Sweet Affliction (17 page)

I am startled by an older woman who touches my arm just above the elbow. Her pale hair peeks out from under a blue terrycloth turban. She is tall, though stooped, and wears a shapeless navy coat. The whites of her eyes are the colour of old snow.

“You had better just get in there,” she says. “Since the war we don't stand in lines no more.”

The heat from the rugelach spreads through my backpack into my lumbar region. On Côte-Sainte-Catherine the leaves are already beginning to turn. This fall everyone is wearing something called a shrug. It is like a special covering for the gesture; it only covers the part of the body that shrugs. The bus is late, or early. I paw the butt out of my pocket, put it in my mouth and light it.

The year I started smoking cigarettes I found on the curb was the year my dad started sleeping with The Turtle's wife. My sister Stacey and I boycotted our mom's feminist Seder and in retaliation Mom started having her DIY gynecology meetings in the living room. Once I found her looking at our neighbour Ms. Knope's cervix with a speculum, right on the green leatherette La-Z-Boy. There were a bunch of other women sitting around drinking herbal tea and gin—I could smell the juniper. Angela, come see this, Mom said, it looks just like a mini-doughnut. Dad was out somewhere, probably banging The Turtle's wife.

Sometime during that period I walked down Van Horne to the corner of Wiseman, right into a half-smoked cigarette, which I picked up and started huffing without even thinking about it. It was so natural, that first time; I've tried, unsuccessfully, to get back that feeling of spontaneity. No, not spontaneity—
need
. I went for it like one chemical bonding with another. I was twelve.

The Turtle wasn't called The Turtle because of some sex thing or because he refused to come out of his shell. He was The Turtle because he played one on television. Terrence was his name, Terrence the Turtle. He was the goofy, lumbering nemesis of the rabbit in a long-running series of commercials for O'Hare Couriers. His sidekick was a snail named Susan, and there was a running gag about how he couldn't keep up with her fast-paced lifestyle.

He had once been a serious actor, once played Lenny in a Stratford production of
The Homecoming
. But no one called him Lenny.

It was hard for me to imagine anyone marrying or even fucking him, and I guess it was hard for The Turtle's wife too, because from what I heard my dad wasn't the first or only person she slept with during the course of their marriage.

The cigarette habit, at least, proved to be a relatively long-term affair. I liked the surprise of it, the feeling of being a tourist. Would it be a lung-busting King Size Export ‘A' Green, or “one-way-ticket” as Dad called them? A husky blue-collar Pall Mall? A prim and bitchy Menthol 100? More than once I was delighted to taste the medicinal green from a half-spent cig. I carried a lighter in my cargo pants everywhere I went.

There were also the times I would find a butt still burning, recently ejected from its owner's lip, sometimes still damp and salty at the end: the unexpected rush, the participation in the moment, the tongue-coating tang of a stranger's mouth.

“Hepatitis!” Stacey used to shout at me whenever I'd make a dive for a fast-rolling butt on its way to the gutter, flecks of orange scattering from its head. I learned to make my grabs alone.

We had grown up watching The Turtle's commercials, had stayed with him through bad writing, poor costume choices, short-lived sidekicks of unidentifiable species and gender. We would linger on the channel if we landed on one of The Turtle's ads. Already nostalgic for our childhoods, we felt a tenderness toward him and his message of slow-and-steady-wins-the-race. We would boo the rabbit, a grinning plushy forever knocking Terrence on his shell.

Stacey walked around in heels and Dad's tweed jacket, her mouth smeared with Cherry Pop! lipstick. At ten she looked like a tiny drag queen. She called The Turtle's wife Spare Mom. This was an attitude she had cultivated in recent years, much removed from the girl so sensitive she cried when someone said she was a southpaw.

Sometimes I wondered why Mom put up with this tacky business, Dad running out at eleven p.m., bizarre phone calls in the middle of the night.

“Look,” said Mom. “You think you understand everything, but you don't. You think this sounds like nonsense. Yes, I can tell by the way you're frowning. You think you understand what love is, a prize you find at the bottom of the cereal box. You have no idea.”

“You always told us love was a construct of the bourgeoisie,” I said.

