Cricket in a Fist Page 7

  When Tamar married Robert, she and Esther had packed up the meagre contents of their apartment. Robert put their pots and pans in his bare cupboards, their books beside his own on the many shelves and their furniture in the guest bedrooms and den. He and Tamar slept in the bedroom in his large, furnished basement. The very bedroom where she’d often lain naked, Robert holding her and imagining a future for them, while Esther thought she was working extra shifts at the store. Esther slept upstairs. Tamar hadn’t anticipated waking in the night, disoriented, with the panicked conviction that there was a stranger under the covers with her; she had never intended to share a life with him this way, to fall asleep with him. He lay on his back with his wiry, surprisingly robust limbs spread wide. He snored. Sometimes he would roll over and his arm would settle across Tamar’s body, heavy and stubborn as an animal. She’d shared a bed once before, but she hadn’t predicted waking beside her husband with another name on her lips.

  “Who’s Femke?” asked Robert. Smiling across the pillow, he said, “You moan in your sleep, love. And you keep saying, Femke.”

  “A girl I knew in Holland.” Femke used to curl up against Tamar’s back and breathe against her shoulder. Her hair was brown and smelled like soap or like smoke or garlic. Sometimes, after an evening with her friends, she smelled of liquor, and sometimes she passed wind in her sleep. “Don’t mention her in front of my mother,” said Tamar. Robert was curious, and so she told him, “I stayed with her family when my parents were gone.” When she said this, Robert pulled her back against his chest as though to protect her.

  One time, Tamar remembered, Femke said, “You better stop making those moaning noises, pervert, or I’ll tell them to come and take you away.”

  “Doesn’t your mother want to know what happened to you while she was gone?” said Robert.

  Wriggling out from under his arm, Tamar sat up. “You can’t mention it to her. Please, you don’t understand.” She’d told him her mother was interned for a time and that Tamar had stayed with neighbours; she had made it sound like a week or two. She had considered telling Robert the whole story, and considered it again as he sat up in bed beside her and shook his head, perplexed; the urge to confess swelled from her stomach into her throat. But to tell him she hadn’t breathed fresh air or been allowed near a window for two years of her life — that the years she was seventeen and eighteen, when most people agonize over first love, worry about exams and dream of extravagant futures, she’d been hidden away like a terrible secret.

  She imagined telling Robert about the hours, sometimes entire days, she’d spent lying in the crawl space under the roof, keeping her mind still by conjugating English verbs, thinking of the beach or concentrating on the smell of her mother’s rosewater perfume until she could feel the memory in her nose. But she had already vowed, privately, never to tell anyone. How could she, without letting those two years define her? If she described details, admitted to the circumstances of her father’s and aunt’s deaths and tried to imagine what her mother had witnessed, anything else Tamar said or did or ever achieved would inevitably pale in import beside those twenty-two months’ obscenely tragic glow. She would become gruesome in her own eyes and the eyes of others; how could she not?

  When she was eight months pregnant, Tamar moved upstairs into the room beside her mother’s. Robert said he was disappointed, that he loved her pregnant body, but that he would respect her need for privacy. He thought she was self-conscious about her new shape, and he wasn’t completely wrong. When Ginny was born they created a nursery across the hall from Robert’s bedroom — his former office — but for the first two months, the baby slept upstairs with Tamar. Robert waited and waited for Tamar to move back to his bedroom, but Ginny started sleeping through the night in her crib, and still Tamar descended the stairs only to use the laundry room and put her daughter to bed.

