That Dammed Beaver, page 6
“Batter up” Moose cried. Then he lobbed a tennis ball at Wally who promptly hit it back with his nose. More clown-white was applied. Dusted in corn starch, I looked more like Bela Lugosi than any show-ring belle.
Spectators in lawn chairs lined the show rings.
Chihuahua owners carried their dogs in vest pockets to keep them from disappearing in patches of long grass.
A Yorkshire Terrier passed by, carried aloft as though it was a stuffed town.
Elegant Afghans paused to have their paws groomed before stepping daintly into the ring.
Apparently sensing the odds of an “accident” occurring in such a large number of dogs, Wally commenced howling and barking.
Reluctantly, he followed me into the show ring, squirming to check out the dogs behind him. Then a child on the sidelines shouted, pointing at Wally: “Mom, it’s the dog that hits balls with his nose!”
Wally heard the word “ball” and promptly went into a crouch, waiting for the games to begin. I tried to straighten him out and instead he flopped down on all fours.
I looked down the row of dogs. Professional handlers in tweed suits held skinny leases over still-as-stone, perk-eared Bull Terriers.
“Round the ring,” said the judge.
Wally lurched to his feet. The idea is for the dog to show off his gaits. But Wally was having none of it. He wanted to sniff the grass for underground moles before he took another step. Behind us, a line of dogs jogged in place like finely tuned dressage horses.
Wally jitterbugged all over the ring somewhere between a trot and a gallop. He jumped in the air and kicked out his hind legs. The crowd loved it, especially when the lease became tangled around my leg, and Wally barked while I twirled around, trying to free myself.
With an arch of his finger, the judge called us for an inspection. Beads of sweat on my brow, sunglasses hung askew.
“Teeth, please,” said the judge. I wrested Wally’s jaws open, revealing a Beggin’ Bacon strip glued to his incisors.
The judge patted Wally’s head and a cloud of corn starch poofed in his face.
At the tail end of the examination, the judge tried to check Wally’s breeding equipment. Wally suddenly reared back and gave the judge such a look as though to say, “What the hell do you think you’re doing, you pervert?”
“To the corner,” said the judge curtly. I felt as though I was tugging an anchor. I went the wrong way.
“Miss, diagonal, please,” called the judge. I turned too suddenly and tripped. Wally stopped my fall by jamming his head in my face, followed by a full body licking.
“You two are a pair, aren’t you?” noted the judge.
We waited in line while the other dogs performed beautifully. My nose was bleeding. Nothing a makeup sponge covered in clown-white makeup couldn’t absorb.
Bored, Wally decided to dig a hole, apparently to China.
To distract him and spare the spectators from flying clods of dirt, I pulled out his favorite thing in the world – the lacrosse ball.
Bingo, he butted it out of my hand where it rolled under the belly of an American-bred Bull Terrier whose owner had travelled half a continent to see his dog win a ribbon. The Yankee dog lunged backward in an unseemly fashion. So did the judge, whose heel slipped on the ball, propelling him into the lap of a large lady who may have had a Chihuahua in her vest pocket.
We did not win that day. By some miracle, Wally placed third. The crowd applauded. I wiped my brow, smearing clown-white across my forehead.
“Looking more and more like your dog, Miss,” said the judge when he handed me the ribbon.
“Pervert,” I thought.
That was the end of Wally’s career as a show dog.
The American breeder whose dog won the class asked me if I might be interested in “harvesting” Wally so that he could add his spirited genetics and fine sense of balance to his kemnnel’s breeding program. My eyes rolled and the sponge fell away from my nose.
Outside of the ring, Moose took Wally on a tour of the grounds. Man and dog trotted in a straight line.
A crowd of children gathered and Wally shot tennis balls off his nose until it started to rain.
Our makeup melted and that was fine with Moose. I went back to worrying about that second cut of hay, and Wally went back to soccer and searching the barnyard for moles.
