In Search of the Perfect Singing Flamingo

by Tacon, Claire;

  We’re in the middle of shooting design consultations this week, which is why I could be home for dinner at a reasonable time last night with Mom and Dad. Not that he seemed to notice. To him I’ll always be a college student on the schedule that he liked to call “the leisurely learning pace.” Class was only twenty hours a week, but I also had a full-time job at the public access station and I graduated a semester early. My father doesn’t have much of a baseline for typical behaviour. Because I don’t have Starr’s difficulties, he expects superhuman achievement.

  It’s why Chester’s family is a breath of fresh air. Chester’s brother is a few years older than me but is still at home, spending most of his off time role-playing online. But his parents don’t care as long as their boys are happy and part of the family. Since they never had girls, they fuss over me. It’s nice sometimes to be the centre of attention, to be the apple of someone’s eye.

  John must notice that I’m keyed up because he asks straight out if I’ve got PMS.

  “Fuck off.”

  Brent laughs in the background. I know John doesn’t mean the question literally – he’s not a complete ass.

  “Dinner with my folks last night.”

  “You and Chester asking them for money?”

  John and I have had some good life chats over the past few years and he knows we’re trying IVF. But that’s a private conversation, nothing Brent needs to hear.

  “Just the usual. Criticized for not including my sister.”

  “Most parents would think you’re a saint.”

  It irritates me when people say things like that, even though I know John wants to be supportive. Starr isn’t a burden. If anything, I wish there was more time to visit, more I could do. “My sister’s great. It’s that my dad forgets all the times I do see her.”

  We’re north of Eglinton now, just a few blocks from the stores on Castlefield, which is now marked with tacky Design District street signs. The Le Château outlet is near here too, so let’s not get carried away.

  “Bets on how late the talent will be.”

  They’ve got a new design assistant, so it could go either way. Super keen and right on time, or too shy to corral Matilda. John swears our host is notoriously flaky because of the uppers that also keep her rail-skinny. The only food we’ve ever seen touch her mouth are non-fat lattes. John figures she must shit cheese curds. Most of the time, she and the design minions stick to themselves.

  The construction crew has their own nightmare in Drayton, the romance-novel-cover lead carpenter who swings his tool belt around and sleeps with the design girls and a few of the home owners, but leaves most of the work to the off-camera construction crew. They’re just regular contractor guys without TV aspirations and few of them last more than one season – usually they realize their regular work pays better.

  We pull into the delivery area for NKTA, our furniture sponsor. The premise behind Bargain Basement! is that home owners get free labour on a finished basement and design advice from Matilda. She comes up with a plan for the space and gives the couple paint swatches and a list of items they need to achieve the look. Then they look at five high-end furnishings and, if they can stay under budget, they win some or all of them. At the end of the show they flash a ridiculous formula – 9/10 items under budget = 4 pieces – but if you look episode by episode, it’s totally arbitrary. Any kind of sob story = they get it all. Today we’re filming Katja and Robin’s design segment in the morning and Dan and Jordan’s in the afternoon. Our producer says that gay and lesbian couples are “on trend.”

  The beats that I have for the first couple are: tech entrepreneurs in need of a home office; design newbies ready to embrace DIY culture. We’ll be coaching them off-camera to show how amazed they are by Matilda’s vision. Once we see what they’re like, we’ll be able to massage the meltdown scene. We had a great one last season, where the man holds up a hot glue gun, trying to make a window valance, and burns his finger on the tip. His wife steps in and tells him to run his hand under cold water. While he’s still in the bathroom, she completes the item. Cut to the closing shot when they win all the furniture and he starts crying, saying he never knew how hard crafting stuff was and he wished he’d been more encouraging all these years.

  When we get into the store, Matilda is sitting on an off-white club chair while one of the design assistants adjusts her makeup. Translucent powder billows onto the vegan leather. Anka, the owner, extracts herself from her clients to join us. She’s so slim and the cut of her dress is roomy enough that it’s not until she turns to kiss the air over Matilda’s cheek that I see it. A bump. It catches me like a slap. Two months ago tomorrow would have been my due date. She must be in her mid-forties, forty-three at a minimum. Three columns farther on the risk charts.

