Rue des Rosiers Read online

  Gail nods. “Me too. I’d rather be distracted than mope. Is there any scotch?”

  Michael keeps the cupboard beside the fridge well stocked. Sarah gets up, goes into the kitchen. Before Gail got to the apartment, Michael and Sarah had been arguing about whether Sarah should go to Winnipeg to help Rose. Gail’s been to Winnipeg twice since the miscarriage, two long weekends she carved out of her work week. Although Sarah wants to go – she hasn’t been there in almost a year – she was worried about whether she could get the time off at the Centre. That’s when Michael hit the roof: the Centre. What exactly did she think she owed them? She was at their beck and call: come in this weekend, don’t come in this weekend. We’re busy, we don’t need you. They paid minimum wage, didn’t give any decent hours, laid people off whenever things got slow. Her sister was sick. She didn’t need the Centre’s permission to take some time off.

  He hates her job as much as Gail hates her rooming-house room.

  He hates fighting too, she knows that, but he left without apologizing. Michael never apologizes, it wouldn’t be manly to say he was sorry. Or something like that. Sarah read somewhere that an apology is an act of trust.

  Maybe Michael doesn’t trust her. Maybe he has no reason to.

  Sarah comes back with the bottle of scotch, pours a finger into Gail’s glass.

  “C’mon.” Gail waves her hand in an upwards come-hither. “Don’t be a cheapskate.”

  Sarah adds another half-inch.

  “Sarah. Come on.” Gail takes the bottle from her, fills half the glass.

  “It’s Michael’s.”

  “Michael would not zhaleveh me his scotch.”

  True. He wouldn’t. She’s never seen him stingy about anything. Michael would be happy with the goodly portion Gail has just poured herself. Zhaleveh: begrudge; withhold. Spare. Don’t spare the single malt.

  “Aren’t you having any?” Gail asks.

  Sarah pours herself a finger, watches Gail sipping reflectively. Sarah prefers scotch, single malt or otherwise, to beer, but it’s too expensive a preference to indulge, except on Michael’s dime. A portion he would never zhaleveh.

  Don’t zhaleveh me my worries about work, about Rose, Michael.

  “Sarah?” Gail raps lightly on her sister’s forehead. “Anybody home? The scotch hitting you already? Speak. You can do it.”

  “I’m thinking about Yiddish idioms.”

  “I can’t get a word out of you in English and you’re thinking about Yiddish? I doubt it. You’re thinking about Rose.”

  Okay, she is.

  “Don’t go. To Winnipeg. It’ll be okay. I talked to Mom and she said David took Rose to the doctor’s first thing. She’s agreed to go onto antidepressants. They say it might take three to five weeks before they can fully stabilize her.”

  Three to five weeks. How can Rose get through three to five weeks the way she is?

  “They think she’ll be all right at home, though they did talk about admitting her.”

  Admitting her.

  “She can have herself admitted voluntarily to a psych ward in the hospital. It’s not like she’s being committed. But they don’t think she needs to – she can stay home. David is going to take a few days off work, keep an eye on her. Until the drugs kick in and she’s feeling better. Mom can spend more time with her too.” Gail takes the untouched scotch from Sarah’s hand, sets it on the glass coffee table. “She’s going to be okay.”

  Gail can’t know that.

  “She will.”

  Gail finishes off her own scotch, solid gulps now, not sips. “Sarah. Remember how bored we were as kids? Remember how boring everything was?”

  Fighting in the back seat of the car as their mom circled and circled the Dominion supermarket parking lot looking for a spot, or dully ploughing through their Talmud Torah homework. Sitting for eons in the women’s section of synagogue during High Holidays, being shushed and hushed by the moms and babas, who were in turn shushed by the purple-faced shammes. (Ladies! This is a place of worship!)

  Gail’s leaning back on the sofa, eyes closed. “All that boredom but then, sticking out of that flat everyday landscape, we had those times when everything was all sparkly. Holidays. Treats. Mom’s taking us to the Paddlewheel at the Bay for lunch! Dad caught a fish! Or those Sundays – Zaida’s taking us for soft ice cream!

