The Garneau Block

by Todd Babiak

  “It may be,” said Shirley. “It worries me more that he was playing with the toy people earlier, making them talk.”

  “It’s on! Get up here!”

  Everyone hurried upstairs and settled into their seats. The story began with a montage of Edmonton, and a few words about the debt-free provincial government. The surplus, the university, the new mayor, the sprawl, the centennial year, the Garneau Block.

  Next came file footage of August 28th, from the site of the Fringe Festival to Benjamin Perlitz leaning out the upstairs window of 10 Garneau. Screams and demands. Nightfall and, eventually, the single shot echoing through the neighbourhood.

  String music played.

  “I forgot to invite Jeanne,” said Shirley. “Damn it.”

  Following the gunshot, the documentary veered into the past. In 1906, Premier Alexander Rutherford chose river lot five, Isaac Simpson’s farm, on the south shore of the North Saskatchewan, to be the site of Alberta’s university. Over the course of the twentieth century, the university grew until it overshadowed the adjacent Garneau neighbourhood, named after the fiery, Riel-supporting Métis who first homesteaded the land.

  The producer walked through the block at night, lit eerily by the street lanterns, and said, “Some will tell you the ghost of Laurent Garneau still haunts these streets.”

  Jonas laughed. “Laurent Garneau. That’s a made-up name.”

  “Who told her the ghost stuff?” said Abby.

  Raymond raised his hand. “I might have.”

  Madison was having trouble concentrating on the documentary, which was wholly sympathetic to the Garneau Block. Though she was moved by her father, who became teary-eyed during his interview, when the producer asked what it was like to raise a child around here.

  “God damn it, they said they weren’t going to use that part,” he said, crushing his plastic wine glass.

  Madison was having trouble concentrating on the documentary, and on her father’s protests, because the baby inside her was executing its first somersault.

  88

  an alliance of book clubs

  Contrary to Raymond’s vision, nothing revealed in the CBC documentary about the Garneau Block saved the neighbourhood. University officials stated that if the buffalo head were already on the site, they would reconsider. As there was currently nothing on the land that warranted cultural status, either by the city’s or the university’s criteria, the Garneau Block would become the Ernie Isley Centre for Veterinary Research by fall 2007.

  Which was, by the way, quite a wonderful thing for the city, the province of Alberta, and for meat lovers around the world.

  Friends called from all over the country to tell David Weiss they had seen him bawl. The newspaper put him on the front page. Both national papers interviewed him and all the local television outfits came to do their own stories.

  During his morning walk with Garith down Whyte Avenue, strangers recognized David. An elderly woman stopped him in front of the Granite Curling Club and told him he was a “real cutie.”

  One of the men who slouched near Second Cup with a girl who looked to be about twelve, next to a KICK A PUNK FOR A BUCK sign, pointed at him. “Hey, are you the weather guy?”

  All of this irritated David. Not only had he been forced to become a Liberal and buy a Toyota, now he was a crybaby. So far he hadn’t told any of the media that he didn’t mind moving nearly as much as his wife and neighbours.

  While Abby and Madison scouted properties in North Glenora and Mill Creek with the real-estate agent, David hid out at home to pack. There was so much to do, as they had to get out of the house and prepare the parents-and-kids spa business for a grand opening in mid-April, but he was frozen. Not bored, but something.

  In two hours of packing he filled precisely half a box of paperbacks.

  In the office upstairs, underneath shelves of books, was a collection of photo albums. Instead of stacking Saul Bellow next to Margaret Atwood, he flipped through pictures he hadn’t looked at in ten years or longer. The first classes he taught at Harry Ainley, with his beard. Family picnics at Emily Murphy Park before his own mother and father died, trips to the mountains, Madison’s firsts–birthday, poop in the potty, bathing suit, kitten, tooth, playschool, concussion. Hidden in the drawer of an old armoire, David even found a few suggestive photographs of Abby, taken in the late 1970s.

