The Garneau Block Hardback - 2006

Excerpt

1. The Coldest Morning in Recent Memory

Madison Weiss woke to the smell of scorched dust and nearly wept. Though she had lived in Edmonton her whole life, and knew well that with September came the first blast of the furnace, Madison felt the city — at least the five houses on her block — deserved a year off. Summer had ended poorly, by anyone’s estimation, and lying in her garage-sale bed, in the suite her father had built in the basement of 12 Garneau, Madison could see no romance in autumn.

The previous night, reading a new collection of nineteenth-century haikus, Madison had forgotten to close her curtain. Now the heatless sun splashed on the upper half of her bed, informing the engines of worry in her brain that a new day had begun. She would have preferred to construct a fort of darkness with her pillows, but she had to be at work in a few hours and the dizziness had arrived.

In the tiny half-bath, as she finished throwing up, Madison remembered:

First autumn morning
The mirror I stare into
Shows my father’s face.

And she threw up some more.

The secret to a comfortable pregnancy and an agreeable post-partum experience is regular exercise. Madison had learned this from Dr. Stevens, a former classmate at Old Scona. Of course, the fact that one of her teenage peers was a doctor, with an Audi and a husband and her own two-storey clinker-brick house overlooking the river valley, was reason enough to search the clinics of Edmonton for an aged gentleman with a British accent, loose jowls, and cold hands. But Madison trusted her doctor, Dr. Stevens, and by way of consolation she did have fat ankles and dry hair.

Madison put on her tights and shiny yellow running jacket. Now that the explosion of hormones in her body had begun its slow work on the size of her behind, Madison appreciated the utility of the rear flap that extended nearly to her knees. She ate a banana in the dimly lit kitchenette and watched a spider stitch its web outside the small window with a view of 10 Garneau’s mustard-coloured vinyl siding. Mid-banana, she wondered about her baby’s father, where he might be at this moment. Trois-Rivières? Prison?

At the door, Madison paused. The furnace had warned her that it would be the coldest morning in recent memory, so she took a moment to prepare herself. Madison closed her eyes and pretended it was February. In February a morning like this would be a miracle.

She stepped out into the September-February morning, breathed in the crisp air and hurried back inside. Television beckoned. Surely there was something on besides bland cartoons and that program where they talk about Jesus and ask for your credit card information.

Soon, Madison would be thirty. She knew, from literature and television shows, that this was no way for a thirty-year-old single mother to behave. So she burst out the door again and down the cobblestone path to the sidewalk. Madison did not linger next to 10 Garneau, with its grey flowerbeds and small jungles of dandelion and chickweed. Potato-chip bags and Styrofoam coffee cups had blown into the yard, and were now trapped under the apple and plum trees Benjamin Perlitz had planted. Benjamin Perlitz, once the most patient and committed gardener in the neighbourhood. A two-week-old strip of yellow police line, coated with dust, hung in the shrubbery. Madison glanced up at the second-floor window, into the darkness and silence of the room where he died, and turned away.

Leaves had already begun to change. Soon the North Saskatchewan River valley would be brilliant orange and yellow, and her morning jog would smell of decomposition and moist soil. The air was clean and the long shadows cast by neighbourhood trees were like old friends.

Madison turned to press against the mountain ash tree in front of her parents’ house for a calf stretch, and discovered a sheet of fresh white paper duct-taped to the bark. Since the night Benjamin Perlitz was shot and his wife and daughter disappeared into the secret grief of the city, Madison and her neighbours had become less likely to be surprised. But this was something. In all her years living under the regulatory shadow of the university, where it was strictly forbidden to affix advertisements, notices, and flyers on historically significant trees and lampposts, she had never seen such mutiny.

Laser-printed in capital letters, in a classic font: LET’S FIX IT.

Underneath, a date and time and the address for a downtown office tower. Madison knew instantly what Let’s Fix It referred to, and understood she was implicated in the “us” of the apostrophe s.

Across the street, the philosophy professor, Raymond Terletsky, ripped a sheet off the tree in front of his house, 11 Garneau.

“What is this?”

The professor crossed the street, waving the sheet like a flag. He was dressed unfortunately, in a turquoise sweater that didn’t quite cover the pink of his stomach. He was a tall man, with a slouch. His snug black pants, like all of his pants, displayed too much sock. Madison averted her eyes from Raymond Terletsky’s ensemble and saw that identical sheets of paper were duct-taped to every tree and lamppost on the Garneau Block.

“What is this?” said Raymond. “Is this new? Let’s Fix It?”

“They weren’t up last night when I came home from work.” Madison turned to study the sheets in silence with the professor.

He stood a little too close for her taste. The professor’s woody-fruity cologne was so powerful it threatened to give her a nosebleed. Raymond Terletsky smiled. “Someone is going to receive one hell of a fine for this.” He turned and raised his voice, though no one seemed to be about. “One hell of a fine.” Birdsong erupted, during which the professor waited for a response. Then he waved the sheet of white paper around with the back of his hand. “What does it mean, do you think?”
Pressing once more against the mountain ash, Madison released her left hand from the bark to point at the second-floor window of 10 Garneau.
“Well, obviously,” said Raymond. “But what does it mean?”

Media reviews

"Babiak’s highest achievement, though, lies in introducing us to the motley charms of the people and the city, whether they be bohemians who shop at Value Village or grandees who dine on bison with blueberry sauce at the Hardware Grill. If there really are a million stories in Champion City, let this one be the first."
— Quill & Quire

“The Garneau Block is screamingly funny. There is at least one laugh on every single page. This novel is fast-paced, savvy, bursting with vivid characters. A celebration of Edmonton! Satire that sucker punches everything sacred. Babiak comes out swinging.”
— Lisa Moore, author of Alligator

“As only the best writers can, Todd Babiak has taken a small patch of turf and, through sparkling satire and a passionate eye, made it a world. A neighborhood in Edmonton is about to get a lot of honorary citizens.”
— Ian McGillis, author of A Tourist’s Guide to Glengarry

“Babiak’s book will make you snicker and guffaw in public places. The Garneau Block is about an oddball cast of characters in a make-believe cul-de-sac in Edmonton, where life is one nonstop block party rife with political intrigue, neighbourly shenanigans, death, and romance.”
— Canadian Living

“...cleanly written, inventive, fast-moving, stuffed with zingers about everything from Satanists to cellphone ringtones, extremely affectionate toward its nutty cast of players, and laugh-out-loud funny. . . . Babiak’s highest achievement, though, lies in introducing us to the motley charms of the people and the city, whether they be bohemians who shop at Value Village or grandees who dine on bison with blueberry sauce at the Hardware Grill. If there really are a million stories in Champion City, let this one be the first.”
— Quill & Quire

“Mr. Babiak is blazing a trail — every city should have a story like this.”
— Alexander McCall Smith