Sonja & Carl Read online

  We decided to rent a one-bedroom in the same building. I would have the bedroom and Ma the pullout sofa.

  “I will clean at night but also during the day. Some pay forty dollars for six hours, on some days I can do two houses. We can manage, but you must forget your plans for university. It would be impossible—you can see that.” All this was delivered in low and pressing Ukrainian.

  I did not answer, torn between the humiliation of having Ma support me by working fifteen hours a day and giving up any future of escape and stimulation. I would, I decided, try to get a part-time job at Tim Hortons, Swiss Chalet, or even O’Dare’s Bar. I had heard Timmy’s and Swiss Chalet paid between $8 and $10 an hour, and at O’Dare’s the drunks might provide decent tips. It would interfere with my studies and any future scholarship. As well, it would provide amusement for some of my classmates, who suspected that I, the poorest student in the class, looked down on them. But I had to do something. Even Pops had encouraged it. And I missed him, more than I’d ever thought I would.

  “Sorry ’bout your father,” Carl Helbig said, just as I was about to go into Miss Steinbrink’s classroom for a discussion of the Fool’s role in Lear.

  “Thank you.” I avoided his eyes. How did he know? We had not even placed a death notice in the Davenport Guardian and I had only missed one day of school. Typical of gossiping Davenport. Then that night, a call came from Carl’s mother, Mrs. Gerda Helbig.

  “You help my Carl pass grade? I give you twenty dollars each hour. Only you and Carl must know. This very important. Carl tell me you very smart. Without help, he not pass.”

  “Please give me a few hours to think about it,” I said.

  I had no one to discuss it with. Ma might encourage it, but only if I contributed the money to household expenses. This, after assuring her that I was no longer considering attending university. I had, in fact, applied for the scholarship the day after Pops’ cremation, although I knew at the time lack of money might make following up impossible. Ma was limited, even Pops had implied it. I decided, however, I would not discard my university plans, but keep them as a tribute to Pops.

  Twenty dollars an hour was enticing, double what I’d get at Timmy’s or anywhere else, even counting tips. And I couldn’t be sure these jobs were available. And working with Carl meant I’d be reviewing my own work. I marvelled at the amount and then remembered that Mr. Helbig, Carl’s father, was general manager of Joseph Dare Manufacturing. I had read it in the Davenport Guardian at the time of his appointment, and that Mrs. Gerda Helbig worked for the company as an accountant/bookkeeper. In fact, there was a picture of the plump, smiling Helbigs with a caption underneath reading, “A Family Affair.” No doubt, I thought, in a nasty frame of mind, Carl would be headed in the same direction—but as a disruptive assembly line worker.

  The nature of Mrs. Helbig’s call explained Carl’s movie invitation some weeks earlier: he was enlisting me for academic help. It was a better premise than to have him use me as the butt of his comedy routine following some so-called date. I would not admit a sense of deflation in having thought for even a moment that I’d appeal to hockey hero Helbig. But apparently I had my uses.

  I did the calculations: three hours a night, five days a week, twelve hundred a month, for four months. It would cover residence—and more. I did not wish to tutor Carl, but then the whole matter of tutoring was to be surrounded by secrecy. He could be relied on to keep his mouth shut, perhaps ashamed that his smirking friends might know he needed help. As if they didn’t already suspect it.

  I did not want him to come here, view our shabby apartment, meet Ma, and see that she spoke no English. His mother had an accent, but at least she communicated. She did not merely stand there, smiling her lack of understanding. It embarrassed me that I had to phone all Ma’s cleaning customers to inform them that she spoke no English, and that I would have to explain the specifics of her duties to her. And then there was the shame I felt at my own embarrassment.

  Since Pops’ death, Ma didn’t cook. There were no more smells of pork sausage sizzling in lard or sharp tomato sauce burping around rolls of cabbage wrapped around ground beef and rice. Instead, Ma told me to help myself to the mottled pink luncheon meat and pumpernickel in the refrigerator. I didn’t blame her. I had never appreciated her cooking and her schedule made me ache with guilt. I did not even allow the acrid fumes of her Camels that lingered heavy in the air saturating everything to bother me. I was, after all, losing weight. I decided, however, I’d buy some apples and eggs when I started my new job.

