Joshua Then and Now (3 page)

Joshua could still remember the Saturday morning he first did something to please his mother. He was eleven, it was autumn, and only two months had passed since his father had been obliged to hit the road again, leaving them abruptly. His mother had grown increasingly anxious, roaming their cold-water flat at all hours of the day and night, unable to sleep, chewing 217’s, playing Duke Ellington records on the gramophone, the blinds pulled down so that she could practice her routines. She consumed one lending-library book after another.
Anthony Adverse, Trader Horn
, an endless spill of Ellery Queens, anything by Edna Ferber. Every Friday morning she grudgingly marched him over to Fletcher’s Field, shot a roll of film of him with her Kodak Brownie, and walked to the corner of Jeanne-Mance, where a man waited in a car. He would extract the roll of film, hand back the camera, grunt, and drive off. Then one Saturday morning, after they had just returned from a
shopping expedition to Rachel Market, they discovered their front door ajar, the glass broken, the wood round the lock splintered. His mother cursed and set down her parcels in the hall. “You wait here,” she said.

But unwilling to be left alone, he trailed after her all the same. The mattresses in her bedroom and his had been razored open, bleeding ticking. The same was true of all the sofa cushions in the living room. His father’s favorite easy chair had been slashed. Every dresser drawer in the house had been overturned, clothes strewn all over the place. His father’s white-on-white shirts. His spats. His black silk socks. His father’s clothes closet, the one he had put his own cedar lining into, had also been ransacked. Somebody had put his foot through his straw boater. He had also defecated on his father’s ice-cream suit. The worn kitchen linoleum had been rolled back, and some of the floorboards had been lifted.

“Should I call the police?” he asked.

His mother opened her purse, fished out a Pall Mall, and lighted it. “You mustn’t be afraid.”

“I’m not,” he lied.

“They wouldn’t dare come if we were here.”

“Who?”

“Whoever.”

“What do they want with us?”

“The gas ration coupon business, you know, is very competitive. It’s no bowl of cherries.”

“I see,” he said, baffled.

“Good. Now Josh, I think Daddy left something with you. A key, maybe.”

He hesitated.

“And I suppose you hid it somewhere in the house here?”

“No. I carry it with me all the time.”

He showed his mother the key and she laughed and actually hugged him. “I’m going to take you to a restaurant, just you and me.”

His mother slipped into her green shirtwaist dress, pinned a straw hat into her hair, and touched her mouth with ruby-red lipstick. She didn’t take him to a poky neighborhood delicatessen, but to a real restaurant, on St. Catherine Street. Dinty Moore’s. Where the manager kissed her on the cheek, his mother, and a waiter immediately brought a Dewar’s and a splash to their table.

It didn’t work out. Emboldened by the sweet memory of his mother’s embrace, he chattered on mindlessly about school and his life on the street until, whatever her good intentions, he sensed her eyes glazing over, bored. Later he would realize that she was more frightened than she allowed, and that if not for his unwanted presence she could have been with his father, who was hunkering down in a fishing lodge in Irish Hills, Michigan, always remembering to check out the trip wires he had set on the property before turning in for the night. But for him, his mother could have joined him there, making sure nobody else was cooking corned beef and cabbage for him or ironing his shirt collars just so.

Even as Joshua struggled to hold her interest, they were joined by a man who he later learned was a city councillor named Ed Ryan. Mr. Ryan, a beefy man with joyful blue eyes, his nose a network of burst capillaries, was smoking a Havana. He slid into his mother’s side of the booth uninvited and flicked his fingers for the waiter, directing him to bring her another Dewar’s and a splash, as well as the usual for him, and a banana split for the lad.

“What a pleasure it is to see you here, Esther,” he said.

“You’ll get over it,” his mother said, flushing.

“And how are you managing these days?”

“Better than Billy Conn. Not as good as J. Edgar Hoover.”

“Ah, isn’t it a sad business,” Mr. Ryan said, his voice soothing, “a most lamentable state of affairs, but everything that can be done is being done.”

“Please don’t do that,” his mother said, moving tighter to the wall. “You’re trespassing on somebody else’s property.”

