Forest Hill

by Ariella Garmaise

In Forest Hill the mansions topple. When my grandfather used to stand at the corner of Dunvegan Road, about five and a half homes could fit into his line of vision. When he first moved into the neighbourhood, this didn’t bother him, he liked it even, because 512 Dunvegan had a semi-basement, meaning that at two and a half stories, it towered over his neighbours’ homes, and city bylaws prevented building above two and a half stories. But then the bylaws changed and at least half a dozen other homeowners on Dunvegan tore down their properties and built anew, some to three stories, so that 512, with its arid grass yard and cracked pavement driveway, now looked run down in comparison. 

Whereas in Rosedale the goyish estates have room to languish and loll, in Forest Hill, each property was built to the edges of a given plot of land. Residents, when asked, would claim that this was in order to maximize square footage; how much of a yard do you need when the winter months render a back patio uninhabitable? Really, I think that residents were resentful of the empty foyers that isolated them, and so they expanded the tendrils of their homes to creep towards their neighbours’. The goyim, with their ornate gardens and sprawling front lawns, were returning to a past in which they staked territory and tamed the wilderness. My grandparents and other Dunveganers had no such past. Instead, they were building a shtetl on a massive scale, so they could peer into each others’ bay windows and keep track of whose Lexuses arrived and left. Maybe it was out of necessity that Toronto’s Jewish elite conglomerated there; the Rosedale country clubs forbade Jews from entry through World War II, some even into the early 90s. But now, it’s what they preferred, this luxury shtetl, an enclave their parents never could have imagined, one which didn’t reek of fish and bloodless meat. 

“Oh dreidel dreidel dreidel, I made it out of clay,” my grandmother sang, approximating warmth, when she opened the door for us. The fourth night of Chanukah is not an especially significant one; of the eight nights, it ranks low. Chanukah itself is a rather insignificant holiday altogether. The story of Judah and the Maccabees, his band of fellow Jews who refused to assimilate to the enforced Paganism of the second century BC Greek rulers, was never even immortalized in the Torah. Instead the Chanukah miracles—the small guerilla army that defeated Antiochus and his generals to reclaim their temple, the jug of oil they found that lit the menorah for seven days longer than thought possible—were passed down orally. Chanukah, ironically, has mainstream popularity only as a meager consolation prize offered in lieu of the Christmas spectacle; the promise of eight days of presents meant to appease children desperate to sit on a Mall Santa Claus’s lap.

“And when it’s dry and ready, my dreidel I shall play,” Saul Rosenstein boomed from across his lawn, patting his jacket down to find his keys. “Happy Chanukah Fran!” 

Forest Hill homes tend to be wider than they are deep, and the distance between properties averages out at around three feet. That means that when my grandfather sat in his study on the first floor and Saul stood by his own glass fridge, the two men were at most six feet apart, and due to hacky insulation and a permanently cracked window, could hear one another mulling about. This is closer than my grandfather typically was to my grandmother, who spent most of her time on the second floor of the house, where she felt more comfortable opening cabinets and pacing back and forth; the first floor was so vast that it required too much effort to maintain, and she preferred to avoid it altogether. 

“Oh, and let me know if you need help again with snow removal this year,” Saul called. 

“I’ll give Marsha a call!” 

“Why can’t they get Saul’s gardener?” I heard my mom whisper to my dad. Even underneath a thin sheet of snow, Saul’s yard was lush, adorned with Japanese maples.   

“Oh give them a break.” I was 12 at the time, and was proud of 512 Dunvegan. I’d brag of going to Forest Hill for holidays to my friends, most of whom lived there already. We didn’t go there often; my grandmother would invite us over for lunch and then cancel at the last-minute, then reschedule and cancel again, and it would go on like that for weeks until my grandfather surprised us with fur-lined winter jackets or Ugg boots or designer bags to atone. Still, my mother’s insistence that the house was decaying, that the front stairs needed to be redone, the electrical system rewired, felt like an attack on a key part of my imagined self. So did her insistence that they needed a housekeeper to help maintain the property, to help with tasks like garbage disposal, about which my grandfather frequently complained. Until 1994, the city of Toronto would pick garbage up directly from residents’ front doors. In 1993, a mayoral candidate caught wind of this from his mother-in-law, and petitioned city council to release data on the exceptional service. He ran an op-ed in a local newspaper in which he revealed that the city spent an annual 400,000 tax payer dollars on private garbage pickup in Forest Hill. So, every Thursday morning my grandfather, a short man made shorter by his hunch, schlepped his garbage bin to the edge of his plain grass yard, “the only white man in sight,” he’d say, as Filipina housekeepers gossiped in Tagalog around him.

