Mumma opens the little window in the bathroom; that turrible smell all over the New House has dissipated somewhat, but one more bit of cross ventilation won’t hurt. Mumma examines the sky above The New House and thinks of Katiya, her neighbour at the Old House, how they visited while each tended her own garden, the ease of slipping on Wing’s gardening shoes to pull a few green onions for dinner, the little piece of green glass in the stucco by the back door that was from a green bottle of 7-Up, the other little piece of green glass with the smaller red label reading “7-Up.” One nice thing about this house — not only could the Old House fit into the hip pocket of the New House, the New House has lots of drawers. And Mumma hears Pen open and shut, one, two, “eighteen, Mumma,” eighteen copper handles, one on each of the doors of the built-in cupboards.
Mumma recalls Wing saying as the two of them were packing their parfait glasses for the move, cold desserts being in vogue when they married, “Mumma, I think the New House feels like it’s just the place for us.” Maybe Wing’s right. Mumma wonders, Oh wow, what will Lizzie think of the New House when she comes home from piano camp later that week?
Pen proclaims herself the Queen of Mudlandia, and all its lands as far as she can see — the back lane which is not gravelled yet, behind the garage where Mumma says the vegetable garden will go, the pristine kidney-shaped concrete back patio, and the vast yard beside the garage. The air smells like wet leaves and absolute power. The loyal subjects arrayed before her fit the bill for the type every despotic ruler desires: quiet, cowed and ready to obey. Well, the loyal subject, yes actually, just one subject. Jane has not grown out of her afternoon nap, still napping inside with Mumma, who took the opportunity to change into more comfortable clothes after the movers finished. Tom stands in front of Pen, his brown irises tipped up to the top halves of his eyes. Pen frowns, disgusted with his red stupid cheeks and his mucousy boogery nose.
“Why can’t I be King?” Tom whines.
Right, Pen thinks, Booger King, “Because, you’re my brother, and I can’t marry you.”
“But. Well, okay, but why do you get to be Queen?”
“Because I’m the oldest. Ah-duh.”
“But. Well, okay, but why can’t I be The Prince then?”
“Tell you what,” Pen considers Tom for a moment then says, “you can be the Prince and the White Knight and the Innkeeper and the school boy —”
“Really?”
“But you also have to be my slave.”
“Nnnohh.”
“That’s the deal.”
“Okay.”
“Can I play?”
Pen turns in the direction of the voice coming from a blonde ringleted girl, her size, standing on their patio, wearing a purple ski jacket, white turtleneck and tights, a pink tulle tutu, and the same rubber boots as Pen and Tom. Before Pen can close her mouth, before she can find and pull the words through her vocal chords to speak, tires squealing on new cement, a loud blunt impact, the sound of a couple of hard but not heavy things falling on metal, and a resoundingly muttered “Well gawddammit,” stop all action.
“That will be my mother,” the girl in the pink tulle tutu says, turning on her heels slowly, “I’m Bonnie. I gotta go home now.”
Pen and Tom turn to read each other’s faces and without saying a word, they follow the path that Bonnie has taken down the lane. Mumma follows shortly behind them, the back screen door banging, a waking-up Jane bundled up in a sweater in Mumma’s arms. Curiosity bells Mumma and her kids, each of them drawn to the site of what the heck was that.
What Mumma notices first is not that the lovely turquoise and ivory Thunderbird is sideways in the large single car garage, but that she has never before looked through a garage door and seen the profile of a person in the driver’s seat. A long-handled spade, teetering on the passenger side of the hood, rolls off and echoes on the garage floor. The driver’s side window is rolled all the way down, and the driver, a woman with a turquoise silk scarf tied over her blonde hair, holds onto the steering wheel with both hands, and moves her index fingers as if trying to remember what gear will get the car turned around and parked in the usual manner. Bonnie smiles and waves at the kids as they walk towards her on the driveway.
“Are you all right?” Mumma asks, approaching the garage slowly. Mumma takes a surreptitious glance down at herself beyond Jane’s pant legs and and stockinged feet, and feels the internal pilot light fire up her heating element; such an old housedress, and she pulled on what was at the back door without thinking, rubber boots, now covered with mud, and dirtying the driveway of her new neighbour.
