“Umm.” Mikey acknowledged. He had changed into jeans and a pullover. Without his protective gear, he looked like an intelligent Elvis Presley. At the moment, he was on the phone.
He’s on the phone,” Rena announced, to the world and to the family.
“He can talk?” His father cracked.
“When he wants to!” His mother defended.
“Go on, sweetheart,” Rena foisted the bag onto her daughter. Give me pleasure. Try on the dress.” When Sharon wore make-up and managed to keep in her contact lenses, her classmates in theatre school called her ‘Mary Tyler Moore.’ Her mother saw her as Jennifer Jones. Sharon saw herself as perpetrating an illusion. She felt like a fraud.
Sharon approached her room at the back of the apartment. On the outside of its door hung large, dark wooden comedy and tragedy masks, which Rena had brought back from a business trip to the Philippines. In later years her masks would leave home with her and hung anywhere Sharon came to live in. To guests, she would introduce them as “my parents.”
The intercom rang. “Awwww! Shut that thing up!” Avrum howled. He couldn’t cope with technology. He would rather die before computers came to dominate. Michael emerged from his lair and went to answer the buzzer. The daughter of ‘Comedy and Tragedy’ dropped the bag.
“Hey Buddy!” The door blew open, and Lawrence lassooed Michael with a television cable. Michael’s sidekick beamed into his best friend’s impassive face. “Your wish is my command!” Lawrence was the Lewis to Michael’s Martin; the Costello to his buddy’s Bud Abbott. He was long and lanky, had a mop of ginger-coloured curls, startled sky-blue eyes, a hiccupy laugh. His visage was like rubber, and made one think that David Kaminsky must’ve looked like Lawrence before he became Danny Kaye.
“Yeah yeah. I love you too. Now how do we do this?”
“My dad showed me. On the balcony.” Lawrence’s dad was a TV repairman. The two boys hoisted the cables, and Michael slid open the sliding balcony doors. It was the darkest time of year. Light snowflakes, delicate as doilies, drifted onto the balcony and melted on its floor.
“Mishigah! What are you guys doing!” Rena wailed.
“Sharon!” Lawrence called, crawling up the outside wall of the 16th-storey apartment.
“What time does the show start?”
“What show?” Sharon stared at her brother’s best friend as he climbed, like a cat burglar, across the wall outside her bedroom window.
“He means the play.” Michael translated. He gazed up at his best buddy, who was swinging from a rope he had thrown and attached onto a 17th-storey balcony.
“It’s not a show, it’s a play, you peasant.”
“What time!” Lawrence yelled. His visible breath crystallized in the early winter air.
Avrum caught on. He remained silent. Then: “Ahh, it starts at eight.”
Sharon stuck her nose outside the balcony door. She felt cold. She always felt cold. Severe dieting had induced anemia.
“Well,” yelled Lawrence. “You may not be able to watch it from the beginning, but you’ll get to see it tonight. Mike, hand me the pliers.” Michael assisted as Lawrence cut wires and set up a cable strong enough to receive a signal from Vermont…He dropped his feet onto the balcony floor. “Don’t you think your sister’s overdoing it?” He was uncharacteristically quiet, and concerned. “She looks two-dimensional.”
“I know, but she doesn’t feel safe.”
Lawrence sighed. Then he burst in through the balcony door.
“Done!” He declared. He punched Michael. Michael, bulkier and broader, grabbed Lawrence’s wrist, twisted his arm, and locked him in a chokehold under the throat. Lawrence looked up at Michael, fluttering his long blond lashes. “Hey Big Guy. Ya give up?” They giggled at each other. Michael released his hold. Lawrence turned to his friend’s sister. “You’re beautiful, you know. It’s enough.” At that moment, Michael’s imposing palm landed on Lawrence’s back, and he shoved his best buddy through the door. Lawrence pranced to the elevator, and Michael pulled on his boots at the entrance.
“Michael!” His mother protested. “Where are you going? It’s late. You have school tomorrow.”
“Out.” Michael shot back, without glancing up.
“But Michael--!”
“Rena! Shaaa! Avrum intervened, from his post on the sofa. “Michael,” his voice softened.
“You need money?”
“No Dad. I’m fine.”
“You want to take the car?”
“No thanks. Lawrence came in his dad’s car.”
“Mike.” Avrum declared.
“Yeah Dad.” Now Michael looked up.
Avrum nodded, deeply at peace. “Wherever you’re going, have a good time.”
Michael grinned his crooked Presley grin. “Thanks Dad. I will.”
Michael and Lawrence were going to Schwartz’s for smoked meat. If Michael wanted to eat something more substantial than carrot sticks, he ate it outside. He wanted to avoid teasing his sister…If ever he met a woman who cooked, he would marry her.
“Hey Big Guy! Let’s go!” Lawrence bellowed, his index finger pressing the button of the elevator door. Michael slung his black vinyl bomber jacket over his shoulder, and joined his best friend. Avrum returned to reading his Soviet espionage memoir. Rena unwrapped her parcels. Sharon exited to her room, turned on the television, and slipped back into the reclining chair she had inherited from her father…
“…and here I am, as you can see. I don’t really remember you. I remember only that you were three sisters. Your father has remained engraved in my memory. I have only to shut my eyes to remember him as if he were still alive…” The first act of the play had just begun…
S. Nadja Zajdman is a writer and an actress living in Montreal. Her short stories, essays and memoirs have been published in newspapers, magazines and literary journals, as well as being aired on radio. Her theatre roles include the one-woman show, Shirley Valentine, and the title role in Sheindele. In an all-female production of Julius Caesar she played a vicious assassin, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Currently, Nadja is completing a short story collection.
December 15, 2008
Goose Lane Editions Launches New Online Media Resources
December 15, 2008
New From Gaspereau Press