KING LOG IN EXILE
MARGARET ATWOOD
After he had been deposed by the frogs, King Log lay disconsolately among the ferns and dead leaves a short distance from the pond. He’d had only enough energy to roll that far: he’d been King of the Pond for so long that he was heavily waterlogged. In the distance he could hear the jubilant croaking and the joyful trilling that signalled the coronation of his celebrated replacement, the experienced and efficient King Stork; and then – it seemed but a mini-second later – the shrieks of terror and the splashes of panic as King Stork set about spearing and gobbling up his new subjects.
King Log – ex-King Log – sighed. It was a squelchy sigh, the sigh of a damp hunk of wood that has been stepped on. What had he done wrong? Nothing. He himself had not murdered his citizens, as the Stork King was now doing. It was true he had done nothing right, either. He had done – in a word – nothing.
But surely his had been a benevolent inertia. As he’d drifted here and there, borne by the sluggish currents of the pond, tadpoles had sheltered beneath him and nibbled the algae that grew on him, and adult frogs had sunbathed on his back. Why then had he been so ignominiously dumped? In a coup d’etat orchestrated by foreign powers, it went without saying, though certain factions among the frogs – stirred up by outside agitators – had been denouncing him for some time. They’d said a strong leader was needed. Well, now they had one.
There’d been that minor trade deal, of course. He’d signed it under duress, though nobody’d held a gun to his head, or what passed for his head. And hadn’t it benefited the pond? There had been a sharp upturn in exports, the chief commodity being frogs’ legs. But he himself had never been directly involved. He’d just been a facilitator. He’d tucked his cut of the profits away in a Swiss bank account, just in case.
Now the frogs were blaming him for the depredations of the Stork King. If King Log had been a better king himself, they were yelling – if he hadn’t let the rot set in – none of this would have happened.
He knew he couldn’t stay in the vicinity of the pond much longer. He must not give in to anomie. Already there were puffballs growing out of him and under his bark the grubs were at work. He trundled away through the woods, the cries of amphibian anguish receding behind him. Served them right, he thought, sadly and a little bitterly.
King Log has retired to a villa in the Alps, where he is at present sprouting a fine crop of shitake mushrooms and working on his memoirs, one word at a time. Logs write slowly, and log kings more slowly than most. He has engaged a meditation guru who encourages him to visualize himself as a large pencil, but he can only get as far as the eraser.
He misses the old days. He misses the lapping of the water in the breeze, the rustling of the bulrushes. He misses the choruses of praise sung to him by the frogs in the pink light of evening. Nobody sings to him now.
Meanwhile the Stork King has eaten all the frogs and sold the tadpoles into sexual slavery. Now he is draining the pond. Soon it will be turned into desirable residential estates.
THE LESSON
ANDREW BORKOWSKI
Miss Kalyn spins up the front walk, the kerchief tied tight over her head as if to keep it from flying off. The quick glances left and right, the sunglasses pressed high to the bridge of her nose, shoulders hunched to her earlobes; from her lookout post behind the front curtains, Marlene Mienkiewicz reads the piano teacher’s body language and wonders what today’s story will be. Miss Kalyn clutches an avocado purse to her side, so it won’t be a repeat of the time she left her bag on the Rexdale bus (the driver, acting on the orders of his superiors in the Masonic Lodge, had driven erratically in order to disorient her into leaving it on the seat). It could be another stalking incident involving the pianist Glenn Gould (whom she believes has never forgiven her for almost defeating him at the Kiwanis Music Festival of 1944 and who retired from the concert stage in order to follow her around town in his car). Or she might have had another brush with the Mafia, (of which she is convinced her Italian neighbour is a member).
Miss Kalyn stops at the door and waits without ringing (because doorbells emit ultra-high frequencies that destroy the hearing) for Marlene to open up.
“How do you do?” she says, as if they were meeting for the first time, then brushes past into the dark hallway, ripening the air with her bad perfume. Miss Kalyn removes her kerchief, allowing tresses of unwashed brown hair to slide down to her shoulders. She does not remove the sunglasses.
“Tell me, Mrs. Menkiewicz,” she asks with a nod to the front door. “Do you see a Muskox outside?”
Marlene goes back to the window peeks through the sheers.
“I’m sorry Miss Kalyn, I’m afraid I don’t quite know what you’re looking for.”
“A Muskox. Those cars that all the hooligans are driving.”
