Barney's Version - Mordecai Richler [130]
— by Stan Mikita early in the first period —
“My father gave me an onyx ring and a pearl necklace with matching bracelet and earrings. I had it valued at Birk’s, don’t look at me like that, I’m not mercenary, I had to, for the insurance, and it was worth fifteen hundred altogether, and I’m talking 1947, never mind now. He also gave me a sterling silver vanity set from Mappin and Webb that still sits on my dressing-table, and would you please not put down your whisky glasses there any more, it leaves rings on the antique leather, not that you care. My grandmother gave me my first mink jacket with matching muff, who wears them now, eh? But I wouldn’t part with it for anything. You’re reading again.”
“I am not.”
“Then why did you move your coffee cup just now?”
“Because I spilled some.”
“Tell me something. You go to a hockey game on Thursday night, you see what’s going on, you know who scored the goals, but first thing the next morning you turn to the sports pages. Why? You think the score is going to be different in the Gazette?”
“You were going to tell me about your dream.”
“You’re not interested in my dream.”
“Of course I am.”
“Because it was about you?”
“I didn’t bring it up, for Christ’s sake.”
“I’ll tell you what I’m interested in. Sylvia Hornstein saw you in the lingerie department of Holt Renfrew two weeks ago, and says she saw you buy a silk negligée, and had it gift-wrapped, and then — and this I found interesting — had it wrapped over again in brown paper — as if it was going to be mailed to somebody. So obviously it wasn’t for me. Who for, then?”
“As a matter of fact —”
“Oh boy, is this ever going to be good!”
“— Irv Nussbaum’s anniversary is coming up, and he phoned me from Calgary and asked me to get it for his wife and mail it to her here.”
“Liar, liar, liar.”
“This is outrageous.”
“Which of your so-called actresses wore it for you last night, you didn’t get in until four a.m.”
“As it happens, I was out with John and Zack last night, and you can check that out if you like.”
“You can go straight to hell,” she said, leaping up.
— it was the fire-wagon Habs taking the play to the Hawks. First it was Big Jean Beliveau feeding Dickie Moore in the slot, then it was Boom-Boom beating Glenn Hall on his glove side with a forty-footer the Hawk netminder would like to have back, and then Beliveau, taking a long pass from Doug Harvey, skated in all alone on Hall. Bang bang bang, 5–1 for the good guys.
14
The Second Mrs. Panofsky pounded on my shower door. “It’s the phone,” she said. “Your father.”
Izzy said, “You were going to take me to the hockey game tonight? Big treat. The fucken Rangers. Probably you couldn’t find another customer. Well, I can’t go. Neither can you.” Then he paused to blow his nose. “It’s over.”
“What’s over?”
“Your poor mother’s suffering. She passed away in her sleep last night and I’m heartbroken.”
“Don’t give me that.”
“Hey, show some respect. You should have seen her when we got hitched. She was a number. We had our little tiffs over the years, who doesn’t, but she always kept a clean house. I had no complaints in that department.”
But I had some complaints in mine. My father was seldom home when I was a boy. For supper I ate macaroni and cheese most nights, but on special occasions my mother boiled