The Garneau Block (10 page)

 

27

another national tragedy

O
n Wednesday morning, Madison woke at six with hunger pains. In the last few days, her potent appetite for carbohydrates had pushed the nausea aside, but she wasn't sure which she preferred. It was still dark and her newspaper hadn't arrived yet, so Madison took her giant bowl of muesli and frozen blueberries in front of the television. Though it had been over two months since she struck caffeine from her life, she deeply missed the hopeful smell of fresh coffee, the hot cup
in her hands, the shock of clarity that came with her first sip.

Madison was rarely up this early, so she almost never saw the morning news from studios in New York City. On all three American stations, the hosts spent most of their time on celebrity concerns, upcoming movies, self-help books, and handy recipes, with only a whisper of actual news. Information breaks on the channel with the most attractive male host–balding-a-licious Matt Lauer–focused on missing children, runaway brides, bad weather in Georgia, and some important senator's gall bladder operation.

Madison knew missing children, bad weather, and runaway brides weren't important concerns, but in her fuzzy, coffeeless haze, she was powerless to turn the channel. It was junk, all of it, buttressed with expensive sets and fake importance that made her feel part of the American experience. But here in Canada, Madison didn't have the luxury of feeling superior.

On the night Benjamin Perlitz returned to 10 Garneau with a rifle and the divorce papers Jeanne had sent, the television and print media outlets interviewed Madison. They interviewed everyone but Jonas, who snored near some shrubbery.

The story of the hostage drama that appeared on television that night, and in the newspaper the next day, went like this: Benjamin was a full-time bureaucrat and a part-time day trader. When technology stocks crashed, he lost a pile of money. He took out a second mortgage on 10 Garneau and continued to gamble.

And lose.

By the end of 2004, everyone in the neighbourhood had noticed the changes in Benjamin Perlitz. He looked and smelled
desperate and ill, occasionally wandering into the Weiss backyard or curling up drunk on the sidewalk. Just before Christmas, his superiors in the government realized he was gambling online when he should have been working, and laid him off.

In January of 2005, to the delight of everyone on the block, Benjamin left. Even Jeanne was relieved, though she feared raising her daughter alone. Katie, when Madison babysat, said her daddy was “getting fixed.” There were rumours in the springtime, circulated by Madison's mother, that Jeanne was having an affair. This made perfect sense to Madison, as Jeanne was blonde and smart and almost six feet tall.

At some point in the summer, Jeanne sought a divorce from Benjamin Perlitz and that, really, was the whole story. Until he brought a rifle to 10 Garneau on the last night of the Fringe Festival.

The news channels had presented several versions of Benjamin's recent biography, which was expanded upon in the newspaper. It seemed artificially dramatic on television, with the piano music in the background, but Madison learned a lot about Benjamin's interests in golf, water skiing, snowboarding, and deer hunting. Quick shots of the tactical team sneaking through the front and back yards of 10 Garneau and the house next door, Madison's parents' house, were on all the national stations.

When the single shot echoed through the block, everyone stopped talking. No one knew if Benjamin had shot Jeanne or Katie, or if one of the snipers had shot him. The answer came less than a minute later, as Jeanne appeared in the window and, in an exhausted voice, announced that her husband was bleeding.

The sun came up and startled Madison out of her early morning doze in front of the American news. She wanted to go back to bed but she hadn't been out for a run in more than a week, and guilt was more powerful than fatigue.

Outside, in the flinty dawn air, Madison stretched her calves. As she did, a woman in shorts approached on her bicycle. At first, Madison thought the woman was on her way east, out of the university area, but she dropped her bike on the lawn at 10 Garneau. The canvas bag on the back of her bike said “Carol's Courier Service.” She pulled out a pile of letters and proceeded up the walkway.

“No one lives there anymore.”

The courier, presumably Carol, dropped the letter into the mailbox and stomped across the lawn. “Not my business.” She dropped an envelope into each of the five mailboxes of the Garneau Block, retrieved her bicycle, and started back in the direction of the university.

Madison walked across her parents' front lawn and removed the envelope from their box. It was from the university, addressed to “Occupant.” She opened the letter and read it, twice, and decided she wouldn't be going for a run that morning. Even though David and Abby Weiss didn't usually get out of bed until 8:30, Madison was determined to wake them. She didn't have a key with her so she began knocking, and yelling, and kicking the door.

 

28

temper

T
he morning sun filled the kitchen where David Weiss paced, from the refrigerator to the patio door, for over an hour. He was in the midst of calling every one of his influential friends in the
PC
party on the speakerphone. Nearly all of them pleaded helplessness. His final friend, the past executive director and a fellow Freemason, said, “David, listen. If we're going to be a party that's against government interference, how do we go about interfering?”

