Izzy

            The only person who ever saved my life, I never thanked. We met at an awards ceremony when I was 25. I won a national short story contest and was flown from Vancouver to Montreal for the ceremony. What I remember is a stage under violet lights, a CBC radio host with a silver whale pendant refilling my wine, the whale swimming in the red sea, and being introduced to Izzy. I’d read his early books—elliptical, episodic, vast—in high school. My ear was mapped by his inflection. My hand went cold in his warm fist—a fish vanishing into a cavern. He was taller than I expected. Mid-fifties, white hair shining on olive skin. He reached down toward me. At the end of the evening, he gave me his email address, said my story was unforgettable and we should stay in touch—he lived on an island a brief ferry ride from Vancouver and I’d be welcome to visit and stay over if it pleased me. His adult children cycled through his guest suite. He didn’t take my email, only gave me his.
            It took me weeks to get up the nerve to email Izzy. His response was instant. He wrote he was deep in restructuring a novel—I could visit, but all we could do was work in silence. Bring a draft of a story. I took the ferry over. We walked through faint green rain to his small house, which overlooked the patterns of the sea. A whale’s fin punctured the sky. He sat across from me at the kitchen table, striking out words, a pot of licorice tea between us, his dirty cutlery and cigarette ends and pencil shavings muddled on a Japanese platter looped by leaping orange fish. I faded into adjusting the dance moves between paragraphs. At five he fried us chicken. He poured black wine into the pan. I’d never eaten a caper. 
            Tell me about the story you’re working on, his voice rang from the stove. What are you trying to do?
            This became our way. Almost every Sunday, I went over and edited across from Izzy in his silence. Fellow obsessives. Things I learned from Izzy: the pace to add broth to risotto, what makes a piece of pottery remarkable, how to sharpen a knife. He turned and turned my knives, clucking at their bluntness. I listened to the sweet grind of his whetstone while I trimmed syllables with his green pencil. He held the blade in the window. It held his smile. The room I slept in was almost level with the sea, directly below Izzy’s. 
            His next novel won three national prizes. My first collection of stories came out. Izzy didn’t show up at the launch. Instead, he treated me to dinner at an austere Izakaya on Water Street where the tables shone like stones in a dark river. He handed me a copy of my book. I opened it—in one moment my torso flooded with laughter and outrage. Every page was covered in marks. He’d line-edited it with his green pencil. I woke up at 3 A.M., eyes rotted with sake, and burned through the stories. His edits made deep cuts in the paragraphs. Water entered the incisions, allowed the paragraphs to bloom. 

                                                                               *

            My book got good reviews, no awards. We continued our visits. He wrote to me: My daughter will be in town, visiting from Tel Aviv, and I would like very much for you to meet. Would you join us for simple carry-in supper if it pleases you. He was most cordial when something was mandatory. 
             I baked a citrus almond cake in the afternoon, a Passover recipe I loved, and held the warm pan in my lap on the ferry. Izzy pressed his fork against the surface of his large slice. He looked dissatisfied. The questions he asked felt performative—about my ferry crossing, about my editor. He had a son who rotated between Palestine and Toronto; the son was never mentioned; they were estranged. His daughter was quick, effusive, with black curls and Izzy’s strong, even gaze. She teased him and he smoked bashfully, took her hand, said a few words in Arabic. She told me how much she loved my stories. She loved the one about the grandmother who’d lived in hiding in the forest during the Holocaust. It reminded her of Izzy’s stories of his parents. When she said this, Izzy walked to the windowsill to water his row of aloe plants. While she asked me about the woman I’d just broken up with, how my day job at the gallery was going, did I get along with my roommates, Izzy looked through the window. He took breaks to watch for whales. He had never asked about my technicalities of living. We only wrote, ate, wrote. 
            You’re not how I thought you’d be. You’re so funny, and your stories are so sad, she said. 
            Izzy sat down across from me. I looked up at him. He gazed at me, his whole body held still. Then, he tilted his face downwards and looked at me over the ridge of his nose out of his green eyes, causing me, unexpectedly, to cower.
            I concealed my depression from Izzy and, in that way, I lied to him for the first years of our knowing one another. When I think back on my twenties, my sadness was a formless power, a smoke that suffocated me from within. I played a game with everyone—the game of concealing my sorrow. My friends accepted that I disappeared for weeks, didn’t respond to messages. When my vanishing acts were mentioned, I only stared back. I didn’t know how to speak of it. I believed I would harm them with my sadness. I continued to go to Izzy’s every Sunday when I was depressed. The expression ‘he saw through me’ doesn’t do justice to Izzy. He saw into me. His table was where I did my best work. Once, before settling in, I’d glimpsed a bank statement cast on the table—the first and only time I saw his legal name, Ismail. 
            Ismail, I said, warmly. The name Izzy flew off his head like a paper crown.
            Only Izzy, he said, turned the paper over.
            His daughter, after that meal, held me close and whispered words I didn’t understand into my ear.
            His next novel came out, won two national awards and an international award. My second book came out, a book of prose poetry, which he told me was an interesting attempt at understanding story. He told me not to get disillusioned with fiction so quickly. 
            You hide in being cryptic, he said. 
            I laughed with surprise, the laugh-bark of a person who’s just been cut.