“You mean Mustangs?”
“Yes. Those. I’m sure one of them has been following me. All the way from Mississauga.”
“I don’t see one.”
“You can’t see from there. You must go outside and look.”
Marlene goes outside and looks. No Muskoxes, just the bulky Oldsmobiles and Buicks favoured by the factory workers who live on Galway Avenue. Marlene can’t believe she’s doing this. Across the street, Mrs. Schwilpo glances up from the carpet she is beating over her porch railing and fixes Marlene with squint. Mrs. Schwilpo dismissed Miss Kalyn as her kids’ piano teacher long ago. So did all the other families who had engaged her. Now everyone is waiting for Marlene to do the same.
“There’s nothing,” she says as she steps back inside. “Nothing unusual, just our neighbours’ cars.” A tremor passes over Miss Kalyn’s features. Her lips purse and release in a hint of the concert hall smile that once graced the stages of Warsaw, Krakow, and Prague. Reassured, she is ready to begin.
Marlene knots her hands in her apron and looks for somewhere to look.
“Alex is late again,” she lies.
“Your son makes a habit of this lateness, Mrs. Mienkiewicz.”
A sly timbre colours Miss Kalyn’s voice. She understands this exercise, has worked through its steps many times.
“Alex is a busy boy. He’s on the student council, he’s in a play, he has his sports…”
“Un jeune homme engagé. So like his father. I understand. But you must teach Alex to set his priorities,” Miss Kalyn instructs her. “You must be firm.”
“Yes, of course, Miss Kalyn. You’re right.”
Miss Kalyn sweeps into the front room and lights on her usual chair beside the piano.
“Well?” Miss Kalyn prompts. “Shall we begin with Blaise, then?”
“Of course. Blaise.”
It’s a long trudge up to the landing outside her younger son’s third floor room. The poster on his door asks “Suppose They Gave a War And Nobody Came?” and its Day-Glo festoons make her dizzy when she stands too close. She clears her throat, giving the boy an extra second’s warning so he can spirit away anything she might not care to see, then knocks.
“Yup,” he calls. She pushes open the door. Blaise slouches in the beanbag chair by the window. His legs, sheathed in flares of purple corduroy, extend to the windowsill where his clunky shoes bob to the music thudding in the speakers on either side of him. At his side is a large juice tin filled with yellow sand. The statue of the Blessed Virgin he was given for his first communion is planted head down in the sand, the rim of its inverted base smudged with nicotine stains.
Say nothing, she tells herself. Say nothing about the statue. Say nothing about the cigarette butts that she knows are buried in the tin. Say nothing about the briny male odour that permeates the room. Say nothing about the comic books and music magazines overlaying the untouched homework on his desk. Say nothing about anything and maybe her son, her baby, will do this one little thing. For her sake.
“Miss Kalyn is here, Blaise.”
“How come? We’re not taking lessons anymore. Dad said.”
“I know. But – well – she’s here, so. Perhaps, we could just humour her a bit longer?”
Blaise cranes around the back of his chair, his features pointed with mischief under the fall of his long shag cut.
“You haven’t told her? You were supposed to tell her. Mum, this is so telepathetic it skittishicizes me! You still paying her?”
“We can’t just brush her off like that, Blaise. She’s a distinguished pianist.”
“She’s a head case.”
“You’re the only students she has left. She needs the support of her community.”
“Since when are we the community? We don’t even speak Polish. You know what the community’s doing? They’re laughing at us ’cause we’re the only one’s who’ll let her in the house. ”
Marlene points to the photo hanging over his bed.
“Miss Kalyn was good enough for him, the piano player in that band you’re so crazy about.”
“Nicki Bury? You can’t even ask her about it. She just freaks when you say his name.”
True. Miss Kalyn sees the success of her famous pupil as a personal humiliation.
“Hey Mum, I got an idea. Why don’t you take the lessons?”
“Me? Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Okay, so you gonna pay just to listen to her loony speeches? How long you gonna let it go on?” Blaise asks with a pimply leer.
