Splitsville Read online

  Lily takes a sip. Holy Gutenberg! she says.

  Sachs gives himself a refill. So here’s this poor schmuck, he says, and he’s got to copy out The Consolation of Philosophy for the sixteenth fucking time. He’s working by candlelight, his hand’s cramping like crazy, and he says, Screw you, Boethius! And sticks some of his own sentences in there.

  And they’re recorded for posterity, says Lily. Have you read Mumford?

  Sachs tops her up. Uh-huh, he says.

  He says the city lives by remembering, that its true value comes from how well it can pass on its culture to the next society.

  Right.

  Lily leans back in her chair, such naked laughter. You haven’t read Mumford, have you? C’mon. Tell me the truth.

  Sachs smiles. Make me, he says.

  Veins of frost on the windowpane, but his pad heats up fast. She’s on top, commands a slow, steady rhythm. Her sibilant obscenities. He tries to hold back his words as he holds back his climax. No longer. They come not quite together, but not very far apart either.

  ◊

  When you were a boy, people always remarked how much you looked like him. Nothing specific, they said, just something about you. The older you got, the greater the resemblance. Both of you skinny with squinty grey eyes. The same thin chicken legs, the same laugh lines around the mouth. The same laugh, like a last gasp from a collapsed lung.

  And like him, your livelihood squirms around a book, a book, another book. A writer and a seller, a pair of marginal characters on opposite ends of a business that now choicelessly meet in the middle.

  ◊

  Histamine snore gives him a start. Heavy-lidded, his eyes loll. Lily is tangled in the sheets. Her boozy breath. Coherence comes with one long slow inhale. He holds a lungful. The bedroom is windowless, but midmorning sounds – delivery-truck honk and hiss, bark of mongers – are well underway. When was the last time he got laid? More snores from Lily. A minor rustle exposes breast and hip. There are fingertip bruises on her thigh. Sachs spans his hand. Hovers it above. A perfect match.

  ◊

  You know, of course, how this story ends: Lily breaks it off, the expressway is killed, Sachs vanishes. Such violence in those initial actions – to break, to kill. Outcomes of indispute that make it easy for you to imagine how your uncle might choose to hesitate. He lived in a city on the verge. Changes were about to come to his shop, his street. He sat on the fence so long that splinters were inevitable.

  ◊

  Second-period civics, Harbord Collegiate. Lily explains suffrage with textbook efficiency. She sticks to the curriculum, reminds the class that the legal voting age is now eighteen.

  You’ll be eligible next year, she says.

  A hand shoots up. Marla Goldman: pimply, whiny, distraught over glandular delicacies she’ll never overcome. So what? she says. It’s all just a bunch of baloney.

  Lily sits on the edge of her desk. A lot of people feel the same way, she says. Voter turnout is historically low.

  See?

  Lily folds her arms. Restraint covers her like a rash.

  After class, she clomps through Kensington Market. Pushes back against the steady press of people. The market asynchronous and fishy this morning. She makes her way across Baldwin, stays under awnings. The softly falling snow becomes a blizzard of feathers, a memory from when she was six years old: she had a tight grip on her grandmother’s hand when she heard the schoctim dress down one poor woman who had improperly plucked a chicken. Such squawking. Not just the terrified fowl, but her own terror, which lodged in her throat like a dreamtime scream.

  Shvants, her grandmother had said. Why not pay them more than two cents a bird?

  Ida Klein had no truck with repression. She found her footing way back in 1912, one of hundreds of Eaton Company garment workers who walked off the job. And then she continued to walk – out on her wayward husband. She raised her son with a rabble-rouser’s aplomb and, when Sid proved to be as feckless in love as his father, raised Lily as well. The two women share both pallor and mien, a sharp-tongued resiliency that ended with Ida’s aphasia. Five years ago, she suffered a stroke that left her without speech. Lily visits her twice a week.

