by Todd Babiak
Shirley Wong and Abby Weiss organized a neighbourhood barbecue for the Perlitzes when they moved in that autumn, and everyone put down their hamburgers and applauded when they learned Jeanne was pregnant. A young family was just what the Garneau Block needed. Benjamin was a senior bureaucrat with the provincial government and Jeanne was a junior-high physical-education teacher. He was a birdwatcher and she competed in triathlons. They liked cross-country skiing and Thai cuisine, and they immediately took out a membership in the community league. Sure, the house was an uninspired mess, but wary of being snobs, the neighbours–even David Weiss–decided to look past appearances at the new interior of 10 Garneau.
Five autumns later, Madison and Jonas stood in the backyard among the weedy flowerbeds and empty bird feeders. Jonas took a drink of Scotch and stumbled.
“This is the expedition? Standing in the backyard and drinking booze?”
“We’re in stage one of the mission. For stage two, we need to be inside.”
Madison began walking across the lawn to the gate in the properties’ shared cedar fence and toward her bed. There was no point arguing with Jonas tonight. He had a thirst on and clearly wasn’t interested in logic or reason.
“Come back, Maddy. Let’s reconnoitre.”
The latch on the gate didn’t work. Had it ever worked? Madison prepared to hop over into her parents’ yard, when she heard the familiar squeak of 10 Garneau’s back screen door. She turned around. “Jonas, stop it. This is dumb.”
“Dumb like a fox,” he said, and pulled out his wallet.
Madison leaned against the fence. The moon was bright enough to see that Jonas was having trouble with his wallet. Like a baby with formula and a teddy bear, he seemed unwilling to set the Scotch bottle and tube on the concrete deck pad. He whispered cuss words to himself, and swayed against the white door.
“Hey, do you have a credit card? In the movies, all you need is a credit card to open doors. And it turns out I don’t have one. I thought I still had a card from Canadian Tire, but I guess I cut it up on account of my, you know, inability to pay credit card bills. Plus, there’s nothing I want from Canadian Tire. Maybe a blender, I don’t know. I was there with a set builder when I got the card a couple of years ago, zombie-ing through the lamp section–ugly lamps. This cute guy with a clipboard asks if I want a free gift. Did I ever! So I went ahead and–”
“Jonas, please. I’m tired and pregnant.”
“Shut up. I know you have a credit card. I’ve seen it. Get over here and reconnoitre with me.”
Madison sighed and walked back across the grass. Now that she was on the property, at night, she wondered why she had felt so spooked. And spooked was the word. Despite her best attempts she had never been able to believe properly in God, so why should she believe in bad luck or creepy vibes or living history or…
“Do you think the ghost of Benjamin Perlitz prowls the house?”
“I don’t believe in ghosts.”
“Really?” Jonas burped. “I do. I saw one when I was a kid, in Stavely.”
“You did not. What’s a Stavely?”
“My uncle has a farm there, and I used to leave the concrete jungle of Beverly every summer for a long visit.” Jonas handed the Scotch bottle and tube to Madison, and she placed them on the deck. “Once I slopped the pigs. Me. Can you imagine? Anyway, I saw a ghost of a woman in the barn. She seemed ticked off.”
Madison looked through the small window of the heavy white door. There was just enough moonlight to see bits of the kitchen–the stainless-steel stove and fridge, the matching toaster–and past the kitchen to the laminate floors of the living room. On the counter, three cans of Diet Coke and a donut box. How could the police eat donuts in here, with all the blood upstairs? Didn’t human blood smell like human blood?
“So can you?”
“Can I what?”
“Imagine me slopping pigs?”
“I wasn’t trying.”
Jonas shrugged. “Come on, get going. Try.”
There he was, in overalls and big rubber boots, singing “A Spoonful of Sugar” and dumping brown goo into a pig trough. “Done.”
“Good. Now, card me.”
“This expedition has been a real gas but let’s go to bed.”
“Card me.”
