Vee frowns. Fantasy always poses a challenge. Has to start with a wedding, Vee’s no floozie-tart. Guy’s got to smell good, like cinnamon bark, fresh coconut, or lime leaves. He has to have nice teeth, lots of money, and be Chinese. At least Oriental. With the good eyes. [Note: God knows how the epicanthal fold can put a hitch in some people’s giddy-up.] Vee hates how she bourgeoisifies her fantasy life, but she can’t help it. There’s the list, and all the ingredients need to be added. She’s tried to negotiate some of the variables, find an express lane, a round the back shortcut, a quick beginning with the end in mind. But the fantasy just does not go anywhere, even in her head, let alone lower. Since marrying Malmo four years ago, well, the rules absolutely had to change — fantasy now has to start with Vee as a widow, wild with grief and not responsible for her behaviour.
It’s not a betrayal, just fantasy. To be pragmatic and, well, in a way loving, Vee has come upon a shorthand preamble that sees Malmo disappearing on a business trip to San Francisco, something about costing out contingencies. Vee obtains an official declaration of her presumed widowhood, expedited by a very compassionate Korean man at the Canadian Consulate in S.F. His teeth line up like tight Chiclets, the brown-eyed man in a well-cut suit who embosses Vee’s declaration. Vee’s permit, a presumption of widowhood that gets tossed over her mental shoulder when Vee hears the motor on the garage door at the end of Malmo’s work day.
In the oval-shaped vanity mirror at the edge of Vee’s reflection, you can see a wall painted and textured Alabaster Frost. Shimmery white with an undertone of candy pink. You can also see part of the back of a gilt-edged chaise longue, upholstered in white silk damask, a subtle pattern of gardenia buds and ivy leaves. On the other side of the mirror, a spindle bedpost at the foot of the bed pins a coordinating white damask bedspread. Vee saw Flower Drum Song seventeen times including matinees at Edmonton’s Paramount Theatre on Jasper Avenue. Taking notes the last five times. Taking Malmo the last two times. Vee rotates slowly on her stool, surveying in a fan-shaped line, the rest of her newly renovated bedroom from the raised, circular platform where her vanity sits. In the Flower Drum Song movie dream sequence, Nancy Kwan’s Strictly-A-Female-Female bridal salon-white bedroom transforms into her fantasy married life bedroom, decorated with sheer white curtains suspended from the ceiling and covering nothing in particular, Greek columns, and a white bedroom suite. Malmo agreed that Vee could have everything the same in their own bedroom but not the columns. And he wouldn’t buy a new mattress for the bed — Vee finds Malmo cheap about kooky things. From her brand new circular platform, Vee recalls how she went back and forth on the white leather Wassily chairs, loved them, then concluded that the tubular chrome chairs with white walls breathing a pink undertone into the space would make the bedroom lean more o.b./gynie than tony/upscale. No Wassily, what a great decision Vee thinks, confident that she stopped just short of ostentatious.
Vee’s homage to Nancy. Nancy Kwan. Vee swivels to face the mirror, her reflection smiles back. A woman. Pink, and Rich. Sassy. Marabou-feathered. Chinese. And No Accent. No Rs for Ls, No “No Speakee Engarish.” None of that. Until Nancy Kwan, Vee felt a bit betrayed by her relationship with Hollywood. Stoic peasant women in coolie hats, attempting to pass themselves off as The Chinese Women, what the hell does Pearl S. Buck know about being Chinese. Academy Award-winning The Good Earth, my ass — like everyone was born in a rice paddy, for God’s sake.
Malmo lies awake in the middle of the night, wondering how he came to be sleeping in, yah, and paying big bucks, to be sleeping in a giant God damned toilet bowl. Clean, yes. Plenty of Sparkle. Still, a God damned giant white toilet bowl. The oval mirror on Vee’s vanity brings to mind shake-tuck-zip-flush-put-the-seat-down. The five-hundred-dollar-apiece gauzy white curtains pooling on the floor say giant reams of t.p.
He saw the movie. Cringed in his seat as Vee kept hitting his arm with the back of her hand, whispering, “See this. Oh, yeah, this is thepart, this is thepart. Ohhh. That. That too. See this? Thispart. Yeah. Yeah. That’s what I want.” This went on through the whole movie — twice — but it’s still not clear to Malmo what exactly Vee wanted to show him. Except the bedroom. That was clear. Small mercy, the rest of Nancy Kwan’s dream sequence apartment was nondescript, a hallway with lots of doors and a kitchen with a round tan leather banquette.