  I called Gerda Helbig that evening and said I’d accept the job and would tell no one. There were conditions, however. The tutoring must take place at the Helbig home. She told me they lived in the new Knightsbridge Community Development, several miles to the north of Davenport High, and that Carl was on the hockey team that practised twice a week for the Saturday games. This, I informed her, might cause scheduling complications.

  “For real help Carl needs a minimum of three hours a day,” I said, marvelling at my own nerve, and thinking that I needed a minimum of $60 a day, a much more pressing concern.

  My scheduling meant nothing to Frau Helbig, who assured me transportation would be provided by either herself or Carl, and that on his hockey practice nights I could come directly to the Helbig residence after school. She was relentless, I thought, and I acquiesced. Stopping her would be the same as trying to stop a tank by standing in front of it. I thought of Ma and Pops’ tales of the Second World War as told to them by my grandparents, and that only the cold of a Russian winter and vodka had defeated them. I felt some shame at the analogy. After all, I wanted Frau Helbig’s money and the job, in that order, and Gerda Helbig was not even born at the time of the Second World War. And neither was Ma.

  ON A NUMBING evening in late February, Gerda Helbig picked me up in her shiny new Volkswagen in front of the apartment building. I was relieved. I had worried that Carl would arrive for me.

  “Yes, I’ve eaten,” I lied, unless of course you considered a half-slice of pumpernickel and a Bubbie’s Pickle an evening meal. I was thrilled to notice I was losing weight, and I imagined arriving at university slim and attractive, with a shrinking of those unwanted soft curves that had plagued me for years.

  Gerda Helbig, cheeks round and apple-rosy, short hair with its golden highlights swept back and anchored with spice-smelling hairspray, gripped the wheel with small, plump hands with square pink fingernails and spoke of Carl. He had never been a student and had squeaked through each year, except for one, but now that he was in Grade 12 he had reached an impasse.

  “It is teacher fault,” she spat. “There is nothing wrong with Carl. He not schtupid. But he must have high school diploma.” Apparently even Joseph Dare Manufacturing, where Carl might eventually be employed, took note of this.

  I felt uneasy. Her indignation and blaming of teachers worried me. Could I measure up to this animated talkative woman’s expectations? I had decided on my teaching strategies the night before. I would start with King Lear, explaining to my student its various themes. There was considerable cruelty throughout, and I felt that he’d respond to that. Putting out Gloucester’s eyes with the leg of a stool and the suffering of Lear at the hands of his daughters might appeal to him. I would convey it all as a family tragedy, although a royal one, and get him to understand the plot. I’d then focus in on its more subtle aspects, the irony of Lear finding spiritual insight through madness, the pathos of Cordelia’s death, and Lear’s resulting agony. Who knew what this large blond jeering fellow might be capable of when severed from his chortling army camped in the last row of every classroom?

  Then on to The Great Gatsby, with an emphasis on Gatsby’s criminal past. That would interest Carl, even the unrequited love that saw Gatsby dead in a swimming pool, all for an ingrate who would not attend his funeral. The decay of the American Dream, the symbolism of East and West Egg, and the flickering green light, even Carl could grasp that. And then the Prufro
ck poem—Prufrock, done in by self-consciousness and society’s restrictions. Could I make Carl Helbig hear the mermaids singing? I would, I was hopeful, open up another world—a world remote from the video games and violent movies I felt sure he was addicted to—and transform this hulking hockey player into perhaps a creature of thought.

  History and political science would follow, kings and queens and changing governments, together with the concepts of capitalism and socialism. I could get through to him on that, especially after the union problems at Joseph Dare last summer. I did not wish to let Gerda Helbig down.

  The Helbig home was a jewellery box of a bungalow, as shiny and antiseptic as our apartment was jaded and sour. There were porcelain ornaments scattered over every polished surface, many Royal Doulton figurines. Ma had broken a Royal Doulton during one of her private cleaning jobs and had offered to replace it, almost collapsing when she found out it would be more than $500. Pictures of Carl’s two sisters showing strong white teeth and fair hair beamed from silver frames. One was in a graduation gown and the other, also gowned, had just received a diploma, which she held in her hands.

