The Garneau Block

by Todd Babiak

  The man opened his mouth in apparent horror. “Pick my…pardon?”

  “Please ignore him,” said Rajinder. “He is pretending to be a nuisance.”

  “Oh.”

  Jonas followed Rajinder down the ramp. “So are you gonna ask Madison to–you know–have a monsoon wedding?”

  “Go get a table.”

  “Well, answer this. Do you know how to build IKEA things?”

  Rajinder opened his nostrils.

  “It looks easy, Raj, but it’s really hard.”

  “Stop inhabiting an imbecile and help us.”

  Jonas left Rajinder and the bald stranger near the front door of 10 Garneau and returned to the truck, where he accused some volunteers of wasting company time.

  91

  small objects

  In the living room of 10 Garneau, Abby and Madison sat behind two computers. They catalogued each small object of mythic power according to a number, a description, the owner’s name, and a sentence about its resonant properties. Raymond Terletsky, who discovered he was born to be a curator, greeted each donor at a small desk in between the kitchen and living room.

  “It’s a bird,” said a tiny, elderly woman. She held the ornamental blue jay in her quivering hands as though it would fly away if given the chance. “A local bird.”

  Raymond had already written her name–Gladys Poon–and a description of the object. What he had to extract from her was its meaning. “Why is it important to you, and Edmonton?”

  “Well,” said Gladys Poon. “You see, I feel for it.”

  He pretended to write that down. “Where did you get the small bird?”

  “My husband bought it for me sixty-two years ago. Every year at this time we would put it on top of our Christmas tree.”

  “Instead of a star?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does Christmas mean a lot to you?”

  “I’m Buddhist but I love the lights, giving presents, sharing time with friends and family.”

  “So the bird…”

  “The bird has soaked up sixty-two Christmases in our house. My husband has passed now, and the children have their own families, their own children and grandchildren. The bird is not lovely enough for any of their Christmas trees.”

  Raymond lifted his pen in triumph. “Soaked up sixty-two Buddhist Christmases in the house of Gladys Poon.”

  “Arthur and Gladys Poon, if you please.”

  Raymond made the adjustment and took the bird. He shook the tiny hand of Gladys Poon and guided her to the door. “I thank you, Mrs. Poon, and the entire city thanks you.”

  “You’re very welcome.”

  Abby and Madison looked up from their computer monitors to say, in tandem, “Thank you, Mrs. Poon!”

  As the volunteer greeter helped Mrs. Poon out of 10 Garneau, Raymond tore the sheet out of his ninth notepad and placed it in the in-tray of the Weiss women. He took the blue jay’s sticky number, 9012, and pasted the number to its underside. The bird would either sit on one of the shelves with its sentence of resonant properties or wait in the storage area downstairs for its two weeks on display.

  Raymond’s job as curator was becoming increasingly difficult. More and more Edmontonians were lining up with their objects of mythic power, and the house was beginning to feel small. The university president and her entourage would arrive for a tour of 10 Garneau on the eighteenth of December, so between now and then Raymond had to decide on an opening exhibit. The collection of items had to represent the whole of Edmonton, its history and its contemporary social and political culture, the peculiarities of its people. The Great Spirit had to be perfect, even though it would lack the buffalo head–for now.

  The bird would stay upstairs.

  Screaming electric saws and twenty hammers, multiple footsteps on the second floor, the echoing voices of men and women, filled the house. Each room had to be transformed into a gallery space. Due to an odd confluence of noise just as the next donor entered, Raymond had to introduce himself with a scream. He was so accustomed to this ritual that he hardly noticed the man before him, with a copy of Henry Kreisel’s The Betrayal in a gloved hand, was Dean Kesterman.

  Dean Kesterman removed his right glove and offered forth the novel. “Signed first edition,” he said.

  “Do you have a moment to sit down, Dean?” Raymond pointed at the chair. “We have a bit of a formal process here. How long were you waiting?”