  Robert had walked into Tamar’s life through stockings, eyes averted from brassieres, face blushing to match his hair. There were different breeds of men who wandered stocking aisles, but, at first sight, Tamar guessed Robert was the harmless type, love-struck and bewildered. When she asked if he needed a gift for his sweetheart, he said, “My sister.” Never, throughout their marriage, did Tamar ask whom he had really been shopping for that day, and he never volunteered the information. Someone had been jilted, quietly shoved aside. Tamar imagined a girl with large breasts, brown curls and a small cross around her neck. The kind of girl Robert had known all his life in the form of aunts, cousins and classmates. He would have known how to be with this girl; it would have been easy, and the restless moments would have passed. They would have slept together in Robert’s big bed, and perhaps he would have lived to be an old man, with many children and grandchildren. Tamar knew Robert had fallen into a trap that day in the intimate apparel section. He’d stepped off course and onto a trajectory that would intersect, twelve years later, with the front of an OTC bus. Her straight, small body, her lacquered honey-brown hair, her eyelashes thick and long as brushes. He must have been disappointed to discover those lashes weren’t real. They were otherworldly. Her accent, which was much stronger then, had delighted him: he would help her, save her, teach to say th. And in return, Tamar would lead him out of mediocrity and into a life of beauty, tragedy and purpose.

  “It’s my sister’s birthday,” said Robert, blushing, a large poster of a brassiere over his head. He was twenty-five, two years older than Tamar, fresh out of medical school and interning at the Ottawa General Hospital. He could afford to take Tamar to nice restaurants because, he explained, his parents were both dead and in fact he had no siblings. And he didn’t mind that she clearly had no real experience with men. Over their first dinner, he did most of the talking, hands flailing, freckles burning orange across his pale nose. He told her excitedly that, despite his parents’ obvious success, his people had suffered. Told her about his great-grandparents coming to Canada as little children during the Irish potato famine. The ships were ill-equipped, and by the time they arrived in Montreal, typhus had broken out. Robert’s great-grandparents had survived the makeshift quarantine shacks set up in the Montreal harbour. “Popish and drunk, that’s what they think of us. Treated us like animals.” Tamar was amazed at his fury about something he had not witnessed, something that happened before his grandparents were born. The immediacy of his great-grandparents’ suffering. Tamar’s English wasn’t perfect, but she noticed that his grammar slipped, vacillating between past and present. Like Asher would, later, he said us. Robert was not very close to his remaining family, he said. He said he was a bit of a loner. “Solitary. That’s me. I’m not one for much cavorting.”

  “Cavorting?”

  “Socializing. Spending time with groups of people, out and about. I’m alone a lot.”

  Tamar didn’t have friends either, or family, except for Esther. She wasn’t one for cavorting. She told Robert that much of her family had “died,” including her father, “during the occupation.” She admitted quickly, to get it out in the open whatever the consequences, “My parents were Jewish, you know, by birth.”

  “Jewish? You don’t look Jewish. I always saw Jews in Montreal, with the” — he motioned with his hands.

  “Hats? No. No. We’re not like that at all. It was only that my grandparents were Jewish. But also, not the — hats.”

  Robert shook his head, perplexed, apparently unable to fathom any connection between blond, peach-skinned Tamar and Jews. “I have renounced Catholicism myself,” he offered, spitting out renounced. “I don’t believe in God. You may as well know that I believe in humanity. And reason. I don’t want any children of mine raised to think they’re part of the one true religion.” Tamar silently watched him across the table, and he blushed. He had almost no eyebrows and brown, fiery eyes.

  “You could be a model,” he said. “An actress. You’re that pretty.”

  He didn’t know. He suspected nothing, Tamar realized. Somehow, the Canadian doctor did not know what it meant th
at she was Jewish and from Europe and had lived through the war. She was nothing more bizarre than an attractive European with an interesting accent and an exotic religious background.

  “You’re hardly eating,” said Robert, looking at Tamar’s fish. Throughout his tirade, Robert had devoured the pork chops and vegetables on his own plate, chewing and swallowing with the same verve as that with which he spoke.

  “I am feeling a bit ill,” Tamar admitted. “I ought to go home.”

  Robert looked at her closely. “All right,” he said. “I’ll drive you. Just let me pay the bill.” He signalled to the waiter and looked back at her. “Oh, Tamar,” he said. “You’re so lovely. But your face is turning green.”

  When Robert pulled up in front of her house, Tamar slammed the car door and ran inside to huddle over the toilet for half an hour, folded arms pressed against her cramping stomach. She’d never felt so sick, not since moving to Canada. When he phoned a few days later, her stomach rebelled again, and she thought it must be the first sign of love.

