In Search of the Perfect Singing Flamingo

by Tacon, Claire;

  In the third drawer of our filing cabinet is a whole folder with tear sheets explaining Williams. Ones for medical staff, employers, the general public. If I’d remembered them, along with Kath’s travel binder, Starr wouldn’t be sequestered now. No one’s given us an indication of how long we’ll be detained. Darren tried to lend me his cell to call Kathleen but the guard confiscated it as soon as he slid it open.

  The agent who finally collects me is a man about ten years my junior. He’s got a fit build but puffy face, like he’s just buffed up and his cheeks are all that remain of his softer self. Officer Gatz. I’d peg him as the type of guy who keeps his kids’ photos in plastic sleeves so his wallet doesn’t bend the corners.

  He’s clipped but not aggressive, ignores my questions about Starr. He skims through the administrative details – address, occupation, citizenship. It’s only when he asks the purpose of my visit that Gatz looks up from his notes.

  “Have you brought this kind of equipment in before?”

  “No,” I lie, certain there’s no record of the other three trips into Michigan, New York.

  “So you work at the store during the day and you have the same machines in your home?”

  It suddenly sounds deviant, an adult singing along with puppets in his basement. I picture the Ironed Prune pitching me the same question, the construction crew frothing to rip out the electronics.

  “Are you aware that you need a commercial bill of goods to import these?”

  The man drops his pen on the paperwork and crosses his arms. He keeps his spine straight as he leans against the chair’s backrest. It’s a generic task chair set to the wrong recline and he sinks way back. It can’t be comfortable but he maintains the extreme angle, vigilant against the comedy of the moment.

  “I know what you’re thinking.” I shift my incline parallel to his. “I’m bringing them up for the store. But there isn’t a single Funhouse in North America that’s expanding their animatronics. Call any of them. Look one up in the phone book. The future’s all in video screens, cheap technology that doesn’t break down.”

  He lowers his palms to his thighs. “What was the suit doing in the car?”

  Is it pornography? Is that what he’s sniffing out?

  “There was an accident at work and we left after my shift. I was taking it out for cleaning.”

  “I thought you repaired the machines.” He jolts forward, unable to gracefully return upright. The movement seems to piss him off more and he holds up his hand before I can answer. “Fine, assuming as technical director you have a wide range of duties, tell me where the live turtles fit in.”

  Funeral laughter is a stress response, Kathleen says, same as any other. This man, however, doesn’t have a crumb of humour. I have the terrible feeling I’m either going to giggle or dry heave.

  “My daughter’d had a bad week. It was stupid of me.”

  “Are you –”

  “Yes, I’m aware it’s illegal.”

  He scratches his pen against his notepad.

  “Is there any way she can keep them?”

  The officer lets the question hang. “What else are we going to find in the van?” He reaches across the desk and plants his palm on my chest, his fingers pressed along the button seam. “Your heart is racing.”

  “I’m worried about my daughter.”

  The officer retracts his hand and places a bottle of pills on the desk. Starr’s Lorazepam. “What’s she going to say?” “She shouldn’t be in there alone. She’s developmentally disabled.” “You’re telling me she’s retarded?”

  If this prick does have kids, the hardest thing they’ve ever faced is strep throat.

  “Can a social worker be brought in to help her?”

  “Are you carrying other pills?”

  “Those are for anxiety. Our doctor’s name is on the label.”

  He gathers his notes, the bottle of pills and leaves the room.

  It’s hard to estimate how long I’m in the interrogation room. There are no clocks, no windows, just eight-feet-by-eight-feet of drab. If I push right up to the wall, I can hear Starr. There’s another voice in there, female, not doing much talking. I can’t make out words.

  A muffled thud. The voices louder now – “Get off! Get off!”

  I test the door handle, unlocked. Not terrorism after all.

  Starr is pinned against the wall, one guard clamped on her wrists, Officer Sanjula patting her down. Starr resists the grip, clawing at the paint. “Fuck off!” she shrieks. “Fuck right off!”

