Paper Teeth

by Lauralyn Chow

  I save my document and stretch my arms. My glasses are smeared and greasy, I notice, as I rub one, then the other gritty eye. Digging my heels into the carpet, I flex my leg muscles to turn my chair around and organize tomorrow’s paper mounds.

  Smooth stone Chinese walls. I put my glasses back on, but that only defines the edges of the smooth stone walls more clearly. Grey stone that I don’t recognize as western Canadian, but some form of granite. No claustrophobic feeling to cut down, the walls do not even approach ceiling height, but they enclose on three sides to the window I had been facing. A little concrete dragon perches on the top of one side.

  I move toward the walls, touch quickly with the tip of a finger, then rest my fingers, my whole hand on the face of the wall. Cool to the touch. I push hard. Sturdy walls, the wall doesn’t move. I hike up my skirt. The dragon’s bulging eyes censure yet also prod me. I reach up and transfer my weight to both hands, resting on the top of the wall. Swinging my left leg, I catch the top of the wall with my heel and pull myself up. I crouch on all fours along the top of the wall. It takes my weight, is wide enough, so I peer over to the other side of the wall. Garbage piled at the base of the wall, looks as if the wind has blown it there, and it’s stuck. Empty bottles, broken glass, paper. Chocolate bar wrappers, some old shoes, and sandals. I hold my arms out for balance and slowly stand tall. My arms start to swoop as I walk, then skip along the wall. My shoulders and hips join in, and I turn and bend my knees. I dance a twisty spiral dance. From my perch on the Chinese walls, I think, sometimes you have to give them what they want.

  Number 29. Fragrant Meats with Chinese Baby Greens

  “Mumma, What’s that turrible smell? What Is that turrible smell? Ooooah! Mumma! What’s that Turrible Smell?”

  Mumma stands in the hallway bisected by the beige sofa travelling mid-air. Mumma’s teeth clench behind her smile as seven-year-old Pen stalks around the living room of The New House. Pen’s determined to find the rotting corpse of a feral turrible. There’s only the wingback chair in the living room so how hard could a turrible be to find? Slippery hardwood under sock feet, so much fun, and the floor doesn’t hide a thing. Not behind these curtain panels. Pen hooks her thumbs under the straps of her green stretchy suspenders with the white teddy bear pattern. Her eyes x-ray all surfaces, her head moves along the length of freshly varnished baseboards, cranes up to the curtain valances, precise fluid alertness. Pen’s lips disappear into her frown, inhaling, her chocolate chip-shaped nostrils flare and relax. Flare and relax.

  “Where do you want the couch, lady?” asks the man entering the living room at the helm of the beige sofa. Pen detects the man’s profile, frowning, then turns her head to enhance the view of the bottom of the sofa.

  The quiet man with his hands under the frame at the other end of the sofa, Ken, or at least the guy in the royal blue coveralls with an oval-shaped patch over the heart, an oval-shaped heart patch into which a machine has embroidered “Ken” in loopy white letters, Ken tastes blood in his mouth.

  Ken’s four front teeth staple the centre of his lips together. His lips open near the corners of his mouth and turn upward, not down, against the restraint of the central incisor quartet. Ken closes his eyes and turns his head slightly towards the hollow below his right collarbone. His whole collarbone moves up and down, makes Ken’s head move like one of those little plaster football player dolls with big helmet heads that bobble atop a wire spring neck.

  Mumma can hear Ken’s almost silent laughter, his breath exiting his nose in quiet bundles of five little snorts.

  Ken, Mumma thinks, as a tear rolls down his right cheek and splashes on the tile floor entrance hall, you drop that sofa on my new floor and I swear I’ll smack you ’til Sunday.

  C’mon, she curls thought waves into the roots of his hair, Buck up, Ken. This can’t be the only time someone else has noticed — Mumma’s eyes dart to the other end of the sofa, Larry — Larry’s bee-oh. You’re a professional, Man. Don’t drop that sofa.

  “Penelope Jean.” Pen’s sensors scramble, then decode high alert paralysis. Mumma’s pointer finger says shhhhhhh. Pen detects the crinkle fans. Mumma opens crinkle fans beside her eyes when she is pretendnice — butbeingmean to Pen in public or when there are other people in the house. Mumma slowly moves her shhhhhhh finger ninety degrees downward, points at Pen.

