Sister Crazy. Emma Richler

asleep, snore-snore-noisy! Just like at the zoo, Ben said. No, Daddy, no, no! Hello! Goodbye!’

      My sister is merry and exits with pirouettes and fouettés.

      ‘Goddamnit!’

      Ben races past, a flurry of long limbs. He is usually in a hurry and my dad is not quick enough to catch him. Nor does he always know what to say, how to get his attention. Ben is complicated. I am crazy about him and this is not a problem for me. You have to know how to get through, that’s all.

      ‘Hey, Jude,’ my dad calls from his prone sofa position.

      Jude, who was only passing, backtracks and stands in the doorway of the living room. My brother Jude is a man of few words. He doesn’t see much point in talking a lot. He has a bagel in one hand and a book in the other.

      ‘Pass me the remote. Did you mow the lawn yet?’

      ‘Not yet,’ Jude says, unruffled, moving very slowly in the vague direction of the remote control. He picks up a magazine on the way and bites his bagel. He is easily distracted and never in a hurry.

      ‘JUDE!’

      I am looking for Jude. There he is.

      ‘Ahh! Jem! Who’s my favourite child?’

      ‘What do you want, Dad?’

      I wish I had not come in, but I want Jude. Being bossed around and doing silly tasks for your dad when wearing a holster and cowboy hat is seriously disrupting.

      ‘Stick ’em up!’ he says, laughing.

      I would quite like to shoot him now but I can’t. Never shoot an unarmed man.

      This is how it was when we were small kids. It is still a bit like this when we come home to visit, even today. We all have our own machines now and we know how to use them. We don’t ask anyone else. We laugh now mostly about my dad when he is thumping machinery with the full expectation that this will be effective. We smile and try to help out. I think he likes that. Once, though, I saw him try to light a faulty boiler with a match. I wanted to yell at him but could not. I took over the situation but I could not yell at him. He is not a kid, he is my dad.

      5. ALWAYS GO TO THE LOO IF YOU THINK YOU MAY NEED TO PEE.

      Here are the times when passing up on rule number five is a bad idea. (1) Settling into a cinema or theatre seat and the show is about to begin. Too late. (2) Sitting at your table in a posh restaurant and ordering wine and food. The entrée arrives. Too late. (3) Turning off the lights at night when in bed in foetal position and already half-asleep. Too late. Now you will have tortured dreams featuring gruesome toilet-bowl situations. (4) Car rides with grumpy drivers.

      I want to blame my dad for this but that is not the way things work just now. In the world today, all things dark and tumultuous are down to me. My dad’s mood is definitely my fault and I cannot bear to hold up the terrible car journey, the fifteen-minute ride which my dad conveys to me with a look will be as gruelling as a forced march across all the central provinces of Canada. No, I cannot hold up the journey by asking to dash to the loo first. My dad says we are going NOW. Some people rub their hands in glee and say, Now! Others, like my dad, mean only one thing by ‘now’. Now is full of terror.

      O-KAAAY … co-RAAAALL! O-KAAAAY … co-RAAALLL! I think of this, too, that my dad must believe if he thumps me, if he takes me by the shoulders and rattles my little bones, gives me a shake momentous enough to reorganize all my vital organs and charge up my circulation and spark up all the neurons and synaptic impulses in my cerebellum, that I, too, will function again. It’s a simple operation. Come back, Jem. Howdy, partner. Long time no see.

      We’re there now. Parking, my dad nearly mows down two dumpy ladies wearing stretchy trousers in appalling colours, but it doesn’t even raise a chuckle in our wagon. In good times this would be a great game, using our car like a cowcatcher. Not today, though.

      ‘Okay. I’m waiting here. Five minutes,’ he announces, not even looking at us, reaching behind the seat for a newspaper and snapping it open at the sports pages.

      Mum and I see right away that the chemist/health shop is closed. Oh-oh. Clearly they knew I was coming.

      ‘Let’s get ice cream,’ my mother says recklessly, not glancing back at the car.

      This feels pretty dangerous. I am prickly all over.

      I get a tub of coffee ice cream and my mother, almost uniquely refined in her tastes and a really great cook, opts for something truly disgusting with caramel and scary little bits all over the top. For her, this is a throwback to a happy childhood she never actually had. She looks rebellious and gleeful which is cool to behold.

      Walking back to the car, I note two things. I don’t need to pee anymore. And my dad is storming toward us, his hands flapping angrily like someone has stolen the car from right under him or maybe a war has begun and we are behind enemy lines. Spotting the tubs of ice cream takes him to a point beyond fury, a place Mum and I do not want to be. I look at her. I am scared now but she smiles beautifully and makes for the car, getting in the back with me. My dad returns to the driver’s seat and tugs the door closed, but he can’t slam it because his car is posh and new and he has to be a bit careful.

      ‘Aren’t you sitting in front?’ he asks crossly.

      ‘No,’ she says, and then, more quietly, ‘Home, James.’

      I feel a great whirl of hilarity in my stomach now and I look at my mother with shock and delight. I whisper, ‘Home, James’ too. I keep saying it in my head and glancing at her. We eat our ice creams all the way home. I did not get my remedy for depression, but then of course, maybe I did, for a minute or two at least, which is perhaps all a person should rightly expect, I don’t know.

      6. HAVE A CATALOGUE OF JOKES OR JOKEY SITUATIONS YOU CAN HAUL UP FROM MEMORY IN DARK TIMES.

      You have to work pretty hard at rule number six. Sometimes, not very grown-up jokes are the best. For instance, my brother Gus and I often look at each other across a room and thrust out our lower mandibles, curling the mouth up at the corners, adopting a crazed, wide-eyed expression. Pretty soon we are spluttering into our drinks. It only takes a second. It is not grown-up but it is very reliable for a laugh, whereas jokes about German philosophers are not.

      My dad tells one or two jokes I have never understood. One of them involves fishing and gefilte fish. It goes something like this. What happened to all the herring fished out of the X sea? Well! Ha ha ha! It ends up as gefilte fish in Chicago! My dad chokes up and all the sophisticates around him quake with mirth, shoulders akimbo and so on. The second joke is about an Eskimo. My dad went up to the Arctic once to cover some sledging championships or something for Sports Illustrated and he came back with some bizarre souvenirs, such as a sealskin doll for Harriet which smelled so bad she wouldn’t touch it and I buried it in the garden for her, plus some pretty bad jokes. It seems that when Eskimos had to choose English names for themselves for legal reasons or something, they picked whatever favourite activity they had or whatever object they were close to at the time. One lady was a fan of American football and so she called herself Sophie Football. Absolutely hilarious.

      Here is another joke my dad finds very funny indeed. One afternoon in late August when I was fourteen or so, I cross the kitchen of our summer cottage on my way outside and see my dad finishing a snack involving bread and tomatoes and spring onions.

      ‘Hey, Jem.’

      I stop. Oh-oh. ‘Yup?’ Will this take long? What does he want? I am aiming to go swimming.

      ‘Come here.’ He crooks his finger at me. This drives me wild. Having to get closer and closer just to be sent far off to get something for him.

      ‘I’m here.’ I take one step closer, that’s it.

      ‘How much pocket money do I owe you?’

      ‘June July-August.’

      ‘I’ll flip you double or nothing.’

      ‘I don’t