                                                                               *

            I had a habit when I became suicidal of going around looking deeply into the eyes of people I loved and saying goodbye to them. I knew I probably wouldn’t kill myself, but it was comforting to go through the motions of preparation. A routine to quell the thoughts, unstopping, that said I shouldn’t exist, I shouldn’t exist. For one winter, every time I saw Izzy, I stared past the front screens of his eyes, into the bright stillness underneath, and I said, Goodbye Izzy. I liked the way he looked back into me, soft-startled, mystified, even while I knew I was being cruel. One night, he called me. It was 11:30 P.M. so I picked up, thinking maybe something had happened to his son. The call was brief. Direct. Izzy’s voice leveled by fear. He told me he was worried about me. I should come stay at his place for as long as I needed, no questions asked. I flipped around all night. I took the first ferry. At his door, he took my duffel bag in his hand and, without speaking, set it on top of his head and walked into the dark house.

                                                                              *

            On the seventh night, sitting at the opposite end of his couch, Izzy asked me to explain to him how my sadness felt. He said he’d always owned a basic form of happiness; he knew he couldn’t understand, and he could not blame me for frightening him. I suppose I’m lucky, he said.
            Explain it to me like I’m an idiot, a fool. 
            Not long before, an old tree-planting friend had come through town and had told me over pints about a lake up north that was so deep its lowest layer was saltwater, a vestige of former ocean. The detail had lodged in me.
            It was the first time I had tried to explain it to someone.
            It’s like diving and diving through dark water for the salt. Never getting there. Believing it’s down there. The deeper you go, the more you lose a sense of time and direction, but you know it’s there, and you can’t open your mouth to try to taste it or you’ll drown.
            He gazed at me, unflinching.
            Your problem is you don’t know you’re already in the ocean, he said.

                                                                               *

            Every day of the month I stayed with Izzy, he drove us around the small island, saying salt to things we passed. We passed a one-armed man on a bicycle. Salt. We passed a heron testing an electrical wire’s strength. Salt. We passed a woman smoking in a wheelchair at the end of her driveway under a striped blanket. Salt. We passed a rusted purple pick-up in the ditch, covered in crows, thick as flies on meat. Salt. We passed a heap of shining red cedar logs, standing in the light like a painting of a bonfire. Salt. He told me to print off everything I had in process. Just edit. He made my favourites: scallops with fried breadcrumbs, chicken roasted in yogurt and salt and sumac with mounds of dill, herb salad with cherries and pickles. I wrote the final section of my first novel, belly full. He called my workplace every week and told the gallery director I had mononucleosis and pretended to be my doctor. 
            He did not press me to talk, but told me not to leave until I would never look into his eyes and say goodbye that way again. The days passed, in the beginning, as they always did, food and walking and faces obscured by the thought I shouldn’t exist whirling like a sourceless, cold wind; the days passed and the spaces between the thoughts lengthened until I could pass through these spaces like narrow doorways; in the final days, I could look at my hand and see my hand, eat an orange and taste an orange. In this way, Izzy saved my life.
            After that month of salt drives, I answered Izzy’s messages more slowly. It was not the only time I’d run from a debt I knew I could never repay. When my brother died when I was 17, I’d abruptly cut off his best friend’s mum who nursed me through the grief; my own parents had evaporated in sorrow. I responded to an email from Izzy: I’m pretty okay, but really busy with the gallery and looking at maybe applying to PhDs, I’ll be back in touch when I have more time. His response was curt and began with the words Sure, Joey. I still cannot explain why I treated Izzy this way. I’d come back from the island changed and, in some way, healed. I couldn’t see him. It was not shame but something larger, undefinable. He had accompanied me inside my sadness. I deleted his emails without opening them. I made up a story for mutual friends who inquired, hesitantly, why my long, close bond with Izzy had suddenly turned to mist. I told them the story of Izzy editing my first book with his green pencil. I told them I felt judged by him. I even, briefly, deceived myself. I drifted away.