  David was pleased to be alone, as the photographs inspired his second crying fit in a week. His father’s straw hat, stained by his father’s sweat, made him cry. Two-year-old Madison, with her sand bucket and tiny plastic shovel, made him cry harder. He lay on his back on the upstairs carpet and looked up at the moulded ceiling that would soon twist into rubble and he didn’t even bother to wipe the tears.

  There was a knock at the door. David hopped up and snuck behind the office door.

  Another knock.

  Due to an overhang that protected the front porch, David couldn’t see who was at the door. So he crept down the stairs and crawled across the living room floor. The wood hurt his knees so he travelled, instead, by modified slither.

  Twenty women stood in front of the house, marching to keep warm in the snow.

  David went into the bathroom to splash water on his face and pat his eyes dry. Then he straightened his shoulders, cleared his throat, and opened the front door to a stirring of the crowd. The moment he appeared before them, the women began to applaud. They shook their heads and smiled. “We love you!” said one.

  “Do you have the right house?”

  An attractive black-haired woman nearest him on the porch, wearing a long purple jacket and a fluffy purple hat, nodded. “We have the right house, Mr. Weiss.”

  David noticed each of the women carried an item in her gloved hands. There was a bucking horse carving, an antique camera, a woven blanket, a stuffed Richardson’s ground squirrel, a tiny rocking chair, a framed map of Edmonton. “Can I help you?”

  “We’re an alliance of five book clubs,” said the woman in purple.

  “That’s great.”

  “Independent of each other, we were struck by the story on CBC the other night. And then the newspaper.”

  “They weren’t supposed to show the crying part. I could take legal action.”

  “Mr. Weiss, we were all so touched.” The woman in purple adjusted the old teddy bear in her arm and placed her right hand upon her heart. “Thank you.”

  Before him, the women applauded again.

  “But they weren’t supposed to–”

  “We decided, in our small way, we had to help you poor people.”

  “Actually, the university’s giving us ten per cent above market value for the house and prices are already at a historic high, so I don’t know if poor is the right…”

  A camera flashed. And another. While he was speaking to the woman in purple, the crowd had grown. Men had arrived. The photographers seemed like professionals, with khaki vests and bland looks on their faces.

  Across the street, Rajinder stood on his porch in bare feet. David shrugged at him and said to the woman in purple, “What are you doing here?”

  89

  mob rule

  Madison was making her thirteenth batch of mulled wine when Jeanne Perlitz arrived with flowers. The CBC story had outed Madison as pregnant, and Jeanne wanted to congratulate her. She also wanted to understand what was happening to the neighbourhood and why Rajinder had left nine messages on her answering machine that afternoon. Strangers were packed into the four inhabited houses of the Garneau Block, their collected voices a roar within the walls, and more arrived every minute.

  “Who are all these people?” Jeanne had to scream. “What is this?”

  Abby took over at the stove so Madison could lead Jeanne into the only empty part of the house–her suite downstairs. Edmontonians in parkas high-fived them on the way. Next door, in Jonas’s backyard, upwards of fifty people gathered around the fire. The local urban radio station had set up speakers in the alley, and playe
d a slow R&B song about rumps, a ruckus, and, of course, making love to you, girl.

  In her tiny living room, Madison caught her breath. “Where’s Katie?”

  “With my sister. What’s going on?”

  “They watched the documentary and read the paper. They’re here to help.”

  “Looks and smells to me like they’re here to get hammered.”

  Madison had to sit. In three hours she had cooked ten litres of mulled wine and accepted over two hundred congratulations. Folksy wisdom and clichés abounded. Strangers assured Madison she would be a terrific mom, and smiled coyly as they said having a child would “totally change her life.”

  The house creaked. On the old couch, Madison wondered if the floors could give out. Jeanne looked up and bit the tip of her pinky finger, evidently wondering the same thing.

  “The university says your house doesn’t count as a cultural site.”

  Jeanne sipped the plastic cup of mulled wine Abby had forced upon her. “They’re right about that. It’s the house where a man died, and that’s about all it is.”

  Madison lay on her side, with a pillow between her legs. “Sorry. I’m just really sore from standing.”

