Girl Unwrapped (30 page)

Lisa looks up from a legal document, startled. She peers at Toni over the tops of her glasses.

“Why was Papa ashamed of her? Don’t pretend he wasn’t. I know he was.”

Lisa says nothing. She purses her lips, thinking. Then her shoulders twitch in a little shrug as if she’s come to a decision.

“He was not ashamed. Ashamed is not the right word. He was careful. This wasn’t something to talk about. He didn’t know if the condition would come up again in another generation, or whether the information could be used against us.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Whether there might be consequences for you, when you wanted to marry. He lied, you see, on the immigration application, the part that asked for a medical history.”

“Papa lied? About what? Tell me.” Toni leans forward on the built-in table of the breakfast nook, bracing herself.

“All right. All right. I’ll tell you, but you must keep this to yourself. Ida was epileptic.”

Toni stares at her mother, not comprehending.

“The poor child had fits,” her mother explains.

“Is that all?”

“That is enough. Perhaps nowadays there’s better treatment, but in our day such a child couldn’t go to a regular school and had to be watched every moment. It was considered a terrible defect. In the Nazi time, anyone—even pure Aryans—suspected of carrying this condition was sterilized. The procedure was called the
Hitlerschnitt
. The Hitler cut.”

“The Nazis were crazy. Everybody knows that. But why the hush-hush afterwards?”

“Always they ask on forms if there is this or that in your family history. We agreed it was better not to say, just in case they would refuse to let us into Canada. And God forbid someone should find out now and take the citizenship away.”

“Mama! That’s so medieval. Epilepsy is just a common illness. You make it sound like possession by the devil.”

“Of course, an illness, an inherited illness,” her mother sniffs. “It was hard enough to get into this country. You have no understanding.”

“But no one could take our citizenship away because of something like that. This is Canada, 1968. We’re not in Nazi Germany.”

“Maybe not,” her mother concedes. “But prejudices still exist. It is better to be on the safe side and—”

“And keep deep, dark secrets?”

“No. We don’t make a secret. We simply don’t need to tell this story. One day you will meet a man you want to marry, and if you tell him this, he might change his mind. Don’t give me such a look. Of course it could happen.”

“But you married Papa! You’re not being rational!”

“My instincts told me it would be all right to marry your father. Not everyone has such strong instincts. I knew any baby of mine would be normal in every way.”

Toni sits down on the bench across from her mother, stunned. Ida merely had a condition that today would be controlled with medication. What would her mother think if she could see into the state of her daughter’s heart? Toni pushes the question away. Back into the dungeon of banished thoughts it goes.

chapter 22

Only the front end of Browsers’ Paradise is all set up. Displays of art books catch the eye on bright, white shelves at the front of a long, narrow room. A rocking chair invites the customer to bide a while. The cash register sits on a desk by the door, unattended, save for a fat grey cat with a baleful gaze. Its yellow-eyed stare seems to say, “Come in for Pete’s sake, if you’re coming, but close the door. There’s a draft.” The cat appears to be the sole proprietor until Toni spies Mr Abbott at the back of the room stooped over heaps of books. Stacks of precariously balanced, unopened cartons cover the floor. Teetering piles clog the aisles between shelves. Toni breathes in the smell of dust and fresh paint as she stands in the doorway holding a heavily laden shopping bag.

“Miss Goldblatt, what a lovely surprise,” he warbles. Today he sports a red beret, worn at a rakish angle, and a loosely knotted ascot in a red-and-cream paisley print. Silky grey hair lifts like wings as he rushes forward to greet her. His several rings glitter.

“Still a bit of organizing to do.” He waves toward the disordered piles and boxes. “And I’ve got a basement full, too. I go to an estate sale and can’t resist. Whole libraries sold in lots. Much of it dross, but some pearls too. I suppose you wonder where I’ll find room.” He waves again toward the towers of books. “Turnover, my dear, turnover. Once people start to buy, there’ll be space for these orphans.”

“I don’t suppose you want any more,” Toni says, raising her shopping bags for him to see. Inside she’s stuffed Langenscheidts’ German-English dictionaries, Churchill’s six-volume series,
The Second World
War
, and
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
. The books are in fine condition and the series complete.

