Lodz Ghetto, 1943
CHAPTER TWO—I WENT NOWHERE
It was Elaine and Gloria, never Gloria and Elaine. Her family
moved into the upper duplex my parents owned when she was seven years old. We
shared the same birthday, October 29, but I was exactly one year younger, and
she never let me forget it. Everyone who didn’t know better assumed we were
sisters. She had two of those; I had none.
We were both scrawny little creatures with fine light brown hair
that we deplored as being the most humdrum colour of all. She had pretty green
eyes; mine were a less glamorous hazel, though Elaine insisted they were merely
light brown.
Elaine had more gumption than I did. I was a shy, clingy little
thing with a defiant spirit seemingly trapped underneath my ribcage. Because of
the age difference, Elaine avoided me, first at the elementary school we both
attended—Westhaven, and then at Royal Crest High.
I watched from the sidelines as she bloomed into a comely teenager,
wasp-waisted, lanky, long, shiny hair highlighted beach-blonde. In contrast, my
awkward stage spanned four seemingly endless years. My pert nose grew big and
lumpy, my body thickened and I was assaulted by cystic acne that was as painful
as it was hideous. I still have scars from those infected pustules, but
blemished skin on a 67-year-old goes pretty much unnoticed.
We went to different universities, both in Montreal, and I
rarely saw her anymore. We no longer visited each other’s homes, and even
though she was living above my nose, I lost track of her. She married young,
moved first to Toronto, then New York, then London, then Los Angeles. From time
to time her mother, Sarah, showed me updated photos: Elaine with a reasonably presentable
but balding husband, Elaine with identical twin baby girls, Elaine on vacation
in a black and white polka-dotted bikini, looking sun-kissed, lovely and lithe.
In 1983, Elaine’s father died. Two of the three daughters were scattered
to the winds by then, and didn’t attend his funeral, which my parents found
shocking and indefensible. The middle daughter, Ruth, the dutiful daughter
managed the funeral arrangements and invited her mother to move in with her
family in Westmount. My parents never tried renting out the upstairs after it
was vacated. Over the years, they were often approached by people who knew
people who knew that the flat was unoccupied, but my parents would smile and
say they preferred it that way.
I went nowhere. I became an elementary school teacher at
Westhaven, my first alma mater, and
worked my entire career there. It was located just a few blocks from where I
lived. I took two years off to care for my mother when she sickened from cancer
and I did the same for my father shortly thereafter. After he died, I was alone
in their house, which had become my house and I also decided against renting
the upper duplex. I didn’t have the temperament to oversee the myriad details
that comprise the duties of a landlady.
It was a bitterly cold Sunday in mid-April,1997. I was cleaning
the upper duplex, a mind-numbing task I performed once a month. One might think
it would be easier to clean empty rooms than ones filled with furniture and
other objects, but I didn’t find this to be the case at all. There were no
visual distractions, and that made the washing of counters, baseboards, tiles
and linoleum surfaces dreary indeed.
I was running the bathwater, making a paste of Old Dutch
cleanser in order to scour the tub when I heard the doorbell ring. The upper
duplex, unlike the lower one, had a pleasantly musical door chime. I came close
to ignoring it, but my curiosity got the better of me, and I buzzed open the
front door downstairs. A rangy woman stood in the doorway.
“Hey stranger. It’s been like what, a million years?”
I recognized the husky voice immediately. It had been so
attractively distinctive when she was a girl. Now it made her sound old and
hard.
“Elaine!” I shrieked, gripping the bannister as I awkwardly
tripped down several curving steps to meet her more or less halfway. The long,
winding stairwell reeked of nicotine.
Our embrace was bony. Both of us were thin middle-aged women
although I wanted to believe that time had been kinder to me than it had been
to her.
It didn’t surprise me in the least that once again we resembled siblings.
We both wore our hair long, were dressed in muted medieval colours and our eyes
were rimmed with inky liner.