Madison and Abby, leaning on the wooden chopping island, jumped back as David picked up a Mandarin orange and spiked it on the ceramic floor. Garith, who had been at his master's feet, yipped and hopped and sprinted away. “That's bullshit! We interfere all the time! Who do you think you're talking to?”

After holding her breath for a few moments, Madison led Abby and Garith out the patio door and on to deck chairs. At first, her mother seemed frightened. Then, as a gentle breeze began to blow through the backyard, tinkling the chimes, Abby chuckled. “Those barbarians are great allies when they want something from you, a few extra hours to help ruin the environment or discriminate against homosexuals. But now that David's in trouble, they're abandoning him.”

Madison didn't know what to say to her mother. Since waking her parents and presenting them with the letter, she hadn't said much. There didn't seem to be any room for optimism.

The letter indicated that in the coming weeks a property evaluator would call for appointments. The appraiser would determine the current market value of the five houses in the Garneau Block, and the university would offer a ten-per-cent bonus. Thanks to the University Land Acquisition Act of 1928, this was non-negotiable.

“It'll work out, Mom.”

“How?”

This was exactly why Madison hadn't said anything. All she could do was recite empty and meaningless clichés. In the real world, nothing ever worked out. “Well, you know, Dad didn't join the party for his own personal gain. He…”

Abby chuckled again, in a particularly un-elementary schoolteacher sort of way. “Oh, my sweet naïve girl.”

The dog, having recovered from his scare in the kitchen, attacked a plush pig in the middle of the yard. Instead of talking about the university buying their house, bulldozing it, and transforming the Garneau Block into a nanotech or health sciences something or other, Madison and Abby watched Garith stalk and chew the pig. A brief gust of wind felled two or three apples from the tree, and Garith left his pink companion to sniff and growl at the fruit.

A helicopter flew overhead, on its way to the hospital. Now here was something Madison could say to make her parents feel better about losing their house: at least they didn't have spinal injuries or massive head trauma. She was just about to bring
this up when David opened the patio door and walked out onto the deck.

“Sorry I lost my temper in there.”

Abby crossed her legs and her arms, and looked away. Madison reached out, took her father's hand, and squeezed.

A chorus of distant lawnmowers filled the air, along with tinking silverware and laughter of the restaurant patios one block north.

David sighed, sat on the stairs, and told Garith to “Bring it here!” Garith picked up the pig and dropped it in front of David. He tossed it across the yard, into the side of the garage, and Garith bounded after it. “Do you two think everything happens for a reason?”

“Not the way you mean,” said Madison.

Her mother laughed her poisonous laugh again.

“I stood in there, after the last phone call, and wondered if the Big Guy isn't trying to tell us something.”

“Ralph Klein?” said Abby, crossing her legs the opposite way.

“The other Big Guy. I'm thinking maybe He wants us to move to Calgary.”

“What?”

“Maybe we can afford a condo in Calgary and a little plot of land somewhere warm. A place with uncontaminated water and stable politics. English spoken. That way, if the oil runs out and the northern world descends into murderous chaos, we can still grow tomatoes and papaya.”

Abby walked into the house. She locked the patio door behind her and pulled down the blinds.

“I don't think Mom likes that idea, Dad.”

“The university's wanted this land for years. Thanks to Ben Perlitz, property values and morale are down. They know we're weak.”

“Maybe if you got a lawyer.”

Slowly, a slouch worked its way into David's shoulders. “We're retired, pumpkin. We can't afford a lawyer.”

“Are you going to the Let's Fix It meeting tonight?”

“What's the point? If we're not going to live here, we'll just be Fixing It for the university. And I say a
curse
on the university. I hope Ben's ghost whips a demonic possession on their large intestines and they all get dysentery.” In his shorts, black dress socks and unreasonably tight United Way T-shirt, David went out into the yard and began wrestling with Garith. He flopped on the grass and held the dog over him. “Maddy, would you be upset if your mom and Garith and I moved to Cowtown?”

Madison felt a rumble in her stomach. The baby demanded more muesli.

 

29

death and the tropical typhoon, revisited

D
r. Raymond Terletsky wore his only suit to the morning meeting, with a white shirt and a plain black tie. Claudia Santino and the sleepy-eyed Dean of Arts, a South African man called Kesterman, had already met with Dannika and two witnesses
from the Waterpark, Paul and Jess from Death in Philosophy.

On Tuesday afternoon, after two hours of shameless flirting, Raymond had been waiting in line behind Dannika to slide down the Tropical Typhoon. On his way up the stairs, he had studied Dannika's behind. It was round without being chunky, though a few patches of endearing cellulite peeked out from either side of her white bikini bottoms.