  Both Carl Sr. and Carl Jr. got up when I entered the dining room, and Carl thanked me for coming.

  “Come, you taste my dinner,” Gerda said. “Carl and Father soon finish.”

  I knew I should refuse. It was demeaning to go there and gobble down food on my first night as if I were starving, which in fact I was, but the vision and smell of the roast beef with rich dark gravy and a platter of roasted vegetables, together with the leftovers from a Romaine salad saturated with oil, vinegar, and garlic, were overwhelming.

  “Perhaps just a little,” I replied, attempting to keep the eagerness from my voice. I did, however, decline the apple strudel. There were limits, after all, to what a paid employee should receive. I wondered what Carl would have said but for the secrecy pledge.

  Gerda, referred to by Carl as “Mutti” and by Carl Sr. as “Trudy,” had arranged the study with leather chairs and a thick polished mahogany table. I reminded myself that Carl would never set foot inside our grungy fifth-floor apartment.

  “We have less than four months to get through the three hard courses,” I said brightly. “I understand there are no problems with math or science, not that I can help you with math.”

  Carl nodded solemnly. I looked at him carefully for the first time. At school I averted my eyes whenever I saw him, afraid of calling attention to myself. He was, I decided, attractive, if you liked the obvious Teutonic type. Everything about him was square: his chin, his head underneath the closely cropped fair hair, his jaw line and shoulders. Even his teeth, when he permitted a brief smile in return for my intense scrutiny, were white and square. His nails, pink, clipped, and square like his mother’s, were part of large hands that moved constantly in a restless tangle. It seemed he found it impossible to stop moving.

  “If you want to, you can get up and move around.”

  He smiled his relief, got up, and paced the room. No doubt, I thought, for him to be sitting motionless in a classroom would be torture, and I started to understand his classroom restlessness, if not his rudeness.

  I would, I decided, give him an overview of King Lear and then narrow in on certain themes and paradoxes. “King Lear,” I explained in a voice that I feared just escaped shrillness, “wanted lavish professions of love from his three daughters, but Cordelia, his favourite, refuses, and says she only loves him as a dutiful daughter. Because of this, Lear gives his kingdom to the other two, Goneril and Regan, and disinherits Cordelia. She had two suitors, but afterwards only the King of France.

  “Lear, rejected by Goneril and Regan, is cast out in a storm and goes mad. But in his madness, he gains insight. The Duke of Gloucester, betrayed by his bastard son Edmond, gains insight upon becoming blind. Both of these happenings are ironic and paradoxical. Cordelia is hanged in the final act on the instructions of Goneril and Edmond, and Lear dies of grief.

  “Lear says, ‘Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life, and thou no breath at all? Thou’ll come no more, never, never, never, never, never.’”

  It was one of my favourite Shakespearean passages, and I was aware I was giving it considerable drama and in the process revealing much too much of myself.

  Carl looked at me, alarmed.

  “Isn’t that sad?” I asked him, my voice almost breaking, “He’s so full of grief and remorse.”

  I saw him watching me in Gerda’s gold-rimmed wall mirror, my black hair swept up in its thick coil, my black almond-shaped eyes shining from my white oval-shaped face with, as I always lamented, its puffy cheeks, and wished he could share in one iota of my passion for literature, which, I feared, he inwardly characterized as “crap.”

  “It doesn’t do anything for me,” he said carefully, watching my face pucker in disappointment, “but I can see it moves you. To me, it’s really a waste of time.”

  I had obviously failed in my purpose so I would start again at the beginning, clarifying and paraphrasing, then trying the Socratic method that Miss Steinbrink used, drawing out knowledge by asking questions.

  “What do you think of Goneril’s and Regan’s answers to their father? And of Cordelia’s answer and implied criticism of her sisters?”

  “Not much,” he replied.

  “How about Lear’s reaction?”

  “Stupid.”

  “And of the Duke of Burgundy’s withdrawal as Cordelia’s suitor?”

  “She’s lucky to be rid of him; he was only in it for the bucks.”