  Pen’s eyes say, “Not right now, I’m busy,” to the tip of Mumma’s finger. The crinkle fans and Mumma’s jumbo flaring chocolate chips say, “Pen, stop trying to find the Turrible or something turrible will happen to you.” Pen unhooks her thumbs from her suspenders, and runs through the dining room into the kitchen. “Don’t point Mumma, it’s not nice,” she hollers and runs down the back steps, out the back door to look for other Turribles.

  “Centre it against the far wall, please. And a good six inches away from the wall, too.”

  Mumma knows Wing will move the sofa sometime in the night, but she wants the room to look settled, completed, for herself. Mumma wraps her left arm under her brassiere, her right hand over her mouth, Mumma’s index finger, a beauty pageant sash pressing across the torso of her Miss Congeniality nose. That is a turrible smell, she thinks, as she feigns the bemusement of the woman wearing a tailored housedress (with darts!) in the Endust ad in last week’s Woman’s Day. The Endust woman, because of her now dust-free furniture, so suddenly beset with waxy fresh life and huge gooping wads of time, contentment, possibility, that woman can pause during the day, eyes turned Heavenly, thank you God for aerosol dusting aids, to have celestial thoughts of delightful things to do with, for, and to her family: mother-daughter matching outfits, park picnics, and Junior Miss Klondike Days pageants.

  “That looks right,” Mumma says, as Ken adjusts the front corner of the sofa, unpockets eight rug-covered coasters from his coverall pocket and hands three to Larry.

  Although Wing brings home the bread, and fruit and veg, and Silverwood’s Dairy delivers, Mumma shops for everything else. What a lot of nonsense, Mumma thinks, flipping through Woman’s Day while queued at the supermarket last week. No sense at all. Look at that Endust woman’s hair, that’s not a home perm, that hair hires someone else to do the dusting; and whose Aunt Fanny wears, hmmh, looks like a girdle and leather pumps to dust furniture; a housedress with glossy black buttons, a topstitched collar, and darts! — really; but most of all, girdle or no girdle, don’t stand there and tell me those hips have taken even one tour of duty through the straits of childbearing. At the checkout stands, the kids play ooow canIhava. Mumma flips through the magazines, plays what’s wrong with this picture. [Note: About thirty-three years from now, Mumma will find Waldo in her grandson’s books with uncanny speed, “Here, and here, there, there he is again,” and will make perceptive, albeit not always appropriate comments about the wearing of a bobble hat and a red-and-white striped sweater in the myriad of contexts in which she finds the hero.]

  “There’s a coffee shop a couple of blocks away,” Ken says, “I think we’ll take our lunch now. We’ll be gone about forty minutes, it’s not on the clock.” Ken presses the middle joint of his curved finger against the end of his nose, moves his finger in enthusiastic little circles, as if to massage the cartilage, scratch an inside itch. “Kind of warm in here. Nice warm day, you might want to open the windows.”

  Mumma’s head becomes the helmeted football dolly head, the wire-spring neck relaxing, she nods her head, little shakes of agreement.

  Wing takes a Red Delicious apple from the wooden crate, gently rubs off the shavings from the excelsior nest, and polishes the fruit in a clean white cloth. Turning the apple to its best side, Wing gently wedges the apple in place, one fruit brick in a magnificent red apple pyramid under construction.

  The front door of Maple Leaf Grocery and Confectionary has a display window on each side. The floor plates in each display case slope downward towards the window, and Wing has a series of different-coloured display boards and risers. Wing proceeds as quickly as the task all
ows, a keen bit of physics to keep the apples from rolling forward and bruising against the window.

  Only a landmark in downtown Edmonton because it marks a location that is due west of the Main Post Office building, Wing opens the store on Rice Street at 8:00 in the morning on weekdays, just as he puts the finishing touches on his window displays.

  The red apple pyramid is twinned by an identical pyramid of Red Delicious apples in the other display window. Wing’s royal blue display boards, which cover the floor plates of the two display cases, make the pyramids appear to rise out of water. In the right foreground of the other display window, near the window, Wing has set a program from the Edmonton Light Opera production of The Magic Flute, four inches back from the window. A gentleman’s evening scarf, cream silk damask, rests at an angle, carefully folded, on the bottom right corner of the program. The bottom of a silver cigarette case on top of the scarf runs parallel to the bottom of the opera program. Wing has combed the fine corded silk fringe of the scarf flat and even.