Malmo turns on his right side, Vee’s hair loose waves on the pillow beside his. He strokes the ends of her long black hair. Did she see the kids in the dream sequence, having seen the film, what, nine times? She must have seen the kids. Malmo smiles. He remembers the kids as the absolute highlight of the movie for him, the movie verifying Malmo’s concept drawings of fatherhood: two kids, an older boy and a little girl burst through a hallway door; those mischievous but good scamps run down the hall and out a different hallway door, their great-looking mother following; the two kids grow up, do well in school, come through the hallway door again as bopping teenagers and disappear out another door. They listen to their father. Respect him. The kids become a credit to him, bring honour to the family. Check, check, double check.
Like Uncle Wing’s kids. “I want to be a marine biologist,” six-year-old Tom says, taking Malmo by the hand to the back of the store. There are no windows in the back, but a wooden wedge props the door to the lane open. A pool of soft light warms the back of the store, but near the door, the dark of the lane absorbs the light. [Note: A solitary bulb suspended from the ceiling with a piece of butcher string dangling as a pull cord might inspire an inventor six years from now to market the home dimmer switch.]
At the back of Wing’s store, it smells like damp wood, sweet with soda pop, rows of pop bottles stacked in cardboard crates. On top of a wooden table, a battleship linoleum tile with gold flecks trivets a bowl aquarium full of activity. An inch of black-and-white aquarium gravel makes a foundation for the home of two orange swordtail fish.
“They breathe from this,” Tom says, pointing to the bubbling blue plastic sea diver taking up most of the space in the bowl, “and Dad says if these guys live, like, make it through the whole week, I might get more on the weekend. Maybe a neon tetra.” Tom floats a fourth pinch of tiny brown and copper coloured flakes on the lens of the water. The fish shimmy to the top of the bowl, mouths breaking the surface.
“Dad says don’t squeeze them when they’re pooping. That’ll kill them.”
Tom puts his hand on top of Malmo’s. “Uncle Malmo. You can’t even hold them. Or pet them. Because they’ll lose their scales. Dad says that’ll kill them too.”
Dad says. Wing is at least twenty years older than Malmo, from the same village. Wing left as a child, alone, and Malmo, escaping the Japanese invasion, decades later. Wing treats Malmo like a kid brother, and Malmo’s always hanging around the store, showing Wing his new stuff, taking Wing under the hood of his new car, showing Wing the cuffs and deep pleats of Malmo’s custom-made suits.
“ ‘You Call Everybody Darling’, you know that song?” Vee says one night at dinner. “ ‘You call everybody Uncle,’” Vee sings, “ ‘Everybody calls you Uncle too.’”
Malmo can’t figure out how Wing manages. Well, there’s his wife. But he’s old and he’s got all those young kids, and that little go-nowhere store downtown on Rice Street. And no education. But he makes it. Malmo’s a university graduate, a Civil Engineer. But Malmo’s the little brother around Wing, always one step behind. How does a six-year-old know what a marine biologist is?
Those kids in the movie were fantastic, Malmo thinks. Great kids.
Malmo moves closer to Vee, his hand cups her bony hip as his striped pyjama pants spoon her bare legs. Their combined lower body weight on the mattress makes Malmo feel as if his feet have passed the lip and are sliding downward towards the small end of a funnel. The urgency compels Malmo to move closer, his pyjama pants drawing tighter, until the lawnmowers in Vee’s sinuses rev to starting.
She’s out. The telephone beside the bed, the white phone that lights up wh
en it rings, wouldn’t even wake her now. Malmo flips over to his left side, curls his right arm against the cold lip of the funnel.
“No new mattress,” he said to Vee. One of those details he had meant to take care of, should have taken care of, before they married, the mattress one he had had all through university and those early years as a Civil Engineer. They really should have had a new mattress when they got married. But they didn’t. And now, No new mattress until Vee finished weaning the first baby boy, a village custom. He didn’t tell Vee that.
The Edmonton Journal came to photograph Vee and Malmo in their newly designed bedroom for the Homes Section a couple of weeks ago. The Journal graciously provided Vee and Malmo with a framed print of the photo that would run with the article. The photographer loved “the draping, all the draping,” “the light, the interplay of light and shadow,” “the subtlety of the contrast white with white.”