                                                                               *

            One of Izzy’s books was made into a movie that, suddenly, made his work famous. The movie poster was everywhere. A soldier reaching downward for a woman in a black and white shawl. My novel came out. I expected an email from Izzy, giving me his read. Nothing came and I knew our connection was dead. I was shortlisted for my first national award. Nothing from Izzy. Although I had created this space between us, his conjured approbation was still a blueprint for my progress. I resented him for it.
            Then, a powerful novelist in the Vancouver writing community was accused of sexual assault by a student. Everyone I knew took sides. A letter was published online supporting the accused novelist, saying that he was owed non-judgment and due process. The letter was signed by a roster of prominent authors, mostly straight people and men. I saw Izzy’s name. 
            Before I knew what I was doing, I was calling Izzy.
            Hello?
            Izzy, hi. 
            Joey? 
            I. Yeah. It’s Joey. Me.
            Joey? 
            Hey Izzy.
            Are you—are you safe?
            Yes. I’m safe.
            Oh. Good.
            I’m sorry.
            Hello there again.

                                                                                    *

            We sat across from one another at his table. 
            He listened to me talk about the novel I was writing based on my older brother’s suicide. He asked me why I didn’t just write a memoir about it. We laughed. We had an old joke that our shared religion was fiction; he was Muslim, I was Jewish, but we’d never talked about that. This was the first time we’d seen each other since the salt month. It had been over four years. His skin looked darker, more tender around his eyes. He was aging.
            Instead of talking about our silence or about my mental illness, we talked about the letter. Izzy told me that the accused writer, Sonders, was an old friend; they shared ties to an agent and to editors. Even if Sonders were a letch, he was a professor and in a union at the university. Writers, we’re a tribe, he told me. A person can’t be thrown to the wolves over one mistake. Here we are, after all, he said, and gazed at me. He tilted his face, looked at me from behind his still green eyes. I still could not thank him or apologize. My heartbeats stumbled over one another. I demanded what he thought would happen to the woman who had been assaulted. He put a palm forward and set his wrist on the table. The heavy buckle of his watch clinked on the marble. He said that we did not know.   
            I have your chicken in the oven, are you staying or not.
            We smoked side by side on stools at the counter, a clafoutis between us. Ash tumbled into sugar. There are people whose bodies you miss, their sheer heft, the way sleeves slide down their arms, the tough, pliant muscle of their laughter. I had missed my friend, my companion, my guide. He told me that this thing with Sonders, it would blow over, it was best for me to not to get involved. 
            Then why did you sign the fucking letter, I said.
            I’m in a more secure position than you.
            There’s a counter letter coming out. I’ve been asked to sign. 
            He sucked his cigarette.
            Things like this, when they happen, people say things they wouldn’t otherwise say. Those things make a chasm and people fall into them. Don’t fall in, he said.
            He touched one of his heavy silver rings to his glass. He lit another cigarette. He’d slipped effortlessly into his old position of advice-giver. I realized that my resentment meant nothing to him; it only created interference, extra noise. I needed to let it go.
            People who don’t take sides are only ever on their own side, I said, softly.
            Don’t be a child.
            More silence passed.
            I won’t sign the counter letter, I said.
            It won’t change things either way, he said. You need to understand that you make people nervous. You’re an observer because you’re a writer, and because you’re gay, and because you’re Jewish. You’re a triple threat. Play smart. 
            In the hallway outside my old bedroom, he handed me a towel. My eyes closed. Seeing Izzy again had taken everything out of me. 
            Are you okay, asked Izzy.
            He studied me. His eyes: glass fingertips on my cheeks.
            I’m better. I’m on medication.
            Thank you for telling me that, he said. He was outlined in white.
            I’m afraid I’m like my brother.
            I know, he said.
            I slept well, in the familiar room, directly under Izzy’s.

                                                                                   *

            My novel about my brother’s drowning came out. Izzy did not come to the launch but took me to the same Izakaya we’d gone to after my first book. He shrieked joyfully at the octopus dancing in smoke on the grill. He’d read the book and had long, intricate responses, which he spoke in complete paragraphs, like a religious recitation. It was the most he’d ever said about my work. He told me that he was proud of me. I signed his copy under the dedication to my brother: for Isaac, in laughter. A fine book, he told me. He raised his glass and said: To family, to life. I had tried to force my brother to live, but I could not, I had failed, and when Izzy prevented me from killing myself, he gave my brother what I could not. I had believed I did not have enough life for my brother. I drank, dizzy with gratitude. He reached out and took my hand as our eyes filled with tears. There are no words for that moment. I realized Izzy was my first true reader. 
            That meal reset our friendship for the years that followed. 