As soon as we entered my flat, Elaine exclaimed, “Why, it hasn’t
changed at all! Have you been living here all this time?”
I admitted that I had been. By this time we were in the kitchen,
where the light was crisp and bright. I noticed that Elaine looked somewhat
downtrodden. Her long olive-green skirt was muddied at the hem; her sensible
lace-up shoes were scuffed and nicked. Much of the prettiness had been leached
out of her narrow face.
She sat down unsteadily, holding on to the table-top as she did
so. “Do you mind if I smoke?”
Actually, I did. Mind. I did, but I was uneasy saying so.
Instead, I mumbled, “If you absolutely must…. I’ll get something you can use as
an ashtray.” She had already fished a crumpled pack of cigarettes out of her
deep skirt pocket. I fetched a teacup saucer, and she ran her yellowed fingers
over its porcelain rosebuds.
“Your parents?” Elaine had liked them and appreciated their
subdued, restrained ways. She had often told me so when we were children.
“Both dead. Cancer. My mother’s was lung, my father’s
pancreatic. Would you like something to drink? Rosehips tea? Coffee? A glass of
white wine?”
“When? When did they die?”
“What does it matter?” I thought but didn’t ask. Instead I
answered dutifully, robotically. “Mother died in 1992, Dad in 1994. What about
your mother? And tell me about your sisters, and your daughters. How old are
they now? Your daughters, I mean. Not your sisters or your mother.”
Elaine laughed. It sounded like the bark of a small dog. “A
glass of wine would be lovely. Will you have one as well?” I nodded repeatedly
as I stood up.
“My girls are seventeen years old. They live with their father
in New York. My mother has Alzheimer’s. She’s been a patient at Spinoza
Geriatric Hospital for the last couple of years. My sister Ruth is her
designated caregiver. Lucky Ruth. She’s the only one of us still living in
Montreal, so she got the position by default.”
I surprised myself by asking, “Your cigarette looks very
appealing. Can I bum one?”
“Be my guest.” She slid the rumpled pack and miniature lighter
toward me.
I couldn’t help thinking, “What a charming picture we must make!
Two old broads smoking cigarettes and drinking wine in broad daylight.”
“So listen, Gloria.” Elaine’s eyes looked at me nervously. I
sensed what was coming. “Can I crash here for a few weeks, until I get on my
feet? I’m staying with an ex-boyfriend, but his welcome for me is wearing thin.
Truth be told, it wasn’t thick to begin with.”
The request had a certain charm. My own company wasn’t all that
entertaining. My personality struck me as being mechanically melancholic. My
little rituals, quirks if you will, bored me senseless. So I was tempted to say
“Yes. Yes of course. You can stay here as long as you like.” But that unspoken
assent was instantly waylaid by a better, bolder, brighter idea, which sprung
out of my mouth like a newborn snake. “The upper duplex is empty, has been for
years. You could stay there, rent-free for as long as you like. It’s very
sparsely furnished, though. You’ll have to buy a shitload of stuff and split
the Hydro and Gaz Métro bills with me.”
I’ve always been a cautious, many would even say
fearful person, but it seemed like the perfect offer to be making at the time,
and I never had cause to regret it.
CHAPTER ONE—ON
EDGE
I thanked my lucky stars for the peephole! It was arguably my
apartment’s most valued feature. The front doorbell buzzed a few times, and I
eyeballed the opening anxiously. It was just Ralph, dear sweet Ralph, my one
and only friend and trusted handyman for the past ten years. His boyish, evenly
featured face looked distorted, chipmunk puffy, but his brown eyes exuded their
habitual goodwill.
I unlatched the double chain-lock and let him in. “Sheesh, Miss
L. It’s insanely cold out there. I can’t recall it ever being quite so
ferocious in November.”
“I’ll make you a grilled cheese sandwich and a cup of cocoa. The
list of fixes is beside the desktop. I hope you can get the poor old workhorse
up and running again.”
