In Search of the Perfect Singing Flamingo

by Tacon, Claire;

Starr takes a break and floats around. “There’s a band-aid down there,” she announces.

  Darren looks even less excited to be in the pool now. I can see him calculating the odds of contracting some flesh-eating disease, another novel way to snuff it.

  Starr keeps popping her head back under the water to survey the tile floor. “There’s also a coin.”

  “What kind?”

  “I can’t tell. It’s over in the corner.”

  Darren darts under the water and stays down for almost thirty seconds. When he surfaces he doesn’t say anything just swims back to Starr.

  “Is it a loonie?”

  He holds out his hand. “Bottle cap.” He laughs and splashes Starr.

  I pull upright in the hot tub – Starr doesn’t like being splashed. Her body has gone rigid and she says, “Hey,” in a harsh tone that stops Darren. But then she’s right back to asking him for another race. That’s when I realize she really likes him, might already have a crush on him.

  “Are you getting in a workout before you see Luz?” I call out.

  “Does your girlfriend value physical fitness?”

  Darren smiles and shakes the water out of his ears. “No, Luz wasn’t a gym girl. But she said she’s been biking a lot in New York.” He carts himself over to the hot tub looking like waterlogged roadkill.

  Despite the previous disaster, I do want that kind of companionship for Starr. It’s just hard to see how it would be managed. In the movies it’s always a Romeo and Juliet dynamic – leave the kids alone and they’ll do just fine. We’re not going to try that again. There’s an online dating site for people with special needs that Kath’s heard good things about but we haven’t taken any steps toward it. Partly because Starr hasn’t pushed, and partly because we’ve had enough trouble getting independent living together. Kathleen or a support worker would have to help Starr navigate through setting safe expectations and boundaries. My mother-in-law used to say, “a lid for every pot” – and Kathleen’s heard of people with Williams who do get married – but it’s a tall order for any suitor: right age, ability level, not too pushy physically. Besides, most of the guys Starr likes are typical. How can you explain why that isn’t likely to work? I feel sore even thinking about it.

  Now that she’s alone, Starr is less keen on the pool. She sits on the edge of the hot tub with just her legs dipped in, a towel keeping her upper body warm. Even though her heart hasn’t given her trouble since the last operation in adolescence, she needs to be careful.

  “Does Luz like nail polish?” Starr asks.

  “Yeah, I guess so. She likes weird colours, though, like grey and yellow.”

  “After you two make up, we could get pedicures and manicures.”

  “I don’t know if she wants to make up,” Darren says.

  “We probably won’t have time,” I say. “Why don’t you and Melly do that sometime?”

  “Melly doesn’t like manicures. She chips them at work.”

  “Your mother will go.” In the past fifteen years, Kath hasn’t gone a week without a French manicure. But usually she does it herself with a drugstore kit, something beyond Starr’s dexterity. “We can ask her to book an appointment for when she gets back. How about that?”

  Starr grins but she’s doing what Kath calls “chewing her words.” She’s trying to be agreeable but something’s bugging her.

  “You want me to text her tonight?”

  “No!” Starr wiggles on the lip of the hot tub liner, unable to get comfortable. “It’s more something nice to do with your girlfriends.”

  “No parents allowed?”

  “Dad!” She appraises Darren’s reaction and I realize I’ve embarrassed her.

  I squeeze her calf in apology. It can be hard for me to remember that she’s not fourteen anymore, to anticipate her pushes for independence. “Well then, we’ll just have to hope Luz comes to her senses.”

  After Starr’s gone to bed, I set out her toothbrush and a new washcloth in preparation for the morning. I’ll offer her time for a shower but it will be so early I don’t think she’ll want to bother and it’s not worth fighting over. As long as Starr brushes her hair, Kath can’t say that I haven’t kept up the routine.

  When she was a teen, they used to bicker about grooming. A lot of the tasks require fine motor skills and it’s tiring for Starr, so she’d want to skip them. To me, it didn’t matter if she went a night without brushing her teeth. But Kath was adamant – no cutting corners. She ordered brochures from the American Williams Syndrome Association on strategies for routines and then implemented them like a sergeant. If Starr’s hair got greasy, Kath would point it out, would insist on a proper clean. To her, we were always one step away from atrophy.