  “Kiddo,” John says, and motions for me to loosen my death grip on the electrical cables. I busy myself taping over the cords.

  Then the couple shows up. Also pregnant – six or seven months along. They’ve baked shortbread and make a point of introducing themselves to everyone as they circulate the tin. They thank us profusely for having them on the show. That’s what it must be like, I think, to be past all the tests, full of generosity for the world. They might as well be levitating.

  “Be careful, ladies,” Matilda says to her retinue. “This type of thing is contagious.”

  At least once a week over the past seven months I’ve had the same nightmare. I’m holding a baby and trying to feed it. First its head is too floppy to latch onto my nipple. Then, the whole body starts shrinking, ending up no bigger than my little finger. After the termination I started lactating. Even now, if I press very hard, a bead of colostrum will spring up.

  The nurses, of course, had witnessed these procedures before. They brought a constant rotation of warm blankets in the seven-hour wait for the pessary to ripen my cervix. All of them offered happy endings they’d seen in friends, patients. Healthy pregnancies six months later. Surprise twins. One nurse rubbed my arm in the chill of the operating room as the anaesthetic took effect. Thinking about it now, it’s nice to be reminded that compassion can be so freely given.

  I call out the first “roll camera.” The look Matilda has come up with is Seattle boho, a mash-up between ’60s San Francisco harem and ’90s tech boom. The office is going to be all clean, hard lines with over-the-top accent pieces, whereas the living space will be “plush, lush but clutter-free.” The bathroom will have a glittered concrete floor and modern fixtures.

  The couple walks into the frame and Matilda introduces them to Anka.

  “Tell us how you see the space being used.”

  “Well, we’re expanding our family.” Katja rubs her belly, beatifically.

  “You certainly are,” Anka says. “When are you due?”

  “Late October.”

  “This one’s a December baby.”

  “So we need an in-law suite in the basement.” She gazes adorably at Robin, who also cups her hand to the bump.

  This is not the beat I’d coached them through ten minutes ago. We already have a couple who need an in-law suite. I catch Robin’s eye and mime typing.

  “And we need a proper home office where we could bring clients. Right now we’re renting a space across town.”

  They don’t have a separate entrance so their home office can’t be a space for clients, unless they want to parade them through the living room first. After the first cut, I point this out to Matilda.

  “Let’s do something special for them. We can put something in off the side door.”

  Typical Matilda, no concern about budget. I call our script supervisor to see how much squeeze room we have. Usually Katrina is a hard-ass. She once yelled at me for fifteen minutes because the couple used the phrase empty nest instead of zoomer living. CARP was providing promotional consideration and we had a tie-in with their magazine – a profile on Matilda redefining snowbirding.

  Katrina is thrilled at the change in focus. “Mommy entrepreneurs s
core huge with our base. Get as much belly as you can. We’ll alter the schedule to make sure we get the filming done before she changes sizes too much. Honestly, if the whole season’s knocked up, we can run with it. We can go back to the archives and bundle a Baby’s Coming Bargain Basement! Marathon.”

  Katrina is not someone I’ve confided in. Last wrap party she made an offhand remark about test-tube babies. Like my father, she thinks IVF is like walking into Pusateri’s and picking out the most exotic fruit. No idea about the daily ultrasounds, hormone supplements, the pain of the extraction. I don’t care what Katrina thinks, but I wish my father wouldn’t dismiss our intentions. It feels like whatever I say, he’ll interpret it as a rejection of my sister, proof I’ve never loved her as much as I should.

  On my first day of grade nine, Starr and I walked to school together. East Oak Collegiate was a new building, designed by architects better known for constructing malls. On a different blueprint my classroom could have been a Foot Locker. Starr was in grade twelve for the first time and filled me in on what to expect, showing off the smoke pit, the vending machines. All the special-ed classrooms were stuffed in the basement and someone had graffitied “Welcome to Mongolia” across the lockers. Over the summer, no one had bothered to remove it.