  “An hour and a half, two hours. But there’s a musician out there singing and playing guitar, and a woman gave us coffee and puffed wheat squares. I’m a little bit jumpy.”

  Raymond numbered the book and wrote the Dean’s name. He tried his best not to appear nervous or shameful. “You think we have a chance here?”

  “Not a hope in hell.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  “Between you and me, certain people are whispering there are better places for the Isley Centre. But they aren’t the right people.”

  Raymond enunciated. “I need a sentence from you that explains the resonance of your object.”

  “I hardly need to defend a Henry Kreisel first edition.”

  “It’s part of what we’re doing here.”

  The Dean removed his hat and scratched his temple. “Let’s see. Expert use of the North Saskatchewan River as symbol. An urban Edmonton novel with elements of the immigrant experience, which is really the Canadian experience. The death camps–”

  “Sorry, Dean, Not good enough.”

  Dean Kesterman sat up in his chair. “Well. Well, I didn’t know I was going to be judged.”

  “How about a quotation?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to give you, Raymond.”

  “No, a quotation from the novel. Do you remember what it’s about?”

  “Of course I do!”

  Raymond assured the Dean he would take care of it, and escorted him to the door. In tandem, Abby and Madison looked up from their computer monitors to say, “Thank you, Dr. Kesterman!”

  The volunteers led two tubby and nervous adolescent boys into the house. Raymond stood in front of the picture window and surveyed the scene before him. Workers putting a new facade on 10 Garneau. A seemingly endless line of donors. Three women and a man behind a table borrowed from the community hall, brewing coffee and singing along with the guitarist. Beyond them all, his house across the street, his house again, the warmest place in the world.

  92

  fitfamily

  The floor of the abandoned health club was strewn with dust, glass, Molson Canadian cans, Burger King detritus, nails and screws, and smashed fluorescent light tubes. It looked to David as though a coil of human feces had been left on the boot mat in the entrance.

  “What is that?” Abby looked down at the coiler.

  “Just keep walking, honey.”

  “It didn’t look like the Hell’s Angels clubhouse a month ago.”

  David found the rest of the lights and the health club, 20,000 square feet in a strip mall south of Bonnie Doon, buzzed alive. The white tile floor threatened to burn David’s retinas. “Do you have the equipment list? We better make sure when they cleaned up they didn’t clean up.”

  Still dazed by the sight of the coiler, Abby waved a faxed sheet of paper and approached a stairclimber. She plugged the machine into the wall and began stepping. The machine whirred. “Hooray.”

  David plugged in a bank of stationary bicycles and elliptical trainers. “These work too.”

  They inspected the machines, counted the barbells, and met in the middle of the room. Abby buried her face in David’s shirt. “Can we hire people to clean this place?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  For the next hour they explored the club and strategized. They drew crude plans and, finally, swept the floor. Abby unplugged the machines and David turned out the lights. In the Prius, fear struck David like a bout of food poisoning. “What if we’ve done the wrong thing?”

  “We haven’t.”

  “H
ow can we move out of our house and build FitFamily at the same time?”

  “We’ll find a way.” Abby reached over and scratched the back of David’s head. Her voice took on that authoritative yet reasonable tone, that new tone. “Flabby locals, with their under-stimulated children, need us so badly. The engines of capitalism must be stoked.”

  David shook his head and parroted her: The engines of capitalism must be stoked. As much as he understood the professor’s oddly chaste dalliances with younger women, at least once every day David Weiss congratulated himself for marrying Abby and never needing younger, dumber, less beautiful women to satisfy…what?

  They crossed the Whyte Avenue bridge over the Mill Creek Ravine and snaked through the east Strathcona neighbourhoods. The houses for sale were the same houses for sale a week previous, $350,000 dumps rented out to stoners who didn’t shovel the snow off their sidewalks. David was about to criticize the prices, the houses, and the stoners who lived in them when Abby did it for him.

  “Vancouver East.”

  David waited to turn back on to Whyte. The street lamp glow highlighted his wife’s pretty face. “I am so lucky.”

