“You know, they were too close,” she heard him say, finally. “It was unnatural. Even when we moved, it didn’t make a difference. They wrote each other so many letters. Chana was always writing letters. Everything that happened, Chana had to write down. But this, this is such a shock. I’m glad Chana isn’t here anymore. Ach, I’m talking too much.”
She shook her head in a non-committal way. His cologne was beginning to sicken her. “What do you think happened tonight? Your sister-in-law thought people from Argentina were still after her. You think that’s possible?”
“Ahh!” He waved his hand dismissing it. “Everyone was tired of hearing what happened to her. Lots of people were tortured. You know, Chana suffered more than her when she was in the camp. How Goldie told it, she was the only one. She wouldn’t forget. She always thought someone was after her. You were her doctor. Didn’t you know she was crazy that way?”
“But someone did kill her.”
“I’m sure it was very simple. A thief in the night. It was her bad luck he came when she was home. If he came in the day, she would be in the bakery. She wouldn’t be dead. Such things happen.”
“Have you told your wife yet?”
He grimaced, waving his hand with dismissal. “Ach! She’s a vegetable. She wouldn’t understand. I can talk to her, talk to her — she watches with those eyes. Nothing. I don’t go much anymore. It’s very hard for me. This is the woman I lived with for thirty-five years. I can’t force myself to see her like this.”
“The police will notify her, as next of kin,” Rebecca said.
He shrugged. “She won’t understand. They’ll be wasting their time.”
Rebecca looked away, recoiling with contempt. This man was still alive while David was dead.
“Mrs. Kochinsky often spoke about visiting your wife at the nursing home. Is she still at Baycrest?” Rebecca knew she wasn’t.
“Baycrest!” he spat. “Who could afford Baycrest? They want you to turn over all your property to them and then they want to see your income tax return. They know how to squeeze money out of their Jews. No, I found a smaller place for Chana. Very nice, on Bathurst too, but further north. Just as nice as Baycrest. She wouldn’t know the difference anyway.” He sat back, smiling, in the leather and steel armchair and sipped his coffee.
Then came fire and burned the stick That beat the dog that bit the cat That ate the goat That Father bought for two zuzim. One little goat, one little goat.
chapter fourteen
Thursday, April 5, 1979
By half past midnight Rebecca was hurtling home along a deserted Eglinton Avenue at breakneck speed. All the traffic lights were green. All the storefronts burned their flashy neon signs into the void, turning ghostly sidewalks blue. She was going so fast she nearly missed turning off into her street.
For the past hour she had sat across from a Detective Dunhill at Thirteen Division. The station was empty except for the desk sergeant. Fluorescent lights hummed above the grey pockmarked block walls. She repeated the story of what had happened that night in a fatigued monotone, disturbed by the indifference of the man filling out the forms, the indifference of the universe.
She could have sleepwalked through the story by this time. She had not only told it to the constable and to Wanless, but had gone over and over it in her own mind, searching for answers. All the pertinent points — her concern, the violation of the apartment, Mrs. Kochinsky like a crushed bird — were beginning to sound hollow even to her. After an hour, the detective had leaned forward and sent her on her way.
She had just gotten undressed and crawled into bed when the phone rang on her nightstand. Now what? She turned on her lamp and picked up the receiver.
“Rebecca!” her mother’s warm voice crooned all the way from California. “We were a bit worried. We called earlier and you weren’t there. Did you have a nice evening, dear?”
“Uh.... yes, Mom. I’m fine.” There was no point in worrying them further.
“Hi, doll!” her father piped in on the extension. “You forgot to call your mother for permission to go out.”
“Big shot,” said Flo Temple. “Your father insisted we call till you answered. Did you go somewhere with friends?”
“Nobody you know.”
“I told him it was better than you moping around at home by yourself. Are you feeling any better lately, dear?”
Rebecca’d had to convince her parents she was all right before they had left for California in December, two months later than their usual migration, but only three months after David died. Then they insisted she come down around Christmas when the office slowed down anyway. None of it had kept her from sinking into a mire of depression by mid-January. By February she knew she couldn’t go on. She closed the office temporarily and Iris had sent her packing to Palm Springs, where her parents doted on her with a gentle love that kept her afloat. She couldn’t worry them now.
“I’m all right, Mom. But It’ll be nice to have you back next week.”
“You sound tired, dear. I don’t want you to do any work for the Seder. We’ll be back Monday — Daddy and I’ll come over and do everything. Wait till you see the pretty Seder plate I picked up here.”
“Your mother thinks if she spends enough on a Seder plate the Messiah will come to our door instead of Mrs. Cohen’ s.”
“Who’s Mrs. Cohen?” Flo asked.
“Do we have to have a Seder?” her father interrupted. “Couldn’t we just have the guilt-free dinners we used to have before Susan married a rabbi?”
Rebecca smiled. Her sister’s husband was an academic who taught Jewish history at McGill University in Montreal.
“You know you like Ben,” Flo said. “And it won’t kill you to be a Jew once a year. Besides, you need to concentrate less on food. Rebecca, tell your father to stop snacking on chips and pretzels. All that salt and fat is pushing up his blood pressure.”
“What’s it at?” Rebecca asked.
“It’s not so bad,” Mitch said. “160 over 90.”
“Sometimes 95,” Flo added.
“Not time to panic yet,” Rebecca said. “Why don’t you try some air-popped popcorn?”
“Isn’t that girl a genius?” said her mother.
“If she was so smart, she’d know we left our air-popper in Toronto,” Mitch said. “I got to tell you a doctor story about our neighbour. Mrs. Goldblum.”
“Mitch, we don’t have a neighbour Mrs. Gold....”
“Sha. I met her on the elevator when you were sleeping. So Mrs. Goldblum is maybe ninety-four and she insists on telling me this story even though I don’t know her from Adam. She says she went to the doctor with this embarrassing problem. She told him, ‘I pass gas all the time’ — actually she said ‘fart’ — ‘but they’re soundless and don’t smell. You won’t believe this but since I’ve been here I’ve farted twenty times. What can I do, Doctor?’ So the doctor gave her a prescription for pills. She should take them three times a day for seven days and then come back to see him in a week. The next week Mrs. Goldblum marched into his office, furious. She said, ‘Doctor, I don’t know what was in those pills but the problem is worse. I’m farting as much and they’re still soundless but now they smell terrible. What do you say for yourself?’ The doctor said, ‘Calm down, Mrs. Goldblum. Now that we’ve fixed your sinuses, we’ll work