  “Treats. We were schooled to expect so little. Because,” she opens her eyes, looks at Sarah with a whiskey intensity, “we were supposed to have this ongoing gratefulness: it wasn’t the Depression. It wasn’t the War. So hooray for boredom.” She closes her eyes again.

  “I keep thinking of that black-and-white photo of you on the old sofa. You’re sitting cross-legged in the red party dress, we had matching party dresses with a border of embroidered cherries. I guess you weren’t yet two. Your hair’s sticking up all over but you’re holding your hands together, arms crossed against your chest in glee. This huge goofy smile across your face. You were like that, Sarah. We were. Unadulterated glee. Soft ice cream. Fishing with Dad. Where did it go?” She’s sitting upright again and has that whiskey stare but something steady, sober, behind it. “Rose was always so solid. What happened to her?”

  And suddenly Sarah’s crying, quiet but hard. Gail sits there staring at her empty glass.

  Sarah can’t stop crying. “It’s my fault.”

  “What’s that? Here.” Gail hands her a paper napkin. Sarah blows her nose, swipes at her eyes. Starts crying again.

  “What did you say? It’s your fault? Don’t be stupid.”

  Sarah takes another wipe. “It is.”

  “Your fault Rose is sick? What the fuck are you saying?”

  “Nothing. Jeez, I’m leaking. I can’t stop.” They start to laugh a little.

  “We’re running out of napkins. I’ll get toilet paper.” Gail gets up, comes back with a wad in her hand. “Here. Blow. Please stop. You never cry.”

  Sarah crumples the wad in her hand.

  “Is it the abortion? You’re thinking Rose is somehow paying for your abortion?”

  Sarah nods.

  “Mene, mene, it all gets balanced out like this? Some big daddy in the sky is punishing Rose for your sins?”

  She nods again.

  “Listen to me, idiot. One has nothing to do with the other. Nothing. That’s not how it works. That’s not the kind of justice the world works by.” She hands another wad of toilet paper to Sarah. “And she’ll be okay. Because she’s Rose.” Gail straightens her jacket, reaches for her purse. “Now that I’ve drunk three-quarters of Michael’s scotch, I better hop on the streetcar home. You okay?”

  “Yeah. I’m all right. I’ll stay here, spend the night at Michael’s.”

  ~

  Where is she? She’s not at home. That much she knows. Her body is propped in a special chair, knees apart, and they’ve given her some kind of drug – she’s not fully in the room or in the chair.

  A nurse is holding her hand. She can feel the smooth skin on the nurse’s hand, lovely soft skin, the bump of her ring. She’s watching the ring, blue stones of some sort, sapphires maybe, in a band, set in gold. Beautiful. Not much light caught in it, not much light in her, though the room’s bright. It has instruments and cabinets, little horizontal vents in the cabinet doors that remind her of the kitchen on Rupertsland. But she’s not at home.

  “All right, now,” someone is saying, a male voice. “You’ll feel some pressure, but no pain. There shouldn’t be any pain.”

  She closes her eyes. What’s happening now? Not pain. Something else. Her mind keeps flitting away from what’s happening. Which is her being emptied. Flesh being emptied, scraped out, scraped clean. It’ll be gone soon, over.

  The nurse is stroking her hand, so gentle, but she doesn’t want to open her eyes, doesn’t want to think about where she is.

  She wants to close her legs. She doesn’t want to be open like this.

  And empty. Hollow. More hollow than she’s ever felt before. Lonelie
r. Nothing to keep her from being this empty. Nothing to keep the thin shell around the hollow from smashing.

  “All right, now,” the nurse is saying. “Can you tell me your name? Can you tell me where you are?”

  She hasn’t got a name. She isn’t anywhere.

