The Garneau Block

by Todd Babiak

  “There’s thirty of them on my block.”

  Barry stuffed the paper into his duffel bag, with the street magazines. “This changes everything.”

  The street paper salesman started to his corner. David opened the magazine to Barry’s essay, began to read, and felt anxious. He hugged Garith, who shivered in the cool morning air. It wasn’t the prospect of declining oil supplies, of course. David just strongly felt the lack of a caramel mochaccino, and he knew his wife did too.

  12

  understanding godlessness

  The weekly meeting of the philosophy department was held in an expansive room on the fourth floor of the Humanities Building, overlooking the jogging trails on Saskatchewan Drive and the river beyond. Thirty years ago, these meetings were populated by forty-five men, all of them wearing suits and smoking cigarettes. They never scheduled classes on meeting days, so nearly everyone sipped Scotch out of coffee cups. As Raymond recalled these meetings, and his youth, he closed his eyes in wonder. How handsome he had been, how droll, and envied by his aging mentors.

  In 2005, professors drank coffee, vegetable juice, or bottled water. Nearly half of the attendees wore jeans, shorts, or sweatpants. The men still outnumbered the women but not for long; nearly all the young assistant and associate professors were female. The few men hired into the department were either gay or foreign. Once the tenured brontosauruses like Raymond Terletsky retired, the dominion of the white male would end, finally, and women could rule as the great pagan gods intended.

  A Running Room group, in matching white T-shirts, passed on the Drive below. In the bright late-morning sun, their black shorts and tights gleamed. Some were chubby, others not so chubby, and a few were in spectacular shape. Mothers, Raymond assumed, working off those pregnancy pounds. He wished, variously, that he was running behind the women and that he was alone in the meeting room with a pair of binoculars. How far could he run without stopping or suffering a massive stroke? When was the last time he had actually gone for a jog? Either 1967 or ’68.

  “Raymond?”

  “Yes.”

  Half the room erupted in laughter. Obviously, Claudia had been calling his name for some time. “Am I interrupting? Were you figuring out a new application for Tractatus Logicophilosophicus?”

  More laughter. Even though he stopped seriously studying Wittgenstein in the early 1980s, Raymond’s opponents in the department still brought up the now-unfashionable subject of his dissertation. “I was looking at some joggers, actually, critiquing their bums.”

  The other half of the room, a collection of Raymond’s beleaguered and sickly peers in old blazers, fleece jackets, and Birkenstocks, broke out in laughter. Then a few of them trundled into coughing fits.

  “It says here you now have only five students registered for your Death in Philosophy seminar.”

  Claudia lifted her black thousand-dollar spectacles and looked at her watch. “If you lose one more this week, we’re going to have to cancel the class.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “We can split one of the surveys, and you can–”

  “This is harassment. I’m not teaching two greatest hits courses this semester, Claudia. I’m sorry.”

  “Harassment.” The chair of the department smiled and nodded. Her posture was impeccable, her control of the room complete. Raymond’s peers, his teammates, one or two or five years from retirement, were already broken. The men who weren’t still coughing slumped in their chairs and inspected the weave in their sleeves or the lines in the palms of their hands. Claudia Santino was beautiful and intelligent and, when she wanted to be, quite cutting. Unbeatable. She lifted her chin, took a breath in through her thin nose, and nodded. “We’ll discuss this in private.”

  If Claudia did cancel his Death in Philosophy seminar, Raymond would press for extra time to work on his new idea for an article. There had been a record number of violent deaths in the Edmonton area in 2005, the most recent one across the street from his house. The Let’s Fix It signs were clearly a cry for understanding in a Godless universe. How do individuals or even communities seek to comprehend tragedy when religious answers no longer resonate in their hearts? The paper could ripple out from Edmonton to the avian flu scourge in Asia and the phenomenon of suicide terrorism.

  According to social and political trends, these were difficult times for unbelievers in North America. In popular culture, the atheists had gone underground. Yet Raymond felt–no, he knew–that millions of North Americans still sought philosophical answers to traditionally spiritual questions. Even if only five students showed up to his seminar on Thursday night, he still had faith in atheism. Just because something was old didn’t mean it was powerless.