  Wing fingers through the excelsior, looking for the top apple. In this display window, Wing has left a black leather evening bag with a rhinestone clip standing and open. Wing placed white evening gloves in the palm of his hand and tossed them gently across the opening of the purse, leaving the clip visible. The glove on top twisted slightly, opened the small slit than runs between the wrist and forearm. Exquisite button loops form a white scallop edge along one side of the opening. The pearlized buttons on the other side shine coldly, even in shadow.

  The Monday morning sun on his shoulder blades feels hot as Wing paces along the sidewalk to look at the window displays. Hullo Joe, Wing’s raised palm says to Joe Heinz, the chicken man next door. The shhshhshh of the corn husk broom stops under the awning for Heinz Poultry and Meat, the flick of Joe’s wrist says, Hullo Wing.

  Wing hooks his thumbs at the front of his waist, wraps his hands around the small of his back. The window frieze, bronze-coloured, black-outlined lettering to “Maple Leaf Grocery and Confectionary,” wraps at Wing’s eye level in both windows. In each window, the top three rows of apples in the pyramids are visible just above the lettering. The apex of each pyramid rises out of “y” in “Grocery.” Wing moves his shoulder blades away from each other to stretch his back, and walks back into the store.

  At the close of Monday’s business, 4:45 p.m., Ralph Goodwin, Barrister and Solicitor, leaves his office, last to leave locks the door, as a point of pride, Ralph Goodwin has locked the door every day for the past ten years. He crosses Rice Street from the McLeod Block to retrieve his opera program and gear, and the evening gloves and bag belonging to “the Missus.” [Note: Over thirty-five years from now, after Judy LaMarsh, after the sexual revolution, after Ms. magazine and Baby X, after equal pay for equal work, after the Canadian workplace culture adopts Take Your Daughter to Work Day, after the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Lizzie will be speaking to an old high school classmate, a medium-young turk with the law firm Goodwin Evans, and he will tell her that he and “the Wife” just joined the Royal Glenora Club to play tennis in winter — “the Wife”!]

  Ralph has stood at his office window all day long, watching the secretaries and downtown workers, his partners even, stopping in front of the Maple Leaf and coming out of the store moments later munching an apple and carrying a brown paper bag. [Note: One of those workers, Stanley Short, young architect, a young turk before anyone thought to call budding young professional men young turks, had the fortune to come early, to see the twin apple pyramids, and sixteen years later, reminiscing and eating an apple after a lunchtime workout at the downtown YMCA, may have become, without his even knowing, the critical tipping catalyst to the design of a nature conservatory in Edmonton’s river valley.]

  Ralph cast aside the entire billable day, ditched every single one of the ten six-minute segments in every blessed hour, door closed, please hold my calls, to watch the pyramids racing with each other to extinction. The pace of sales heightened as the apples descended in their display. Ralph could learn a thing or two from his food-stylist neighbour across the street about creating interest. And Wing could learn a thing or two from his lawyer neighbour across the street about the almighty hour, and how to monetize time.

  “Wing, you are one crazy guy who sure knows how to sell a piece of fruit,” Ralph says, clapping Wing on the shoulder, and pulling a five-dollar bill from his wallet. “I guess you win this one.” The empty blue window displays look post-party. Wing wins most of the time, but usually just a cup of coffee. Today, Ralph wins too, quietly amused at seeing his and the Missus’s ordinary fancy belongings in extraordinary settings, secretly thrilled at the public display in broad daylight anonymity.

  “Thanks for the loan of the stuff, Ralph,” Wing says, taking the bill from Ralph’s middle and index fingers, and handing him a clean cardboard flat containing the opera gear, “And here’s a bag of apples for Missus Goodwin.”

  “Hey, you didn’t cheat me, did you? You sold all the ones in the window, right?” Ralph is simultaneously embarrassed to have made the accusation and skeptical about losing.

  “No cheating. I got these apples from the box in the cold room, not from the window. Still nice and cold,” Wing says, thinking Ralph still believes that the only reason he can lose to me is if I cheat. Wing wonders if Ralph’s heart’s as visible on his sleeve to anyone else, when Wing can see it across Rice Street through a window high up on the sixth floor.