Madison pulled her wallet out and removed the dread VISA. In three days, the minimum payment was due. Jonas took the card and held it in the light. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“No, Jonas. I never wanted to do this.”
“Do you think there’s still blood in there?”
“I don’t know. Yes?”
Jonas nodded sagely, and slipped the card in the tiny groove between the door and the jamb. As soon as he hit something solid, an alarm whooped inside. Jonas screamed, tossed the VISA card in the air, knocked Madison down, and sprinted through the yard. Madison, with some satisfaction, heard him wipe out in the gravel back alley, cuss, and stumble back to his feet. “Scatter!” he hollered, as he sprinted into his own yard two houses away.
On her hands and knees, Madison found her VISA in a terra cotta pot. She collected the bottle of Scotch and the tube, and walked to the gate. When the latch still didn’t work, she kicked it open. By the time she had closed her basement suite door and locked it behind her, Madison could already hear the sirens.
10
the rabbit warren
At least once every day, Shirley Wong wondered what the city, her life, and hockey would have been like if Gretzky hadn’t left. It seemed on August 9, 1988, a great barrier crumbled on the south side of Edmonton, allowing the American retail and fast food chains to transform the marketplace and the character of her city’s heart. Now look at the booming detritus. What distinguished the outskirts of Edmonton from the outskirts of American and proto-American cities like Denver, Minneapolis, and Calgary?
Usually, Shirley considered Gretzky at 9:55 in the morning Monday to Saturday, and at 11:55 a.m. on Sunday. This was when she walked the four corners of her Whyte Avenue store, the Rabbit Warren, to make sure everything was in place and no dust was visible.
The southeast corner of the window display housed a tiny Gretzky sculpture by the great artist and philosopher Raymond Terletsky, her husband. The proportions were all wrong and the orange paint had bled before it dried, but that was the beauty of the piece. All the flaws and sorrows and calamities and ruined dreams of the city were alive in this little sculpture of Gretzky in his Oilers uniform. It had been sitting in the southeast corner of the Rabbit Warren window since she opened the store in late 1989; every year she adjusted its price for inflation. Now it was going for $235.
Shirley unlocked the front door and considered the change in morning light. Soon autumn, real autumn, would be here and mornings would become cold and dark. Not that she despised winter, or even disliked it. This time of year reminded her of being a little girl, in and out of sleep early in the mornings as her father prepared for work in the adjacent bathroom: the sound of his razor, the smell of his aftershave, running water, his car warming up outside. Soft hallway lamplight sneaking under her closed bedroom door.
The Divine Decadence woman with the striped tights and enormous black boots gave her a wave from across the street. Shirley stepped outside.
“Beautiful day,” said the Divine Decadence woman.
A couple of cars and a bread truck stopped at the lights. “Cool and crisp and sunny,” said Shirley. “Just how I like a Tuesday to be.”
“Pardon?”
The bread truck was a diesel. Shirley was going to wait until it passed to repeat herself, but she was in her Rabbit Warren T-shirt and it was cold at this hour. The Divine Decadence woman wasn’t burning to know what Shirley thought about this particular Tuesday, so: “Beautiful! Yes!”
She went inside and laid out the newspaper. No one wanted to buy perfumed candles, soap, cards, vases, and other tchotchkes this early in the morning, so the first hour at the store was always hers to read a newspaper
or two and, inevitably, stare into space and think about the strange, new, vacant feeling at the bottom of her tummy.
Unless, of course, Abby Weiss knocked on the glass door.
“It’s open.”
David was with her. So was Garith. Abby opened the door. “You want anything from Starbucks, Shirl? David’s going.”
“No, thank you. Hi, David. Hello, Garith.”
David leaned down and picked up Garith. He hid his mouth behind the hairless dog and said, in a Chinese accent, “Hello, Shirley Wong. Sell much potpourri lately?”
“Out,” said Abby, to her husband and his dog. “And if you’re going to sit around and argue with that homeless man, get my caramel mochaccino first.”