  Now it’s one of the things that Kath’s proudest of, that Starr has learned enough to keep up her appearance on her own. There’s a picture list of steps in her bedroom to remind her, but Starr manages most of it by rote. It’s only if she gets sick or there’s a change in schedule that she needs extra supports.

  I send Kath a text, letting her know we can’t phone because Starr’s sleeping. It’s a variation on the truth, but I’d hoped to unveil Franny Feathers only after I’d snuck her onto the grid. Easier to lie by omission through a keypad.

  As I wait for her reply, I fiddle with my key chain screwdriver. It’s a silicone square that opens to reveal a set of drill bits and an Allen key – a sample item from a new supplier. My wife’s always bringing home misprints and surplus: sweatshirts, bookbags, baseball caps, aprons. Kath says it’s only the women at the office who bother; the male reps think it’s beneath them to pick out the stitching errors.

  “Fully printable,” she’d said. “Looks especially sharp with metallic ink. Perfect for contractors, any of the trades.”

  “Pretty slick.” I wiggled one of the Phillips bits out and tested the shelving bracket screws.

  “This quarter I’m focusing on businesses we don’t usually reach. A lot of small operators think that promo is too expensive. Or not important. You know what would be a great tag line? Do it yourself – and call us when you need help. Or something like that.”

  Kath has a lot of drive. After staying home for a decade with the kids, not a lot of companies even gave her an interview. Ever since Professional Imprints took a chance on her, she’s been out to prove them right. “It’s not cheap. It’s not going to be a cold-call giveaway. It’s what you leave your customer when you’re finished the job, so that they can remember who to call next time. And so that their friends can see it and ask for a testimonial.”

  I slipped the ball chain out of the connector, hung it in solidarity on my key ring. Already it seemed destined for the drawer with all the Christmas cracker sewing kits.

  The Super 8 has free breakfast, so we’ll save time not stopping for food right away. We need to be at the Napier Heights Frankie’s by eight, well before the store opens. Darren’s packed and waiting for us by the cereal stand.

  “Don’t eat the oatmeal.” He motions to a large Crock-Pot. I lift the lid and see a plastic spoon embedded in congealed grey sludge. “It’s gravy.” It doesn’t look like that either. Next to the spoon rest is a basket of premade biscuits.

  “I’ve got you some water. The juice isn’t quite right.” He’s set out glasses for the three of us. “There’s some fruit and yoghurt.”

  The kid’s face looks better today, but now that the swelling’s down, the purple on his eye has bloomed.

  Starr finds a pre-stirred strawberry yoghurt and we split a banana. Darren pours himself two bowls of Froot Loops, no milk. When we get into the car, he produces two giant Styrofoam cups of them and rests them in the drink holders. “Help yourself,” he says, looking proud of both his foresight and stealth.

  He hasn’t said what caused the fight but I have a hard time believing he was the instigator, that he could do anything to deserve that pummelling. If Jeremy sets foot in Frankie’s again, he and I will be going for a long talk.

 
On the way into Napier Heights we pass a giant outlet complex with fifty percent off signs bleating in every window. It must be well before opening but there’s a backup of cars by the entrance and an ant trail of shoppers circling the Coach store. A mile down the road, however, the city’s hollowed out. On the main strip, every other commercial building is empty – even the for-lease signs look dilapidated. The side streets are lined with brick Victorian three-storeys, paint blistering off the wooden peaks, porches listing; the kind of places you’d say have good bones.

  The Frankie’s Funhouse is in the corner of a strip mall. There’s no one on the surrounding sidewalks and it feels like we’re the sole survivors of one of Darren’s B movies. The store has the old rat logo in the light box, from before Frankie got remodelled as a squirrel. He started out as a sharp-toothed Frank Sinatra in a zoot suit with a fur pompadour and a tail swung up like a pimp cane. Frankie Fuzz and the Laughing Rat Band. Some unflattering headlines came out after a kid in New Jersey was hospitalized with severe vomiting from Frankie’s potato salad and the company decided to retire both the recipe and the rat. In focus groups, people responded better to squirrels. The current Frankie has nut-stuffed cheeks and a basketball jersey. The fact that you can see any of the old branding shows that this is a franchise. Company-owned stores have the law laid down the minute a memo gets sent from head office.

