The Garneau Block by Todd Babiak Page B

Nancy Cook to eat their German sandals when Noam Chomsky appeared at the fence. “Can we go home now?”
    â€œWhat’s your highest score, buddy?” Chris raised his voice toward jollity but didn’t actually look at his son.
    â€œI got 1,449.”
    â€œAs 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.”
    â€œThe pleasure was ours,” said Chris.
    â€œAbsolutely,” 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
    I n 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.
    â€œI 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 neverlaugh 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