“We don't eat cereal,” said Stacey, “because it overloads the pancreas.”

“You're killing me,” Mom said, “oh you're killing me. I'm dead.”

The cooled air of the hospital smells like a pretty girl's hair. I pass the nurses' station, on which there is a coffee cup with a picture of a coffee cup on it. Two nurses are deep in conversation.

My mom is sitting up in bed, glaring at the TV. Her bald head and hooked nose give her the look of a wounded eagle. I'm relieved she isn't wearing her wig, a brown bobbed thing made for someone half her age. It has short Bettie Page bangs and is made from real hair, probably from some poor Russian woman forced to sell her ponytail to feed her kids. The wig was chosen by my mother's nurse, a tall, big-boned woman named Linda. Linda herself has a straight brown chop that hangs over her ears like two mud flaps. Her hands are very large and seem to have at least one more joint than normal. She has a deep voice that contrasts with her little girl mannerisms, like twirling the hair by her ear as she talks. Her eyes are green and striking.

Once she told me she had a new invention for dental floss.

“Oh yeah?” I said.

“Yep. Wanna know what it is?” Before I could answer, she said “Cinnamon buns!”

“As a flavour?” I said. My mother, who was sitting out of Linda's line of sight, caught my eye and made a loop-de-loop gesture by her temple—the international sign for total fucking nutbar.

“Nooooooo,” Linda said, drawing her lips up into a smooch. “For cutting them! Because a knife gets too sticky.”

“Wow,” I said.

“Wow is right!”

There is something new and bizarre in the corner of the room, a face made out of what looks like bread dough, with blank holes for eyes and a tangle of curly yellow yarn on top like a kid's drawing of pubic hair. Paper wings protrude from either side of the head like scalloped ears. It's holding a wooden placard that reads
Friends are angels that come from above. Sent down from God for you to love. So if you are sad and don't know what to do. Just remember that I care for you!
I have no idea how it got there. It must have been left by the woman who occupied the room's other bed, who is no longer there. I try not to think about where she might be now.

The whole scene is making me feel terrible for my mother, who hates sentimentality like poison. “I know a woman,” she once told me, “who saved a noodle that fell out of the pot and onto the red-hot burner and didn't burn. She framed it and hung it on the wall so its message could inspire her. I am doing everything I can not to become that woman.”

Myself, I'm trying not to become the noodle.

“I brought rugelach,” I say, holding out the bag.

“Oh God, take that away,” she says. “I can't so much as look at food right now.”

“Okay.”

“Thank you though.”

“I brought a book too. There's a new Chomsky I thought you might like.”

“How sweet. Put it there.” I start to put it on the night table, but she gestures toward the drawers. “No, no, in there,” she says, “I need that clear, for my dinner tray.”

“But how will you read it?”

“Well I'll get it out when I'm ready for it, dear, obviously.” Which I have to admit is reasonable enough.

When Stacey and I were kids Mom used to give us a morning glass of apple cider vinegar cut with water. Drinking it was mechanical enough, though sometimes it would have a slimy gob of mother at the bottom. It was like swallowing an oyster. I would grimace as it slid sown my esophagus; it seemed like I could feel it the whole length of its journey to my gut.

“Why do they call it mother?” I asked once.

“Because it's the omnipotent wellspring of reproduction and health,” said Mom.

“Because it's supposed to be good for you but makes you want to barf,” said Stacey. Mom smiled and put her hands on our shoulders. “You'll thank me for this one day,” she said, like a mom on TV.

Stacey and I started referring to her as Omnipotent Wellspring after that. We didn't call Dad anything.

Now my mom says “I'm dying for a fag.”

“Mom, you can't say that.”

“I believe I just did.”

I fumble out a smoke from my pack. She puts it behind her ear, a gesture that recalls a younger version of herself with a pencil, hunched over her desk, making sketches for an illustration for
Tikkun
or
Mother Jones
.

“Remember how Leanne's working on the set of
The Man of Ville Emard
as a dresser?” I ask her. “The director told her she was so beautiful he's going to make a part for her in his next film. Isn't that hilarious? What a sleaze.”