Inside, my grandmother had ordered such a perplexing amount of food that it seemed like she had forgotten that my mother only had two children. The table teemed with stacks of party sandwiches—egg, tuna, and mayonnaise mashed together in crustless bread, sufganiyot—deep fried jelly donuts rolled in powdered sugar, layers of bagels with a prepackaged spread of smoked salmon and cream cheese and tomatoes and cucumbers and capers. The food is, of course, a trick, she won’t eat any of it, and is carefully keeping track of how high everyone stacks their plates. Even at 12 I knew to stay away from the sufganiyot, and my mother opted to eat before we came to avoid the entire ordeal. The men are allowed to indulge, but even they did so under watchful eyes. 

“You did a great job decorating mom,” my mother said, but she didn’t mean it. She’s observed that my grandmother set the table with paper plates instead of the china she would normally use at a holiday family dinner, and is lodging it in an unwritten book of slights.

“The dishwasher still isn’t fixed,” my grandmother responded. “I can’t hand wash a dozen dishes.” 

“Did you not call the handyman I told you about?”

“That guy is no good,” my grandfather bit into a bagel.  “Oh fuck, Fran is this that whole wheat bullcrap?” 

My mother recoiled, his wife didn’t flinch. “You can barely even taste a difference.” 

“Fran, I told you fifteen fucking times to get the regular bagels,” he spat. 

“Dad, can you watch your language please,” my mother pleaded. “Have some sufganiyot, they look good.” 

My grandfather sat down, temporarily sated. 

“Can we play in the basement, Zaidy?” my brother asked. Despite being unfinished, the basement was our favourite room in the house. It was mostly unlit, save for one corner which housed a decrepit pinball machine. The neon lights of the Moon Ball 81 gave the room the ambiance of a haunted carnival, so as children, we would go to the basement only if my grandfather and his flashlight accompanied us. I loved my grandfather most when we were in the basement, where hidden from eavesdropping neighbours walking by and the clacking of the Chanel block heels my grandmother wore even inside, he finally seemed to relax. He would shine his flashlight below his jowls, which was supposed to scare us, but instead the light caught on his heavy eyelids and liver spotted cheeks, temporarily lending his face a warmth. 

“After lunch, RyGuy,” my grandfather countered. “Let’s play dreidel instead.” Besides the stack of latkes, fried potato pancakes dripping in oil that has begun pooling in droplets on the plastic tablecloth, lay a wooden dreidel. My grandmother had begun to sprinkle gelt—chocolate coins wrapped in gilded foil—in the shape of a Magen David, but gave up so that the six point star was just a triangle. 

At 512 we spin the dreidel the way you would in Israel—“we’re in the Promised Land,” my grandfather insisted. There are two versions of the dreidel. One you spin in the diaspora, with letters that symbolize Nes Gadol Haya Sham (A Big Miracle Happened THERE). In Israel, the letters on each side of the spinning top stand for Nes Gadol Haya Po (A Big Miracle Happened HERE). At Dunvegan, my grandfather is insistent that the miracle of oil found in the ravaged temple lasting eight days happened HERE, not THERE. 512 Dunvegan is both temple and oil persisting far beyond expectations. 

Ryan landed on the letter hai, he got half the pot of gelt. My grandfather landed on a peh, he had to put one piece of gelt in.

“So Mark, how’s work?” My grandfather asked my dad mid-spin.

“So far so good,” my dad took a sip of some coffee and gave a wry smile. “It’s been a welcome change.”

“I’ve always said we need more teachers,” my grandmother chipped in, vacant-eyed and stirring her tea. “I read in the Post that there’s a national shortage.”

“Not enough people who want summers off I guess,” my grandfather huffed. “I read they’re bargaining for more. Fran, did the Post say that? July and August just isn’t enough I guess.” 

“It’s quite alright for me,” my dad said. 

“I think what you’re doing is terrific, Mark,” my grandmother nodded with little conviction. 

“You know, Fran and I were thinking of going to Capri this summer,” my grandfather said.

 “No you’re not,” my mother finally interjected, awoken from the corner where she had slumped over a plate of cucumbers and tomatoes. “Mum, you guys can’t fly to Europe.”

“See, Rachie wants to go too,” my grandfather eyed my dad. “She pretends to be all hippy-dippy, but she’s just like her dad, she likes the finer things.” 

