<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cStanley Shliome, would you, would you believe it. Your uncle just got up and went to Winnipeg. I came home from the clinic at the hospital and there was a note. I knew right away something was up when I saw it on the kitchen counter. He never leaves no note.<\/p>\n \u2018You think I am crazy. You\u2019re the crazy one. I told you I\u2019m leaving. Send all my mail to Shloime\u2019s address. And you told me I would never do it. Du bist meshugeh. You are the nut.\u2019<\/p>\n Such a note to leave in the kitchen for all to see? Lucky the cleaning woman was not coming that day.<\/p>\n He hasn\u2019t shown up. Yesterday I waited and waited. I didn\u2019t know where his car was but I got a call this morning from a towing company. He left another note on the front windshield telling everyone where he was going. Who does he think he is, the prime minister? Is anyone interested? That meshuganer just went and parked his Buick in the police lot at Dorval.<\/p>\n But I\u2019m not calling, Shloime. Not on your life.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cShould I phone him?\u201d I interrupted.<\/p>\n \u201cNo, don\u2019t you dare. Let him go. We\u2019ll see how long Bronia will put up with him. He\u2019ll be back. He\u2019ll be back!\u201d<\/p>\n That was last spring. Even for the High Holidays he wouldn\u2019t return. I defied Aunt Frances and phoned a few weeks ago. I got nowhere with my uncle. \u201cStanley, I know you always take her part. So look after her. She\u2019s all yours,\u201d he cackled. \u201cThere\u2019s no way I am going back to live with her crazy shtick. Forty-six years is enough of a sentence. The jailbird flew the coop,\u201d he burst out with another guffaw.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd what about your clothes and all that fishing gear you meticulously bought and took care of for years?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cGive it away, Stanley. I don\u2019t care to whom. Have a yard sale. Let her make a few cents. That will get her busy and off your back for a while. Give her something to do. She needs something to keep her preoccupied, otherwise she\u2019ll pick on you, Stanley. You are all she\u2019s got now,\u201d he finished with glee.<\/p>\n What had come over the old man? After forty-six years of warfare and armistices, I thought he would hold out to the end. He never liked going out. Home was where he spent all his winter days and nights, except for the shopping expeditions he went out on with Aunt Frances. Uncle Morris balked at it twice a week but still he chauffeured her around. If he had his way he would only step out to pick up the paper delivered daily to the front balcony. However, in spring and summer he was ready at a moment\u2019s notice to check on his growing garden. Tomatoes and cucumbers were his favourites. A bumper crop meant that he would be preparing his famous pickles over which family and neighbours would vie for samples and sometimes gifts.<\/p>\n \u201cUncle Mo, think it over and reconsider. In any case, it is not the same here without you!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cListen, kiddy boy, I am not changing my mind. In fact, I am going further west. I always wanted to visit Vancouver. Well, now I am going to settle there. Have a good week, boychikle, phone me when I get my new number. Remember I still like you, even if you are on that meshuganeh\u2019s side.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHow will I know what it is?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll phone you with the number as soon as I get it. How\u2019s that for service, Stanley? Enjoy taking care of your auntie,\u201d he closed with another cackle. He certainly enjoyed his own jokes. I remembered the first one he told me when I was starting high school Latin. Conjugating verbs was his specialty at Baron Byng, he boasted.<\/p>\n \u201cStanley, there\u2019s a very important verb in Latin. One you will need to learn for the years ahead. Amo amas amat a mames a tates a kind,\u201d he roared with self-satisfaction. \u201cYou know what it means? I love, you love, he loves, a mother, a father, a child! Basic stuff, Stanley. You\u2019ll also learn all about that in good time.\u201d<\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n \u201cWest 36th Avenue near Oak,\u201d I told the taxi driver at the airport. I hadn\u2019t been to Vancouver in years and needed a bit of a break now that the income tax return season was over. Besides, my friends Margaret and Tibor had been urging me to visit for the last few years. But first things first. I had to check up on Uncle Mo. A family mission. Aunt Frances had given up expecting him but the rest of the family were concerned. It was now almost a year since he snuck out on her. Besides, he was sending everyone e-mail messages every few weeks, filling them with his jokes. What was e-mail for if not to share his jokes? Without his cronies in Montreal, who would give him the time of day? So the family was all for my investigative voyage.