“Why would she tell you that?”

“Because it's funny?”

“It's a bit vain, no?”

“I think she just thought it was an amusing story.”

“‘You're so beautiful I'm going to put you in a movie.'”

“That's what she told me.”

“To be funny.”

“Yes.”

“Is that really what you think?”

“Yes.”

“Well. Maybe you're right. Some people need to pump themselves up to feel good, though.”

“Mom!”

“I just think that maybe Leanne is a little insecure, and that's why she tells you these things. She's nowhere near as pretty as you are.”

“This isn't about me! And, excuse me, she's ridiculously pretty. Everyone thinks so.”

“If you say so.”

“What?”

“If you say so.”

“Okay. Forget I brought it up.”

We sit in silence for a while.

“What in the name of God
is
that,” I say, pointing to the angel.

“What?”

“That hideous angel.”

“Oh,” Mom says, “someone here gave me that. I thought it was kind of cute.”

“It looks like a demented muffin.”

“It's not hurting anyone, is it?”

“It's hurting my eyes.” My mother says nothing, and I decide to drop it.

She had a particular way of telling Stacey and I we were getting in her hair. “No thanks,” she'd say if we started a band with a blowdryer and a xylophone. Her tone was light, cordial, final.

“Well what about if we practise in the garage?”

“No thanks.” Like we were Girl Guides with boxes of cookies. She never laughed at jokes but instead would say “That's funny.” She could almost understand what makes people normal, but she couldn't be it.

“Stacey been by today?”

“Oh, not yet,” she says, “She was here last night with that new lady of hers.”

“Camille? The little kid from down the street?”

“Not so little anymore.”

I nod. I remember Stacey and Camille holding hands, practising steps for an Israeli dance they learned at summer camp.

“I met someone,” Mom says.

“You met someone? What does that mean, you met someone? At a nightclub?”

“Don't be mean. Here, on the ward. His name is Bruce, and he's very nice. He's a teacher.”

“So you, what, go on dates to the vending machine? Wash each other's bedsores? Do they provide special rooms for conjugal visits?”

“For godsakes Angela, we're friends. And he's married.” But she's laughing.

“Never stopped you before.”

“Angela Davis Feldman! Hush your mouth!”

“Did Brucie give you the angel?”

“Oh God no, not his style whatsoever.” She can't stop giggling. Linda breezes in, bringing a chart and a sharp peppery smell.

“Well look at you gals, having a grand old time in here,” she says, checking the numbers.

“Linda,” says my mom, “My daughter was just admiring that sweet angel you gave me.” Of course it would be Linda who gave it to her. She probably has a whole drawerful of them at home.

“Yes, it's lovely,” I say. I try to catch Mom's eye but she just looks at me with a flat, over-pleasant smile.

“Well I just think a room isn't a room without an angel's touch.”

“It's stunning,” my mom says, a word I've never heard her use.

“Yes,” I say, “I am definitely stunned.”

“You know, there are angels all around us,” Linda says.

I widen my eyes and nod, trying to look credulous. “Really?”

“Oh yes. This place is chockablock with them.” Linda straightens up and looks at my mother with shock.

“Abigail! You're not wearing your hairdo!”

My mom's hand flies to her head. “Oh, I forgot to put it on!”

“Let me get it!” cries Linda. She and Mom bumble around like a couple of soft-shoe comedians, looking for the wig (my mom's bumbling being mostly with her hands), until Linda locates it in the bottom drawer of the dresser. “Now what were you doing there, you silly thing,” she says. As Linda goes to fix it on my mother's head, she finds the cigarette behind her ear. “Abby! Naughty girl.” She shakes the cigarette at her like a finger. My mom does an “Oops, I did it again!” face and they both laugh like teenagers.

Linda spends a good deal of time straightening the wig on my mother's head, her tongue protruding slightly from her mouth. I don't know where to look while she does this; it's like watching your relatives kiss.

“Ohhh…” she says. “There you go. Now you look absolutely stunning. Like a famous actress.” My mom smiles and lowers her eyelids. She actually seems to be blushing. She's like a hothouse orchid, blooming under this woman's care.