by Barb Howard
She didn’t go canoeing. David went with the Norgay-Hillars and reported that it rained the whole time. That was years ago—get over it, Margaret thinks as she turns up the walkway to the house. It had nothing to do with breaking out of a mould. It had to do with preferences.
Margaret glances around the yard, which looks like all the other yards used to, before the neighbourhood started xeriscaping. Margaret’s yard still has a neat lawn, a shrub patch on one side, a flower bed on the other. If there was time, she’d cut a few Cheddar Pinks and put them in bud vases inside the house. As if anyone would notice.
Margaret can hear the baseball game on TV, and she can hear David snoring—each snore a deep grumble followed by a pause. Now there’s someone in a mould, Margaret thinks as she unpacks her groceries as loudly as possible.
After she whisks a balsamic marinade for the tenderloin, she tidies the kitchen. She picks a crumpled dish towel off the kitchen counter. David must have left it there—she would have hung it over the rack. The towel is slightly damp and Margaret is about to exchange it for a dry one when she decides she’ll use it to dust the family room, or the “TV room” as David calls it.
She walks in front of the couch where David is sleeping, dusts under the remote control, and then smacks it back on the table. David props himself up on one elbow and tries to peer around her to see the screen. Margaret checks the screen, too. Extra innings, today of all days.
“What are you all huffy about?” he asks.
“Nothing,” Margaret says.
“Dinner. You’re worked up about Tanya and Edmund even though they won’t be here for hours.”
“There’s a lot to do,” Margaret says.
“You invited them,” David says.
There is no point responding to such a stupid remark. David will never understand the politics or the orchestration required when it comes to company.
By dinnertime the house is spotless. Margaret has had a bath, thanks to the time freed up by the instant sourdough buns, and changed into her black pants and the sweater with the beaded phoenix. She hasn’t worn the phoenix in months—not since David commented that the bird, with all those dark tubular beads at its bottom, appears to have messed itself. Scat, the Norgay-Hillars would call it. Wait, what was she thinking? The Norgay-Hillars would never notice what she was wearing unless it came from the mountain equipment store.
The food will only require a few last minute steps. Tenderloin and tomatoes prepared for the barbecue, baby romaine salad waiting for dressing. The table is set with her antique plates, the pewter napkin rings from High River, and the quaint bun basket she picked up on a car trip to Rosebud.
Even David, Margaret admits, looks pretty darn good. He has put on clean jeans and a navy golf shirt that Margaret recently bought for him. As a bonus, he has tidied the front hall closet.
Margaret opens the fridge and pulls out the tube of buns. She twists the tube according to the directions and raw dough oozes out of the package and through her fingers. She plucks off bun-size bits and sets them on a baking sheet. After burying the empty package in the garbage, she slides the baking sheet in the oven.
When the Norgay-Hillars arrive, they hug as a couple—first David and then Margaret. There are several layers to their coats, including outer shells and inner fleeces. Still, Margaret is certain that she smells the same pine-scented deodorant on both Tanya and Edmund. At the end of the hug, Margaret’s phoenix snags on one of the Norgay-Hillars’ many coat toggles and there is a brief awkwardness as she detaches herself.
David hangs up the multipurpose jackets, then Margaret leads everyone through the front hall towards the family room, where they will have a drink. On the way, they pass the dining room. Tanya stops talking (about a hot spot she developed on her heel while cycling) to admire the table. Edmund puts his arm around his wife’s shoulders.
“Oh, Margaret, you go to too much work!” Tanya cries.
“Indeed,” Edmund says.
David nabs a hot bun from the basket. Edmund takes one, too.
“Fabulous,” Edmund says through his mouthful as he follows David out of the room.
“Edmund and I are ravenous,” Tanya says. “We intended to go for a short out-and-back in Kananaskis today, but you know us—in the end we’d completed the entire nine-hour loop. Good thing we got an early start.”
“Do you ever get sick of each other?” Margaret asks.
“No,” Tanya replies.
“Not ever? Don’t you ever want to go out alone? Even if it’s just shopping?”