  In the atrium of the nursing home, the hoary and the hoarse. A young doctor gets cornered by a jut-jawed babushka, her cane wobbles as her voice rises. Someone spills juice on the floor. A quartet of alta kockers trade cackles. Lily turns her head toward a wheelchair squeal and sees her grandmother swivel window-ward. Lily pulls up a hard plastic chair and pulls an orange out of her pocket. Peels it. Feeds an eighth. Ida looks at Lily with big silent eyes. Juice runs down her chin.

  Chew, Gram, you have to chew.

  ◊

  Your earliest memory is assembled out of moments from that day – the day your mother filed a missing-persons report. Your parents sat at the kitchen table. They never did this except at mealtime. Their sentences, incomplete, carried strange weight.

  Maybe he, said your father. His sandbag face shifted with unspoken gravity.

  Oh, Larry.

  Vacation, you know? With her.

  Without telling me? He’d never.

  For chrissakes, Min.

  You stood in the doorway. Bugs Bunny hijinks on the tube behind you. Commercial time came and you wanted a glass of milk. Your mother took notice: Did you get peanut butter on the couch again? Her words were ragged, the facecloth rougher than usual in her hands. Your father picked up the phone, paused.

  Larry. Call.

  The dial tone was the loudest thing in the room.

  More cartoons. The opening credits of Super Friends had just begun when the doorbell rang. The police officer was very tall. He wore his shoes in the house. He had one big eyebrow.

  The witnesses were all reliable. A man who fit his description was spotted, late in the night, on the Queen East streetcar. He was also seen at Union Station, under the rotunda of the Great Hall, luggageless. One driver swore he appeared on the shoulder of Lakeshore Boulevard, illuminated by the onrush of headlights. His thumb was out.

  Your mother was certain about one thing: He would never hitchhike. She would explain this to neighbours, relatives, reporters. As though the danger of a stranger’s car caused her more grief than the fact that her brother had vanished without a word. At least that was the kind of trouble that could be pinned down. But as the days passed, all explanations hardened into mere recital. The house grew grave. Sobs and nods. Even your father, rarely tight-lipped, muttered but brief asides. Right in the kishkas, he’d say, or Backroom shenanigans.

  He was shushed often.

  Something in the impenetrable adultness of those two little words: the backroom. You were too young to attach any meaning beyond simple aural significance, but with age came the sound of hushed and lurid antics, the unmistakable murmur of bad behaviour. Montaigne writes of the need for an arrière boutique, a metaphorical room behind the shop where the truest self can grab a seat. He also wrote that there is more wildness in thinking than in lust.

  ◊

  The next day, nearly sundown. The Jewish shops close early, observant merchants head home. Sachs, too, locks up and rushes to his apartment upstairs. Lily is already there. Her laughter is soft but certain, like the sound of an unbuttoned blouse as it hits the floor. Up and down the street, neighbours prepare for the Sabbath, while these two, apostates both, eschew foreplay. She is wet, prehensile, and makes a mitzvah of sucking his cock.

  ◊

  There is a photo from your mother’s wedding that she has never liked: Min in white gown, her eyes flash-red. She gestures with a glass, but her brother appears to be distracted by something just outside the frame. In the time it took for the shutter to open and close, he became a blur.

  You were ten years old and had no one to play with. In the backyard, you went into the windup. Threw the tennis ball against the wall and caught it off the bounce. Strike two! This was a familiar game, one played in the head with oneiric facility. You were almost through
the imagined batting order before your mother held the screen door ajar. Hinge grate and a jumble in her throat: I’ve told you a million times! Don’t throw the ball against the wall.

  You blinked.

  Now come inside and wash up.

  You pounded the pocket of your mitt, dallied here and there, and hit the kitchen. Your father chomped a radish.

  What’s up, kiddo?

  I dunno.

  The table set not quite the same as always. Beyond the salad bowl, in between the napkin holder and breadbasket, sat a yahrzeit candle. An all-day flame lit in memory of a man who had finally, seven years after he vanished, been declared dead. You watched it shimmy on the wick.

  Pass the butter, said your father.

  Twelve years later, another commemorative, another all-day candle. Your mother opened a box of Kleenex. Behind blown honker, she attempted to parse out her brother.

  His problems began with that woman, said Min. I believe that. I really do.