The Saturday next, those are the words The Journal will use liberally in the article, which will also describe Vee and Malmo as a “professional couple about town.” Vee will buy twenty-seven copies of that Saturday’s paper, then crack open a bottle of champagne Saturday night, which neither of them will drink, Vee hating the bubbles in her nose. Malmo likes bubbles, but just in pilsner.
The following Monday, Mr. Cheney, owner of the engineering firm where Malmo works, Mr. Cheney’s large, cupped hand will clap Malmo on the shoulder and assert a firm grip of congratulations into his warm palm. Throughout the day, Malmo’s colleagues will say, “Hey, I saw the article in the paper,” and, “You guys don’t have kids, do you, all that white,” or, “Thanks a lot, now my wife has got it in her head to renovate, says if you guys can do it, so can we. Kidding aside, it looks like a great job.” None of the women in the secretarial pool say anything, but they will sparkly eye and both-rows-of-teeth-bigsmile Malmo all day long. Florence Kay, at reception, will tell him that her mother thinks Vee and her good taste are lucky to be married to such a modern man. For Malmo, the encounters over the day will feel awkward, like getting credit for something he didn’t do. Nevertheless, Malmo will lay the pelts of these stories at Vee’s feet when he returns home that night.
Malmo has not adapted to falling asleep in a noisy room. He shakes Vee’s shoulder. Her snoring idles, sputters for a few seconds, then the mowers turn decisively to the back lawn.
Malmo focuses on the giant white curtain hanging at an angle off the foot of the bed. A few days before the photographer’s shoot, Malmo had picked up Uncle Wing, driven him to the house when Vee was out, to see the bedroom renovation and all the redecorating.
“Wow,” Wing said, “Malmo, this is so modern. Current, and fancy like a movie set. And — this is so much, so much — work.”
Wing moved his hand behind, but not touching one of the curtains, the shadow of his palm slowly descending.
“Expensive, huh. Geez, what the kids’d do to this,” Wing exhales through the small fish-kiss of his mouth, a soundless whistle. His cupped palm squeezes Malmo’s shoulder gently. “No one else has this!”
Back at the store, as he closed the passenger door on Malmo’s navy blue Meteor, Wing, polishing a small spot of chrome by the open window with his thumb, said, “That’s just great, Malmo. When they come to film you, don’t look at that camera. And wear a dark suit, eh?”
Malmo sits upright in bed. He hadn’t remembered that until now.
Malmo’s memory scans his copy of the photographer’s print that will appear in this Saturday’s Homes section, front page. The image is all there in black and white. In the foreground of the picture, Vee sitting on her vanity stool, looking away from the camera, canary-fed contentment in white lounging pyjamas, the wrists and shawl collar soft with marabou feathers. The oval vanity mirror to her right, Malmo slightly to her left, behind her, in a white turtleneck, slacks, and white bucks, one hand on Vee’s shoulder, the other holding his white belt — Malmo looking directly at the camera lens. In the background, the white chaise longue, the coved ceiling and curved walls, the bedspread, the whiteness of the many layers of draping.
Malmo fades behind himself, imagines himself and Wing looking at a picture of the world’s largest God Damn giant white toilet bowl and the idiot, dead centre, who OK’d it. Lives in the bowl, becomes the bowl. Too stupid to know any better.
A month later, Malmo comes in from the alley to the back of the store, his legs erratic scissors. The first Wednesday afternoon of the month, Wing checks the wholesale invoices by supplier against his ledger and files the invoices. “Uncle Wing, I’ve got something to show you.”
Wing looks up from his ledger, turns down the volume on his Bakelite radio. “Malmo, what’s a good-looking guy like you doing in a place like this? Hey, what d’ya got there?”
They never do speak about the picture in the newspaper, Wing always having said, “I get sixty copies of the newspaper delivered every day. Do I ever have time to look at any of them?” The subject never comes up. Malmo finds excuses to come to the store, has done so for years. He needs a packet of Sen-Sen before a big meeting, or some lemons to help a scratchy throat. Every week or so, a paper bag of dried-up oranges, a half roll of mints, an unopened potato chip bag will get thrown into Malmo’s garbage can from the trunk of his car. He brings his empties to the back of the store. After school, Tom pops empty soda bottles into the cardboard crates, stacks the crates three high and two deep, and then counts the crates. Malmo moves out of his way, stands beside the two orange swordtails and two, no three, neon tetras swimming, an inch of rainbow-coloured aquarium gravel at the bottom. The fish live in a rectangular aquarium now that covers all but the edges of the linoleum tile.