  A classmate, Candace, caught me coming up from the special-ed wing after recess and called me Queen Retardo. Back in elementary school if a teacher had caught a whiff of that they’d have shut it down right away. Probably Candace would’ve had to give a presentation on Williams syndrome in front of the whole school. At East Oak, Mademoiselle Malcolm either didn’t hear or didn’t care.

  The nickname stuck. It meant I didn’t have much of a social life until grade ten, when I made the track team. I got some friends and, by the end of the term, a crush. Owen Lenton was six foot three, but his thighs were thinner than my dad’s arms. He was a distance runner and the coach thought he was good enough to make provincials. I liked how driven he was, the contrast of his determination with the breezy, relaxed stride of his run. He always had a new sports biography in his backpack, was constantly pitching new training programs for the team.

  We went to a house party after the OFSAA championships and ended up in one of the rooms, wedged against a Hot Wheels headboard. Owen and I kissed, but mostly we just sat there, feeling our bodies side by side. In some ways, growing up with a sister with special needs, I felt wise to the world, but in other areas, I was so sheltered. Owen didn’t push things and I liked that about him.

  We started hanging out whenever we could. Between that and track, it meant there wasn’t as much time for Starr. Mom gave me some leeway, said it was natural at our age for siblings to carve out their own space. Dad wasn’t as pleased. I could tell by the way he asked, “Owen again?” every time I’d leave the house. Starr was graduating that year and there was a lot of stress at home about next steps. It was nice to have someone who was a reprieve from that.

  On a hot day in late May, three weeks before the end of school, Owen invited me to come over to his place. They had a pool and his mom would be out until six. He said I should bring Starr too. She liked Owen and loved swimming and it felt nice to be able to include her.

  When we got there, Owen’s brother was in the water with another of his rugby buddies. Arnold was two years older and played on a city league. His friend’s eyes bugged out when he saw Starr, but Owen smoothly introduced her as my sister. He made it clear, without saying it, that I was his girlfriend and Nate had better be nice, no matter what he thought of special-ed students.

  They had a beach ball and some pool noodles and we played a game of water polo. Arnold kept teasing Owen about bringing home not one but two girls. The two of them roughhoused like little kids. Every few minutes, they’d fill their mouths with water and spray it in long streams at each other’s faces. They were gentle with Starr, letting her score a few times and making sure she didn’t get splashed. When I was ready to get out and get changed, I motioned for Starr to come with me. But she was having such a good time she wanted to stay in longer. I told her to call me when she’d had enough – she had a hard time peeling her straps off once her suit was wet.

  Owen led me to his room to change, but didn’t leave. We kissed for a while standing up, soggy in our towels. Soon we were on the floor making out furiously, his erection dry humping my hip through his trunks. He was grabbing my breasts in his hands, unsure how to slip them out of my halter. I was busy sucking the chlorine off his neck, too shy to grab his penis. I don’t know how much time passed. When we shifted onto his bed, we could see the damp outlines we’d left on the carpet.

  Through the window I heard a yelp and a sustained whine.

  Starr, having an anxiety attack. I flew into my clothes, taking the stairs two at a time. I kept listening for her cry, proof she wasn’t drowning.

  Through the patio door, I could see she wasn’t in the water. She was naked on a lawn chair, wrapping her arms around her breasts, her suit crumpled over a can of Fifty.

  Nate was doing up his pants.

  “Did you touch her?”

  He zipped up faster.

  “Kiss it, kiss it,” Starr said, pointing at him, too worked up to be coherent.

  “Just calm her down,” Arnold said. “I can drive you home.”

  I pushed right up to him. A big stripe of sunlight arced over his forced grin. “Why is she naked?”

  “She needed help with her suit,” Nate said. “She sat on my lap.”

  “I’m calling my mom.”

  “Don’t.” Arnold cuffed his hands around my forearms. “Nothing happened.”

  Owen had gotten Starr a towel. It hung over her shoulders like a poncho.