“We hate shopping,” Tanya says.
“Bun?” Margaret offers.
Tanya peers at the buns and takes the biggest. Margaret notes that Tanya pulls the bun apart in two halves, just as Edmund did, before eating it. No one appears to have noticed that the buns are not homemade.
“Thanks,” Tanya says, popping the last bit of bun into her mouth. “I think I’ll go see what Edmund is up to.”
Margaret adjusts the remaining buns in the basket.
Later, when David, Edmund, and Tanya are seated at the table, Margaret delivers the plates of food. She has been fluttering about the kitchen, trying to convince herself that it makes no difference that the ready-to-bake buns passed as her own from-scratch buns. Now, as she stands in front of her chair at her end of the table, she feels overwhelmed by other irritations. What sort of dining room suite has only one armchair? And why is David always in it? And why are the Norgay-Hillars here at all? Why does she keep inviting them for dinner? Why is she waiting on all these people? The mould, Margaret decides, breaks now.
Margaret takes the edge of the tablecloth in each hand. She checks the faces around the table—David, Tanya, Edmund, immersed in their three-way conversation about the best way to stretch the quadriceps. Margaret tightens her grip and, stepping back, yanks the tablecloth to her hips.
The table setting jumps toward her. An avalanche of plates and cutlery crash into each other on the way to the carpet. The basket tumbles. Buns scatter. The Norgay-Hillars leap to their feet.
David, looking slightly frightened, asks, “What’s with you?”
When Margaret doesn’t answer, David comes round to her end of the table. He gets down on his hands and knees and begins cleaning the debris at her feet. Margaret sits in her chair and stares at the Norgay-Hillars. They scurry to Margaret’s end of the table, where they crouch and help David pick up the Gremolata tomatoes and tenderloin slices and, of course, the sourdough buns.
Margaret closes her eyes, listens to the threesome working beneath her, and smiles. She has summited.
VACUUMING THE DOG
It was Wednesday and I was vacuuming the dog. The more hair I can get directly off her coat, the less there will be on the floor on Thursday, when I vacuum the rest of the house. Fridays, I vacuum my keyboard because I am a writer. In fact, last month I received a much-coveted government grant for writers. My colleagues were astonished. They’ll be even more astonished when they discover that my grant application included a proposal to write a book called Law and Literature in Canada: From Zero to 2010.
I take weekends off. On Mondays, I Google stuff. On Tuesdays, I send e-mails. On the Monday before the Wednesday mentioned in the first paragraph, I Googled Richard Posner, the famous American judge who wrote a best-selling book called Law and Literature. He also wrote something or other about law and economics. On the Tuesday before the Wednesday mentioned in the first paragraph, I emailed Richard Posner at the University of Chicago and “queried” (as they say in the writing world and the legal world—and so the synergy begins) whether there is enough material out there for a book about law and literature in Canada. Ever since I got the grant money I’ve been wondering about that aspect of my project. Of course, I also hoped that Posner would summarize his books so that I wouldn’t have to read them as part of my soon-to-be-started research.
Big judges like Richard Posner probably don’t even read their own email, I figured. But nothing ventured,
nothing gained. Besides, according to my grant proposal, I had to do research. The grant people must have ways of checking up on recipients. I needed to be able to say, “See, I did more than vacuum the dog—here is a copy of the email I sent to Mr. Posner, AKA Mr. Law and Literature.”
As I may have mentioned, it was Wednesday and I was vacuuming the dog. She especially likes to be vacuumed around her neck, and I am always careful not to inadvertently suck up an ear. I have done that once or twice, and she looked at me harshly until I gave her a piece of Gruyère cheese. I explained to her that this vacuum wasn’t exactly invented for dog grooming. There is such an appliance. Several years ago, I ordered the PetVac from a flap on the envelope of my department store bill. The photo showed a small hand-held object, about the size of an electric razor. Just the right suction, the ad claimed, to remove loose hair from a dog’s coat. However, like the cleaning robot, the musical mattress, and the pomegranate diet pills, the PetVac was a rip-off. It couldn’t suck hair off a barbershop floor. I decided from then on I would always be on the alert. If something looks too good to be true, it probably is.
