine tend to do. Freddie found a yoga class online, and even though she didn’t have the proper gear, she enjoyed a few minutes of relaxation. Then, after the class, she went online to order some athleisurewear.
“I guess I’ll have everything shipped here,” she said pointedly. Mike adjusted his glasses and looked up from his book, one of the ones he’d picked up the day before.
“I guess so. The entry code is 217,” he added. “And if you’re short on the minimum for free shipping, I have a couple of things you can throw in.”
Freddie wasn’t worried about the free shipping. Not when she saw how much the order of “basics” was adding up to. Out of courtesy as well as a touch of curiosity, she asked, “Sure. What do you need?”
Mike handed her a hand-written list. Freddie read it with interest.
“Vitamin D, Post-It notes, and what are those? Books? But you just bought books.”
“And these are different books,” said Mike. “What did you order?” He peered at the screen. “The clothes are at least recognizable, but what are all the rest of the things? Primer, contour, a set of brushes, special effects? Do you paint?”
“It’s makeup, and there’s an art to it, so, yeah.” Freddie preened. As soon as the delivery got there, she’d be able to get back to feeling like herself again. Without makeup, she felt – what was the right word? Undressed? Naked? Vulnerable? How about d) All of the above.
“Just a few basics,” she added virtuously. In tough times, there was no excuse for flagrant extravagance. On the other hand, in tough times, it was important to keep your standards up. She’d learned that from the Holocaust survivors, especially the woman who’d lamented how she couldn’t get any beauty products after Auschwitz had been liberated, and the luxury of using scented soap in a hot bath would have been just the thing.
“Well, you do you,” said Mike, as off-handedly as he could. Since seeing Freddie stretching and posing during her yoga class, he’d realized that maybe being quarantined with her wouldn’t be the worst thing. If he could get past the fact that she was vapid and shallow, they’d get along reasonably well. Then, they could get closer, until…
“Lunch!” announced Freddie. “I’m ordering salads. Unless you want the beet burger.”
“The burger sounds good,” said Mike. "You remembered that I like burgers.” Another point scored.
“Well, my short-term memory is slightly better than Bubbie’s,” said Freddie. “I have just enough time to call my folks. I hope they can get the connection. They’re in the Caribbean.” She stared at the phone, then shook her head. “Not now,” she said with annoyance. “I’ve never seen such a bad setup in my life. You’d think it was ten years ago. Do you know what they have to pay for Wi-Fi? It’s insane!”
“My parents aren’t the cruise type. They’re total homebodies. Mom has Dad working on a few renovation projects that he’s been putting off. I think he’s gonna attempt to put in a new vanity in the bathroom in the basement. Personally, I think they’ve been watching too much HGTV. Dad thinks he can do anything.”
“Exciting,” said Freddie, not knowing what else to comment.
“For them it is. They’ve been in the same house ever since I can remember. With the prices of Toronto real estate, Jason – that’s my brother – keeps telling them to sell and downsize into a condo. But they’re stubborn.”
“And you take after them, don’t you?” Freddie forced a smile.
“Yeah.” Unlike his quarantine date’s, Mike’s smile was genuine. “I almost bought a place near the Parc Metro station. It was an apartment building that was converted into condos. But there was a cockroach situation, so that was a no-go. Too bad. I would have enjoyed fixing it up. I like doing things with my hands.”
Freddie stared at her impeccably manicured fingers. The last manual thing she’d done with significance was to run her fingers across the perfectly shaven cheek of The Big Hurt. No, that wasn’t right. She’d curled Bubbie Rose’s hair and given her a manicure, using the same nail polish that the Royal Family favoured. “Now, you look like a queen,” she’d said.
When would she see her grandmother again? Video-chatting was a poor substitute for the real thing. Freddie felt like a little girl when she was with her grandmother. The potted African violet plants, the china cups and saucers on display, the box of social tea biscuits on the counter – all of these were touchstones for a life well-lived.
