Abie Says His Prick's in the Top Two Percent

"Hey," he says, grabbing my ass on the second step leading to the upper floor of the townhouse, and I think, you could have given me a few steps for myself, is that asking too much?—there is our bedroom, bathroom, small bedroom where I write term papers and study and Abie spends occasional all-nighters for courses he deigns to touch with his glorious intellect, and then a larger sun-filled warm bedroom, my baby’s room, except there is no baby.

More and more I am thinking of babies and farms bordering a lake. Last weekend, we drove to a commune near Freelton."We do have some Jewish families in residence," the woman with cropped hair said as she looked at us. "Modelled on the kibbutz, you know. We even have sleeping houses. "You mean . . . ?" I said. "Oh yes," the woman said. "And is there a choice?" I asked. "No," she said, clearing away earthern pottery mugs from a coffee table with a tree stump base. Abie looked my face, ushered me out, opened the car door in an uncharacteristic gesture, and practically shoved me in. He knew I was about to have one of my melt-downs.

I guess, my sense of direction is haphazard ─ I followed my wayward sense of direction, landed in this god-for-saken marriage, and now there is no way out of this tunnel. It’s like the one Abie’s family hid in during for war. One thousand days underground, thirty-six people, first and second cousins, brothers, sisters, parents, aunts, uncles. They had to strip the Baba and grease her so she’d fit down the foxhole. There were streams deep down in the tunnel and prehistoric drawings, and the brothers, Sam, Sholke, and Nissel built a chimney through the trunk of the tree to a top branch. Sixty feet it was. A dentist performed abortions. First cousins married first cousins, and seconds, seconds. At night, the men plumaged fields for potatoes. Most stayed in for one thousand days. When they emerged, they looked at each other and laughed. Their skin had turned blue. Of course they also cried. And Abie’s mother, Chana, not knowing if the man she had married just before she slid down the fox hole and whom she heard was taken to Siberia─Siberia!─was still alive. So she dressed as a nun, that she might be spared from harm, meaning rape and death, and set out from Poland, across Russia, to Siberia. Jose had been eating rats to survive, but he was alive. And after all that, in her fifties and firmly established in her Cote St. Luc bungalow, although she would have loved to live in TMR with her wealthy brothers, Chana was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Three months and she was gone. She climbed on the silver table for her radiation treatment and her heart gave out. Her husband remarried within a year. He was used to being taken care of. He’s ninety-one now and waiting to join Chana.

The Baba wrote a book “We Fight to Survive.” Abie says she left out all the good stuff, the marauding and killing and sex. The uncles didn’t keep her in the loop. It’s said that Nissel could pick up a horse with one hand. He’s dead now. But he was never bent or stooped over. I keep telling Abie he has to write the book. He says he has to interview all the uncles and Sonya and Pepe in New York, as well as Henya, his mother’s sister. "Before they die," he says. “I’m going to tell this story,” he says. “And it will be better and bigger than any Dr. Zhivago.” Every so often he makes phone calls to producers. He has contacts.

I have to hand it to him; this one he could do. At first he talks about it every week, then once a month. He tells me it’s going to be a classic. "You’ll act in it," he says. "Maybe it will be your big break." Those acting surges wash over me, making me weak in the knees. Now’s the time I could fuck him, but he keeps on talking. I can’t see movies, can’t go to plays. The screen credits get blurry and I sob when the actors take their bows. “The most gifted young talent," Leon Major had said. Although I screwed up at the Saidye Bronfman centre – Louise Marleau was starring in the "Doll’s House" and Trudeau was in the audience, first row centre. Gina who was having an affair with a slight blond set manager slipped backstage in her black pantsuit and whispered grandly, “You’ll never believe . . . " I was the maid. I figured if Eisenstein could create memorable bits parts for his players, so could I, but when I entered stage left and looked at Nora all dressed in her finery, I forgot my lines. She repeated her lines. I used my character to get flustered, curtsied twice, burst into tears, and excused myself. The audience clapped. “Don’t you ever ad lib on me again, do you hear me?” Louise hissed. Robin Ward patted me on the shoulder, “You did good kid,” he said. “Never mind.”

I even auditioned for the National Theatre School. “You didn’t get in,” Abie told me straight out one morning in our Bourret Avenue kitchen. “You needed three out of three votes. You got two. One thought your emotions were too powerful. It would be hard to match you up. They chose David Lazarus instead."
“What? He has no soul and he talks in a flat line.
"And Alan Migicovsky."
“You gotta be kidding me. He walks with his ego up his ass, and he crimps his hair."
“I know, Abie said. "I know." And then he called Pluto and we sat the three of us, as I cried on Abie’s shoulder and into Pluto’s fur. We sat like that for a few hours, then Abie said “I have to take a leak."

Constance Brown kept me on. She wanted me to see this director for a lead in a CinePix movie.
"What's your sign?" the director asked me and I said "Pisces."
"It figures," he said.
"I'm Aries," and then he paused. I hadn't a clue what all that meant, so I just stood there nodding meaningfully.
"Do you do nude scenes?" he asked.
“I do not,” I said.
“Aw, you’re kidding me,” he said.
“You’ll have to get a stand in,” I said.
“Won’t you show me a bit of leg?” he said, and I said, “Well, OK,” and I lifted my mother’s burgundy dress to mid-thigh.

The next day I phoned Constance. “That’s it for me,” I said. “This is not my scene.”
“It may not be your scene, but it’s part of the scene,” she said. “You’d have the lead.” The movie did well in Quebec. And really it wasn’t even soft porn. But when I heard that, I was already in Guelph, enrolled in early childhood development, a five-year B.A.Sc. honours program. And Abie was either sleeping or eating or calling "Janice where are you?" or "Are you ever coming to bed?"
And I'd yell up, "That's because you're watching TV."
"You have any better alternatives?"
I guess that's why I stayed. I didn't have any better alternatives.