“Bye bye,” said David, still with his mouth hidden behind the dog’s rear end.
Abby stopped briefly at a rack of thin candles and glass holders. She fondled the items. “Ooh, are these new? I just love them.” Then she leaned on the other side of the cash counter and said, “Did you hear the sirens last night?”
“I did. What was it?”
“Someone tried to break into 10 Garneau.”
“Why?”
“Satanic rituals, I heard. Apparently you go inside a place where someone has recently died in a violent manner or what have you, and then you burn crosses on the wall and listen to heavy metal music and have sex. It’s good luck for a Satanist.”
“Who told you that?”
“David was speaking to someone this morning.”
“Who?”
Abby swivelled on her toes and stood in front of some locally woven baskets. “I don’t know. The mayor or someone.”
“Why would the mayor know anything about that?”
“They’re all plugged in, these Conservatives.”
“The mayor’s a Conservative?”
Abby flipped through some art deco posters advertising Banff, Jasper, and Lake Louise. “I wish we could go back in time. Wasn’t it so much better then, Shirl? Wasn’t the air so much cleaner, people smarter?”
“My parents were exploited. My grandparents paid a head tax.”
“All the forests. All the virgin land. The noble First Nations peoples, fashioning pemmican.”
Shirley shook the newspaper and wished Abby could go back in time sixty or 160 years and leave her alone.
“You know, you should diversify your media.” Abby picked up and examined one of the Lake Louise posters. “If you rely only on the corporate propaganda, you won’t get the truth.”
Shirley sighed. “What truth?”
“Hey, does anyone know who put up those flyers yet?”
“I heard it was you and I heard it was me. So, no. Maybe it’s an invitation to a Satanic sex ritual.”
“You think? I wouldn’t mind giving it a shake.” Abby cleared a strip of hair that had fallen in front of her face and placed it behind her ear. As much as Shirley loved her old friend, she coveted the softness of Abby’s still-brown hair and it came between them like an ugly secret. “So darling, what are you doing tonight?”
“There’s a pre-season Oilers game.”
“Hockey, hockey, hockey,” said Abby.
“Satan, Satan, Satan,” said Shirley.
“At the university there’s a fundraiser and workshop to oppose logging and coal mining on the eastern slope of the Rockies. I’m talking slide show, some music, a silent auction, activist seminars, organic wine. If you change your mind about hockey.”
For the past few years, Shirley had sensed a distinct hollowness in hockey. Would the salary cap restore passion and soul to the game? Would there be enough left over for her? “All right.”
“All right what?”
“I’ll come to the whatever-it-is tonight.”
Abby placed her hands together in yogic prayer, closed her eyes, and exhaled through her nose. Shirley sensed she had made an error.
11
life after oil
David Weiss had intended to walk straight into Starbucks and order two caramel mochaccinos. He wanted to be prompt so Abby wouldn’t change her mind.
For years, Abby had refused to buy hot beverages at chain stores because they never sold fair trade organic coffee and because they squeezed locally owned cafés out of business. One afternoon during the Fringe Festival David had bought his wife a caramel mochaccino at Starbucks. She reluctantly took a sip, and something in her was transformed. The taste of a superior product had finally overpowered her absurd guilt and frankly dangerous notion of liberal duty.
At that moment, during a sunny dusk waiting in line for a play in the Masonic Hall, with a nearby clown smoking a cigarette, David loved Abby so much he would have married her all over again. In the weeks since then, she would only drink Starbucks if David made the purchase. And it always had to be a specialty coffee unavailable at the Sugarbowl, their local.
David and Garith were waiting to cross Calgary Trail when Barry Strongman stepped out of Second Cup. “Hey, I was just using the crapper. What is up, Garith?”
Barry Strongman plopped in his usual chair outside Second Cup, with his street magazines and his coffee. He called Garith up on his lap and Garith obeyed. So did David, in his way, sitting in the opposite chair.
“Were you going somewheres or–? Don’t wanna interrupt. But you are retired.”