Rose had been a pioneer, a proto feminist. Although her peers were stay-at-home moms, she had worked in a hospital as an x-ray technician, She kept up with advances in medicine, and often commented that nowadays, she’d be called an imaging technologist and would be able to do MRIs, CT scans and ultrasounds as well as radiography. Rose had met her husband at the hospital when he’d come into the ER with a bloody, broken nose. She was the x-ray technician on duty at the time, and the rest was history.
Harry Zanger was a salesman in the schmatta business. That was a bit of a cliché. The interesting part about him was that he was also an amateur boxer, hence the smashed schnozz. There had been a thriving boxing scene in Montreal, and the Jewish Community Centre was one of the epicentres. Zadye Harry had taught Freddie to box when she was a toddler, and she channeled him every time she went to certain fitness classes.
Lunch arrived, and not a minute too soon. Freddie had forgotten to add green tea to her Amazon order, so she’d be going without for a few days at least. Unbowed by this setback, she microwaved herself a cup of hot water and opened the paper bags.
“Okay, this is yours,” she said, pushing the burger over to Mike. He set his book aside and opened the recyclable container. “What exactly is this?”
“You said you wanted the beet burger,” said Freddie as she delicately dipped her fork into the container of miso salad dressing.
“Ah. I must have misheard. I thought you said beef burger.” Mike took a bite, then his expression went flat. “This is a burger,” he said. “Made out of beets. It’s borscht in burger form. I will not be ordering this again,” he added. He was hungry enough to make a sizeable dent in it, after picking the alfalfa sprouts off and not-so-discreetly depositing them on his napkin. “How’s your salad?”
“It’s good. You want some?”
“Nah. I’m fine.”
This was not good, thought Freddie, despite Mike’s assurances. Who didn’t like beet burgers? Seriously… Suddenly, she had an idea. “Let’s not save the good stuff for a special occasion,” she said with an evil grin. She got up from her chair and returned several seconds later with the bag of Oreos. “It’s party time,” she said with as much enthusiasm as she could muster. “Which one do you want to try first? Carrot Cake or Peanut Butter?”
“Surprise me,” said Mike, holding out one hand and covering his eyes with the other. He took a bite of the cookie, still covering his eyes.
“These aren’t half-bad,” he said, his voice muffled as he chewed. “Your turn. Eeny, meeny, miney, mo, here’s a surprise Oreo!”
“Ohh, that’s soo good,” said Freddie as she nibbled the cookie. It was bordering on the restaurant scene from “When Harry Met Sally,” but the cookie was just that good. “I have to go on social media and post about this,” she said, grabbing her phone.
“You’re gonna post about a cookie?”
“And I’m gonna tag the company so they’ll know that I posted. That’s how this works.” It took her seconds to take a picture of the half-eaten cookie and tap out a brief text. Then, she stared at the phone, waiting for reactions. “If they send me that freakin’ weasel GIF, I’m gonna go ballistic.”
After a few minutes, and a few more cookies, Freddie reached for her phone. “I think I’ve been cancelled. No, I haven’t. There’s an AITA about my situation on Twitter. It’s fictionalized, slightly. But anyone can tell it’s me. Look. The YTA score was 98.6.”
“That’s normal. If you’re a temperature.” Mike didn’t know what else he could say. Freddie was The Asshole for having kissed her supposed BFF’s BF. Aww, jeez. Now he was starting to sound like one of his students, the kind that watched Catching Up with the Caplanskys and hung on to every word that they said as if they were important people. Rich, definitely. Important, not so much. Unless your idea of importance hinged on celebrity. His didn’t. The only thing the Caplanskys had that he didn’t have was a terminal case of affluenza.
Mike had watched a couple of episodes of the show, so he could keep up with his students. It was a good segue to studying poetry, because Marge Piercy’s “A Work of Artifice” was on the reading list. And it was even relevant to the episodes they’d watched, because the Caplanskys had purchased bonsai California redwoods that lived in coffee mugs, and the poem discussed the plight of a bonsai, diminished by the need to conform to a standard of beauty and behaviour. He had to curtail the discussion after two sessions, because a new student was hospitalized for an eating disorder, and her treating team thought it would have been harmful to her at this stage of her trajectory. But he would always associate the Caplanskys with this poem. Did they have the insight to even get the reference? Doubtful.