  “I understand, believe me. Katie was over nine pounds.”

  “Vive la France!”

  “Don’t buy it when people tell you it’s magical. Get the epidural early.” Jeanne inspected the photos on Madison’s mantel. Two were of Katie. Something happened upstairs that inspired applause. “This is all quite nice but I don’t see what any of it has to do with my house.”

  “A small group of women, in a book club, bought the professor’s argument about mythic power.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “So they decided to bring over things that, to them, held mythic power.”

  “I don’t understand what that means.”

  Jeanne picked up a piece of petrified wood Madison had found on the shore of the North Saskatchewan River when she was a kid. Madison pointed at it. “Like that.”

  “Wood.”

  “Wood’s just an example.”

  “I still don’t understand.”

  “The university says they’d build the Ernie Isley Centre somewhere else if the buffalo head was already on your property. There’s no time for that, so these people want to make your house into a cultural site now. Today. So that the university might reconsider.”

  Upstairs, someone started singing “Jingle Bells.” Soon it was thunderously loud, and not only in the Weiss house. The entire block reverberated with “Jingle Bells,” and when the song stopped it started again.

  “All these people brought something?”

  “Yep.”

  “How did they know?”

  “Word spread. It was on the six-o’clock news, every channel.”

  Jeanne sat down again and sighed. “So what am I supposed to do?”

  “I don’t know. You can either open your house and let these people leave their…”

  “Wood.”

  “Or you can say, ‘forget it,’ and go back home. Take the university’s money, move to Buenos Aires, and forget this ever happened.”

  “I can’t forget this ever happened. That’s my problem, Madison.”

  “So stop trying. Let the rest of the city help you. Let your house be, I don’t know, something.”

  “It’s a bad place.”

  “Make it a good place again. I remember when it was a good place.”

  Jeanne slapped her glass of wine on the coffee table. “This is insane.” She started up the stairs. “I’ve told you people I won’t do it. And I won’t do it!”

  The door slammed at the top of the stairs and Madison eased herself up. If she hadn’t been pregnant and somewhat queasy from the mulling of wine, she might have chased Jeanne. She might have begged or enlisted her father to squeak out a few tears.

  She drew a glass of cold water and peeled a banana. Through every one of her windows, all she could see were feet and legs. Hiking and snow boots. Madison finished her banana and started upstairs to find her father. Outside her door, bodies flowed down the icy concrete walking pad toward the street. Madison stood behind her door, unable to open it.

  Finally, as the crowd thinned, she snuck outside. There was Jeanne, on her front porch, surrounded by people, opening the door. Jeanne turned and saw Madison over the sea of heads and she paused. On the verge of a smile, Jeanne turned the key and walked inside. The people followed.

  A teenage girl, in a knit toque and puffy down jacket, started past Madison. As she did, the girl opened the lid on her white wooden music box. A tiny ballerina spun to The Blue Danube Waltz.

  90

  mythic furniture

  Rajinder piloted the rented moving truck into a strip mall on Gateway Boulevard. It was an unusually warm December day, with a sweet-smelling wind blowing in from the distant western hills, so Jonas had the window open in the passenger seat. High in the cab of the truck, which came with a CB labelled “Don’t Touch,” Jonas pretended his can of root beer wasn’t diet. He pretended he cussed regularly and had trouble with his little lady back home. Darlene.

  When Rajinder pulled the key out of the ignition, Jonas hopped out and pretended he was pot-bellied and bowlegged. He cussed quietly about Darlene, who never did the damn dishes.

  “Did you hurt yourself?” Rajinder stopped at the entrance to Shangri-La Exotic Home Decor. “And who are you speaking with?”

  Jonas walked normally. “It’s a political exercise I’ve invented. Over the course of the election campaign, I want to inhabit the voters.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I’ve never been a handyman, a mover, a roofer, a digger, a roughneck. I’ve never been a secretary or an accountant or a housewife. But I have to appeal to all of them.”