<\/p>\n \u201cListen here, Stanley, you have a mission to perform. We can\u2019t go. We\u2019re too old. You go and find out what\u2019s doing with your Uncle Mo. It\u2019s a mitzvah,\u201d offered David, one of two surviving cousins of the elderly generation.<\/p>\n \u201cUncle, how are you?\u201d I immediately asked as he came to the door in shorts, a t-shirt and beige New Balance walking shoes.<\/p>\n \u201cNu, look who\u2019s here? The Mossad agent from Montreal. What brings you to these enlightened parts, nephew?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou, uncle.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMe? Why would anyone be interested in an A.K. like me. Come in, come in. It\u2019s a bit of a mess. Next Thursday the cleaning lady is supposed to be here for her regular visit and Valerie has been out of town for a week. So why keep neat and clean if I can get away with it?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cValerie?\u201d I inquired.<\/p>\n \u201cYes, my intended \u2013 well, can\u2019t make an honest young woman of her since I still have the kvetch in Montreal in marital tow but there will come a day, Stanley, my boy, when I will be free! Free finally to do as I bid. I see you\u2019re shlepping a suitcase. Are you arriving or leaving Shangri-la, B.C.?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cJust arrived and thought I would visit you first. Everyone is worried about you, uncle. They wanted me to see you at the earliest.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cEveryone is worried about me,\u201d he mimicked. \u201cDid they worry when I was pecked and pestered by crazy Frances? Now all of a sudden they\u2019re worried. Is it my will they are concerned about?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYour will?\u201d I inquired.<\/p>\n \u201cListen, Stanley, you haven\u2019t grasped the essence of family relations until you master the conventions and customs of the yerusheh.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYerusheh?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYes, the Yiddish word for inheritance, my boy. What animates a family more \u2013 love and concern, or an inheritance?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNobody said anything about a will, uncle.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOf course they didn\u2019t. You\u2019re too young. Why should they let you in on the secret? Simply put, boychikle, they want my wherewithal.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWherewithal?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMy yotzris. My treasures. Whatever form they take: bank accounts, bonds, stocks. After all, what\u2019s family for if not interpersonal, as your generation puts it, raiding. Grab, grab, grab. Do you remember my sister Malka? Well, no sooner was she six-feet under at De La Savanne and the family were tearing at each other over her will. She left quite a bit behind, mind you, although she lived like a street person in that smelly old split level of hers in C\u00d4te St. Luc. She didn\u2019t have parts of it vacuumed since Diefenbaker was storming up and down the country on behalf of the Tories. What a shmutz! Just like her head. A cluttered mind she had; everything went in, nothing seemed to get thrown out until there was so much she couldn\u2019t turn a thought this way or that way. And so that\u2019s also why I am here, Stanley boy. I didn\u2019t want it to happen to me. And I was also caged in with a meshuganeh animal. I am no saint or tzaddik. I am not easy to live with but Frances \u2013 she was such a bug. Such a complaining, whining, blaming, accusing person I have never met, and may I never meet another one in the days left to me on this fragrant earth!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSo am I going to see you during my visit, uncle?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat are you doing now? Look at me in my glory!,\u201d he laughed out loud. \u201cOf course, I\u2019ll see you, if you don\u2019t nag me about going back and if you will promise you won\u2019t betray me by giving out information to the enemy.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe enemy?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cFrances, boychikle, my earnest enemy numero uno!\u201d<\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n \u201cI love this place, Stanley. It so deliciously goyish, if you know what I mean. As long as I stay away from Oak Street and watch the young parade before each other with their good looks I figure my ears won\u2019t ache from the voices of my past.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cUncle, are you firmly resolved never to return?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNever? I never thought of it. Maybe never is right. You\u2019re a good boy so I will tell you the truth. Never. But to compensate you I am going to put you in the will. Of course, you had to put up with your aunty all these years. Danger pay. Family compensation. You were always on the front line, never knowing when the next barrage would hit. A brave soul you are but it\u2019s time you got married, heh heh,\u201d he added with a look of mock glee in his eyes.