                                                                                 *

            When Israel began bombing Palestine, I called Izzy. He didn’t pick up or answer my voicemails. I emailed. Nothing. I wrote his daughter. She responded that her younger brother had been in Gaza when the war started, visiting Izzy’s parents in the village where Izzy was born. 
            He won’t leave his house. The key is under the purple pot, she said.
            I’d never gone to the island uninvited. It felt like trespass, but a necessary trespass, like I needed to recuperate a stolen person who was imperiled. He opened the front door in a bathrobe and a toque. Trembling. Hair matted. The TV screamed through the empty house, like a frightened boy running room to room. He sat at the table and covered his head with his hands. I rubbed his back. He spoke through his sobs, which frightened me with their depth. His sobs hungered. I told him I would stay with him until he got news about his son and parents. 
            I stayed for a month, coming and going on the ferry for work. I was living with a girlfriend; I told her that Izzy had saved my life in my twenties and I needed to repay him. We spent our evenings in silence with the TV on. After a month, he told me he wanted to go to Toronto to be with his daughter, who’d flown there with her baby.
            We ate our final dinner together—trout baked in salt, saffron risotto. He asked me, for the first time, how the war starting had affected me. I had kept my silence, not wanting to encroach on his fear for his son. I told him that I had been the greeter at my synagogue on Simchat Torah—October 7, the day the war started. I had stood at the entrance, opening and closing the locked door, the faces of my fellow worshippers approaching and flowing past me, fear glimmering on their faces—dark angel sweat. 
            You were in charge of the door?
            I realized I had concealed my religiosity from Izzy, just as I had once concealed my depression. Our friendship had belonged to this table; our religion was fiction. He asked me how long we’d known each other. 
            Fifteenish years, I told him, and he shook his head. 
            I’ve known you for so long. And now you’re old. About to be 40.
            He asked me what my family thought of the war, about Palestine, about Palestinian independence. A few days after the war started, my father had told me over tea and lamb that as Jews we were Indigenous to Israel, that it was ours, no room for debate. My father had said it was a horrible situation, but horrible situations exist in the world, and sometimes there must be sacrifices. His words had turned my breath to ice.
            You don’t want to know, I said.
            You have to tell me, he said. 
            No. It will break our friendship again. 
            Can a friendship be protected by silence, or does the silence always seep in like poison, I wondered.
            After all this time, you can’t be honest with me about who you are, he said.
            It won’t help.
            Don’t make excuses, he shouted, the only time he’d raised his voice to me.
            What you said. I won’t fall in. I won’t fall in, I said. 
            As I said this, I began to cry.
            We continued to eat in silence. 
            After some time, he asked what I was writing. I was working on a weird short story about a guy who’s maybe on a drug trip or maybe really spiritual who lives with a bunch of people in a van. They keep going to this lake that’s rumoured to be so deep that the lowest layer is salt water and the guy is working on learning to hold his breath for longer and longer, to reach the salt at the bottom. He wants to be a master diver. Izzy smiled, recognizing the detail I’d finally used in a story after all this time. 
            Salt, he said. 
            I’ll send it to you when it’s done.
            Sure, Joey.
            When I left with my duffel to get the last ferry, he drew me in, gripped me against his body. 
            I’m worried that when this war is over, I won’t be able to look you in the eye, I said, after he pulled away.
            That could happen, said Izzy, and went back inside. 
            As I walked to the boat, I remembered our first meeting—his clear eyes, the handshake, his email address on a cocktail napkin. Our friendship had taken root in a different world.

                                                                             *

            I heard from a friend in Toronto that his parents were killed and that his son made it to Egypt, severely injured. I emailed Izzy—no response. I wrote to his daughter and she responded that he was grieving and didn’t want to speak with me. She wrote: it’s too complicated, you understand, he said he can’t speak with anyone who might upset him. Again, our relationship had foundered. Ill-conceived from the beginning.
            A year later, when I finished the story about the diver, I sent it to him. I named the diver Izzy. I entitled the story “Thank-you” and hoped that he would understand. 

                                                                              *

            Tonight, the familiar sadness takes hold of my mind so I go out looking for salt. I walk my neighbourhood, following its lines of ocean and curbs. A teenager hunched over an iPhone screen like a sacred lantern. Salt. Meat on spikes in the open windows on Denman, hissing beside the weak rain, fat streaks like quartz veins in rock. Salt. Streetlamps deep in sleep over the bootblack ocean. Salt. My boots hitting the pavement between my heartbeats, a soft syncopation on loop. Salt. A Post-it, glued to the sidewalk by rain, reads: black tea eggs oranges. Salt. At English Bay, I walk down onto the hard brown sand. A figure in a wetsuit comes out of the ocean. Cold-plungers, these crazy people emerge from the waves in all seasons. The swimmer is precisely my brother’s stature, walks with his thoughtful crooked gait. Sometimes, I allow someone to be Isaac. His face hidden, his arms outstretched, dark water streams off his narrow shoulders, shimmering like wet feathers. Salt. Why did I survive and not him? The swimmer walks past me, skin shining, and he vanishes up the sidewalk, headed toward the lights on the buildings and mountains. There are debts that take more than one lifetime to repay. The only person who ever saved my life, I never thanked.