  “And don’t you forget it.”

  “Is the Perlitz house going to be ready?”

  Abby smiled. “Even if the whole block has to work all night on Friday.”

  “I’m not letting Madison stay up a moment after midnight.” David was curious about his daughter and Rajinder, as they were spending time together again, but he was afraid to ask Madison. Since she became an adult, David had taken a let her tell me if she wants to tell me approach to parenting. “Has she said anything about Rajinder?”

  “Not a thing.”

  “Are they?”

  “I don’t know, David.”

  “She’ll tell us when she’s ready. She’ll do that, right? Tell us?”

  “The girl’s six months pregnant. It would certainly be a bizarre courtship. I just hope she doesn’t get her hopes up and, you know.”

  David started north toward the block. “It’s not so bad, getting your hopes up. What’s the alternative?”

  Every night for five nights it had been the same; they accepted objects of mythic power until 10:00 p.m. and then sent everyone away with a goody bag of puffed wheat squares and a tiny plastic container of hummus. Few, if any, people complained.

  Environment Canada was saying a genuine blast of winter weather was on the way, but David couldn’t feel it. Neither could the dancing crowds in front of 10 Garneau. One of the Sugarbowl DJs had set up on the newly painted porch, designed to look straight out of 1905, and played music that sounded to David like it ought to be a cartoon soundtrack.

  Abby had already gone inside 10 Garneau so David pulled his hood over his head and walked and danced among the Edmontonians in the lineup, hoping to learn a thing or two about voter sentiment. To his disappointment, no one talked about politics.

  Near the front of the line David almost walked right into Barry Strongman. Barry held a small medicine pouch in his hand and stared straight ahead with a satisfied smile. An assistant was on a little silver cellular phone, waving his arms and frowning.

  In his suit and wool overcoat, Barry Strongman looked calm and confident. He held the medicine pouch with great care. Standing in soft snow in the middle of the lawn, David’s next instinct–to hide behind a spruce tree and whip a snowball at the back of Barry Strongman’s head–faded into something like pride.

  93

  the symphony orchestra

  The violins rose, danced with one another, and then, after a dramatic silence and a mournful plea by the concert master, faded into an echo. It had been so good, so pure and perfect and insightful, Madison couldn’t help herself. She clapped. Even when it was clear she was the only person in the Winspear Centre clapping, it took a few stern messages from her brain to stop her hands.

  Rajinder spoke into her ear. “Most people do not clap between movements.”

  “Why?”

  He paused for a moment. “I do not know. It is an old European tradition I suppose. You save all clapping for the end.” Rajinder opened the program and showed Madison the Mozart concerto was split into three parts–Allegro aperto, Adagio, and Tempo di Menuetto.

  “Whoops.”

  The conductor and musicians prepared to begin again. “How could you have known? This is your first time.” Rajinder leaned close and said into her ear again, “So, do you like the symphony?”

  “I’ve wasted so many nights watching TV when I could have been here.”

  The violins started anew. Someone nearby in the VIP seats said, “Shush,” so they shushed.

  Madison had not looked forward to her night at the symphony. She wasn’t permitted by her mother or by Rajinder to say this aloud, but she felt like a rhinoceros in her stretchy black dress. Since she was always tired, she also worried about falling asleep. But this was a special night for Rajinder, as he was surrendering his anonymous status and becoming a named patron of the arts. Madison knew it made him anxious and she didn’t want him to be alone.

  Now that she understood, Madison saw it would be impossible to fall asleep at the symphony. This was not like sitting at home with the newspaper or cleaning the kitchen while listening to the Kronos Quartet. While the musicians played, Madison dreamed with her eyes open. And her dreams were so vivid she wondered if it was all a hormonal fluke or if someone in the lobby had slipped a tab of acid into her Perrier.

  At the end of the Tempo di Menuetto, Madison joined the rest of the Winspear Centre in clapping. Someone in the floor seats even said, “Woo!”