“We’re looking into it,” my grandmother still stirred her tea, she hadn’t taken a sip.

“Working the entire year is hard, but it’s worth it when you’re on a boat in the south of Italy,” my grandfather continued. 

“Zaidy, Zaidy, it’s your turn.”

My grandfather landed on a nun, he got nothing. Ryan landed on a gimel, he got the entire pot. My grandfather landed on a nun again. Ryan went to spin his dreidel and landed on a nun too, but, thinking my grandfather wasn’t paying attention, flipped the spinning top to its side so that a hai was face up and he could claim half the pot.

“Ryan, did you flip the dreidel?”

My brother looked up wide-eyed. 

“Did you?”

“Dad, he didn’t flip it.”

“I don’t appreciate cheaters in my house,” my grandfather advanced. “You can be honest with me, Ryan, and I won’t get mad. Look me in the eyes: did you cheat?”

“Mom can you please intervene, he’s eight years old,” my mother looked to her mother, who finally brought the tea to her lips.

My grandmother turned to Ryan. “Answer him.” 

Ryan looked down, and then up at my grandfather, and then nodded slowly. The room suddenly felt huge, expansive, like Ryan was miles away from me and my mom and dad even further. The only major renovation my grandparents had ever made to Dunvegan was in this dining room, when they knocked down a wall separating formal eating from the casual sitting room. It was a home improvement that was trendy at the time; we’ll be able to keep an eye on the kids while we eat, my grandmother explained. Their insistence on what ended up being a costly update was confounding; they had never been that pressed to monitor the grandchildren, nor were we ever eager to play in the living room, which had a sticky leather sofa we were forbidden from lying down on and a glass coffee table that was a magnet for our shins. Now, I wished there were a dozen walls separating the children and adults. 

My grandfather looked like he might strike, but instead retreated wordlessly upstairs. Now that she was alone, my grandmother took a deep breath. She finished her tea and played dreidel with Ryan, running her French manicured nails through my hair. 

“You have such soft hair, Jordyn.” I thanked her, but it’s uneasy to receive a physical compliment from my grandmother because it means she’s watching you. Just like my mother had her book of slights, my grandmother had her catalogue of physical imperfections; pounds gained, blouses wrinkled, eyebrows unbrushed. The only thing worse than looking unkempt is looking too good, a cinched waistline also a sort of attack. It’s best to find yourself in a narrow category of beauty, which was slightly less attractive than she imagined herself as a young girl. 

“Jordyn, go help Bubby clear the plates,” my mother interfered. 

“No, no Jordy, sit down,” my grandmother untangled her fingers from my curls. “Now that Merv has…” she paused. “...gone for a nap, there’s something I’d like to discuss.”

“I have something of an announcement,” my grandmother smiled. “I’m running for office.” 

“To be the president of the synagogue? You never go to synagogue.” 

“Not synagogue,” my grandmother demurred. “Public office. I’m running to be a city councilor.”

“A city councilor?”

“Do you have a problem with that?”

“You’re 79 years old, for one.” 

My grandmother winced, ignoring the reminder of her age. “There’s too much lying in this city,” she deflected, practicing for her political career.

“Do you even know what riding you’re in?” 

My grandmother hesitated. “St Paul’s,” my dad supplemented, looking neither at his wife nor mother-in-law. “Ward 9, I believe.”

“Have you ever even voted?” 

“I’ve already submitted my paperwork,” my grandmother said. “There was a tremendous amount of paperwork involved, and that’s one of the things I’m looking to fix.” 

“How are you going to go to Italy if you’re supposed to be canvassing all summer?” my mom sneered, almost enjoying herself. “Are you going to walk door to door and shake hands?” 

My grandmother rolled her eyes. “You’re not interested in hearing my platform?”

No one answered. “Well, I’m running for the conservative party seat, and I do support most of their policies, except the lies, of course. And I believe in abortion.”

“I’m not sure that falls under municipal jurisdiction, Mum.” 

My grandmother was unfazed. “I think there should be lower taxes, especially for the middle class. There’s too much crime, we need to be tougher on crime. But that’s not my main agenda item.” She paused, waiting for someone to ask, no one did. “I think this city needs to bring back private garbage disposal in Forest Hill.” 

“Oh my god,” my mother finally grabbed a sufganiyot. She clawed at it, kneading the dough between her fingers, then finally acquiesced, biting into the center. Strawberry jelly stained her lips. “Please just get a housekeeper. Karen and I will help out if you need.”