The car door opens and two rubber boots swing out onto the pavement. “Those gawddamn idiots at the hardware think they’re God, think they know everything about matching paint chips, they know what’s best, stupid, stupid buggers. I’m fine, thanks. Just embarrassed. Pride’s a little damaged, but nothing else that matters. Don’t suppose you know how to drive standard do you — I’m Bonnie’s mom — not that I suppose that’s going to help much. This is my daughter Bonnie, I’m Sally. You must be the new folks on the block. What about all this muck, eh?”
When Wing pulls up the driveway, his eyes scan the new backyard and he feels his chest tighten. Wing slowly reaches behind the steering wheel, and shifts into park in front of the empty garage on the driveway. The War Amps tag swings gently below the ignition as Wing turns off the car, but Wing doesn’t take the key out immediately. He rolls the side window down, as if it were the glass wildly distorting the image.
Rubber boots. Three of them. Stuck past their soles in mud in the middle of the back yard. Three child-size rubber boots, Wing concludes, a pair and an odd. The mud backyard looks like a track-and-field meet has been held on it, hundreds of footprints, ruts, and ball-sized craters, but Wing expects this. He doesn’t even notice the mucky footprints all over the back patio. It’s the odd boot that’s very much out of place. That, and the pair of boots posed neatly together, as if a small invisible marching soldier stands in them, at ease.
Wing stands on the back patio, studying the boots for a few minutes. He uncrates a cigarette from a pack in his suit jacket pocket, and cupping his hand around the flame of his lighter, lights a cigarette. By all appearances, a man enjoying a late afternoon cigarette in the perfect quiet of his backyard until the back screen door slams.
“Daddy Daddy the furniture came the furniture came and we played outside in the mud and I have a new friend and her name is Bonnie and one of the moving men stunk and Mumma says that you’re not supposed to tell someone that they stink even if they stink and Tom and I and Bonnie played outside and then Bonnie had to go home and Tom and I played school way out in the backyard but Tom got stuck in the mud and I got stuck too and Tom starts crying and I say ‘Don’t be such a baby’ and he cries harder and I say ‘Crybaby what’s the matter with you’ and he sucks air like he goes phup-phup-phup-phup like he can’t talk cause he’s been crying so hard and so I pinch him and he says ‘Don’t I’m stuck’ and so I say ‘You’re not stuck Stupid it’s just your boots walk out of them’ and he says ‘I’m stuck’ like he’s given up so I walk out of my boots and then I run to the patio and Stupid cries louder again so then I run back out to him and I pull him out of his boots but one of them stays on his foot and he loses his other sock and I drag him back to the patio and Mumma yells out the window ‘What are you doing to Tom?’ so I go back again in my socks and I get his sock Bonnie’s mom can drive sideways and do I get anything for saving Tom?”
“It’s too bad your brother’s sick, because if there’s no prince, there’s no point,” Bonnie says, “What should we do?”
“Well, do you wanna play school?”
“Nah, my Mom says the school’s going to open next week. You could come over and see my stuff, but my mom said I should play over here today. What d’you got there?”
“Try one. My Mumma gave one of these to Tom and then she put them in her underwear drawer. They’re called baby Aspirin, cause
they’re little and pink like babies. Chew it.”
“Mmmmm. They’re kinda good.”
“I know. But you can only have two a day, that’s what Tom gets. It’s medi-sin.”
“Oh.”
“What are we going to do?”
“Have you met Michelle, yet?” Bonnie asks.
“No.”
“She’s bossy, but she’s got chalk.”
“Okay.”
“Too bad your brother’s sick.”
“Yeah.”