He didn’t know what Mr. Ryan was doing, but Ryan guffawed, bringing a hairy hand up from under the table, and recited:

His mother snickered nervously and indicated Joshua’s presence. Mr. Ryan edged closer to his mother even as he winked at Joshua. “Did anyone ever tell you,” he asked, “that you have your mother’s haunting brown eyes and her delicate complexion?”

Fuck you.

“And how would you like to go to Belmont Park this afternoon and try all the new rides?”

“Why not?” he said, misunderstanding, assuming he meant all three of them.

“Euclid,” Mr. Ryan called out, still smiling directly at Joshua.

A small, peppery French Canadian hurried over to their booth.

“How would you like to take the charming young Mr. Shapiro here to Belmont Park this afternoon?”

Confused, he appealed to his mother, who was squeezed even tighter to the wall, Mr. Ryan crowding her. “What should I do?”

“Go. Stay,” his mother said in a thick voice.

Euclid was already tugging him by the elbow. “Come on, sonny, we’re going to have lots of fun.”

He didn’t remember much about his afternoon in the amusement park, but he did recall that it had already turned dark when he let himself in the front door. His mother was on the phone, hollering at somebody. “I’m going to tell him everything you did to me, you son of a bitch.” Slamming the receiver back into the cradle, she saw him standing there. “Why did you go?” she demanded.

“You said I should.”

“I didn’t want you to go.”

The room stank of cigar smoke. His mother’s feathery pink fans lay on the carpet. But there was only one purple balloon. The other had been burst.

“What happened?” he asked.

“What happened happened.”

His mother was wearing a flowery housecoat over her costume. “And will you please stop staring at me,” she said.

“I’m not staring at you.”

“I should be with your father. I shouldn’t be stuck here alone.”

“I’m here.”

“Wowee,” she said.

Recognizing her mood, grittily determined not to be left behind again, he surprised himself by speaking harshly to her. “If you leave me with Aunt Fanny again, I’m going to run away.”

“Where would you go?” she asked, interested.

“I’d manage.”

“I wonder.”

Now he was really scared. “If I ran away, Daddy wouldn’t like it.”

They stared at each other, a moment of recognition, and then, frightened, they both retreated.

“What would you like for supper?” she asked.

“I’m not hungry.”

“Oh no you don’t,” she said fiercely. “You are not only going to eat, you’re going to stuff yourself. So when we go out to take your picture on Fletcher’s Field this Friday, I don’t want a message back that his precious one looks thin.”

When he wakened the next morning he found his mother on her hands and knees with a bucket and brush, scrubbing the hall floor. “He should have left the key with me,” she said. “I’m his wife.”

“I didn’t ask for it, but.”

“Some bigshot. You’re not even a man yet, if you know what I mean?”

Lying in bed in his Lower Westmount townhouse one morning, two weeks before his accident, before the letters had surfaced or anyone had accused him of being a closet queer, sifting through the conundrums of a childhood that still bewildered him, Joshua was suddenly jolted awake by the front doorbell. Damn it, he had not even had his breakfast yet, and when he peeked out of his bedroom window he saw a police car parked in the drifting snow. Relieved that the kids had already left for school, he hurried into his dressing gown and raced downstairs to open the front door, in such a rush that he totally forgot what he was still wearing underneath. He beckoned the two cops inside, determined to have them state their business – especially if it was what he feared – without benefit of onlookers.

“What can I do for you?” he asked warily.

“It’s what we can do for you, sir.”

Aha.

“We found your car parked downtown with the keys still in the ignition.”

“Outside The King’s Arms?” Joshua asked, his head pounding.

“It’s a tow zone.”

Immensely relieved but still suspicious, Joshua said, “I had too much to drink last night and decided to take a taxi home.” But the truth was, he had forgotten all about the car. “I’m sorry to have caused you any trouble.”

The older of the two cops, the plainclothesman in charge, plunked down Joshua’s car keys on a table and introduced himself: Detective Sergeant Stuart Donald McMaster.

McMaster was a chubby man with icy blue eyes, pudgy cheeks, a sly tiny mouth, and a chin receding into wobbly fat, the price paid for too many submarine sandwiches on the fly. “Why, it’s our pleasure,
Mr. Shapiro,” he said. “I happen to be a great admirer of your column.” And sending the younger cop back to the car, he wandered into the living room and sat down, uninvited. Immediately putting the furniture under surveillance. “You’ll find your car parked across the street, incidentally.”