“Very nice,” Mr Abbott murmurs as he examines her offerings on the desk with the cash register. The grey cat decamps with offended flicks of its tail. “They were your father’s, weren’t they?” And when she nods, he lifts his hands in protest. “But you should keep them. You might find them handy. You’re a student, aren’t you?”

“Not right now. I’m looking for a job.”

“Money worries?” His mild blue eyes seem genuinely concerned.

“Nah. Just the way it worked out.” She shifts from foot to foot. “We’re selling all his books,” she blurts out.

“All?” Abbott’s eyelashes flutter. “You don’t mean that, surely?”

“I do,” she says gruffly. “I don’t read German. My mum doesn’t care for his books. She’s negotiating with Mr Heinemann on a price.”

“His Wassermanns? His Georg Hermanns too? Oh dear, that is sad.”

Abbott puts his hand on the side of his head as if the news has disturbed the delicate workings inside. “I suppose you know the type of authors your father liked to collect?”

“Not really.”

“Your father had a soft spot for Jewish German-language authors of a certain vintage who’d lost their audience because of the war or whose careers were nipped in the bud or who’d fallen out of fashion. Authors who no longer fit with the time. Wassermann was one such. He was a giant in his day, according to your father. And now, who reads him, who’s heard of him? Georg Hermann, who died in Auschwitz, is a similar case. Another of your father’s favourites, Hermann Ungar, was a rising light in Czechoslovakia during the brief democratic era. His works are shunned there now. The communists, you see? They don’t care for Jews. Oh, there are many others.”

Abbott makes an expansive gesture to conjure up the multitude of books by persecuted, obscure, and has-been authors in her father’s library.

“He collected a few pure nobodies too. Writers who weren’t particularly good—he told me this quite frankly—because he felt sorry for them. Isn’t that sweet?”

Abbott flashes a smile. Toni experiences a prickle of irritation. Her father loved those who in some way failed. She doesn’t see the glory of this at all.

“Thing is, it doesn’t matter anymore,” she says harshly. “Doesn’t matter who he liked and why. He’s gone.”

“Well!” the bookseller says, taken aback. “Well.” He gives his head a small shake as if trying to dispel her cold pronouncement. “The monetary value was never the main point, you see? To your father a book was a soul and each had intrinsic value. He was on a rescue mission of sorts. To rescue those crushed by fate, destined to oblivion, by at least giving them a place in his library. Quite a quixotic fellow, your papa. I must admit I rather fell in love with him.”

Toni is surprised to see a fat tear slip over the rim of Abbott’s left eye and roll down his soft cheek. Her father would be mortified by such a display.

“How well did you know my dad?”

“Not well enough,” the bookseller answers with a tragic air. “But I understood. The collector’s soul, I understood. Oh, my dear.” Mr Abbott honks into his handkerchief. “Young people can be hard. Do keep a few of his books for yourself. You’ll be glad you did when you are older.”

Abbott squeezes his hands together in appeal. Toni laughs. She can imagine her father commenting dryly.
A comical bird, that one, but
harmless. I give him a year before he’s bankrupt. You realize not a soul
has entered the store since you did.

“You say you need a job,” the bookseller says, throwing his hands high as if struck by an inspiration. “How strong is your back?”

“I’m very strong,” Toni answers, squaring her shoulders. “I do the 5BX program, the one used by the RCAF.”

“Well, then. I could use a helper. You’re just the one.”

“Really?”

“So many boxes to bring up from the basement. I’m a walking ad for Ben-Gay ointment, my dear. And I’m sure you could handle the cash better than Mr Pickwick.” He gestures toward the grey cat, who has resettled in his spot. “And I have no doubt books are in your blood. Just a matter of bringing out the latent potential.”

Abbott dances about, gesturing with excitement.

Six months. That’s how long he’ll last
, she hears her father saying. But Mr Abbott’s elation is contagious, and a job’s a job. Her very first. That’s something at least.

chapter 23

Sunday morning in the deep-freeze of winter—it’s the worst day of the week, worst time of the year. Toni surveys stark trees, sidewalks of hard-packed snow, cars with black slush frozen into the wheel wells. All this beneath an iron sky. She leans her forehead against the frosty windowpane until her whole face aches. On weekdays and Saturdays, she can busy herself with her bookstore job. On Sundays, there’s nothing but long bleak hours of empty freedom. “Get together with some other young people,” her mother urges. “Join a club. Why don’t you call the Nutkevitch girls?”