The other place my dog likes to be vacuumed is on her hip bones and at the base of her tail. That’s where I was vacuuming Wednesday. “Oh-la-la,” the dog seemed to be saying before we were interrupted by the ring of the phone. (I didn’t mention the phone ringing at the beginning of the story, even though that is where this story really begins, because that would have been poor style. Like having the story start with an alarm clock waking the protagonist. I’ve taken writing classes and know a few things. That’s why I got the grant.)
“Richard Posner here,” the voice said.
Richard Posner said that he had received my email, that he was in Calgary, and that he could meet me for lunch. In an hour.
“For sure!” I exclaimed, eagerly and expectantly (which are unnecessary adverbs that kind of mean the same thing, but I left them in for effect).
Then I remembered the PetVac. If it looks too good to be true, it probably is too good to be true. There was no way on Uranus that this was Richard Posner. But if not Richard, then who? And how had he gotten my phone number? And how would he know that I emailed Posner?
“Do any writing this morning?” he queried.
The truth hit me like a bag of money. This person, this Richard Posner, was a Canadian government spy working for the grants department. Incredibly, government hacks must have tapped my emails. Now, I will admit that I may have spruced up my credentials when I emailed Richard Posner. I may have suggested that I had written a few books already, which is true—although they are still in the draft stage. I also may have hinted that I had lined up a well-known publisher for my book. Luckily, everything would jibe since my grant application had been similarly spruced.
I suggested that we meet at Timmy Ho’s.
“Timmy Ho’s?” the Posner impersonator queried, as if he was some guy from Chicago who had never heard of the place.
“Yes, Tim Hortons, on 6th.”
“All right,” he said, after a pause.
What’d he think? I was going to suggest Starbucks and blow my grant money on a venti mocha frappuccino with him taking notes? Mr. Posner’s cover was so blown. Plus, that fake American accent was plain goofy. In any event, my dog noticed a squirrel on the windowsill and started barking incessantly. I couldn’t hear anything else so I hung up.
I started to put on my best suit. Something I might wear to an important meeting about my trust fund. But then I thought, wait a minute—it can’t look like I spent grant money on fancy clothes. Which I did. So I took off the suit, put on jeans, a wrinkly shirt, and sloppy shoes—just like a writer.
I was only a few minutes late, less than thirty. (After all, I had to finish vacuuming the dog’s tail.) Mr. Posner was waiting outside Timmy Ho’s. I knew it was him because he was dressed like a Canadian government employee. Blue golf-style pants, white shirt, glasses. Nice disguise, dummy. I could not discern if he had a microphone taped to his chest, or a camera on his watch.
We introduced ourselves, went inside, picked up trays, and got in the service line. He ordered a bagel with salmon. The most expensive item on the overhead board. But I wasn’t tricked. Oh sure, Mr. Posner thinks I should buy him lunch with my grant money. That’s for subsistence, buster.
“So you have a dog?” he queried as we sat down at a table for two. He picked up his bagel and I tore the wrapper off the pack of crackers that I would be having for lunch. Luckily, before I answered his question, I realized that I didn’t want him to think I owned an expensive purebred. Which I do.
“Yes,” I said, “a mongrel that I found in the ditch. I eat her food sometimes.”
“Dog food?” He put his bagel down on his plate.
“Discount kibble.” I emitted a few “grrrrr” and “rrrruufff” sounds for humour and emphasis.
Mr. Posner excused himself, stepped outside the restaurant, and made a call on his cell phone. I imagined him saying, “Case closed. She’s legit.”
Then he flagged down a taxi and, I assumed, instructed the driver to take him back to the devious government office from whence he came. I finished his salmon bagel.