Malmo takes the scroll of papers from the crook of his elbow and unrolls them on top of the crated empties. Wing pins the papers with a metal two-hole punch and a large stapler laid on its side. Wing cups his chin with the palm of his hand as he leans across the papers.
The concept drawings are as dramatic as the sequential blue prints are detailed. “Wing, the floor’s made of high quality, transparent Lucite, cantilevered by a modified radial matrix of steel joists,” Malmo’s pencil-leaded fingertips glide over the top drawing. “Through to the subfloor, we’ll seal the joists with a white polymer resin so they’re virtually invisible looking down at them — most will come up under the banquette. On the joists, I’ll float a sprayed and galvanized fibreglass basin, custom poured, right to the walls, to fit under the floor.” Malmo lifts the hole punch, and three pages roll, echo-curl to the stapler.
“Here. I’ve done the structural analysis and preliminary stress bearing weight calculations, for water volume, fill weight, pumps, metal contraction and expansion. I’ve contacted a filtration pump manufacturer in L.A. and they’re sending a draft spec proposal; the trick is the volume to depth ratio.” He pulls on the corner of the page, and it peels against the stapler.
“I thought about electric heating rods through the subfloor, which would also work to help warm the basement. But I wanted to use my education, on this one,” Malmo says, index finger lightly tapping his left temple. “So, I’ve devised a heat exchange system. It uses the waste heat from the kitchen — you know, fridge, stove, dishwasher, to keep the water in the basin heated. This will cost me nothing to run. Will actually save money on the heating bill.” Malmo licks his three middle fingers, and unleashes another page to the stapler.
“Here. Where the thermocouple will sit, completely safe, with two emergency generators, here and here.”
Wing smooths the rolled papers away from the stapler, pins the top drawing under the two-hole punch. He points at small ellipses drawn on top of what he thinks Malmo called the subfloor. “These are fish?”
Malmo shakes his head at Wing. He spreads his hands over the drawings as if he were blessing them. “Well yeah, that’s what I’ve been talking about. Not just fish, Uncle Wing. Koi.”
Wing’s lips disappear into his mouth, “Koi. Fancy carp. Why don’t you just buy a big aquarium for your
kitchen?”
“Because,” Malmo says immediately, “I want a koi pond. I live in Canada, the West, I. . .I want a koi pond. A pond with koi because they’re. . . koi. You remember them,” Malmo says.
“No, not really. But I know what koi are.”
“They’re the best. And I want them.”
The two men stare at each other, irises widening, cones and rods skimming the index file, needle scratching, skipping, wildly searching for the groove, any groove on the record.
Wing turns off the Bakelite radio. “If you want this, I want this for you.”
“Tom could help,” Malmo says, excitedly, “I’m going to need a marine biologist to help me chose the fish, Uncle.”
“He’d like that, but you know, now he wants to be a magician.”
[Notes:
1. Anyone who knows about retrofit water-bearing structural designs and specifications will know that Malmo’s design can create a technically perfect pool of water — water-tight, durable, filtered, aerated, competently supported.
2. Anyone who knows about fish physiology will know that Malmo’s design would suddenly poach the fish to death, sometime-anytime, but definitely before the first year is out. Not in the Chinese style of poached fish, the whole fish, covered with scallions and sliced ginger on a long oval dish, hot oil and soy sauce poured over just before serving. But in the style of dead fish, bloated, opaque eyes, little fins up, doing the back float in a too warm pool of water. Knocking, knocking hello-farewell against a Lucite sky. Adios. [Note to Note #2: Adiós, from the Spanish a Dios (Lat. ad deus): to God.]
3. Anyone who knows about heat exchange systems using kitchen waste heat will know how the fish would die. Malmo’s thermometer would crash, sometime in the first year, the repeated surge of heat from the hot dishwasher water overtasking Malmo’s thermometer. One time, that daily surge of hot dishwater would heat the cabling of the heat exchange system enough to raise the temperature of the water so quickly, the fish would poop, poach, and do the ultimate back float. The bloated corpses bumping against the ultramodern Lucite floor.
Paper Teeth Page 5