<\/p>\n \u201cFrankly, uncle, you\u2019re no model for the institution.\u201d \u201cFreddy?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cJust an expression. Waiting for Fred Astaire. For a dance. So where\u2019s that Valerie? Supposed to be home this morning and I hear nothing. You know I should have been a bachelor from the start. It suits me. Living like a hermit.<\/p>\n Stanley, I am getting to like you. The only one who pursued me and didn\u2019t give up. But can I trust you, boychikle?<\/p>\n When we got off the boat in 1922 I had just passed bar mitzvah age but had not yet gone up to the bimah. How could I? We were fleeing the Cossacks and their fellow murderers, the White Russians. We got across the border to Poland and languished in Warsaw until my mother, blessed be her memory, managed to locate my father in Montreal. The old boy had set off more than ten years prior and had stopped writing. Little did we know what he was up to!<\/p>\n He probably hoped we had all perished in the Revolution or the civil war that followed. He found a comely lady and had shacked up with her in Mile End and the last thing he wanted was to get a letter from the Immigrants Aid Association asking him to show up at the office. And what did he find there? A letter from his wife who was now in transit and hoping to be reunited with him.<\/p>\n Well, reunited we were all the next spring. Right off the train in Windsor station he took us unsmiling back to a flat on Esplanade near St. Viateur. We were not a minute in the front corridor than he fell upon me, the youngest. The other two were too big to beat. And he began to shove me and when I failed to push back he knocked me down and kicked me everywhere while my mother was trying to fight him off.<\/p>\n \u2018Where did you get this chevreman,\u2019 he bellowed!<\/p>\n \u2018Yankev he\u2019s yours, he\u2019s yours. You left with him in my belly, as the Lord is my witness. I\u2019ll swear on the Sefer Torah! Don\u2019t beat him; he\u2019s yours.\u2019<\/p>\n He\u2019s yours, he\u2019s yours, I kept hearing in my ears for many years afterwards but I never wanted to go near him again. Like an animal he had fallen upon me, his eyes wild with rage.<\/p>\n And what about all my anger all those years, Stanley? I wanted peace in the house and worried about my mother. I said nothing no matter the insults he hurled at me. Except that last night in the Hospital of Hope, that last time we were opposite each other, he in the bed and I in the visitor\u2019s chair.<\/p>\n \u2018You\u2019re so stupid,\u2019 he spat out at me, no matter he was slowly losing his strength and the power to breathe. He only knew words of spite, except when he went fishing in his little stream up in Val David. There with this awful smelly pipe he would sit content. Even civilized. The brute was pacified momentarily. Or just after his daily shot of rye.<\/p>\n Listen, Stanley, you didn\u2019t come for an old man\u2019s stories. Go to your friends. Enjoy the air, the view. Leave the family behind in C\u00d4te St. Luc. And don\u2019t try to reform me, boychikle!\u201d<\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n I spent two busy weeks in Vancouver and then returned the following March when Valerie left an S.O.S. on my voice-mail.<\/p>\n \u201cYour uncle asks about you, Stanley. He is very ill. Please phone me back.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cStanley, you unrepentant goodnik, you came to visit your terrible uncle!\u201d<\/p>\n There he was, propped up in the government hospital. Since he had served in World War II, his doctor got him into a veterans facility.<\/p>\n \u201cHey, the food\u2019s terrific here, Stanley, if only my teeth would cooperate.\u201d<\/p>\n But then he grew uncharacteristically quiet.<\/p>\n \u201cSo you\u2019re happy you came to Vancouver?\u201d I asked but no sooner did the words escape my lips that I regretted uttering them. Why add pinch to injury?<\/p>\n \u201cIt was good, Stanley, good. So how\u2019s your aunty, Stanley? How\u2019s she doing? Not so good, I hear. In a convalescent home on the slopes of Westmount? You know, now that she is ill, all my resentment has gone. Of course, it helps I\u2019m a sick A.K. myself. Solidarity in suffering,\u201d he said with that old glint returning to his eyes.<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s o.k. but losing her bearing. One day she\u2019s happy, the next day…\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cLike a caged animal, Stanley? Just like when we lived together.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut now she forgets easily, one day to the next.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat are you talking about \u2013 it\u2019s one hour to the next. Stanley, she either never remembered or the little things didn\u2019t interest her. And boy, did we fight over the kleine sachen. But who remembers now, Stanley, who remembers?