Mumma checks the DeVilbiss vaporizer in Tom’s room and dabs a bit more Vicks VapoRub in the cup on top. [Note: Tom will call the vaporizer DevilBiss, a permanent fixture in his childhood bedroom. An asthmatic, and the only one in the family, when Tom is an old man and Mumma even older, she will draw a straight line between Tom’s inhaler and Dad, the smoker, picking up Tom and carrying him everywhere when he was a baby, which Dad did not do with the girls.] She feels his cheek, and tucks his arm under the flannel sheet. Too bad that Tom’s feeling sick, a chesty cough and cold. Mumma’s mind keeps returning to her new neighbour Sally Faber, Sal, the sideways parker. Her husband has had to Call-in-a-Favour with Walt McBean of McBean’s Lumber. Today, Walt’s going to send out the big truck with the winch and dollies to try to get Sally’s car out of the garage and Walt says it’s going to be nip and tuck. What are winch and dollies? Mumma wants to be there to take in the proceedings, but a sick kid lassoes Mumma, keeps her close to home, and closer to a more subdued version of herself. Still, that nip and tuck makes Mumma wild with the need to know.
Winch and dollies. Wing tries not to think of that sideways car, as if it is possible to forget. Neighbour seems to be a funny guy, “I told her she could have the garage for her car. Wasn’t even going to be home for a few hours, but she still wants to race me for it,” Don Faber winked his eye at his new neighbours, “Yeah, just kidding Sal!” What is body language if not rhetorical, Wing and Mumma blushed red last night and a very small bit later, went home.
Well, Wing can do something about the other. Wing lays out three small pieces of cardboard, cut to the size of business cards. Before him lie three rectangular plastic sleeves with brass safety pins in their backs that Ralph Goodwin brought over at morning coffee. “Sure, I know what you mean, Wing, I’ve got some in my desk, you’re welcome to them. You’re going to use them in a display are you? No? Ohhh, Bartlett pears today, okay, the usual time.”
Under Wing’s supervision, each of his kids will fill volumes of penmanship books, at home, before they reach the age of nine. No surprise then that Wing’s design and execution of lettering has a stencil-like consistency and precision, the letters placed carefully on pencilled-in straight lines and each line exactly centred. After the ink has completely dried, Wing carefully erases the pencil lines.
Each plastic sleeve has a small flap that snaps over the back and runs along the top length of the sleeve, making a rectangular badge. Wing opens the flap on each sleeve and inserts one of the cards. He lines them up in a row across the top of his desk blotter. At the back of the Maple Leaf Grocery and Confectionary, an old wooden office table with a gooseneck lamp and desk blotter constitutes the office.
For a new grocery store, you’d think the carts would be in better shape, Mumma thinks, then realizes that what’s out of alignment is her driving and not the cart. Mumma suddenly recognizes that the problem has never been the carts, but in the new grocery store, Mumma takes notice for the first time. With Jane in the baby seat, and Tom and Pen pushing and pulling at her hips and the cart, Mumma’s entourage-driven grocery cart moves like a bumper car in between the aisles.
But the store by the Old House where Mumma never cared how the carts steered and knew where to find everything has impossible math: two buses away multiplied by three kids. Home, home, new electric range, the discouraging word here being Endust. Some of the women in this store look like they actually do wear the girdle, the leather pumps and the fancy housedresses (with darts!) to dust their furniture. She smiles at them and says, “Hello,” and they smile back, “Hello.”
“Here, let Mumma put these in her purse. Pen, where’s yours?”
“I dunno. I guess I lost it.”
Mumma quickly unpins the plastic badges from Tom and Jane’s tee-shirts. Two little pin prick holes appear over their hearts. She pricks her finger on one of the badge pins, reads the four lines: “Tom Lee, 13918 Summit Place, Edmonton, HU8-3152.”
“It’s not so they won’t get lost, Mumma,” Wing said this morning, the plastic badges appearing on the breakfast table, one at each of the kid’s place settings. “It never even occurred to me that they would ever be lost. Or missing. But it’s a New House and it’s their place and that’s where they belong and this way, they’ll know.”
Not today, Mumma thinks, the snik on the clasp of her purse an indisputable confirmation.
Pen feels the round nubby of the garter holding up Mumma’s stocking, rubs the fabric of Mumma’s dress and feels the elastic armour Mumma calls her girl. Pen’s sensors are on high alert when she sees Michelle’s mom quickly walk up to them.
“Hello, you must be Pen’s mom. I’m Michelle’s mom, Monique, Monique Oliver. I’m a little distracted, have you seen a little Mountie in the store, about this tall?” Mrs. Oliver’s hand levels at just above her waist.