  Claudia asked if there were any more questions or contributions. Of course, Raymond had a few obscene suggestions for Claudia and her acolytes, but articulating them wouldn’t quite fall under the protection of academic freedom.

  Both Claudia and Raymond stayed seated quietly while the philosophy professors filed out. Two of his withered associates were brave enough to drop a hand on his shoulder as they passed into the hallway. Claudia stood up. The chair of the philosophy department closed the door and smiled with artificial geniality. “Coffee?”

  “I shouldn’t.”

  She returned to her seat and folded her hands on the table. Long fingers, ringless. A pianist’s fingers. Raymond glanced out the window again, searching for joggers, but there was only a man pushing a baby carriage while speaking on a cellular phone. The only sound in the room now was water travelling through distant pipes, until he looked back at her.

  “Are you a very troubled man, Raymond?”

  13

  not a rotary meeting

  Shirley Wong sat in a giant chanting circle in the yellow Universiade Pavilion–better known as the Butterdome–clapping. Next to her, Abby sang along.

  We got power

  We got faith

  We got John Kenneth…Galbraith

  A bearded and shirtless man played guitar and two others slapped drums. In front of them, twenty or thirty people danced like Hollywood witches. Thinking this activist fair would be semi-formal, like a theatre opening or box seats at an Oilers game, Shirley had put on a black dress and tan cardigan.

  More and more people were jumping up to dance, including Abby. She stood in front of Shirley in her tie-dye T-shirt and loose jeans, her hands out. “Come on, Shirl. Let’s shake our things.”

  “I’m good, thanks.”

  “Suit yourself.” Abby slipped off her sandals and joined the dancers in front of the musicians. She swayed her hips and moved her arms as though she were groping to find a door handle in a dark and turbulent airplane.

  Shirley stopped clapping and got up to explore the booths and small seminar groups along the edges of the Butterdome. The incense and patchouli could not overwhelm the rubber smell from the floor of the athletic complex, an odour that reminded Shirley of the turmoil attending her children’s winter track meets.

  Greenpeace, Amnesty International, Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, and the David Suzuki Foundation had professional kiosks, with pamphlets and public relations specialists. Other local groups sold hemp products and recycled goods. In the back, fenced off, was a licensed area with organic beer and wine.

  In the corner farthest from the entrance, a young man in dreadlocks stood before fifty or sixty people with a microphone attached to his Utne Reader T-shirt. He was giving a PowerPoint presentation about the latest, most radical methods to stop logging. On the white screen behind him, photos from Clayoquot Sound and northern California. The young man advocated treehouses, chaining strategies, playing dead in front of the machinery.

  “Are we gonna write letters to the editor?”

  “Yes!” said the crowd, in unison.

  “Are we gonna live the change we want?”

  “Yes!”

  “Are we gonna play dead?”

  “Yes!”

  That was the formal end
of his presentation. The crowd clapped and he lifted his hands. “Now comes the hard part,” he said. “At booth twenty, I have chapbooks and CDs and sandal-wood soap and T-shirts for sale…”

  Shirley walked close enough to the chanting circle to see that Abby was still waving around for the door handle. So she checked her wallet and was delighted to discover two crisp twenty-dollar bills.

  At the organic beer and wine garden, Shirley bought a glass of Chardonnay and wandered around looking for a seat. All of the tables and most of the chairs were taken. Finally, after walking through the area three times, a woman and her male companion waved.

  “Would you like to join us?”

  “Thank you,” said Shirley, and sat.

  The couple introduced themselves–Chris and Nancy Cook. They each had a glass of beer and a bag full of pamphlets, hygiene products, and carob snacks. They pointed out their thirteen-year-old son, Noam Chomsky Cook, who sat with his Game Boy just outside the fence. When Shirley said she owned the Rabbit Warren, they complimented her on the store.

  “Though you could certainly have more fair trade products,” said Chris. “Don’t you think?”

  Shirley had endured criticism like this from Abby. Rather than explain the retail business to the Cooks, she nodded and took a sip of organic Chardonnay.