  Sarah wakes herself from the dream. And she’s fully awake, not in some dreaming-while-waking state – she’s in her own rooming-house room on Palmerston, she can hear the traffic along Harbord. When she left Michael’s place at 1:00 she almost woke him stumbling against an armchair. So damn stupid. Here she was trying to escape one dream and all she did was fall into another. She checks her watch. 2:30. She has to get back to sleep, her shift starts at 8:30. She goes to the sink, pours herself a glass of water, she’s so dry, but the water quiets her throat. The front yard is full of shadows. She doesn’t need this damned dream, this dream among all the other damned dreams: she remembers everything. All she has to do is open a door in her head and she’s there, sixteen and pregnant. Terrified. Cupped in an orange plastic chair with angled chrome legs in the waiting room at Mount Carmel Clinic, waiting to find out what’s going to happen to her, become of her. That time when her life was some cheap soap opera.

  It was Rose who saved Sarah, Rose who made the appointment at Mount Carmel Clinic for her scared kid sister. Sarah can see herself sitting there in that chair at the Clinic with the news. The news – it wasn’t good news/bad news, it was just bad news – and she felt the ceiling opening up above her, she was going to float right through it. That or keel over. The nurse had explained that it was very early, and that was good. The nurse was saying termination, not abortion. They could get her an appointment for a termination at the Morgentaler Clinic in Montreal. And when the nurse said that, a certainty pushed through Sarah’s confusion. Her body decided for her: she couldn’t have a baby. Because she was still a kid. And it wasn’t a baby. It was a clump of cells. Less than a goldfish. It was just something lodged in her body, a part of her body she didn’t want.

  And at the same time, the very same time, in the same place inside her where she was sure termination was right, she was also sure it was wrong. She was doing harm, preventing a life.

  It was wrong and it was also right.

  She signed the paper, didn’t look back. Even now, she can see the room, the paper with her signature, can see how – before everything broke inside her – Rose came into the room. Rose walking in, spine straight, graceful. Rose picking her up from the Clinic, taking her home.

  Everything was going to be okay.

  Of course everything wasn’t okay. Though the Mount Carmel Clinic did get the appointment in Montreal arranged for her, she needed her parents’ consent. And then it was her mother, who never yelled, who was yelling; her mother, who never slammed doors, slamming her bedroom door. And it was her father, always so proud of all of his daughters, telling her he was disappointed in her. Saying they thought she had more sense, better judgement. Hadn’t they always trusted her? Was this how she responded to that trust? His big hands wringing themselves, his big strong body pacing the room. And what about this boy she had the hots for. Abe’s face heating up, the big hands not knowing what to do. She’d made the decision that this was the person she wanted to take these kinds of risks with. The boy has a responsibility too. Abe’s big voice raised, his big hands clenched.

  A few days later, Sarah was flying to Montreal with her mother, Pat’s compact self tucked tight into her seat, flipping the pages of a magazine, putting it down, picking it up, closing her eyes to snooze but not snoozing. Together they took a cab straight to the Clinic, an ordinary-looking house in the east end of the city. After the operation, after Sarah remembered her name, where she was, when she came out of the drug mist, there was Pat in the recovery room, taking her arm and folding her into the cab, which seemed to be waiting nervously. Then they were in the hotel room and Sarah was on the bed. And suddenly her mother was her mother again, not silent, not angry, just giving her a glass of water, making her take a pill the doctor prescribed. Pat helping her to the bathroom, and when Sarah started feeling woozy, she called Mom, she had that word in her mouth, and there was Pat in the bathroom with her, holding her arm so she didn’t fall, swiftly helping her change the pad the nurses gave her, as if she were a little kid again, helping her back to bed.

  When she got home from the procedure in Montreal – that’s what her mother called the abortion, the procedure – all Sarah wanted was to stay in bed. But she couldn’t stay in bed, she had to get up, she had exams to study for, her mother wanted her to get back into a normal routine as quickly as possible. Sarah couldn’t be late for school, no excuses, no reason not to clear her place, not to help with the dishes, not to please put her sweater away, no need to just sit around watching TV all evening, some fresh air would do her good.

  Sarah wanted Nick, wanted someone to hold her till it went away. She didn’t want to think about what they scraped out of her, what they did with it, a bunch of cells, where they took it. Something that could have become a baby. Her baby. Hers and Nick’s.