“I’ll do my best, Miss L. There’s almost always a workaround for
every problem.”
“It’s the almost that worries me, Ralph. Sooner or later, I know
I’ll run out of luck.”
Ralph carried his quaint wooden toolbox to the computer room,
and I headed for the kitchen, a room which was comfortingly outdated. If my
computer, or for that matter, my stove, refrigerator, washing machine,
television or home phone were to conk out on me, I would be in deep trouble,
for it had become impossible to find replacements for the older models.
The new systems were integrated and interactive. They were
programmed to leak your personal data to the CIC—Citizens’ Information Centre.
You couldn’t use the stove for example, without the screen asking in
illuminated text, “Where did you purchase your tilapia? How much did you pay
for it? Please swipe the receipt.”
Many people weren’t overly concerned about this intrusion into
their private lives. Some were even pleased because on occasion, after you
swiped your receipt, you became the instant winner of a month’s supply of dairy
products or mixed nuts or frozen meals or some such prize. But for people of my
age and older, these interactions could prove to be very, very dangerous.
Indeed, even running errands had become risky business, and I
had recently asked Ralph if he would run them for me.
“Not yet, Miss L. It’s not time yet. Why that long blond hair of
yours and your slender figure and stylish clothes make you look under the age
limit, way under it.”
But I didn’t agree. Of late, during my forays for consumer
items, I had been noticing that people were looking at me differently, with
less benign neutrality. There were fewer smiles and more inquisitive
expressions directed my way. I had begun wondering if I should go the route of
skin fattening, but that procedure had recently become illegal and was now
dangerous for practitioner and patient alike.
Seniors who had this technique performed on them were conferred
with plump, smooth skin, skin as firm as Gouda cheese. But they still didn’t
look young. They looked like old people with retextured skin, at least to my
eyes. They were often referred to as CheeseHeads
by the population at large. The procedure didn’t seem worth the cost or
pain. Nevertheless, the notion of “reversing time” intrigued me, so I had once
made an appointment with the most famous skin rejuvenator in Montreal, Dr.
Lesage. That would have been five-and-a-half years ago.
I was so nervous walking into his aluminium-coloured office that
my blotchy hands trembled. The receptionist was clinically exquisite: sleek
platinum bob, perky nose, full rosy lips, melon breasts, a crisp glaringly
white lab coat. She was perched daintily on a grey leather stool behind a
plexiglass partition. At the time, I still had a Medicare card, which she
swiped even though had I agreed to a procedure, the cost would be out of my own
pocket. She handed me a clipboard and
requested that I fill out a questionnaire while waiting to be called. The final
section confused me thoroughly. I was required to check the box beside the type
of filler or fillers I wanted:
ð Resveratrol
ð Matrixyl
ð Hyaluronic
Acid
ð Lactic Acid
ð Glycolic
Acid
ð Vitamin C
Acid
ð DMAE Bitartrate
ð Resveratrol-
Vitamin C Acid
ð Resveratrol-
Matrixyl
ð Matrixyl-
Hyaluronic Acid
ð Resveratrol-
Glycolic Acid
ð DMAE Bitartrate-Vitamin
C Acid
ð DMAE
Bitartrate-Matrixyl
The list rattled me. I hadn’t known that I was expected to make
an informed choice. The room was otherwise vacant and the white-coated creature
was engaged in a personal phone call. The telephone she was using was not a
cellular device, rather a lollipop pink landline apparatus which was the only
source of vivid colour in the otherwise stark landscape of the reception area.
I walked over to her glass cage and waited humbly for her attention. As I
watched her lips move as though they had a life of their own, I noticed that
her skin, although taut and firm, was tellingly dense. The realization that she
was a CheeseHead gave me instant
courage.
I waited patiently for her to complete her conversation and
finally, after what I estimated to be a good ten minutes, she lowered the phone
handle to the cradle and rewarded me with her full attention. Although her face
looked eerily ageless, I calculated that she was around my age, and I asked
myself which was worse: to look one’s age or to look neither young nor old, but
like a creature that belonged to some other species entirely, humanoid—with a
covering that resembled skin, but wasn’t
actually skin, rather an ersatz more durable material.