  She stuffed a wad of tissue into the cuff of her blouse and continued: I mean, I know he’d always had his moods. I’d go weeks without getting him on the phone. And when I did, it was as if nothing happened. He’d never mention it. Not a word.

  A toilet flushed. Your father’s latest tax rant became louder in the hall. You were twenty-two. You had gotten high through an apple on the way uptown. Your mother was ready to set the table. Knives, forks, spoons, her words rattled within the cutlery drawer: She was a bit of a boozer, you know.

  ◊

  The next day, Sachs breaks a sweat. Drags a dozen cartons from the backroom before a bitchy sacrum gives him pause. He kneels. Lifts a lid and catches a good whiff of old wood pulp, a thousand prior mornings in his nostrils.

  The door opens and in with a gust comes his friend Joe Sharpe. Name matches his tongue, a killer kibbitzer.

  On your knees? he says. Good. Pray for guidance.

  I’m sure you can offer me some.

  Joe grins and runs a forefinger across the dusty top of the register. He’s a middleman for Durwood-Grubb, an outfit that has swallowed city blocks whole and spit out rubble. Leases have been ended, evictions ordered. Sachs, a renter of both commercial and residential space, has so far clung with success to the terms of his original tenancy. But, as the expressway decision looms, Joe is sent by his bosses to talk turkey with his stubborn chum.

  You think things won’t change, he says. You think it’ll be business as usual. We’re talking five thousand more cars downtown. Per hour. That means parking lots, baby. That means millions of dollars in real estate up for grabs.

  That means you show up every month with a new spiel.

  Joe rubs his chin, an hispidulous deliberation. These guys, he says, they only know dollars and sense. Common sense. They don’t know how to deal with a yutz like you.

  And you do.

  I’m just trying to look out for you, pal.

  Sachs straightens up with a soft groan. I know, he says. But if you really want to help, go lug those last boxes out here. My back is killing me.

  Businessman’s lunch at the Victory Burlesque. Joe Sharpe glances stagewise. Chérie LaRue, held over another week, slips off one sheer glove and flings it into the crowd. Sparse noonday chortle.

  Grubb, née Gruber, orders the usual and says, Did he sign?

  Not yet.

  We’re sitting on sixty million worth of real estate, Joe.

  I know.

  My guy’s camped out at the Land Registry Office.

  I know, says Joe. I’m working on him. I just need more time.

  The food arrives. Grubb’s got a mouthful of eggroll, Chérie is down to her pasties, tassel-tipped. The Victory was once a theatre where Yiddish actors risked jailtime for their agitprop performances.

  What’s the holdup? Money? Because you can go up to six, seven if you need.

  Nah. It’s not the money. It’s just how he is. The shop is all he knows.

  Well, use your judgment, says Grubb. You’ve always done a nice job for us.

  Joe nods. He dips a chicken ball.

  ◊

  Friday night, uptown. The Aklers have a Buick in the drive and a mezuzah by the door. The table is set for four. They say the Motzi, then the kiddish. Min serves the soup, ladle on the precipice of a sudden aporia.

  Just tell me one thing, says Larry.

  Shoot.

  Why don’t you want to move?

  I never said never, says Sachs. I just said maybe later.

  Maybes mean bupkes.

  C’mon, Larry.

  What come on? We’ve all moved away from there. You’re bringing up the rear.

  Aitch Akler, three years old and a mouthful of challah, sniggles. His uncle slurps the soup, a passive indolence honed after years of Sabbath dinners at his sister’s house. Larry’s in automotive, Min protects the furniture with plastic. They’re original up-the-hillniks, part of the first wave of affluent couples who moved out of the cramped homes of their Spadina Avenue forebears and into the new, big-lawned bungalows of North York.

  Listen, says Larry. There’s no percentage in sticking it out. Once the expressway goes through, you’ll lose all your leverage.

  If it goes through.

  Puh-leese. They’ve spent what? Thirty million already? Of course they’re going to finish it.

  So what do you suggest?

  Shut it down and come work for me.

  Auto parts, says Sachs. I don’t even like to drive.