Mike took another Oreo, this time opting for Peanut Butter. He unscrewed it, then stuck it back together and devoured it in one bite.
Chapter 5
After an afternoon of relative domestic felicity, it was time to order dinner. Freddie ordered the plates for the two grandmothers, then Face Timed with them to tell them the good news. Mike cheerfully photobombed, and they had a nice chat about karaoke, and how Marv Silverman did a great version of “Are You Lonesome Tonight.” This led to The Grannies recounting how scandalous Elvis was when he’d first hit the scene, and how his nickname was Elvis the Pelvis with his Pizza-Platter Hips.
Neither Mike nor Freddie had been alive at the same time as Elvis, assuming you believed the date of his death was accurate. But they listened with their full attention, because neither of them wanted to believe that this was not just another day.
Then, Mike’s parents called, and he pretended to be extremely impressed with the new vanity. It hadn’t been installed, but his father and brother had assembled it. It took four hours. Oh yeah, Jason and Emily had split up a couple of weeks ago and Jason had moved back in with them.
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” asked Mike. “Way to bury the lede, Dad.” His brother Jason had been with Emily for years, to the point that they were nicknamed Jamily – two people mashed up into one happy couple. They’d talked about buying a house together, even getting married one day if they decided to have kids. Now, Jamily was dead and Jason was single, living in his old bedroom, the one with the Blue Jays posters. And as if it was too trivial to mention, he’d lost his job because of COVID-19. Good thing he was eligible for the government program, eh? Thanks, Justin.
Freddie hung back. Ordinarily she would have come on screen and said hello, introducing herself as being the granddaughter of Fran’s best friend. But there was something heavy going on, and the last thing she needed was to get caught in the middle of even more family drama. Her time with the Caplanskys had taught at least that much.
The only thing Freddie could do was to make a pot of tea, so she did, using the Red Rose orange pekoe tea that every Canadian had on hand. While she was prowling through the pantry in search of honey, she listened in on as much of the conversation as she could, out of sheer politeness.
Mike would probably be all, like, “Can you believe it?” and she would be Doing the Right Thing by not making him have to repeat the whole messy saga. Her parents had always said she was a considerate person. Freddie preened at the thought of making her parents happy. She lived for these moments and took great pains to make sure they came along as often as possible. Freddie searched her memory bank, lookin
g for the perfect example. None came to mind. It must have been the stress.
Reflexively, she called Bubbie Rose, the only person in the world who didn’t hate her for kissing The Big Hurt. The call went to voice mail, which probably meant that karaoke was still on. It tended to drag on past the appointed time, because once Tessa the rec-tech got everyone started on the Beatles, there was no turning back.
When she brought her guitar, things were even worse, timewise. Around the holidays, they’d done version of Feliz Navidad that ended up almost half an hour long, because nobody knew how to end the song. It was the largest conglomeration of Jewish people singing Christmas carols ever and might have even qualified as a world record. Freddie could imagine them stuck in an endless loop of Twist and Shout, like Charlie not being able to get off the MTA. That was one of the songs her grandfather used to sing to her. When she’d gone to Boston, she’d made a point of riding on the MTA, so she could take a video and send it to Bubbie Rose, who had a hard time figuring out how to view it. Nonetheless, she was incredibly grateful. The video had been shot on the anniversary of Grandpa Harry’s death, so it was especially meaningful.
“I’m gonna try my folks again,” said Freddie to nobody in particular. Mike was still on the phone, and his contributions to the conversation had dwindled down to the odd “Yeah,” or “Okay, Dad.” But he was actively engaged, if his body language was any indication.
After about five minutes of active listening, Mike was ready to explode. “I don’t give a rat’s ass about the quarantine,” he said. “I’m coming down there and I’m going to administer the biggest attitude adjustment my brother has ever had. I can control a room full of teenagers, so believe me when I tell you that I can do it.”
A minute later, Mike started to depressurize. “Yeah, I know. No, I won’t do anything illegal. Of course I don’t want to put anyone in jeopardy. Give me some credit. You can’t drop a bombshell like this on me and expect me to not react.”
My Funny Quarantine Page 3