  “Call my mom,” I said, breaking Arnold’s grip. I wasn’t going to leave my sister alone to use the phone. “Owen, call my mom.” Starr rocked in the chair, stark white legs under the navy towel. She wouldn’t let me hold her.

  “I only fingered her a bit,” Nate said. “I just wanted to see if she’d suck it.”

  Arnold grabbed his friend’s shoulder and yanked him around the side of the yard. Owen stood there watching his brother charge Nate past the fence. “Why didn’t you stop it?”

  Out by the driveway the friend called back. “He did it too.”

  Then it was just the drone of the hatchback’s muffler.

  I never knew if that was true because the whole thing was so traumatic for Starr that she didn’t remember it in the way police want you to – linear and with no associations poking their heads in. Because she had to be examined by the doctor, she said that the doctor had molested her as well. She wasn’t considered a reliable witness. All we knew from the doctor was that they didn’t get as far as penile penetration, but they had probably digitally raped her. They couldn’t determine if they’d been able to coerce her into oral.

  It broke my parents’ hearts. They’d thought they’d prepared her for this. They’d paid for a therapist to coach her on how to say no, ordered “healthy body” videos from the special-needs societies. But she would have trusted the boys because she thought they were my friends. Chester says there’s an exercise firefighters do as part of street smarts outreach in schools: during the middle of the role-playing, they get a stranger to interrupt, saying he’s giving away puppies from his trunk. Every time, at least half the kids follow him out.

  Starr liked Owen, so Starr liked his brother. She might have asked them to help her with her bathing suit straps because I was upstairs. It probably wouldn’t have taken much manipulation and attention for her to stay naked, to sit on one of their laps.

  My parents pushed for the school to discipline the boys but they said there was nothing they could do unless the accusations were proven. Their solution was for Starr to skip the last month of classes. They promised to graduate her anyway.

  The truth was, no one believed that Nate and Arnold would need to go slumming for action with someone like my sister. There were threats from the rugby league, promises to bli
tz my lying face in. Their girlfriends flicked lit cigarettes at me when I walked past. The next year I switched to a Catholic school and my sister went to a day program that wasn’t very good but would look after her for the hours my parents were at work.

  My mother forgave me right away. Said I couldn’t have foreseen what happened. That dispensation was almost worse than my father’s ongoing silence. It feels like he’s carried more anger toward me through the years than to the perpetrators. But he was right, I should have been watching out for Starr instead of upstairs with Owen.

  It’s why I’m terrified to bring a kid with special needs into this world. I promised myself that day that I’d always take care of my sister and I wouldn’t be able to give them equal attention. Deeper than that, I know that even if I parented like my father, became a shield for my child against the world, some of the hurts would get through. Awful as it was for me to make the call that day, it would be worse having to pick up the receiver.

  HENRY

  FOR THE FIRST HOUR AT THE VICTORIA PARK FRANKIE’S, there’s only one kid in the store with his grandma. She trails behind him, carrying a bucket of tokens and his layers of clothing – a sun visor with monkey ears, a green hoodie. I can’t decipher the language they’re speaking. Filipino, maybe. When they get to the Dance Dance Revolution knock-off, she gamely gets up on the other footpad and the two of them dance battle. She’s maybe sixty-five, tops, and it’s cute the way that she moves, awkward between the steps but graceful too, like she might do social dancing. I wonder if they’re together all the time, if she does child care while the parents work. The kid’s lucky to have someone who loves him so much looking after him.

  Greyson, the owner, catches me staring. “They’re here every couple of weeks. Dance Pantz Party and Whack-A-Mole are their favourite.”

  I’m proud to say we have one of the originals with the pop-up Frankie heads, instead of the LED version they’re phasing in. Corporate doesn’t understand that kids are more captivated by lower tech entertainment. Almost every game that we have is available on the Internet for free. It’s not like it used to be when the girls were growing up, when only the rich families had Nintendo at home. When video game consoles would be a big gift, the kind you only got once every few Christmases. We’ve got to offer something they can’t download or watch on YouTube.