“I am, I am.”
Barry lifted one of the magazines. “New issue, still toasty from the press. You ready to be educated?”
“I guess so.” David sighed and took five dollars out of his wallet. Whenever he read the street magazine, it annoyed him. The articles were almost always poorly written rants about the Klein government, blaming hard-working public servants for the writers’ own personal shortcomings. “Did you contribute anything for this issue?”
“Page sixteen. Do you and the little lady shave Garith so he looks like this?”
“No. It’s natural. The Chinese Crested dog was originally bred for–”
“That is effed-up, man.” Then Barry did one of David’s least favourite things in the world, more loathsome than the New Democratic Party. Barry said to Garith, in a cartoon voice, “Who’s the effed-up puppy? Who’s the ugliest dog in Alberta?”
For a moment, David allowed the farce. Then, when Garith mistook Barry’s insults for praise and began licking the hobo’s mouth, it became too much. He reached over and took Garith back. “That’s cruel.”
“Allowing good people to die on Alberta streets every winter is okay, fine, not your problem, their own damn fault, but talking crazy to an animal that doesn’t understand English is cruel? I said it before and I’ll say it again: you got comical views, David.”
A tiny capsule of adrenaline burst inside David Weiss. He could pretend he didn’t love arguing with Barry Strongman, but he loved arguing with Barry Strongman. Here he was, the nephew of a chief, living on less than thirty dollars a day. Sleeping on the streets, in front of bank machines and in shelters. Why didn’t he get a regular job? Was he incapacitated in any serious way? Nope. Barry didn’t want a regular job, he didn’t want to live on the reservation, and that was that.
David flipped through the latest edition of the street magazine until he found Barry’s article, an essay about peak oil. “Oh, come on, Barry.”
“Your cushy western middle-class life is coming to an end, David. The oil is running out. And when the oil goes, so does our rich city.”
“Just like the year 2000, when the capitalist system was going to collapse over a computer glitch. Baloney.”
“Just read the article and try not to be scared. I dare you to try, David.”
A group of five punks in dreadlocks and studded leather jackets approached with a golden retriever that looked hungry and desperately in need of a bath. Did she even have her shots? Garith stirred, eager to inspect the dog’s bottom. The punks smelled sugary, of last night’s booze. The leader wiped his nose and asked if David could spare change for a coffee. He was just about to tell them to cut their hair, wash their
faces, and get proper jobs so they could take care of their dog when Barry handed over a toonie.
“Keep on keepin’ on,” said Barry.
The leader winked. “Thanks, brother.”
David wanted to stand up and slap the punks. What was wrong with young people these days? The only looming crisis, as far as David was concerned, was a social one. When the light changed and the kids were halfway across Calgary Trail, he shook his head at Barry. “I know you’ve got your issues, being a mistreated Indian and all, but don’t enable those nasty kids.”
“I’m a mistreated Aboriginal to you.”
“Wee-aww, wee-aww, pull over.” David formed a mock loudspeaker around his mouth. “Language police.”
Barry made like he was going to splash his coffee at David, and both men sat back in their chairs to watch the pedestrian traffic on the avenue: video-game programmers and cooks and sellers of marijuana paraphernalia preparing for another day of commerce.
The sun appeared, then hid behind a cloud, then appeared again. David pulled the Let’s Fix It notice out of his jacket pocket and slid it over the silver, uneven table. “What do you make of this?”
A couple of Harleys passed while Barry examined the sheet. David plugged his ears. Albertans didn’t need any more government interference in their lives, but there ought to be some restrictions on noise. He took out his notepad and jotted down “Harley noise” as a resolution to be debated at next Tuesday’s PC Association meeting.
“This is amazing.” Barry nodded at the sheet of paper.
“It’s about the shooting next door. Where Benjamin–”
“Maybe sure, but it’s really about the city, the province, the country, the continent. This is about effin’ George W. Bush. It’s about the humans, David, don’t you get it?” Barry waved the sheet. “Can I have this?”