  Min in the kitchen fixes a platter of gefilte fish. In the arrangement of jellied patties a deep appeal, her homemaker’s id fully satisfied with the preparation of an appetizer. Back at the table, though, it’s a different kettle of fish. How many times has her husband tried to nudge her unnudgeable brother? Not that he shouldn’t try, of course. The bookshop has long been in the red and no one has a better head for business than Larry. Min looks around: where did she leave the tongs?

  We own half of that store, don’t forget.

  She owns half, says Sachs.

  You know what I mean: we’re entitled to have our say.

  Min’s back in, lugging the same old words. Nothing in her diction has ever been up to this task. Her advice unheeded, her concern misinterpreted. Theirs is a sibling relationship of eager queries and offhand responses. He might mention a dinner date six months past or a first edition found and sold, but his elaborations were all mumbles and shrugs.

  We just want you to think of the future, she says.

  Someone’s got to, says Larry.

  Maybe you should lay off the Manischewitz, says Sachs.

  This gets Aitch’s attention. He hears humour in the remark, but also ellision, the mystery of missing meaning. These are the absences he will forever try to fill. He furrows his brow and stuffs a tremendous piece of bread into his mouth.

  Honey, says Min. Don’t be such a chazzer.

  The boy’s reply is doughy: whaddachazzer?

  Larry leans forward. His tie tastes his soup. At least let me make some calls, he says.

  Larry knows a lot of people, says Min.

  Sachs sees his cloth napkin has slipped from his lap to the floor. He reaches under the table.

  Ma! Whadda! Chazzerrrrr!

  Friday night, downtown. Expressway fighters from all over town gather at Grossman’s Tavern. They dig the turned-on music and twenty-five-cent suds, but burble dissent when a civil rights lawyer named Blatnyck clears his throat. In braying tone, he updates them on the board hearings and outlines expert deputation on driving times, air pollutants, traffic flow. He’s a litigious bore and even adamant ears soon sag. A poli-sci student named Irving raises his hand.

  Does anyone really believe the OMB will side with us over Metro?

  Alderman Ying Hope opens his mouth, but Blatnyck bleats about due process. All opposition groups, he says, have agreed to follow proper legal recourse.

  Phoebe Dinkins nods her head. She works reception for the lawyer; she types maybe twelve words a minute, but she onl
y needed to give one drunken handjob to get gainful employment. Across from her, unkempt artist Vern Dyson makes eyes at Lily. Lily rolls her eyes. Irving and boyfriend Claude mutter about the bourgeoisie.

  Architect Paul Bosos stands up and says, Listen, people. This is beyond class politics. How many diverse groups have come together on this? It’s pure democracy.

  If it’s so democratic, why not vote on it?

  Votes, says the old barber Gus Bosetti. If votes changed anything, they’d make it illegal. Know who says that?

  Emma Goldman, says Lily.

  Sì, says Gus. She tell me that many times.

  You knew her?

  Hey! says Vern Dyson. Did I tell you I’m living in her old apartment?

  Lily gives him a look.

  No guff, he says. You should come check it out.

  Stronzo! says Gus. I’ve been there.

  Not you!

  ◊

  Group B streptococcus screening, nonstress test, contraction stress test: Es aced them all. And then, as a transducer roamed her abdomen, an image, almost ectoplasmic, of your child emerged. Sound waves shaped a head and face and hands. It was easy to count all ten fingers, all ten toes.

  Hm, said the technician.

  You cocked an eyebrow.

  The baby was full of gas, intestinal density that somehow left an acoustic shadow across the genitals. There was no way to determine gender.

  The technican clicked off the machine and said in a heavy Slavic tone: You will have to wait for the sex.

  So: maybe a girl, maybe a boy. This missing piece of information has helped forestall the future. In all the time that remains, you never once wonder who this new person will be. Rather, you pace, every morning you pace. Bedroom, hallway, kitchen, where you eat your yogourt and granola. Es put the ultrasound picture on the fridge. You stare and stare: small curled fingers, prominent nose, unfused skull. June 2. You hold your spoon mid-bite, the you of now. Gone, wrote William James, in the instant of becoming.