  She called Nick, left messages with his mom a couple of times but he didn’t call back. When she finally ran into him at school, he told her her dad had come by his house to give him a talking to, scared the bejeezus out of him. He was really mad, her dad. And then Nick told Sarah he couldn’t see her anymore. He didn’t want them to be together, didn’t want his parents to find out what happened, he wanted it all to go away, like it never happened. His beautiful hands hanging at his sides. She grabbed his shirt, she wouldn’t let him do this, he had to be with her, especially now. All he did was pull away, pull the shirt from the grip of her hands. He was so much bigger than her; standing in front of her, he was all she saw.

  She came home, closed the door to her room. She’d been taken to pieces and emptied out and there was no one to put her back together. She needed something to do, needed to do something, count it all up, account for what she’d done. Figure out the variables. No more Nick, no more Nick plus Sarah. No Nick plus Sarah plus a possible baby. So no Sarah. Maybe it did add up in one way, Euclid’s axiom: things that are equal to the same thing are also equal to one another. She didn’t want a baby and Nick didn’t want her – it added up but the sum was a negative. She was nothing. There was nothing, nothing bad and nothing good. Or was nothing good? Was it bad?

  Abe called up to her from the kitchen to come down and eat. She didn’t answer, didn’t have any words for him. He came upstairs, sat on her bed, his big hands in his lap. Dinner was on the table. Her mom had made tuna casserole. Sarah looked at Abe, expressions she couldn’t quite identify flickering across the plane of his face. And then the elements of his face, features, broke into parts that didn’t come together. Eyes, bushy eyebrows, nose, mouth, but what had happened to her father? The bits didn’t make a face. Was this her good father? She heard footsteps on the stairs, the door to her room opened. Her mother. Sarah looked at Pat’s face and the sprinkling of features didn’t come into place to be her mother. Her mother and father were saying something to each other that she didn’t understand.

  They wanted her to try to sleep, and maybe she did sleep, but she kept drifting in and out, the plusses and minuses, equivalencies, moving through her head. There were voices in the hall, Rose, her parents saying something about dehydration, should they call a doctor. The next morning her mother was there again, wanting her to talk, tell her what was wrong; she was angry with Sarah. And then her mother’s face, those strange planes and bits of features, changed, and her mother put her head against Sarah’s neck and was crying, saying, Baby, you’re my baby, Sarah. I want you to be all right. She was her mother’s baby but she didn’t have a baby.

  And then her mother was gone and Sarah must have slept again because the light kept changing. She heard steps coming up the stairs again. Rose was sitting on the bed, talking to her. “Have some ginger ale. We know you don’t want to eat right now, but you need to drink something.” She put her ar
m around Sarah’s shoulders, sat her up. Put the straw to her lips. Rose watched her drink. “You’re scaring the hell out of us, Sarah.” Sarah finished the glass.

  “I’ll get you more.” The room emptied of Rose, and then she was back, and Sarah took the glass in her hands, drank up.

  “Sarah. Nick broke up with you, right? That’s what’s wrong.”

  What was wrong. Sarah didn’t know what was wrong, or right.

  “Gail asked around at school. I’m sorry.” Rose’s hand on her arm.

  Sarah was sorry too, about the abortion. She couldn’t ever undo it and no matter what she did, there would never be enough good to make it even out again. There would never be enough good. Maybe Rose understood, because Rose’s arms were around her and suddenly Sarah was crying and Rose was holding her, keeping her together.

  “Lie down, Sarah. Put your head down and rest. You’re wearing yourself out.”

  And Sarah lay down, and Rose lay alongside her, smoothed her hair. Hummed a song, then started to sing it, her sweet clear soprano washing over Sarah, washing her clear. The lyrics words Sarah knew, the waters troubled, a bridge. And she was feeling small. But she had laid herself down and Rose had laid herself down beside her so that Rose’s body was an edge to her own, a dam, so she wouldn’t spill over. A container, so even if her body wasn’t a solid, she wouldn’t dissolve. Rose’s body hemming her in, keeping her in place. Rose rolled over, gently placed her light weight on Sarah, a soft pressure. Her breath in Sarah’s ear. Rose’s body holding her on the earth. The only thing holding her on the earth.