“I’m afraid I can’t check off the appropriate squares in Section
D,” I informed the receptionist. “I have absolutely no idea what these fillers
are.”
She smiled at me reassuringly. “No worries, dear. The doctor
will explain everything to you. He’s an injection genius. Look at what he’s
done for me.”
I smiled back at her but said nothing. It was true that her
“skin job” was better than average, but I’d already made up my mind that I
didn’t want to look like that. I decided, however, not to exit the office.
Perhaps the good doctor could propose a different sort of procedure, one that
yielded a more natural-looking result.
One of three glass doors opened, and Dr. Lesage took my chart
out of the hands of his receptionist and asked me to follow him into his
office. I was surprised to note that he was also a Cheesehead, and a balloon-head to boot. He was so skinny that his
head looked as though it belonged on a different body entirely. He was either
deathly ill or severely anorectic. He was short for a man, my height—5’5”, and
his severe halitosis filled the otherwise immaculate room.
There were two metal chairs on the patient side of the desk, and
he sat down in one of them. I followed his example, and placed my lumpy purse awkwardly
on the pearl-grey carpet. He then stretched out his unusually long arms and
turned my face this way and that way, tilting my chin, running his bony fingers
up and down my neck.
“I see that you haven’t filled in your preference for fillers,”
he spoke softly, almost dreamily.
“That’s correct, “I acknowledged. What do you recommend?”
“That depends entirely on the effect you want and on how much
money you’re willing and able to spend.”
“I was hoping you could show me digital results of what the
various options would produce.” By then, his deathly breath made me feel faint
and I was in desperate need of fresh air.
Again the soft and dreamy voice. “Yes, yes, of course, Will you
be wanting your hands, arms and chest area done as well?”
“Not straight off. I was thinking I’d start with my face and
neck and see how it went.”
“Baby steps,” he murmured. “Let me say that for satisfactory
results you’ll require at least three treatments, and I think that for your
particular type of age damage, I recommend the DMAE Bitartrate-Matrixyl option.
That should tighten, lighten and brighten your skin significantly.”
“And how long should the benefits last?” I asked. “I mean, how
often will the procedure have to be repeated?”
“Oh, that’s very difficult to predict. Every case is different.
On average though, refilling is required two to three times a year.”
“I see. And for the filler combination that you recommend for my
face and neck, how much will three sessions cost?”
“Forty-five hundred dollars, payable before we begin.”
I groped for my purse and rose. This time it was the doctor who
followed my example. “Thank you for your time, Dr. Lesage. I’ll get back to you
as soon as I’m ready to be filled. Should I expect much pain?”
“No pain at all. A little discomfort, but no actual pain.”
We shook hands and I bolted out of his office. The receptionist
cocked her head toward me expectantly. She resembled an albino parrot. “I’ll be
back,” I told her breezily,” once I sort out my finances.” But, of course, that
didn’t happen.
I carried Ralph’s sandwich and sea-salted potato chips into the
computer room. “Time for a lunch break,” I informed him as cheerily as I could.
“Would you like mineral water or beer?”
“Tap water will be great, Miss L. I always vouch for Montreal
tap water. It’s the sweetest drinking water I’ve ever tasted.”
When I returned with a jumbo-sized glass of cold water, I inquired,
“How’s it going? Do you think you’ll be able to fix everything on the list?”
He finished chewing the delicate bite he had taken out of the
sandwich. “We’re in luck this time ‘round, Miss L. But I don’t think patches
will be available for much longer. This old baby is well on her way to
obsolescence.” He pointed toward my eleven-year-old PC, but he might as well
have been pointing at me. Ralph continued speaking glumly. “Everyone’s being
herded in the direction of integrated systems. That’s just the way it is. It’s
only a matter of time.”