Back on the landing Marlene pauses and tries to reconcile the young cynic in the beanbag chair with the white-blonde toddler who loved trains and wept when she hung his stuffies on the line to dry after he took them swimming in his splashpool. How did this happen? she wonders. How have I ended up so alone?
She finds Miss Kalyn at the front window, scanning the street for Muskoxes.
“I’m afraid Blaise isn’t feeling well again,” she says. “He won’t be down.”
The piano teacher seems not to hear. She keeps her eyes to the street. Striking eyes. Green, tinged with flecks of gold. If only she’d learn how to apply her eyeliner.
“Alex shouldn’t be long. I’ll make some tea.”
Marlene retreats to her kitchen. The vegetables lay unpeeled on the counter. Thad will just have to wait for his dinner, even if it makes him late for his evening shift at the Parish Trust (or the Air Force Association, the Legion, or some pensioner whose taxes he’s agreed to do). It’s him who started this. Why isn’t he here to finish it? The bump and scrape of furniture in the front room tells her that Miss Kalyn is once again rearranging the furniture around the piano – to correct “dissonances” in the room’s acoustics.
“So that’s where she got to!” said Liz Hejnal, Thad’s assistant at the Trust, when someone mentioned that Zosia Kalyn was giving piano lessons. Liz had been in St. Boleslaw’s choir when Miss Kalyn was the church organist. “They fancied themselves,” she said. “The whole fandamily.”
Liz told them how Miss Kalyn’s parents came as political refugees before the war, which meant they had to have been communists. The father spent all his time in the greasy spoons on Copernicus Avenue, holding forth as if he was still in the cafes of Warsaw while his wife worked shifts at Dempster’s bakery. Liz said that Zosia was an obvious talent from the get go and nothing was good enough around St. Bolesław’s. She won all the competitions, topped her class at the conservatory, almost beat out Glenn Gould at the Kiwanis.
Then she was discovered by Alloysius Ardaszkiewicz, the pianist and hero of the resistance. Marlene saw him at Massey Hall with Thadeus on one of their first dates. They were introduced to him at the reception afterwards, the shock of white hair swept back from his temples, fingers still hot from the performance as he took up her hand to kiss it. After that tour, he spirited Miss Kalyn off to Warsaw at the age of seventeen.
“The old goat,” said Liz. “Him in his sixties, and her barely finished convent school. He takes her back to Poland, tutors her, gives her the big buildup, and then, on the eve of her first big concert tour, he croaks. A stroke, though Zosia’s dad swore up and down Copernicus Avenue that he’d been poisoned. Who knows? The old boy had enemies for sure, and once he was gone, the knives came out for Zosia. The official critics dumped all over her. That’s when she went off the deep end.”
And now it was this: the long bus rides in from Mississauga, students who despised her, and parents who catalogued her eccentricities to fuel the firestorm of gossip that followed her around the neighbourhood.
“Like letting a wild animal into your house,” said the mother of one former pupil as they stood in line outside the Crippled Civilians store one Thursday morning
Miss Kalyn comes into the kitchen clutching the windup clock that belonged to Marlene’s great aunt Lex.
“Mrs. Mienkiewicz, you must never, never leave such items on your piano.”
“But Miss Kalyn. It’s not electrical.”
“All the same, Mrs. Mienkiewicz. It is metallic and invites the possibility of fields which could magnetize your piano.”
Marlene plucks the clock from Miss Kalyn’s grip and says, “I will try to remember that.” Marlene learned early on that the room with the piano had to be cleared of electrical devices. The record player, the adding machine, and the old tube radio that was a wedding present all had to find new homes. Thadeus’ roll top desk had to be locked after Miss Kalyn was caught going through it looking for paper clips, staplers, rulers, and any other metal object that might cause an unwelcome vibration during a lesson.
While the tea brews, Marlene steals a glance into the front room to monitor the progress of the inspection, but the teacher has suspended her search. She stands at the old upright, her hands resting on keys that are yellowed and chipped. The fingertips flutter and twitch but don’t produce a sound. Marlene has only heard Miss Kalyn play once, two years ago, when, frustrated with Alex’s slow progress on a Chopin prelude, she shoved him aside and launched into a rendition of the composer’s Etude in C Minor.