  Rajinder did not seem to know how to respond. He opened the door to Shangri-La and allowed Jonas to lead him to the bookshelves and cabinets. To fully express Edmonton’s diversity, they wanted to display the small objects of mythic power on furnishings from around the world. Nordic, yes, but African and Indonesian, too.

  This was their fourth trip in the rented moving truck in as many days, as 10 Garneau was to be completed by the weekend. Rajinder and Jonas had moved the Perlitz belongings into storage. Then they had bought lumber, paint, and other building supplies for the volunteer carpenters and designers. Now, Rajinder and Jonas were driving all over the city to buy tables, counters, shelves, and hanging baskets.

  The owner of Shangri-La offered them tea, coffee, or hot chocolate while they browsed. But they didn’t have time to browse. Jonas chose two cabinets and Rajinder picked two matching bookshelves. They parked at the back of the strip mall and stuffed new items in with other shelves, tables, 1930s stereo boxes, and extended glass display cases.

  Back in the van, Rajinder reached out and squeezed Jonas’s arm. “Are you Jonas or are you inhabiting a garbage man or somesuch? At this moment?”

  “At this moment, Jonas.”

  “Good. Now, since you are Madison’s best friend, this may feel like an imposition or a betrayal of her trust. But please. Tell me. How does she feel about traditions like marriage?”

  Rajinder turned out on to the street. Jonas leaned into the passenger door and smiled. “You’re blushing, Raj.”

  “No, I am not.”

  “You are.”

  “Remember, I am brown. If I were to blush, it would be invisible to the eyes of a white man. Please, do me the favour of answering the question without drawing undue attention to it.”

  Jonas crossed his legs and said, “Hmm.” It pleased him to torture Rajinder. “Let me see now. Madison, Madison. Marriage, marriage. I know she wanted me to get married after the bill passed in the summer, but of course I had no one to marry. Still don’t. Never will, most likely. It’s hard for someone like me because I’m picky. I don’t want to be with a funboy or a homophobe or a German. I can’t explain why, but I have an aversion to Germans. And the town of Blackfald
s. It’s not a word I like to say: Blackfalds. Now Granum, however, is another thing altogether. I like saying Granum. Say it with me, Raj: Granum.”

  “No. Answer my question.”

  “Granum, Raj.”

  “We have a saying in Punjabi: thusi kalay kuthay kahn.”

  “No. Granum.”

  “Here you go then: Granum. Please enjoy it.”

  The sun broke through the clouds and reflected off puddles, concrete, cars and trucks, old hotels, discarded Tim Hortons cups. Both men gasped and reached for sunglasses. “Madison is all for marriage. If the right person asked, she would even convert to Sikhism.”

  Rajinder smiled. Driving north on 109th Street, past the big church on the right, he shook his head. “That would be unnecessary.”

  “How are you feeling, Raj, about the pregnant thing? She’s getting huge. Every time I see her now, all I can think is, Wow. Girl, you definitely had sex.”

  “The physicality of it is extraordinary. I cannot imagine going through this myself. Men are so very lucky. Our burdens are light.”

  “Unless you’re born fruity.”

  “Indeed, fruitiness is a heavy thing to carry.”

  Rajinder pulled into the Garneau Block and, to Jonas’s delight, backed on to the sidewalk in front of the Perlitz house. “Beep, beep, beep,” said Jonas, in time with the truck. Workers stripping the vinyl siding from the house and donors standing in line with small objects of mythic power parted to make room.

  “Hello, good-looking people,” said Jonas, to the crowd in front of 10 Garneau.

  The good-looking people greeted him. A small group of men hurried across the yard to help carry the furniture inside. Jonas didn’t want to lift another heavy item as he had to go door-to-door in the morning with his new red pamphlets. A strained lower back would make him one grumpy Liberal.

  Instead of lifting half a table or a bookshelf, Jonas jumped inside the back of the truck and pretended to be a manager. He furrowed his eyebrows and looked at his watch, said, “God damn it,” and made disdainful remarks about the volunteers. To the bald man who prepared to lift one of the Shangri-La cabinets with Rajinder, he said, “Come on, come on. I’m not paying you to pick your nose here.”