  “Where’s he from?” Esther asked.

  “Canada.”

  “Where is he really from?”

  “He was born right here in Ottawa, and his parents were born in Montreal.” Esther sighed and put a hand to her head as though Tamar were pummelling her.

  Tamar acquiesced. “His family came from Ireland.” Esther groaned and shook her head, then launched into a description of well-known Irish vices and failings. Tamar found herself defending Robert as though she’d known him far longer than one week. She told Esther that Robert didn’t drink, wouldn’t even touch alcohol, in fact. That he was estranged from his family because he refused to go to church. “He’s a doctor.” She didn’t mention that he specialized in disorders of the feet, that he spent many of his waking hours face to face with corns and bunions.

  It was that second date that sealed his fate. A movie with Katharine Hepburn, and Tamar’s stomach hurt so badly she almost gagged on the few kernels of popcorn that she forced herself to swallow. Robert was worried about appendicitis and, in his car afterwards, put his hand low on her belly. “Does it hurt here?” He pressed firmly. And suddenly it didn’t hurt at all. “I’m terribly tired,” Tamar said. “Terribly tired.” She laid her head against his collarbone.

  “Come and see my home,” he said.

  She had a lover once before that, shortly before moving to Canada. She was working as a seamstress, and he was an older man, an accountant who worked for the same tailor shop. He had bought her several nice dinners and was quite handsome. He didn’t think much of her, was clearly convinced he was getting away with something. She hadn’t told him she was planning to leave.

  Robert occupied the main floor and basement of a three-storey house in Sandy Hill. “You’re exhausted,” he told her, as he pointed out the bedroom. “Bone-tired. That’s the only problem with your health. Please feel free to have a sleep.” And though it was strange, undoubtedly, Tamar accepted his diagnosis and his offer, and took a long, deep nap in his bed. She woke late in the night and waited for him to join her.

  “Don’t worry,” said Robert, later, driving her home. “My house is big enough for us and your mother.” He had it all planned out, and he smiled at the ceiling, so sure and optimistic. Tamar almost believed him when he stopped in front of her building and said, “The past can be sloughed off like a dried old skin. You’ll see.”

  Within two days, Tamar had a bladder infection, and she thought it was a bad omen, but Robert said “honeymoon cystitis” and prescribed penicillin. Alarmed by the word “honeymoon,” Tamar was sure the constant pain in her abdomen was retribution for her own absurd behaviour, but she took the pills and the pain went away again. After she took the last pill, Tamar went straight to Robert’s house. She put her hand in his shirt as she stepped close to him in the foyer.

  Tamar sat on the edge of the bed, waiting to help Ginny out of the bath. On the floor by her foot lay a used tissue. She looked around for a trash can, but there was none, and she remained sitting.

  “Tamar,” called Ginny, “are you out there?”

  In the dusty mirror across the room, Tamar watched herself mouth the word no without saying it aloud. The heat, along with the steam from the bath, had caused her mascara to run, a black smudge under each eye. She heard Ginny splashing, manoeuvring herself into a different position. The gradually recognizable smell of cigarette smoke seeped into the bedroom. Tamar wished she could ask her daughter for a cigarette; longing heightened the tension in her shoulders and up the back of her neck. Just a few puffs to ease her taut nerves.

  “I’ve been an A-plus student all my life,” Ginny said loudly. “Do you even realize that? I’m a brilliant bullshitter, name dropper and cocksucker. I bet you didn’t even know I was multi-talented. You’re not out there listening to me, are you, really, Mother?”

  Tamar’s reflection blinked at her. She was starting her own business, buying her own house and her own place of work, finally. She was almost fifty years old.