  The owner, Dean, lets us in at the back of the store. He’s much taller than I am, looks to be in his early sixties, hints of jowls starting below his sideburns. His short, salted hair’s gelled down against his brown skin. He seems surprised that I’ve brought Darren and Starr with me.

  “The moving crew,” I say. “Thought we’d take a detour to Chicago.”

  “Ever been?”

  “Once, a long time ago. My wife and I saw Gloria Gaynor play at Navy Pier.”

  “Stormy?”

  “It rained so hard that they had to take a break.”

  “Nineteen seventy-nine. The year we got snowed in for four days. My date had made a new dress and wasn’t happy when it got soaked.”

  He leads us through to the Frankie and Friends performance area. There’s new paint on the wall where they’ve ripped out the Nifty Trio stage. In its place is a Digital One – a test set-up with a sixteen-motion Frankie flanked by two giant flat screens. The other characters are pretaped. Surrounding the screens are fibreboard cut-outs of the old secondary animatronics like the twin winking bulrushes and tambourine toad.

  Franny Feathers is boxed up by the load-in door. From Dean’s description, the head extension joint is shot, her beak perpetually flopped toward the floor.

  “What did you do with the others?” I ask.

  “Some kids in Florida wanted to re-skin them for a bar.”

  If his store was company-owned, the parts would have to be stripped and broken, then trashed. The rumour, though, is that lots of tech directors only scuff the parts up so they’re easier to salvage. On the forums, they call it grimming. Franchises aren’t supposed to sell off inventory, either, but the stores have been underperforming and corporate turns a blind eye.

  “This one’s my last,” I tell Dean. “We’ve got all but Bassie – not enough room for the piano.”

  He glances at Starr. “You need a hand loading these?”

  “No, we’ll get them.”

  “Come settle up when you’re done.” Dean crouches to turn on the air compressor then boots up the show computer. He catches me looking. “We’re between tech directors right now, so I’m it.” That’s part of the reason he said yes when he was offered the test stage. “For one thing, it’s fewer moving parts. For another, I can finally get rid of these.” He points toward five boxes stuffed with 3 1/2” floppies.

  There have been murmurs for a while of upgrading the computers but in Canada we’re still on a hybrid system where movements and sound run off DVD tracks, but corporate sends floppies to reprogram the show. It’s a shitty hack.

  “Can I see how the show works?”

  “You want the summer show or birthday?”

  “Summer.”

  The video is HD – better than any of the segments we’re shipped for the screens around the arcade. The character costumes have also been updated with latex faces and distinct bodies. For a while, corporate was saving cash by using the Frankie suit for all of them, only changing up the hair and fur colour.

  The clips barely incorporate the standing Frankie. He’s singing the tune and waving his arms, but if they cared about the animatronic components, they’d have used a thirty-two-motion robot. The extra articulation is subtle but it shines in the transitions, smoothing out an arm raise or head tilt. The sixteen-motion models are closer to shaking mannequins. It wouldn’t be hard to remove Frankie entirely, add an extra screen.

  “You like the song, kiddo?”

  “Yes,” Starr says, “it’s Lily Allen.”

  “Like a Lily Allen song?”

  “No, it’s her single from last year.”

  We haven’t had fresh, licensed music in a long time. It’s a lot of money to sink into a test stage. My guess is if Digital One performs well, the Funhouse will roll it out quickly. Mississauga might have another two, three years with animatronics. Take away the band and my job’s all arcade servicing, the poor cousin of slot maintenance. I like to think Greyson will hold out.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Dean says. “I’ve gotten fond of the machines too. That’s why I held onto Franny after I got your email – figured you’d give her a good home.”

  As the song winds down, Frankie’s got more sway in his pelvis than he should.

  “Your hip pin’s fallen out.” I notice the squirrel’s back wrist is also flopped. If I got up close, I’d be able to see metal – a cardinal no-no.

  “Like I said, our tech’s gone.”

  “You want me to have a look?”