  “Calm down,” Sanjula hisses. She whips her head to my approach. “Stand back. You can’t be in here.”

  “Please let go of her.” I raise my hands up. “I can help get her quiet.”

  The other agent is on her walkie-talkie. Two more guards appear behind me, the room very small with the six of us. A hand on my shoulder, forcing me to kneel. Someone’s breath above my ear.

  “You’re not going to make me cuff you, are you?”

  My daughter has flipped herself to face me, her eyes pink and raw. With each intake of breath, the panic constricts her throat. She sounds like a drain unclogging.

  The two female officers aim their faces at the guard behind me, a supervisor.

  “She has a genetic condition called Williams syndrome,” I explain again. “One of the complications is anxiety.”

  “Is that like autism?”

  “Please let me help her.”

  The guard who was restraining Starr speaks up. “There was something on 60 Minutes about that. A teenager who could play anything on drums.”

  The supervisor motions for them to back down.

  “It’s okay.” I bundle Starr toward me and ask for the Lorazepam. The supervisor taps out one white disc. “They wanted to see if you were hiding something. They’re not going to touch you again.”

  Swallowing from a paper cone makes it harder but the pills are small, no bigger than a sesame seed. I coach Starr to exhale, insert the pill, gulp down two sips.

  Starr points to Officer Sanjula. “They’re lesbians.”

  “It wasn’t sexual. They were just doing their job.”

  Through her ribs comes the thump of a handball colliding with a wall. When we did therapy for fire alarms, Starr’s counsellor told us phobias can’t be treated as a single unit. We had to unpick each component fear – the element of surprise, the sensory overload of the sound, the emotional response to an emergency. My job is to file this trauma into its separate parts.

  Starr touches where they handled her. “They’re lesbians.”

  Officer Gatz coughs away a snicker.

  “She’s been molested before.”

  The supervisor motions – he’ ll take this from here. The three guards quickly clear out, no eye contact. The man hands over Starr’s purse and cardigan. “It’s procedure.”

  Starr squirms, embarrassed.

  “It’s nothing bad about you,” I say. “It’s nothing to be ashamed about.”

  “Can you give us a contact so we can verify her condition?”

  After all this, he thinks we could be acting. There must be easier ways to smuggle drugs, ones that don’t involve pocket turtles and ketchup-stained squirrel suits. I dig the Community Living contact card out of Starr’s wallet. “Cynthia’s her support worker.”

  He handles it around the edges, as if it might be evidence.

  My leg is getting cramped from Starr’s weight but I don’t want to readjust if she’s comfortable. There’s still a tremor in her hands, but the markers of her panic attack are fading. What Starr needs now is a good cry, to get the last of it out. We know the worst is over when she’s relaxed enough to let the tears come.

  When Starr and I watch those talk shows together, every episode has parents breaking down in front of their kids, confessing hurt or demanding forgiveness. The kids start bawling, everyone hugs and by the next commercial everyone’s smiling. Those families might as well be on the moon. I can’t tell Starr how sorry I am
because my voice will crack and seeing her loved ones in pain only makes things worse. Always, Kath and I fight to stay collected, to spare her. Instead, I hum an old favourite, “A Kiss to Build a Dream On” and wait for the Lorazepam to start unhooking the knots in her limbs. Two pills in a week. A black mark in Kathleen’s log.

  Starr passes out before the supervisor releases us back into the customs building’s main hub. She and Darren are free to go. The turtles, like me, are stuck until they find a fish and wildlife specialist. In the absence of veterinary certificates, customs needs someone to vouch that Alex and Mallory don’t pose a risk to the downtown Mississauga ecosystem. They’re also contacting Greyson to verify that I’m not transporting commercial goods. I’m resigned to a lifetime of hassle at the border, but I hope I haven’t flagged him by association.

  I rouse Starr enough to join Darren, who pushes a chair and bench together to form a makeshift bed. I’ve called Melanie and she’s driving down from Toronto to collect them. Darren tries to make small talk, asking if this is the daughter who works in TV.