I returned home and took the dog for a walk. Much later, I Googled Richard Posner, more thoroughly this time, and found a photo and a sound bite. Sixtyish, lean face, horn-rimmed glasses, American accent! Likes seafood!! Apparently, I had been with the real Richard Posner (no more need for sardonic italic emphasis—he’s the real thing!) at Timmy Ho’s. Whoops. But I’m not the type to cry over spilled milk under the bridge or bygones or corky Cabernet. This is the writing life. Ups and downs. No one, not even me on my grant proposal, said Law and Literature in Canada: From Zero to 2010 could be written easily in, like, a week. No, I simply call my dog, hoist my vacuum, and begin thinking really hard about a catchy opening line for my book.
LAST SEEN AT TEENY TOWN
As they enter the Okanagan, Matt complains to Kayla that when he was a kid his parents always drove right by Teeny Town.
“You’re almost thirty,” Kayla says. “I can’t believe that still bugs you.”
“The sign made me think of it. And besides, it wasn’t just Teeny Town,” Matt says. “Even though I begged, my parents wouldn’t stop at the fruit stand with the petting zoo, or the place with the bumper boats, or even the go-kart track.”
“Poor thing. Pull into Teeny Town if you want,” Kayla offers.
“Really? Now?”
“Sure. I don’t want you complaining about roadside attractions after we’re married.”
“Oh babe—you won’t regret this.”
Matt and Kayla met in Banff at the hotel where Matt was the handyman, and where Kayla worked as a summer front desk clerk. At the end of four months—hiking every day off, sleeping in the same bed every night—they got engaged, quit their jobs, and are now on what Kayla calls their Meet the Fockers tour. Matt says they can overnight in Penticton where his parents have the largest cabin on the lake. “My dad is a big show-off,” Matt has told Kayla. “He wants the celebrity-size cabin, the fastest boat, and the most successful son.”
After Penticton, the plan is to stop briefly in Vancouver to make sure Kayla is set up at the University of British Columbia for the upcoming term at grad school, and then carry on for a weekend on Vancouver Island, where Kayla’s mom lives in a double-wide trailer with two tabby cats and a hedgehog. “My mom and your dad probably shouldn’t sit too close at the wedding,” Kayla said. “My mom doesn’t do show-offs.”
More than seating at the wedding (no date has been finalized but Kayla is hoping for sometime next spring), Kayla has a few other concerns regarding her mother. For instance, she hasn’t told her mother about the age difference—that she is eight years younger than Matt. That’s something her mother, perpetually negative about men and relationships and life in general, could find upsetting. But Kayla is sure that once her mother meets Matt, and Matt applies his charm, everything will run smoothly. Then Kayl
a will mention the age difference.
Matt brakes, steers the car between the brick posts, each topped by a stone rabbit mid-prance on its hind legs, that signal the entrance to Teeny Town. There’s only one other car—a minivan—in the parking lot, and the building appears to be more of a 1960s urban bungalow than a roadside attraction.
“Doesn’t look like much,” Kayla says. “And those rabbits aren’t teeny. They’re bigger than real rabbits.”
“Trust me,” Matt says.
The front door is propped open with a worn moccasin-style slipper. Straight ahead, a thin elderly woman stands behind a long empty desk. Her grey hair is done in stiff roller-shaped curls, and she wears a frilled blouse tucked into high-waisted jeans. Behind her, in the kitchen, an old man sits at the table, a newspaper spread out before him. He has one thumb looped through his suspender, and he licks the other thumb each time he uses it to turn the page of the newspaper. Kayla flips through the pamphlet on the desk so she doesn’t have to watch the licking.
“Busy day?” Matt asks the woman as he pulls his wallet from his back pocket.
“Twenty dollars each,” she says. “There’s a mom and her kid already touring the exhibit.”
“This brochure says ten dollars per person,” Kayla says.
“No big deal,” Matt whispers into Kayla’s hair. “We’re here for miniatures, not a bargain. And it looks like these folks could use the money.”
He puts forty dollars on the desk, slips his hand under Kayla’s arm. Then he gently pulls her through the living room, down a short flight of stairs, and toward the “start” poster, which is above the back door of the house.
Matt pushes open the door and they step into a gravelled compound of small wood huts, like sheds, arranged in a semicircle. The huts are identical, except one has a ladder and a lookout fort attached to it. Matt heads for the first hut on the right.