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe other day, uncle, when I phoned she asked: \u2018Did ya hear?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDid I hear what?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI gave them notice! I gave them notice. A shame on these lodgings and what they call food here!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou gave them notice at the residence without telling us, without discussing it with us first? Where will you go, aunt Frances?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBack home, of course.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut you can\u2019t live alone.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhy not? I\u2019ll get a girl to help me.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnd sleep over too?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnd sleep over too! Sure…\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnd what\u2019ll it cost?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019ll cost what is costs, Stanley. I need to move. I can\u2019t stay here. It\u2019s like a jail. And the food, oy, even a famished dog wouldn\u2019t touch it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s still the same old pest, Stanley Shloimeleh. Nothing will stop her. Not even the Angel of Death who stays away from her as from the plague. Even this Angel has qualms. Why be in a hurry to take on Frances? She\u2019s a handful.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnd you, uncle, you\u2019re not a piece of cake either.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m going, Stanley. My guardian angel has given me advance warning. He\u2019s watched me since I was a kid in the Ukraine. But he\u2019s packing it in. Enough with old Morris who got a good run for his family. Eighty-seven years of protection service and now I have to get ready to join the others, to echo our Bible. Let me at least get up there first so I can settle in and bolt up the door before Frances arrives. I\u2019ll have triple locks installed up in heaven. I won\u2019t give her any address. I don\u2019t want her following and pestering me in the world to come. Listen, I have to get there first; otherwise she\u2019ll beat me to it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBeat you to it?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019ll get up there first. And convince some do-goodnik angel to have me billeted with her for eternity!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cUncle, how do you know you\u2019re both going to the same location?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHa, ha, that\u2019s good, Stanley, that\u2019s first-class.\u201d<\/p>\n Within three days his system began to shut down. On a Thursday afternoon the nurse noticed no more motion in his chest. He had drifted away.<\/p>\n But where was he to be buried? How could he be left in alien Vancouver soil? I had him shipped back to Montreal and we had a graveside ceremony with only a handful of acquaintances. No eulogy. A few of his cronies showed up. And aunt Frances resplendent in her wheelchair.<\/p>\n \u201cMorris,\u201d she whimpered, \u201cMorris, you got away again.\u201d<\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n \u201cListen, you wanted it, so I am giving it to you. I am making you all legatees, all eight of you except Valerie and Stanley. They each get 25% off the top. Then the rest of you can fight over the remaining portion \u2013 but only after Frances and Valerie pass away. The usufruct is theirs to share, after all they shared me. See you all later. Ta ta.<\/p>\n Morris\u201d<\/p>\n And so concluded Uncle\u2019s will in his own handwriting.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s Morris for you, always getting in the last laugh,\u201d added the lawyer nervously. \u201cNo one\u2019s going to contest the will, are they?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Conjugating \u201cStanley Shliome, would you, would you believe it. Your uncle just got up and went to Winnipeg. I came home from the clinic at the hospital and there was a note. I knew right away something was up when I saw it on the kitchen counter. He never […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":784,"parent":148,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-200","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":686,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/200\/revisions\/686"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/148"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\n\u201cListen, I was faithful to my vows for decades. Paid my shul membership on time; gave regularly to UJA and whenever my fortunes increased I topped up my donations. Were there only more righteous dopes like me, the community would be swimming in a surfeit of funds! But now I have to finish my story. The new chapter is wonderful. I feel like a kid again. I can run circles around any obstacle. I am ready for Freddy!\u201d<\/p>\n