  Wing doesn’t intend to be a food stylist, Wing Lee, the accidental aesthete. Wing’s displays, his Dominion Day cherry tomato and cauliflower new Canadian flags, his back-to-school acorn squash bells, the simple black cloth draping and pooling over the picture frame set on a table for Remembrance Day, the Maple Leaf windows figure frequently as game pieces in the chit-chat of downtown Edmonton. And although he graciously accepts his customers’ compliments, and although Ralph is partially right, Wing does know how to sell a piece of fruit, what Wing Lee has a real passion for is a sense of order, everything having a place.

  Everything. Just put it in its place. Rows of apples in boxes look tidy, but not in place, today. Today, they should be stacked upon each other in pyramids. The ones left in the box, make one or two small pyramids in the box, don’t leave them in rows. Next month, or week, or day, many varieties of apples are placed in multi-coloured chevron bands. After that, lift the boxes into the windows, the rows of apples in boxes are right in place.

  It doesn’t stop with apples. For Wing, every single thing has a place. Wing doesn’t insist that doing his thing becomes Mumma’s thing, or anyone else’s thing, Wing’s composition of place a solo act. Mumma tries to keep the furniture minimal and the clutter non-existent on the home front, a gesture of support and understanding she extends to her hard-working husband. Mumma understands it is hard to move furniture at night with no lights on, at night when everyone else should be asleep, when Mumma pretends to sleep. At an early age, the kids learn to weave around the morning’s new furniture configurations.

  Wing tags everything with the date of acquisition, with the price paid (if purchased), and any other pertinent details, such as gifted from whom, or from what store or city or vacation. Wing’s calligraphy is small and exact, his ink indelible. Sometimes he counts the number of Lees in the phone book, a neatly scribed marginalia, “53.” Every so often, Wing will bring the bathroom scale and yardstick to the kitchen, line the kids up, and make a permanent lined paper record of their heights and weights pinned down by black triangular points onto the black pages of the photo album with a date of record, say, 17/09/60 — but not always with a photo.

  Mumma refuses to be measured. Early in their relationship, Mumma learns to put things behind cupboard doors, into drawers, closets, anywhere away, a gesture of support and understanding she extends to herself — visitors, even family, do not need to know that the cold cream in the bathroom has a recorded birthday or homecoming, now two months old, and was bought on sale for $1.29. [Note: Mumma and W
ing never realize how the jumbled conversations, the relentless labelling and the bringing home of new baby siblings may have affected their children. As a preschooler, Tom will close the bathroom door and no one else will know that he will get an ache behind his navel, an ache in the shape of a toilet paper roll, twenty-five minutes of pulling and prying, looking for 24/05/57, or 6 lbs. 8 oz., or Royal Alex, anything, on the inner folds of his innie. Years later, at university, Pen will spin an intimate, compelling and totally fallacious fable of a culturally-based ritual, the Chinese baby tattoo. Five times as foreplay, four times not all the way, twenty-year old Pen will dare the boys to find her birthmark tattoo.]

  A tiny plastic and metal license plate-like tablet suspended from a short length of ball chain jingles against the ring of keys as Wing turns a key in the deadbolt on the front door of the Maple Leaf. Holding all the keys in his fingers, Wing jiggles the ring to move the tablet like a pendulum. Aluminum on one side, the other side displays a series of black letters on a yellow background, covered by a hard, clear plastic window. A thin rolled edge of aluminum running along the border keeps the plastic in place. Wing thinks about summer vacation, Key Number 6F, Chickadee Bungalows. The gold embossed lettering on the leather key toggle: “If you find this key, please drop it in any mailbox, to be returned to Chickadee Bungalows, Box 16, General Delivery, Banff, Alberta. Thanks!” Now there’s a place for a vacation, Wing thinks.

  The tablet swings back and forth in front of Wing’s nodding head. The engraving on the back of the aluminum tablet promises that these keys too should be dropped in any mailbox if they are lost and found — then, The War Amps will relocate them to their proper place. Wing knows a lot of Vets, a lot of his customers are Vets, but no War Amps. And while Wing doesn’t know a War Amp or anyone with anything amputated, and has never misplaced his keys, his keys never dropped in the mailbox by a good Samaritan, mailed to the War Amps and then sent back to Wing, how can you not support such a worthy cause, caring for people, putting keys back where they belong?