“I don’t need help, Rachel,” my grandmother said. “You’ll come to learn that time is money. Nowhere is that more true than on Dunvegan. We have esteemed doctors, business people, presidents of boards, prolific philanthropists. This neighbourhood contributes a lot to the city. I think they deserve some compensation for their efforts.”

“Do you want me to come on Thursdays and take out your garbage for you? Would that solve the issue?”

“Rachel, you’re not listening. Your father doesn’t mind taking out the garbage,” she lied. “It’s the principle of it all.” 

“What are you talking about?”

“Toronto used to have respect for the people who drive this economy. Why no longer? Not to mention,” she looks around at me and Ryan, “that it drives down property value. Houses were worth more when they came with a certain standard of living. I have no doubt that the money the city spends on garbage removal will be more than recuperated with a boost in the housing market. It’s a part of your inheritance after all.”

“I don’t think it works like that Mum.”

“Are you going to make signs and stuff?” I finally asked. 

“See Jordy’s getting into the spirit of things,” my grandmother lit up. “Yes, we can make signs. But no t-shirts,” she laughed. “T-shirts are gaudy. This is going to be a word of mouth campaign.”

“Listen Mum, I know it’s been stressful taking care of the house, taking care of Dad,” my mother shifted her approach. “Maybe going to Italy isn’t such a bad idea. Take a few weeks, and just decompress.”

“Rachel, you’re not listening to me,” my grandmother insisted. “This city has a problem, and no one is bold enough to fix it.” 

“Don’t most of your neighbours have people to take out their garbage already?” 

My grandmother bristled. “That’s not the point.” 

“Why don’t you ask Saul’s housekeeper to take your garbage out when she takes out his? You can pay her extra.” 

“Rachel, I’m not going to keep repeating myself if you’re going to be intentionally obtuse.” 

“Dad, what do you think of all this?” my grandfather had returned barrelling down the stairs, and starting clanking in the kitchen. 

“As long as she doesn’t wear a suit,” my grandfather called, “I think your mother is on to something here.” He grabbed a jug of orange juice from the fridge and brought it to the table. 

“For all her yapping, she can be quite clever,” he started pouring himself a glass, took a sip, then looked at the jug again. “What the fuck is this Fran?” 

“Merv, please…”

“Are you just trying to be fucking annoying? What the fuck is Simply 50?”

“Merv, it tastes the same, it just has less sugar.”

“If it’s the fucking same, then why can’t you get the one I like?” The word ‘like’ seemed to aggravate something in him, as if saying it out loud affirmed that low-calorie orange juice wasn’t a playful grievance but the stuff of war, and he had no choice but to retaliate. 

“Take your fucking Simply 50 and go to Hell,” he screamed, whipping the open jug from the head of the table across the dining room so far that it smashed against the back of the sofa in the living room, splashing against the leather fabric. 

“I think it’s time for us to go,” my mom grabbed her sufganiyot while my brother, father and I quietly followed her to the front hall. It was how these gatherings typically ended, if a bit sooner than usual. 

“You do this to yourself, Fran,” my grandfather continued from the dining room, the mounds of uneaten food now dripping with sugarless orange juice. “You do this to yourself.”

The car ride home was silent. “That was almost fun,” my father began, testing if my mother was willing to joke. She wasn’t. “Jordyn, Ryan, don’t say anything to your friends about Bubby running for office, ok?” she turned to us. We nodded. “I’m going to talk to her.”

My mother gripped her knuckles tighter around the steering wheel. “Jordyn, is your shirt stained?” There was a blotch of orange on my sleeve. 

“The next time we go,” my dad smiled, “we can just wear rain jackets.” 

“Yes, next time,” my mother sighed. 

***

The oil ran out. The next morning we got the call that my grandfather died, he had a stroke overnight while my grandmother slept on the juice-stained sofa downstairs. Unbeknownst to my grandmother, he had remortgaged the house twice, so once the details of the funeral were settled and my grandmother, through gritted teeth, had sat shiva for her full seven days of mourning, she packed up 512 and moved to an apartment rental out of the bounds of Forest Hill. It wasn’t far, only about an 11 minute walk south west really, but she was no longer a resident of the St Paul district, and therefore ineligible to run for city council. Besides, she no longer stood to benefit from the door-to-door garbage pick up. So long, Bell Reve, my dad would say. My mother, who didn’t cry a single tear when her father died, at least not that she showed me, spoke only of her mother’s thwarted political career. Nes gadol haya sham, she insisted. A big miracle happened there.