  The activist fair was no less hollow than professional hockey, no less hollow than anything she could buy or sell or experience on a night like tonight. Trapped in the vinaigrette aftertaste of the wine, Shirley wished she had just stayed home with Raymond, in the bloody echo of the house across the street. An echo that likely inspired her recent and unprecedented bout of skepticism. Doubt. Gloom.

  “Not that we’re asking you to change,” said Nancy. “Goodness knows.”

  After another sip of Chardonnay, with her nose plugged, Shirley cleared her throat. “Almost everything in my store is from Canada and the United States. I try to focus on local artists.”

  “Oh,” said Nancy.

  “Almost.” Chris leaned back in his chair and touched his goatee. “What does ‘almost’ mean?”

  “Not that we’re, you know,” said Nancy.

  Chris began telling Shirley about their recent trip to Peru, wherein he understood for the first time that life here in the northern half of the world is what the Latin Americans call una broma–a joke. He used the words bourgeoisie and imperialism in one sentence. The music and singing from the chanting circle halted, and a great roar of applause began. Shirley was just about to tell Chris and Nancy Cook to eat their German sandals when Noam Chomsky appeared at the fence. “Can we go home now?”

  “What’s your highest score, buddy?” Chris raised his voice toward jollity but didn’t actually look at his son.

  “I got 1,449.”

  “As soon as you get over 1,500, then we’ll go.”

  Noam Chomsky stood staring at his parents for a long moment, and then returned to his spot on the rubber floor of the Butterdome. Beyond him, the chanting circle had broken up. Shirley could see Abby wandering around, with her hand above her eyes as though she were blocking out the sun.

  Risking a gastrointestinal revolt, Shirley plugged her nose again and finished her glass of wine. “It was a real treat.”

  “The pleasure was ours,” said Chris.

  “Absolutely,” said Nancy.

  The Cooks didn’t stand up to shake Shirley’s hand, so she didn’t bother leaning down to shake theirs. This experience at the activist fair, in sum, had been the opposite of a Rotary meeting.

  Shirley exited the organic beer and wine garden and passed over Noam Chomsky Cook, who looked down at a blank screen. Noam Chomsky was only pretending to play his Game Boy. In the distance, Abby spotted Shirley and started jogging toward her.

  Instead of meeting Abby halfway, Shirley bent down and put her hand on Noam Chomsky’s head. “It gets better.”

  Noam Chomsky placed his Game Boy on the rubber floor. “When?”

  14

  a white van arrives

  In their investigations, no detectives or CSIS agents had battered down Madison’s basement suite door. No one had even left a voicemail message. The police cars hadn’t stayed long Monday night, so she assumed the attempted break-in at 10 Garneau had been blamed on teenage miscreants or frat boys. Poor teenage miscreants and frat boys: how much of their nasty reputations did they truly deserve?

  All week the crisp mornings had given way to warm afternoons and evenings with light, fragrant winds, the sorts of September afternoons and evenings that inspired false hope in Edmontonians. How could snow dare destroy this?

  On Thursday, her day off, Madison agreed to help her mother clear a final growth of weeds from the flowerbeds in their front yard. Though they had talked constantly for almost two hours, Madison had absorbed precisely nothing of her mother’s current opinions on global warming, same-sex marriage, marijuana deregulation, and the tenor of a new and inevitable Alberta, controlled by a fiscally conservative yet socially liberal and enlightened urban elite.

  “I love talking politics with you, love it.” Abby trimmed three rose bushes, tossing the dead or unnecessary bits in a pile of dandelion carcasses. “You don’t interrupt me. You never laugh sarcastically or call me a pinko. Your father is my husband and my best friend but sometimes I’d just like to take a strap of leather and…”

  The soil was so warm and moist, Madison wanted to crawl into it with the earthworms and huddle for six months. When she emerged, strong and rested and wise with her baby, she would be healed. No more anxiety or laziness or regret or confusion.

  Madison knew it was immoral and foolish to squander these hours with her mother, who was nearly sixty and would not live forever. Already some parents of her childhood friends had succumbed to cancer; Madison went to three or four funerals every year. In 2002, Jonas lost his grandfather, mother, and cat. Crawling out of his sorrow, what had Jonas suggested? Jonas, who didn’t carry a teaspoon of mush in his heart? Listen to them. Phone them back when they call. Go for breakfast. Watch bad movies on Sunday nights. Tell them you love them.