  “Steven’s in love with me,” Ginny said, speaking over her mother’s last thought. “Did you know that? I bet you didn’t. I tried to seduce him one night but it didn’t work. He said he had too much respect for me, that he valued the future of our friendship.” Ginny paused. “Asher said he found me fascinating, but do you know what he really found fascinating? That damn scar on Oma Esther’s arm. He thinks you two are a real textbook case. He wanted to study the both of you and make his thesis of it. When I told him about Auschwitz he practically had an orgasm.” Tamar saw herself cringe, and was grateful Ginny couldn’t see her. “I’m surprised he didn’t want to talk about it while we were screwing. Not that we’ve done much of that since I’ve lived here, though, Mother. My stories about growing up with Oma Esther were a real disappointment. I couldn’t come up with anything good. Oh, Mama,” said Ginny faintly. “Asher’s a real idiot. The real deal. And what am I supposed to do now?”

  “I’ve been trying my best.”

  “Aha!” Ginny started, but Tamar kept talking.

  “It’s been my best, liefje, and I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t Scotchtape your A-plusses to the fridge like your sainted father would have done. I’m sorry I haven’t stopped your bones from breaking every which way.” She breathed deeply, calming herself. “But I’m not strong enough to lift you out of that bathtub, Virginia. You’re very heavy. You’re extremely heavy right now, and you’re going to have to help.”

  Robert had his own bathroom in the basement, and maybe he didn’t realize it was right under Tamar’s bedroom. Perhaps he didn’t know she could hear the shower running, the water surging through the pipes. His nights out: perhaps he really thought they were well hidden. She wondered if it was the woman he’d been shopping for that first time she saw him, or if it was someone else. Maybe it was many women. Nothing seemed impossible; she didn’t understand Robert at all. Walking toward her through ladies’ apparel, a foreign foot doctor who needed a salesgirl to answer his questions about silk stockings. She could have done that very well, and they both would have kept their dignity. But this grand-miracle-of-life business — it wasn’t a business she ever claimed to know anything about.

  Ginny’s red birds didn’t look trapped to Tamar; they were windtossed, gliding straight for the window. She wanted to tell her daughter that migration isn’t something you can restrain. Not once the will to migrate has set in. The will to seek a place far and foreign, clean and bright and not yet used up. And that’s not to say there is such a place; there’s not. She could have warned Asher, though it wouldn’t have done any good: no place stays that way for long, because winter follows you around the globe. That chill you left behind is always right at your heels.

  Amnesia, traditionally understood as a condition imposed by physical or psychological trauma, can also be a way of life, consciously adopted and lived. What is the opposite of amnesia? The opposite of amnesia, as I am using the word, is nostalgia. Nostalgia is a longing for home
, a fear that we will never see home again. Nostalgia also tells us that the past is more real, more important, than the present. The past assumes a potency beside which the present is as lacklustre as a dried-out husk. But what if you have no home and no past? Nothing sickly to dredge up, nothing to confess? Then you are free. Amnesia freed me from nostalgia. Technically, my amnesia was temporary — as I recovered from my head injury, memories began to return. First I remembered things from early childhood, and then early adulthood, but I remembered events as though they’d occurred in a book I’d read or a movie I’d seen. I realized I’d wrenched myself free from the chokehold those memories once had on me. The present became and remains luscious and ripe.

  Imagine yourself in a train station, dragging everything you’ve acquired in your life. Not to mention all the clutter you’ve inherited from your family. All those bags and suitcases — all the anxiety they cause. You’re afraid you might lose them, afraid they are becoming too heavy. Afraid they might tumble open and spill your dirty underwear in a humiliating pile around your feet. Put it all down and set it alight — build a pyre and leave it! The train pulls out, leaving that smouldering pile of ashes behind. Yes, it’s normal to feel a momentary pang of loss, of regret, just as we grasp at dreams while we wake — even nightmares. But the station is already behind us and there’s no need ever to look back. Now you can go wherever you like.

  J. Virginia Morgan

  The Willing Amnesiac: Reappearing into the Present

  Three

  It was Benna Hadrick who showed Jasmine the stocky, shiny-faced man in the mall. He had a receding hairline and wore light-coloured jeans and a matching jacket, and he was with four girls, helping them choose clothes in La Boutique. “And those are his hoes,” claimed Benna, pushing a small, lacy red shirt into Jasmine’s hand. In the changing room, Jasmine took off her father’s grey and blue Adidas jacket and dropped it on the floor along with her baggy T-shirt. “Come out and show,” said Benna.