  Dean’s wary. He’s got to open the doors at nine and even a jittery robot is better than none. “How do you take your coffee?”

  “Just sugar. Thanks.”

  “Let me unlock the supply closet.”

  Darren and I get to work, stripping down the character suit. Dean sets Starr up with unlimited Skee-Ball play because she’s always found it disturbing to see the characters exposed to their plastic-shell-and-metal skeleton. We start with the hip. Nine times out of ten, the pin’s fallen down one of the pant legs because someone’s forgotten to replace the set screw. Usually you get a warning when the body starts to rock more and you can push the pin back in before it falls. To fix it we’ll have to take apart Frankie’s whole bottom half. It’s not difficult, but it’s tedious getting the clasps on the plastic armour to line back up.

  The wrist, however, is a real pain. There’s hard foam around the joint and the access point is a thin, carved slit. You’re feeling blind for the bolts, only enough room to turn the Phillips thirty degrees. It takes fifty twists just to remove the defective part. After almost two decades, I’ve done this repair a few hundred times, generally caused by a parent yukking it up with a high-five or a kid Tarzan-ing off the hand.

  Dean comes back with the coffees. He scans Darren’s face as he hands him a mug. “Did the other guy look worse?”

  “My right hook could use improvement.”

  “Get some cayenne pepper and Vaseline. One tablespoon of pepper, five of Vaseline.”

  I shake my head at Darren, sure Dean’s teasing.

  “My cousin’s a boxer. There’s a grocery store just down the block. Leave the stuff on for a few hours, couple times a day.”

  I put the machine on override mode and test the flexion of Frankie’s wrist and the rock of his hips. The compression valves are working again in the hand but the hips aren’t as fluid as I’d like. It’s a common problem, the pneumatic tubing filling up with crud. When the store gets a tech again, the machine’s going to need a thorough line flush.

  Dean is happy enough with this fix. He runs the first few bars of the birthday show to check
the motions. “Wish I could give you the bird for free.”

  “Happy to help.”

  “Maybe I can knock a bit off.”

  I hand over the envelope of cash and he insists on returning a hundred dollar bill. A few of the other staff have arrived now. Dean waves two young kids over and introduces them to us as his walk-around actors. The girl is stretching her arm across her chest, hyperextending her elbow. She shakes Darren’s hand like that, still limbering up. The guy doesn’t stop his lunges during our conversation. Darren’s one of the best walk-arounds we’ve had but I’ve never seen him so much as loosen a hamstring.

  The kitchen timers start beeping – the pizza dough’s defrosted enough to roll. Dean excuses himself to open the store but tells us to stick around, check out the performance.

  There are three birthday parties right away and it’s strange to be here without a job to do. Even though the town’s economy seems depressed, the kids here dress up more. There’s a group of four-year-old girls decked out in puffy skirts, sequin tops and plastic tiaras. Starr’s wandered back to us and gravitates to the little ones. She seems to know without being told that the girls are Disney princesses. “Are you Ariel?” she asks the birthday girl.

  “Yes!” The girl spins, fluffing up her turquoise skirt and showing off her matching leggings. “I’m going in that.” She points to a machine off to the side of the eating area that I’ve never seen before. A boy in a navy running suit is already in line for it, small fry next to a second, older birthday girl. She’s wearing a ’70s romper suit, her face framed by a soft afro.

  The machine’s called Ticket ’Splosion and is basically a Vegas dollar tube. As the boy steps in I get worried about what noises the machine will make. Starr’s gotten better at dealing with unfamiliar sounds, but certain tones alarm her. When the party hostess flicks on the LED marquees, speakers along the top beat out an ABBA knock-off. Inside, the kid’s swallowed up by a tornado of tickets. He keeps grabbing them from the air, dropping the ones in his hand.

  When I was growing up, my father had a sideline repairing pinball machines. Old-school pinball repair was an art. More than my work in the auto sector, Greyson hired me because of my experience in Dad’s shop. In the eighties, as video games and electronic controls took over, my father got out of the business. “What’s next?” he’d always ask, addled by a generation that no longer thought pinball was exciting. I wonder what he’d make of this spectacle, its ratio of skill to reward.