I was aware of that and was preparing myself to go off the grid.
As far as I knew, that wasn’t illegal. Damned troublesome, yes, but not against
the law. I had been paying for everything exclusively in cash for the past
three years, and not once had my money been rejected. And I rationalized that
living without a stove, refrigerator, washing machine and clothes dryer might
prove to be a kind of adventure in urban homesteading. Who needed a broiled
steak or baked fillet of halibut when peanut butter was so high in protein? I
would save time and money by eating out of jars, cans, boxes and bags. I could
easily wash my clothing and bedlinens by hand and string up clotheslines in the
dining room. And as for communication, well, if I truly needed to see someone
or someone needed to see me, there was always the quaint rite of visiting.
There would be few personal visits, though. I was virtually
friendless unless I counted Ralph as a friend. But he wasn’t really; he was my
friendly handyman. But better than friendly, he was trustworthy. I didn’t see
how I could manage without Ralph.
“Doesn’t it bother you to see all those still serviceable
electronic devices and electrical appliances tossed to the curb?” I wanted to
know.
“It used to, but not anymore. I suppose I’ve gotten accustomed
to seeing them. They do look kind of forlorn, abandoned. And I do worry about
little kids fooling around with refrigerators and getting stuck inside. Well,
Miss L. I’m all done here. You’re good to go for now.” Ralph stood up. He was
so boyishly lanky and polite that I had an urge to tousle his thick,
spicy-toned hair. I resisted it because I didn’t want to embarrass him.
“How much do I owe you?”
He just about began shuffling his feet. “Golly, Miss L. I don’t
feel right taking money from you. It would be like charging my own mother. Why
won’t you let me do this stuff for you without payment?”
I made my voice sound as stern and stubborn as possible.
“Nonsense! This is your work. It makes no sense for you not to charge me. You
have to make a living. Do we have to have this discussion each time you visit?
I’m not impoverished, and I don’t expect to be anytime soon. So kindly tell me
what I owe you.”
“Fifty dollars will be fine, Miss L. I had to be in the
neighbourhood anyway. You know, I grew up just a few streets east of your
place. It’s amazing how little this district has changed. I always feel kind of
happy when I drive around here.”
“That’s good,” I commented. “I suppose that means you had a
happy childhood.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that although it certainly was happier
than my adulthood’s been so far.”
“You’re still very young, Ralph. You’ve got everything going for
you. Anything you want is within your reach.” I almost believed my encouraging
words. The only thing that Ralph lacked was ambition. A strong-willed young
woman could change that. Ralph would be okay. I had to believe that.
After Ralph left, my own company seemed sad, old and tired. I
couldn’t recall the last time I had enjoyed being by myself. Had it really been
so long ago? If I could only spend the day with Elaine. Just one day. But then
that day would end and I would be in exactly the same lonely spot. She had been
out of my life for eighteen years, but I still half-expected her to ring my
doorbell and simply re-enter my little back stairwell of the world.
In the coming days and weeks, my plan is to deposit Miss L's Travails here, chapter by chapter. I may or may not complete this task.
This contemporary novel with
dystopian elements shifts between two focal points in time: 2016 and 1997.
Gloria Lewis, an unassuming retired school teacher is the protagonist.
When her 2016 story begins,
Gloria is living life on the edge, for citizens over the age of 65 (and the
unemployed) are being targeted for special programs by the government. She
believes it is safer to move into a senior citizens residence, and she says
goodbye to her one remaining friend—a young handyman named Ralph.
She moves into Serenity
Lodge with a certain degree of dread, but is pleasantly surprised to connect
with a few sympathetic characters there: a dapper old man (Saul Acker), two
large and vibrant women, Rose Gold and Ruth Margolis and a young and
gender-shifting employee, Ballerina Girl/Sam. She is less impressed by the
manager, Ms. Julie Dowd, who is strangely hostile and suffers from a
disfiguring skin disease.
