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By Root 438 0

hot dogs served with lumpy-mashed-potato pyramids covered with corn flakes. She did do one thing for me, registering me for a tap-dance class with Mr. Jeepers Creepers, who had twice been charged with molesting boys. It was her fondest hope that I would appear on “Major Bowes’ Amateur Hour,” and be discovered, but she lost interest when I bombed in audition for a local show. The closest I ever came to her was when she was already out of it in the hospital. I would shut the door to her room, don my straw boater, twirl my cane, and tap-dance round her bed, singing “Shoofly Pie and Apple Pan Dowdy” or “Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Positive,” another of her favourites. She would squeal, and clap her hands, tears sliding down her cheeks, and my mood would seesaw from joy, for having reached my mother at last, to rage at her for being so damn stupid.

Izzy wept at the funeral, if only for the benefit of her two brothers and their wives, who had flown in from Winnipeg where my mother came from. My uncles, whom I hadn’t seen since my bar mitzvah, were respectable people. Milty was a paediatrician and Eli, a lawyer, and they both warmed to The Second Mrs. Panofsky immediately. “I understand,” said Uncle Eli, “that your father is a good friend of Mr. Bernard’s. He’s going to speak at a fund-raiser in our synagogue next week. Tell your father if I can be of any help, I’m at Mr. Bernard’s service.”

The Second Mrs. Panofsky hastily explained that her parents were travelling in Europe, or of course they would have been at the funeral.

“Should business ever bring your father to Winnipeg, he has a friend there now. You tell him that.”

My uncles had always disapproved of my father and been embarrassed by my mother, whom they took to be the family idiot. All the same, Uncle Milty asked my father, “Where will you be sitting shiva?”

“My own philosophy, speaking personally, is modern,” said Izzy. “I don’t go in for the religious hocus-pocus.”

Relieved, my aunts and uncles made arrangements to fly home. I dropped off The Second Mrs. Panofsky at our house, and drove my father on to Dink’s, where we could mourn together in Panofsky fashion. Only after we were well into it did Izzy begin to sniffle, dabbing at his eyes with a filthy handkerchief. “I’m never going to marry again. Ever.”

“Who in the hell would put up with an old fart like you?”

“You’d be surprised, kiddo. She loved you, you know. When she was pregnant, you were an accident, you know.”

“Oh?”

“She was pregnant, worried about her figure, I said you want an abortion, I can arrange it. Naw, she said. She wanted to call you Skeezix, after the kid in Gasoline Alley, but I put my foot down and we settled on Barney, after Barney Google.”

“You mean I’m named after a character in a comic strip?”

“She hoped one day you would grow up to be a radio personality.”

“Like Charlie McCarthy or Mortimer Snerd?”

“Come on. Those was dummies. Hey, even a spot on Canadian radio would have pleased her. She never missed a ‘Happy Gang’ show. Remember? Bert Pearl. Kay Stokes. That bunch.”

“Do you need any money, Daddy?”

“I’ve got my health, you can’t buy that with millions. What I need is a job. I went to see the mayor of Côte-St Luc. How about it, I said? Izzy, he said, I’m a Jew and the alderman is a Jew. It wouldn’t look good to have a Jewish cop too. The goyim would talk. You know how they are. He had a point. When I was a youngster, I discovered that they even used to resent Al Jolson. He’s not a real nigger, they’d say. It’s make-up.”

“Daddy, I don’t know what I’d do without you. You don’t need a job. I’m going to tear apart our basement and turn it into a self-contained apartment for you.”

“Yeah, sure. Your missus would really go for that.”

As Izzy anticipated, The Second Mrs. Panofsky was furious when I told her I was going to convert the basement into a flat for him. “I won’t have that animal here,” she said.

“He’s my father. I don’t like to think of him all alone in a rented room at his age.”

“How would you like it if mine moved in, he’s so sick, a day goes by he doesn’t see me, he’s miserable.