McMaster, Joshua noticed for the first time, was carrying what appeared to be a bound manuscript, and now he revealed what Joshua took to be the real reason for his visit. McMaster was taking a night course at Concordia University, creative writing; he had been working on a novel for ten years. “I want you to know it’s not one of your little one-character jobs. Shit, no. It has ten major characters and I’ve written the biographies of each one of them.” He paused, watching Joshua closely. “Now I suppose you want to know why ten?”

“Only,” Joshua said, beginning to enjoy himself, “if you have already copyrighted the idea.”

McMaster didn’t answer at once. Savoring the moment, he lit a cigarette, his face flushed with hatred. “You don’t know what an honor it is just to be sitting with you, a man of your stature. We never miss you on
TV
. Wait till I tell my grandson. Wow.”

“Please, McMaster.”

“Stu.”

“Stu.”

“I used to know your father in the old days.”

“There isn’t a cop in town who didn’t.”

“Hey, did you know big Ed Ryan back when?”

“Never heard of him.”

“Well, I got my own theories about his accident.” McMaster ground his gleaming dentures together. “I read somewhere that you liked hockey better than any other sport.”

“Don’t we all?”

“Affirmative. But you’ve got a season pass, maybe even a couple in the reds, and you get to booze with all the players. Me, I only get to
take my grandson to a game when the legendary Washington Caps are in town. Ginsberg of Upper Belmont lays the tickets on me. And I’m supposed to faint with gratitude and maybe cruise past his house one more time while they’re in Florida. Specially these days. With all the robberies.”

In as casual a voice as he could manage, Joshua asked, “Are we having an unusual number of robberies in Westmount these days?”

“Not so much an unusual number as unusual robberies. Crazy.”

“How do you mean, crazy?”

“I was going to tell you why ten characters.” McMaster sucked in a mighty puff of his cigarette, his cunning eyes belying his quick smile. “There’s one major character from each province of Canada.”

Joshua whistled, impressed. “No one from the Northwest Territories or the Yukon?”

“Minor.”

“If Quebec separates, will you have to revise?”

McMaster’s smile lapsed. “One of the major characters,” he said, his voice filled with reproach, “is a Jew. And I’m not saying that to flatter you. I don’t give a sweet fuck about anybody. Ask around.”

“I don’t have to. I believe you.”

“Nobody speaks for guys like me any more. We just hacked this country out of the wilderness, that’s all. But these days, you want to inherit the earth you better be a gay-libber or a jigaboo or a Jew. You’re a faggot today, and you want it written in the bill of rights that you got the right to teach gym in elementary school and soap the boys down in the shower room. A Jew elbows ahead of you in a lineup outside a movie and you shove him back a little, just to keep him honest, and right off he’s hollering about the six million.” McMaster leaped to his surprisingly dainty little feet. “What I’m trying to say is, don’t make the mistake of taking me for a fool. I may be nothing but a
goy
,” he said, enormously pleased with himself, “crazy enough to be an honest cop, but I’ve still got all my marbles.”

“I can see that you weren’t born yesterday, McMaster.”

“Aw, come on.
Stu.”

“Stu.”

“Don’t get pissed off with me. More power to you, I say. I wish my people had your savvy. If we did, the French Canadians wouldn’t be dumping on us today. Here, give me your hand. Put it there.”

Feeling foolish, Joshua shook hands with him. McMaster’s palm was moist.

“I get home tonight, I’m going to tell Irma I shook hands with Joshua Shapiro and that he has agreed to read my novel and give his frank opinion of it.” Instead of letting go, he squeezed. “Sorry about your wife.”

“What, exactly, do you mean about my wife?”

“Hey, hello there. Geez. Better ask me what I
don’t
know about Westmount, this has been my turf for better than thirty years now. You must know the Trimbles. You know, Belvedere Road. The corner house.”

“Yes,” Joshua said wearily, “I know the Trimbles.”

“Have you ever wondered why such a la-de-da Englishman served in the Canadian army?”