Emma Richler - Feed My Dear Dogs

‘Do you remember I told you Ben has special exams to write, O levels, and then he’ll join us, he’ll come by air?’

‘No. Maybe I wasn’t listening, maybe I forgot, maybe you just said O levels, I don’t know what that is, are you sure you told me?’

‘Yes, Jem.’

‘Why can’t we wait for him?’

‘We have to find a house and furniture, all kinds of things, it will be fun, I’ll need your help.’

‘Everything’s changing, it’s all different, I hate it – will Ben stay in the house by himself?’

‘No,’ my mother says. ‘He’ll stay with Chris, with Chris and his family.’

‘Well, do they know he needs nuts and raisins in a bowl when he comes in from school, do they?’ I feel right pathetic now, I can’t do much about it, and the tears fall, kind of leaping out of my eyes, it’s weird. ‘Do they have binoculars where we’re going? You don’t want to go, do you, Mum, I know you don’t!’

‘Jem. Sometimes we do things we don’t want to do because we love someone.’ Mum wipes my tears away, her long fingers brushing my cheeks like windscreen wipers on a car.

‘Dad, you mean Dad. Because he has to go, right?’

I think of learning to change Gus’s nappies, trying to copy Mum, how she raises his ankles with one hand and slides the old nappy out from under him with the other, then swabs the decks with damp tissues and pats him dry and bundles him up neatly again, all the while having a friendly chat and tickling him in the ribs. It’s not so smooth an operation with me but that is not the main thing, the main thing is how it does not feel like a poo situation, usually quite grievous and appalling, situations such as walking slap into a mound of poo on the pavement or in a field and having a doomy feeling for hours thereafter. Gus’s poo is not a problem for me at all, just as Harriet barf is not nearly so bad as stranger barf and the day she marched up to my table at the convent and spewed a wee pile of swedes at my feet like I was the only person who could handle the barf situation with poise and even temper, that was not a problem for me either. In my opinion, Harriet displayed fine judgement that day. No one should have to eat swedes in their lifetime. I had a conviction swedes are nun food only and do not exist in the great world so I looked them up and I was nearly right. Brassica napus: used as a vegetable or as CATTLE FOOD. Hmm. This is possibly a catechism issue with nuns, how we should all eat off the same menu, cows and girls, the whole zoo. We are ALL God’s creatures.

The main thing is, not everything that spews forth from a person is lovely and charming, poo, barf, blood, but depending on your feelings for that person, this will or will not be a problem for you, and fine feelings are likely to predispose you to cheery mop-up operations, and willing journeys by sea to uncertain destinations.

‘Can Ben bring some binoculars when he comes?’

‘Maybe,’ says my mother, turning back to face the mirrors, ‘or maybe we can go out hunting for something you will like as much, something new. We will look until we find it. What do you think of that idea?’

I am not hopeful. A not-binocular, just as good? I don’t know.

‘OK,’ I reply because I don’t want to let her down. She needs me, she said so.

Mum loops that cross around herself, the one with the pale stone at the heart of it. It is art, she says, made by an artist, a man from Ireland, and I wonder about him, whether he is prone to cracking jokes and doling out hugs or whether he is too caught up with the forging of silver and the embedding of pale stones for such things. Mum tucks the cross under her clothes because of Dad and Judaism, or else she hangs other stuff about her neck, shimmery silver chains or a wispy scarf so the fine cross is kind of hidden, like seeing a person you know standing under a weeping willow in a slight breeze and the picture keeps breaking up. Kaleidoscopes give me the same feeling, part excited, part depressed. I twist the tube and the pattern comes, marvellous, and just as I get an idea about it, close to recognition, it turns into some new pattern and I have to start all over again, like nothing is clear for long enough, there is nothing you can swear to. Hey, you, standing there, do I know you? Is that a cross I see?

‘I love that,’ I say, pointing to the cross, trying not to say the word though my dad is downstairs. ‘And in the middle, the –’

‘Moonstone,’ says Mum drawing it out from the tangle of chains, willow. Binocular, moonstone. Memento. Where she’s been, where she is headed. Mrs Yaakov Weiss, destination Moon.

‘Well, I love it.’

‘It’s lovely, but you don’t really love it, Jem. You love people, not things.’ She says this gently, stroking the top of my head and taking the opportunity, as per usual, to untangle some of the mess up there. Like my dad, I do not have a big thing for combs and combing.

Here comes my dad. You can hear him coming a mile off. Is he worried about spooking people, is that why he goes in for all that shoe scuffling and throat clearing? I don’t think so. He finds it very funny indeed if you suddenly leap in the air limbs akimbo because someone has just spoken loudly in a quiet room or you are watching a film and there is a gunshot out of nowhere. Ha ha ha, he goes, watching you try to recover your senses. He loves this, people losing their cool. So that’s not the reason. He wants to make an announcement, that’s all. It’s a long hello. When an important cowboy enters a bar, he will pause a moment at the swing doors, stopping short in a slap of heels so everyone has a moment to turn round and get the picture before he bats the doors open, and this is no show-off thing, but a courtesy and a greeting, the only kind he knows, because he is an important cowboy and a man of few words.

Dad is carrying two glasses, white wine for Mum, Scotch for him. It is time for him to slap soapy water under the arms and put on a new shirt and tie it up with a tie. This will take him about three and a half minutes and there will be a lot of commotion.

‘Jem,’ he says. ‘We’ll have another boxing lesson soon. Maybe tomorrow.’

I think he has forgotten about telling me not to bother Mum. Anyway, why can’t I be in here if I want to?

‘Tomorrow? OK.’

My dad pulls on my hair, two tugs, like my hair is a bell pull and he is ringing for servants. It’s a show of affection and now I feel guilty about skipping out on his head rub, something I hope he has also forgotten.

‘Tomorrow we’ll do the rope-a-dope!’ says my dad, putting his glass down and shuffling from foot to foot like he is doing a war dance or some such thing. I have no idea what rope-a-dope means, or whether I am supposed to shuffle around also. I don’t bother. ‘Put up your dukes! Ha ha ha! And don’t eat those before dinner,’ he adds, prodding my bag of crisps and picking his glass up again.

Bloody. Not again. It is possible Mum asked him to look out for this tonight, the eating of crisps before dinner, because she is always in charge of health matters and that can be a full-time job when there are a lot of kids roaming around like in our house. The thing is, when Dad takes on a task of this kind, of handing out advice or rules, he is a lot bossier, clearly believing a kid will not get the message unless you yell out the advice and make a cross face and repeat it eight or nine times. We are not spooked, but if one of us has a friend around when Dad is marching through the house, poking us in the ribs in passing and yelling out advice, or going Heil Hitler! ha ha ha, the type of friend who is a bit jumpy near my dad, wondering if he is a crazy person or dangerous or something, for a moment I think I should explain to the friend that my dad is not scary, he is funny, that’s how he is, he’s not mad or anything, and then just as quickly, I feel clapped out and know it is time to get a new friend, because some things are too hard to explain, and I am real choosy about friends now, finding ones who can relax around Dad, which is a lot easier than trying to explain things to people who will never really understand. This may be an unusual way to pick friends, I don’t know, but that’s how it goes.