  Recalling this advice made Madison’s daughterly transgressions seem doubly sinister. As she ignored her mother, she chewed on the consequences of ignoring her mother. A good person would make a memory out of this afternoon in the yard. Instead, Madison stuck her hands deeper into the soil, and twisted them, and made fists.

  “…and what kind of person even thinks about buying a Hummer? It’s a crime against humanity. And guess what your father thinks? He thinks they’re cool. Cool! As though his Yukon Denali isn’t big and pointless enough. To him I say, once global warming melts the Arctic and the oceans go cold and start another ice age, well, what then? What about Madison, or your grandchildren if–we hope and hope–we have grandchildren? What are they going to do when Alberta is rendered uninhabitable?”

  “We’ll move to Belize.”

  “Madison Weiss! How could you say such a thing.”

  The women were ten feet apart in the yard, separated by a tray with ice water in a sealed pitcher. Madison crawled over and poured herself a glass, and watched Abby clip and trim, the purple veins snaking through her legs and the slight tremble in her hands. “I love you, Mom.”

  Abby Weiss stood up with a foot-long rose-bush branch in one hand and a pair of hedge trimmers in the other. She looked as if she had been slapped with a glove. Her straw hat was crooked and her 1993 Folk Fest T-shirt had ridden up, revealing her fifty-eight-year-old abs. “Did you just say you love me?”

  “I did.”

  “But you never…”

  “I just did.”

  “Well, frick.” Abby’s eyes glistened and she dropped the hedge trimmers and the rose-bush branch and baby-walked to Madison. They hugged on the warm front lawn, with the laughter and provocations and tinking glasses of nearby restaurant patios audible about them. “That made my day, sweetheart. It really did.”

  Madison squirrelled out of her mother’s grasp. “Get back to yo
ur roses.”

  “Gladly.” Abby wiped her tears with the Folk Fest shirt. “Gladly.”

  Her mother returned to the rose bushes and Madison hunched over the annuals bed again, digging deep into the soil with a decommissioned screwdriver. It was her job to battle the seemingly endless white roots of dandelions. She reached to the bottom of a particularly nasty one and heard a large vehicle apply its brakes. On her knees, she saw one white van and then another in front of 10 Garneau. Without a word, both Madison and Abby dropped their tools and hurried to the sidewalk.

  A small team of men and women in matching blue uniforms resembling hospital scrubs emerged from the vans with a variety of indoor and outdoor implements of improvement: buckets, sponges, mops, bleaches, rakes and shovels, garbage bags and touch-up paints in appropriate colours.

  Abby approached two deeply tanned men who stayed outside while the rest of the team went in the front door. Stunned and feeling oddly violated, the way she had felt on Monday night when Jonas slipped her VISA card into the door jamb, Madison hung back on the sidewalk.

  “Lovely to see you,” said Abby.

  The two men looked at one another.

  “What are you people doing here?”

  Now that Madison had grown used to the idea that Jeanne and Katie were in Mexico or Calgary, that Benjamin Perlitz had died in a pool of his own blood in the master bedroom upstairs, she was beginning to accept 10 Garneau as it was. Madison realized, on the sidewalk, as a cloud of tiny bugs formed over her head, that she had been taking a sort of secret pleasure in the tragedy; the sort of pleasure she once took in muscle injuries after cross-country ski races.

  The whole city had been implicated in the death of Benjamin Perlitz, just as it had been implicated in the murdered policemen, the thirteen-year-old girl found dead on the golf course, the Somali cab driver stabbed and stuffed into his own trunk, the pregnant wife beaten to death and abandoned in a ditch. The whole country and culture had been implicated. Yet this particular horror wasn’t just local. It was next door. Jeanne Perlitz was her gardening friend. Once, when she had locked herself out of the house, Jeanne had come into Madison’s basement suite and they’d watched a cooking show together. Madison had babysat Katie several times, while Jeanne and Benjamin went to the theatre, the opera, the ski hill in Whitemud Creek.