As Raymond studied Dannika's backside, he had outlined Montaigne's views on death, and how these views might relate to North American society's current fascination with so-called extreme sports and activities. Let us rid death of its strangeness, he said, quoting the Frenchman. Let us come to know death, befriend it. Let us have nothing in our minds as often as death. At every moment let us picture it in our imagination, in all aspects. It is uncertain where death awaits us; let us await it everywhere. Premeditation of death is premeditation of freedom. He who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave.

“Or she,” Dannika had said, at the top of the stairs.

Raymond smiled. “Or she.”

The other students disappeared in that moment, along with his fatigue from climbing the stairs and the noisy teenage fact of the World Waterpark. Dannika smiled back at him, a warm and sweet and pure smile, and Raymond nearly lost all muscle power in his legs. She turned from him, toward the entrance of the Tropical Typhoon, and he did what any man in his situation would do.

Raymond slapped her little bum.

Seventeen hours later, Raymond waited to be called into Dean Kesterman's office. At home that morning, before she left
for work, Shirley had been typically wonderful. There had been a letter in their mailbox, from the university, declaring a hostile buy-out. Shirley wanted to fight it. She wanted to study the Land Acquisition Act of 1928, find the holes in the document. To Shirley, it was a horrifyingly inappropriate move considering the recent death of Benjamin Perlitz. Cynical and manipulative. Raymond had just watched her, as he might watch a curling match on television.

Dean Kesterman walked into the waiting area with his hand outstretched. “Raymond.”

“Dean. I'm so sorry about this awful misunderstanding.” Raymond hoped the Dean would stay with him in the waiting area outside his office for a moment, so they might discuss this like gentlemen. But the Dean didn't respond to the apology, or linger after their handshake. He adjusted his eyeglasses and led Raymond immediately into the largest office in the Humanities Building.

Claudia stood up from her seat at the small conference table. “Raymond,” she said. “Thanks for coming.”

“No, thank
you
. I was so pleased to be invited.”

Neither Claudia nor Dean Kesterman found this amusing, so Raymond laughed to encourage them. It didn't work. The Dean walked around to his chair, looked down at a couple of closed file folders before him, and sat. “Please,” he said, and motioned for Raymond to do the same.

There was, at that moment, a tightening sensation in Raymond's chest. He hoped, before the proceedings got underway, that he might suffer a mild stroke or heart attack. Sympathy, in that case, would trump punishment. The tightening passed
with a burp, so Raymond said, “Pardon me,” and sat in the stiff chair.

“You know why we're here,” said Claudia, as she opened the red file folder. “My office received a complaint yesterday afternoon, from a pay phone at West Edmonton Mall. We followed up on that complaint, meeting with the complainant and two witnesses earlier this morning.”

Complainant, thought Raymond. What sort of word was that for a philosophy professor to use? Obviously, her veins were filled with weevils and black ice.

The Dean took it from there. “These are serious accusations, corroborated by two witnesses, Raymond. But we'd like to hear what you have to say for yourself.”

“What did Dannika say?”

Claudia looked at the Dean for permission, lifted her chin, and said, “Quite simply, Raymond, that you slapped her in a private place. While she wore a bathing suit. The fact that you took your Death in Philosophy class to the World Waterpark without permission, using five hundred dollars of departmental petty cash, is grounds for disciplinary action, but sexual harassment takes us into a whole new league.”

The Dean tilted his head in thoughtful confusion, as though he were regarding a piece of abstract art. “Did you do it?”

Raymond had considered pleading academic freedom, claiming the slap was a bit of social science. In the office, however, this defence seemed dangerous. “Yes,” he said.

“But why?”

“I thought it was our little thing.” Raymond felt the muscles in his neck and shoulders soften.

Claudia shook her head and removed her eyeglasses. “Your little thing? Do you understand how demeaning it is, to slap a student on the backside?”

For ten or twelve seconds, Raymond held his breath and flexed every muscle in his body, hoping for an aneurysm. Nothing. He turned to his right, to the river valley out the Dean's window, bathed in glorious autumn sunshine. No clouds today and only a slight breeze. The institution that was about to sack him had also announced it was going to annex the Garneau Block and render him homeless. Unemployed, and with housing prices this high, he imagined the noisy beige condominium of his immediate future. “Are you going to tell my wife?”

For the first time since he arrived in the office, both Claudia Santino and Dean Kesterman smiled. They covered their mouths. The Dean actually snorted. A minute later, as Raymond walked to the Dean's north-facing window, Claudia outlined the terms of his dismissal.