  “I’ve only got two.”

  “Right.”

  Perhaps he’s trying to cheer me up.

  “My mom watches a lot of those shows as research.”

  “Is that right?” It doesn’t seem wise, considering how much Melly tells me is staged. Darren lets my reply trail off and I’m grateful to be alone with my thoughts. I realize I should have warned the day program about Starr’s absence. Because they work with vulnerable populations, they have call ladders in place and, by now, Kathleen would have heard from them. It’s too late to call the centre and explain.

  “Do your parents know you’ll be in late?”

  Darren shakes his head. He doesn’t reach for his cellphone.

  “You haven’t told them, have you?” There’s no point in getting angry.

  “They know,” he says.

  Not quite the same.

  At seven-thirty, there’s a shift change and an old-timer calls me back into the interrogation room. Still no sign of the wildlife officer. He gives a cursory glance over the file, says it all checks out. In the end, I don’t know whether it’s Greyson’s word that releases me or not.

  Both my daughters are at the condo when I arrive.

  “Starr’s asleep,” Melly says. “Don’t bother coming up.”

  We meet in the lobby and I hand over the terrarium, the rancid water sloshing against the sides. Under the halogen track lights, the turtle shells look mossy and green as blooming algae.

  “Didn’t you know you can’t take these across the border?”

  I nod, stuffing my hands in my pockets.

  “But Starr wanted you to.” The left corner of Melly’s lip rises up but it’s not a smile.

  “Thank you for saving my bacon.” The wrong thing to say, not nearly enough. When I go to hug Melly, the ridges of the glass tank dig into my biceps.

  At home, the voice mail is full of messages – Della, her parents, the agency, the day program. All in various stages of concern. Then it’s my wife, exhausted. “The earlier train is overbooked. Do I need to rent a car?”

  MELANIE

  THE SHOOT’S ALREADY GONE OFF RAIL WHEN I GET THE call. We’re supposed to be plaster-ready tomorrow, but when we ripped out a dividing wall we found a whole section of the main floor that’s floating. The previous owners had cut the support post to put in a rec room. Drayton estimates that they’ll need at least ten thousand dollars to bring it up to code. Our producer’s been on the phone to see if we can cut them a break on a percentage of that, if we can squeeze more out of our hardware sponsor.

  We filmed Matilda telling the homeowners, but their reaction was too laid-back so we need to reshoot it. John is coaching them to be more colourful. “Now that you know the floor could cave in, how do you feel about your children sleeping upstairs? Do you think Matilda should have warned you before we started?” When we roll camera again, they’re jacked up. Matilda takes it for a good three minutes before reaming them out for being so disrespectful. It works better for the scripting if she waits before standing up for herself. The problem is that she’s not particularly charismatic or likeable, so we need to set up adversity for the viewer to root for her. We’ve taken to calling them martyr shots.

  My right hip starts vibrating as we’re moving the equipment to the front yard. We’ll need footage of the couple fighting and then rallying. Without checking who’s calling, I press the silence tab. Probably Chester, and I can call him later. We’ll be running late tonight, so there’s no rush.

  By the time we’re ready to shoot the segment, the couple needs no prep. The wife keeps sweeping her hair off her forehead and glaring at her husband. “I told you we needed a home inspection.” He isn’t making eye contact. “What was it going to be? Five, six hundred dollars? But no, it had to be your uncle.”

  “He’s an engineer.”

  “Chemical engineer. I don’t think Rick even knows which end of a drill you screw with.”

  It’s perfect, like a swear but not.

  “It was a bidding war,” the man says. His wife sulks off.

  “Sure,” John says, trying to be nice. None of us cares whether or not they made an informed decision when buying the house. If our homeowners weren’t incompetent, they wouldn’t need us.

  “Real estate boom.”

  We ship the husband off set with assurances that everything will look better in a day or two.

  My phone starts vibrating again. The call display reads Government of Canada but when I answer, it’s my father. I deposit myself on the lip of a barrel planter, braced for another strained conversation.