  I felt gratified. At last I had elicited an enlightened response—of sorts.

  “The King of France still hung around,” I reminded him.

  “Good for him,” said Carl, smiling at me and showing his square white teeth. “He knew a good thing.”

  I sat frowning at the text. He was detaching himself and making fun of me, as if, because I had a passion for literature, I was in some way naive and childish.

  “And there is Edmund, the bastard son of the Earl of Gloucester, who is jealous of his legitimate brother Edgar and who will falsely convince the Earl that Edgar is plotting his death.”

  “Edmund’s a real bastard,” said Carl, smiling again.

  “Look,” I said, attempting to take the edge out of my voice, “we have a test on this in three weeks that counts for thirty percent of the final mark. If you don’t care, then I don’t, but I’m not going to have your mother waste her money if you don’t want me to help you.”

  It was the first time money had been mentioned and it had a sobering effect. Carl stopped smiling and started talking. “I guess that’s why you’re doing this, for the money. You didn’t believe I’d be such a challenge. That’s what Steinbrink said I was, after telling me I was a disgrace to the German people, ‘a challenge.’”

  I wanted to answer, Of course I’m doing it for the money. My mother cleans floors for a living and my dad’s dead. I haven’t got enough for university unless I get it for teaching you. But I did not want his pity.

  “I do need the money because I want to go to university next year. I’ve applied for a scholarship, but it doesn’t cover everything even if I do get it, and there are others applying. But I do like teaching and that’s what I want to do, so it’s not all about the money. Understand?”

  He nodded, looking serious. He always understood the concrete; it was the abstract he had problems with. It was his way of making me feel like my love of literature was in some way made-up and pretentious.

  “I want you to paraphrase for me, in writing, like you would in an exam, all of Act I. I want you to pay special attention to the Fool. It is another paradox that the Fool, who is the court comedian, serves as a touchstone of common sense to Lear, who lacks judgment. Can you do this for me?”

  “It’s sixty pages.”

  “It’s important,” I insisted.

  I WAS QUIET as I sat with Gerda Helbig in her scented Volkswagen, returning to the two-bedroom apartment that was so
on to be a one-bedroom and that smelled of stale smoke and the liniment of broken lives.

  “Study is good?” Gerda demanded.

  “Well, I hope,” I answered. I was not about to launch into a list of concerns as to Carl’s academic shortcomings to his biggest fan.

  “I tell them it nothing. He lazy boy,” she replied, wheeling expertly and smoothly along the darkened streets with the smooth sheen of winter wet reflected in the headlights and the occasional streetlight.

  “Carl must hockey practice at eight o’clock. You come to my house, three-thirty. You have dinner, then work hours with Carl. You and Carl ride in Volkswagen. Again tomorrow?”

  I nodded my agreement and thanked her once more for the dinner. That was one thing about Gerda Helbig: she prevented you from making personal decisions. I had only two hours to spend on my other courses and math was always a concern. One thing was certain, however: I would know my Lear.

  THE NEXT DAY I followed Carl in winter sunshine to his gleaming blue Volkswagen parked near the teachers’ parking, past a cluster of whistling boys.

  “Way to go, man,” one shouted. Carl merely turned around and grinned at me. I scowled back at him and walked more quickly toward the shiny little Bug, not relishing the thought of being cooped up with this large blond teenager who felt that literature was one huge joke and that my love of it some amusing form of early dementia. I saw Candace Stewart standing on the school steps watching us, unsmiling. She was said to have sex with Carl on occasion and never missed a hockey game. Carl threw her a wave and grin, which she did not return.

  “They think we’re getting it on,” he explained.

  I did not answer but looked straight ahead. I had no friends except for my two luncheon companions, Donalda and Margaret, both heading for professional courses, and Miss Steinbrink. They would know I would never get it on with someone like Carl.

  2

  THE STUDENT

  “YOUR ASSIGNMENT?” I ASKED. WE had not spoken on the way back to the bungalow, heavy with smells of oven-roasted chicken and furniture polish, except to have him mention the hockey practice at eight o’clock. “Assignment” sounded pompous, I knew that, but I wanted to give the tutorials an air of formality.