  The public “Woo!” had always vexed Madison. Was the woo designed to make the artists feel good about themselves and their performance, or was it really all about the woo-er drawing attention to him or herself? It vexed Madison further that she thought up all her best Psychology 101 essay topics fourteen years after taking the course.

  The conductor left the stage while the musicians prepared for the final concerto. For the twentieth time that evening, Rajinder leaned over and asked Madison if she was feeling all right. His eyes flashed down at her belly, just as everyone’s eyes flashed down at her belly.

  What did Rajinder think when he considered her belly? Madison hoped he saw her baby, not the baby of Jean-something. With her brain properly stimulated by Mozart, she hoped Rajinder would one day see it as their baby. If humans can design violins and write concertos and build halls like this, surely they can forget about Jean-something. She took Rajinder’s hand. “How are you feeling?”

  “Apprehensive,” he said.

  The composer-in-residence of the orchestra, a sinewy middle-aged woman in a shiny blue dress, stepped out. The loud clack of her heels on the stage seemed to embarrass her, so she hurried.

  At the podium, the composer introduced herself. Nancy Barislawski. From Philadelphia, originally. She looked to her right, to the box where Rajinder and Madison sat, and talked about being summoned to the thirty-eighth floor of Manulife Place. She talked about 10 Garneau and Rajinder Chana’s impossible request. To design a concerto that said everything there was to say about the mythic power of Edmonton. In a month!

  Nancy shrank from Rajinder in mock-terror and went on to say how much she enjoyed the impossible project, and how she hoped it would help restore the neighbourhood to its true owners. The audience applauded politely and Nancy introduced Rajinder. She asked him to stand and then she asked his fiancée and Garneau Block neighbour Madison Weiss to stand as well.

  Fiancée? The word, its French threat, hung before Madison like a flock of red bats. Rajinder turned and gripped her hand. “I am sorry.”

  “No. It’s…” Madison sat down, her cheeks on fire.

  “A mistake. A mistake. I will fix it.” Rajinder, still standing, waved at Nancy Barislawski. She stopped talking about the music everyone was about to hear and turned to Rajinder. “Excuse me,” he said. “But Madison is not my fiancée.”

  Nancy Barislawski opened her m
outh and squinted.

  “She is only my girlfriend thus far.”

  “Oh, I apologize,” said Nancy.

  She seemed prepared to continue discussing the concerto of mythic power when someone below them, perhaps the woo-er, said, “Thus far? What does that mean?”

  Rajinder didn’t seem to know if he should respond. “I mean she is my girlfriend currently. But someday, perhaps, if she feels like we can maybe…”

  “Are you waiting for a full moon or something?”

  Madison wanted to crawl under her seat. On stage, Nancy Barislawski shifted her weight from one high-heeled shoe to the other. Someone in the balcony yelled, “Go on, ask her, already.”

  “That girl looks ready to me,” said a gentleman with a Slavic accent.

  “Woo!” said the woo-er.

  Rajinder shook his head. Madison pulled on his arm, wanting him to sit down and save himself from this, but he appeared to feel obliged. He addressed the crowd: “What if we would prefer to do it alone?”

  A woman called out, “You got a ring, kid?”

  “I do happen to have a ring, yes.”

  The audience erupted in applause. Several woo-ers joined in. Rajinder looked down at Madison again and shook his head. “This must be horribly awkward for you.”

  It was and wasn’t. Aside from the afternoon talk-show spectacle of the thing, Madison was comforted by members of the audience saying what she herself felt. Ask her, propose, woo. Rajinder went down on one knee, pulled out a small jewellery box and said, “Will you?”

  “Will I what?” Madison bit her finger.

  “Marry?”

  The orchestra broke out in a quick, impromptu “Here Comes the Bride” as Madison nodded.

  Once Madison and Rajinder were in their seats holding hands, their hearts unified in dangerous velocity, and everyone had stopped clapping and laughing, Nancy lifted the microphone again. “Upstage city. Sheesh. I only wrote a concerto here.”

  94

  the terletsky-wongs