“A little what?”
“A little Mountie. Sometimes we dress Trevor up like a little Mountie when we’re going out, little red serge jacket and blue pants, brown hat with a wide brim and whistle. I don’t like those leather harnesses, and he’s a runner. Have you seen him? One minute he’s right here, the next he’s gone. Like now.”
“Oh. No, I haven’t seen him. I’m sorry. I’ll keep an eye out.”
Pen flattens her body against the white and chrome frozen food chest.
“Well, he’ll show, he always does, but it still makes me anxious. At least this way, we can usually find him pretty fast. Love to visit, but got to find my little man.” [Note: The little man will run through many family vacations before he outgrows the uniform and Trevor Oliver, Senior, will make a killing in “let me give you something for the little fella”-s. After all, who doesn’t want their picture taken with a Mountie, at Yellowstone National Park, Jasper National Park, Niagara Falls, and Anaheim, California. In Jasper, a souvenir photo with the little Mountie will become almost as ubiquitous as the postcard, “Black bear on its hind legs leaning into the cab of the red truck.” Trevor Oliver, Junior, will stop running, slow down, and become a park warden for a national park in the Rockies, not Jasper.]
Pen tries to put her arm around her mother’s waist. Mumma has her going-out smell. When Pen was little, the smell of face powder always made her sad and Mumma cheerful. But I’m here, Pen thinks, and Tom and Jane, out with Mumma and her face powder smell, all of us together, so why does Mumma seem so tucked up inside herself?
Pen knows how to cheer up Mumma, get some happy colour behind that face powder. With the milk man delivering milk and cream, and Dad bringing home fruit and vegetables from the store, and bread from Alberta Bakery, Mumma only ever comes to a place like this to get meat, Mumma not caring about sprinkles, or birthday cake ballerina candle holders, or those delicious-looking lollipops shaped like tiny balls and tied together like little colourful balloons with an elastic band.
“Mumma,” Pen exclaims in a timbre and volume reminiscent of a sideways driver careening into a single-car garage, “Mumma,” in a voice loud and clear enough to make everyone on the aisle look up. “Look at all the Meat. Hooole-ly. Oh Mumma, Could We have some? Huh? Could We? Can We Please try some Meat? Oh please, Please Mumma, Mumma can We buy some Meat?” [Note: Jane is the only one of the kids who doesn’t refuse to wear Wing’s name badge, at least until she starts school, which gives a very pleased Wing too many years to make a ridiculous number of Jane badges. “If you ever do get lost, someone will know exactly where you belong, where to bring you back,” he tells Jane quietly. Learning how the
war amps tags on Dad’s keychain work, and remembering at least a couple of the family summer trips to Chickadee Bungalows before she started school, several decades after wearing her last Jane badge, Jane still will cross the street to avoid walking in front of a mailbox.]
Number 188. “Peeking” Duck
“Is your house all clean? It’s New Year’s Eve, you know.”
Hello, Pig Pen. Peace Assassin. Joy Molester.
That’s what Jane thinks, those are the words stuck against the fine mesh filter lodged between Jane’s mind and her mouth. Banal words flow through the fine mesh, right past the pejorative nicknames and other detritus trapped there.
“Oh. Is it Chinese New Year? I completely forgot.”
“Well, you’ve got about three hours before midnight your time. I’m just getting ready for bed, here.”
Right. Three hours. Jane inventories just the clutter in the kitchen: Piles of articles torn from magazines that Leo wants for future reference; a shopping bag full of never-tried recipes, clipped from the Sunday paper. Three dozen or so miniature pots and cooking tools, stacked beside the stove, to be hung in a three-dimensional wall frieze. Two boxes of received and opened Christmas presents that haven’t moved since Christmas. A pile of junk mail waiting to be recycled.
Like all the rooms in their house. Three hours will not tidy the house Jane describes as a two-storey purse with five appliances and a deadbolt. She knows it, and so does her sister Pen. Jane forgot about Chinese New Year. Jane’s focused on what to give up for Lent.
Paper Teeth Page 15