Nothing changes.

Her mother has gone to the Shape-up class at the Y—Toni can see them, a roomful of middle-aged, leotard-clad women, upside down, doing the “bicycle” to a tinny recording of the Beatles’ “Lady Madonna.” Hips propped on hands, legs churning the air with desperate determination. Pedalling to melt away fat, to banish sorrow. But fat clings and sorrow sticks. A woman of a certain age without a man is pathetic. No one says so, but everyone knows.

Toni prowls about the house. Picks up yesterday’s paper—“Students Riot at Sir George Williams University”—throws it down again, then flips on the TV for ten seconds of
The Galloping Gourmet
. She drifts into her mother’s room. The closet door stands open. Her mother’s clothes have strayed across the rod. Months ago, bags stuffed with her father’s suits, coats, sweaters, and shoes were finally sent off to the Hadassah bazaar. Toni has his watch, which she asked for as a memento. The twenty-year-old Swiss Omega was his first big splurge in Canada, part self-indulgence, part prudence. It has seventeen jewels, a stainless steel casing, a black leather strap, and the last letter of the Greek alphabet stamped in gold beneath the number twelve on the watch face. A watch like that would help him look like a solid citizen, inspire the trust of clients, he must have thought. Toni punched an extra hole in the strap to make it fit her own wrist.

On what was once her father’s side of the closet a single suit remains, along with one white dress shirt, a tie on the otherwise empty tie rack, his felt fedora on the shelf above, and a pair of black shoes on the floor. A complete outfit. Do the dresser drawers also hold one of everything? Socks, underwear, pyjamas? So that were he to suddenly materialize, he’d be perfectly equipped to walk out into the world? She can’t bring herself to look.

The suit her mother has saved is of good grey wool, shot through with blue and silver threads, and without a speck of lint. When did he last wear it? Toni can’t remember. She’s never paid much attention to male attire before, but now she admires the subtle pattern of the pinstripes and the fine cut of the cloth while her heart aches. This mere thing has outlasted its owner. Oh, the mute, useless endurance of inanimate objects! The cruel emptiness of sleeves! She has a sudden craving to see the suit filled by a living body.

Lifting the jacket from the hanger, she slips it on. Not a bad fit. A bit roomy across the shoulders and around the middle, perhaps, but the sleeves are about right, reaching to the midpoints of her hands. What’s not right is her faded orange T-shirt beneath the beautiful jacket. She tries on the dress shirt, buttoning it right up to her chin. The pants now. She must have the pants. A thrill of the forbidden flutters beneath her ribs. She steps into the trouser legs, zips up the fly, pulls tight the belt, though it’s too long for her slim waist. The pant cuffs flop on the floor. She wriggles her bare feet into the black shoes. Better. The tie next, a lovely silk one with blue, white, and wine-coloured stripes. Her nervous fingers improvise a knot. She completes the picture with his grey felt fedora.

Hands in trouser pockets, legs astride, Toni surveys herself in the mirror behind the closet door. The sight is both eerie and exhilarating. She looks downright handsome. Were her mother to walk in the room right now, her screams would shatter glass. Toni feels she has overstepped some limit, regressed into a childish game of dress-up, but one that perverts the very idea of childhood and human dignity.
What a naughty devil!
She winks at herself, a wink that thrills as it appalls. How would her father feel to see her thus? Does he look down reproachfully from some heavenly realm?
But he’s not here. He’s gone.

An old, familiar sadness washes over her. She remembers this from long ago, the terrible anguish that would engulf her in the presence of her father, leaping from his skin into hers. They would be happily walking hand-in-hand on a blustery April day to the Belgian pastry shop on Côte des Neiges Road, perhaps rhyming off some comical verse from a German storybook. Suddenly, she would sense a difference, perhaps a release in the pressure in his hand, an uneasy shifting of his head. That was all it took for the atmosphere to change, and they would carry on in strained silence. She could sense the pain of loss in his bloodstream, a dripping away that whispered:
You are alone, no happiness lasts, happiness
is merely an illusion causing you to drop your guard, so that when
the blow comes—as it must—it will fall harder than you can bear.
And now that old gloom lives on. A dead brown smell, detached from its source, concentrated in the fabric of his suit, seeps into her body once more. Hastily she removes the outfit, puts everything back exactly as it was before, after a thorough going over with the lint brush.