Part 40 (1/2)

Thank you to my brave and supportive patrons at the Edmonton Journal, where this book had its first life as a daily serialLinda Hughes, Allan Mayer, Barb Wilkinson, Peter Maser, Roy Wood, and my other extraordinarily smart editor, Shawn Ohler.

Thank you to Edmonton. My original plan was to thank the small army of e-mail correspondents who followed The Garneau Block in the newspaper. People like Pete Gasper, Darka Tarnawsky, Dean McKenzie, and Annie Dugan. But the list was becoming very, very listy. Thank you, all of you, just the same.

Thank you to David Robinson at The Scotsman, and to the great Alexander McCall Smith for reading, and liking, an early draft.

Thank you to Gina Loewen, Avia Babiak, and all my other informal researchers: s.h.i.+rley Schipper for the medical advice, Duncan Purvis and Tami Friesen for legal concerns, Karine Germann-Gibbings for les corrections, Kirk Babiak for information about hunting p.r.o.nghorn, Nola Babiak for tips on mothering.

Thank you to Anne McDermid and Martha Magor for seeing the potential in this, and in me.

An excerpt from Todd Babiak's new novel, The Book of Stanley.

1.

Stanley Moss silenced the Cuban music and glanced at his watch. Frieda looked up at him and sighed. