Emma Richler - Feed My Dear Dogs

Jude is staring out the big bay window. ‘Let’s go outside,’ he says.

‘Lost causes, Jude, please!’

‘When you work very hard even though you’ll never win, you’ll never change a thing.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well. Like wars, there will always be wars.’

‘Why, why will there?’

‘That’s how it is, Jem. But you fight anyway, even if it’s a lost cause.’

‘Why, what’s the point, I don’t understand.’

‘It’s good to try, it makes you good – forget it, Jem, ask Mum, it’s hard to explain, I’m tired.’

‘OK, sorry. We can go outside now. I think I’m better.’ I start to climb down the ladder. ‘Know what? Dad might be a lost cause in the mess department. We can try to help him be less messy, but it’s no good. We can say, Oh Dad, when he drops food between the plate and the pot and make little suggestions like Wait till I get a bit closer with my plate, Dad, or Slow down there! or some such thing, but it’s no good, he’s a lost cause, right? And Harriet! She –’

‘Jem. You have to stop making everything to do with us. We are not the world, the Weiss family is not the world, you have to learn the big things, science, history, all that. And you can’t stay in your family for ever, I mean, you don’t even know what you want to do.’

‘I do!’

‘What then?’

‘I’ll tell you later. I’M TIRED.’

‘Yeh-yeh.’

‘I have ideas. I might do what Dad does.’

‘See? Just because Dad does it. And you can’t anyway. Sports writing is not a girl job, I want you to do a girl job.’

‘It was just one idea, I have others. I’m only ten, Jude, it’ll be OK.’

I get it all wrong with Jude sometimes, nothing I say is right, and I hate it when he is cross with me, why can’t he explain properly, what does he mean about the world and our family, what did I do wrong? I have this bad-news feeling now, a locked-in-the-attic feeling and I need to get rid of it fast.

‘Let’s drink milk!’ I say.

‘Don’t say milk.’ Jude hauls on his blue rugby top and I have one too, one that is a bit too small for him and I think to grab it from my room but he might not be in the mood for me to wear the same top as him so I decide to wear something else. We are going outside. We’ll play some game. Great.

‘Jude? Just one thing. Is it good, do you think, going to Dad’s country, changing countries like that?’

‘Sure. It will be fine. We have to travel.’

‘Why? Why do we?’

‘We just do. It’s important, travel is important,’ he says in a voice meaning this is the end of the talk we are having, it is time to move on.

‘MILK,’ I say, stepping up to him with a horror film killer look. ‘MILK.’

I am running now, Jude chasing, both of us scrambling down the stairs and I forget about other Judes, there is only one, not lost, no saint, not obscure, but my own brother who is only fifteen months older and so nearly my twin, it’s scientific, it’s historical, it’s nothing to do with me.

‘Mum! Mummy!’ I am kind of cross, and stomping all over the house, where is she?

I ask Lisa who is feeding Gus in the kitchen. Lisa comes from Portugal and she lives with us. She wears a shiny blue dress with buttons down the front like our painting smocks at school, same colour, same arrangement of buttons and pockets, different feel. Convent painting smocks are matte and soft, not slidy and shiny, and they are for ART ONLY. Lisa is sometimes friendly, sometimes not. She is not very friendly if some item has gone missing and you ask her about it. If you ask her if she knows where a thing might be, she grabs the edge of one pocket of her shiny blue dress open and holds it like that until she has finished saying, IS IT IN MY POCKET?!

I like Lisa even though she is grumpy. Also, she needs me. Some days, when she is having a rest in her room, she calls me into her room and we do one of two activities, sometimes both. 1) Photographs. Lisa shows me the same old photos of her family every time, pictures of scowly boys with dark floppy hair standing near big white walls and old men with pipes and dark hats on, black hats with little brims. Then there are ladies in dark dresses and black napkins wrapped around their heads though it is not raining. The focus is not all that great but I don’t remark upon it. It would be rude and clearly it is not a problem for Lisa who tells me the names of all the people and I pretend I remember some of the names that go with the people, though this is hard because they all look pretty much the same to me and because Lisa covers each face as she goes, kind of lingering there a while and mumbling soft things in the Portuguese language. 2) Football Pools. I help Lisa choose which football team to bet on for the match on Saturday and I fill out the forms for her. My dad says little kids are not allowed to bet, it is against the law and I am now on the slippery slope and had better watch out, etc. Yeh-yeh. I like to help Lisa out and I know quite a bit about football and I can spell Sheffield Wednesday and Norwich no problem whereas it is not so easy for her without checking every single letter and still getting it wrong. English spelling is a bit weird, I tell her in a comforting manner. And hey, Dad can’t spell! I do not want her to get depressed. Lisa comes from Portugal.

Lisa is never grumpy with Gus who is taking his time right now over some squashed-up bananas, eating slowly, with a thoughtful expression, holding his right foot in his left hand and flexing the toes to and fro, a habit of his I believe will stick with him. I can see it. And I see a day when Gus will catch up with me and be at an age when the difference between us doesn’t count any more, we are grown-ups, and we sit in a bar and have drinks, wine for me, like Mum, and Scotch for Gus, like Dad, Scotch he will sip with a thoughtful expression, maybe reaching for his foot now and then, he doesn’t know why. I do.

‘Lisa, have you seen Mum, please?’

‘IS SHE IN MY POCKET?!’

Bloody.

Lisa is not coming on the ship with us due to love and sex. Mum says she has a boyfriend here but I can tell Mum is worried about the boyfriend situation. Dad says, He’s a ganef! Shiker , shmuck! This sounds bad. In my opinion, though, Lisa will go back to her old country with scowly dark-haired boys standing against white walls and old ladies with napkins on their heads, that’s what I think.

‘Mum? Mummy?’ I’m calling a lot louder now, reminding myself of Joey in Shane , my dad’s favourite Western he took us to the cinema to see. A revival, he said, whatever that means. I never saw him so excited. At the end of the story, the boy Joey calls out for Shane, he calls his name many times, Sha-ne! Shane! Come back! Etc. He runs after him a long way, running with his dog, but Shane is not coming back, not ever, he is not coming back even though part of him would like to stay because he has a big feeling for little Joe’s family and they have a big feeling for him, but he rides off anyway, maybe thinking like Jude. Travel is important.

When we came home from the cinema, Ben, Jude and I were a bit giddy from going, Sha-ne! Sha-aane! in the same voice as the boy, the whole way home in the car, flopping around in hysterics in the back seat and driving Dad a bit crazy. At supper, any time anyone stood up for a glass of water or something, one of us would call out, Come back! in poignant tones and I believe Dad was a bit disappointed as Shane is a favourite film of his, and this was a little traitorous on my behalf because I remember feeling a bit desperate at the end of the film, tears rising up in me when Joey chased after Shane who is not coming back, Shane who is a hero and ought to stick around. I don’t tell Jude or Ben, they might think I am a bit sissy, which is strange, as my dad certainly has a big thing for Shane and he is not a sissy. Oh well.