  “Melanie. We’re at the border.” The waver in his voice makes my throat catch, worried this is the kind of call you mark with before and after.

  “Starr?”

  “Your sister’s okay, but I need you to come pick her up. I’m not allowed to leave.”

  There’s silence on the other end. Dad crying. Something I’ve only seen him do once before.

  There aren’t many details to report to John when I ask if I can leave set. Dad’s being detained, Starr’s recovering from a panic attack and some kid Dad knows is stuck there with them. John says he’ll cover. Three hours there, three hours home, one hour to settle Starr – I promise to be back before they strike. If worst comes to worst, I can pull an all-nighter at the office.

  At customs, the guards are brisk. An officer leads me into the main building and waits, never more than a few feet away. Starr’s legs are up on a backpack and her face washed out by post-Lorazepam glow. Dad’s next to her, hunched over his knees, mindlessly rubbing at callouses on his palm. He’s staring off into nothing at all.

  “You came for me,” Starr says. She stands, groggily, and wraps her arms around me. Only then does Dad register my arrival. He stands in front of us, unable to lean in for a hug with Starr’s weight draped against my shoulder.

  “You made good time.”

  “Not much traffic.” The exchange flat and inadequate. I wait for an acknowledgement that never comes.

  “This is Darren.” The kid waits, slump-shouldered, for further direction. I don’t know what the hell’s happened to his face, its green bruising patchy like bread mould.

  An officer escorts us to the van to retrieve the suitcases, Dad’s contraband taped off to the side. I grab everything that’s not a boxed robot and try to shove it in the trunk well. My car’s an old Honda hatchback that holds a surprising amount when only one person is driving, but is cramped with passengers. The high-school kid is tall, but he’s going to have to lump it in the back seat so that Starr can stretch out in the front.

  While I help my sister into the car, Darren hangs back. There’s likely no more than six years between us, but it feels like a decade. I have to open the door for him before he musters up a few words. “So you’re Henry’s other daughter.”

  “That’s me.”

  “You work in film, right?”

  “I’m
supposed to be on set right now.”

  He has to push into the luggage for the door to swing shut. He rights himself and pins his knees against the back of the driver’s seat.

  I’ve brought Starr a ham-and-cheese sandwich from catering, a can of ginger ale and a few cookies. I fish around in my overnight bag and find Darren a granola bar.

  “Thanks,” he says, meeting my eyes in the rear-view. Before I can turn the ignition, he’s sucked the stick out of the wrapper.

  It’s bizarre that he’s even here, that my father’s picked an under-twenty co-worker as his travelling companion. Other than Greyson, Darren is the only person I’ve ever met who currently works with Dad. Most people shed friends when they become parents, and I guess when you have a kid with special needs, it’s even harder to stay in touch, but Mom’s got her high-school track reunions, work colleagues, families she’s met at support groups, her two sisters.

  Dad’s side of the family said some shitty things about Starr when she was young and he hasn’t spoken to them since. His parents had thought the trouble was with my mother, that she was doing something wrong. That’s why the baby was so small, so fussy. When it was clear there were bigger issues, they didn’t want to accept Starr. Like they were embarrassed, thought it somehow reflected badly on them. I guess my uncle’s kids called her retarded to her face. Obviously they’d learned the word from their dad and when my father demanded an apology, they refused. I don’t even know if any of them are still in the province. Now the closest thing my Dad has to a friend is Darren, someone he’ll probably never see again once he’s off to university in the fall.

  My passengers barely stir through the ride, even when I’m getting an update on Matilda’s wrath on the hands-free. It’s a good thing for Starr that she’s so calm, but I’d expected Darren to remain conscious. I have to wake him up after Milton so he can give me directions. “Right,” he says, as if he’d forgotten that I have no idea where he lives. We drop him off in front of a pink brick semi-detached, the type of place we’ve filmed in a half-dozen episodes. He stands, stunned-looking, on the sidewalk as I unload his gear. His feet stay planted as we drive away.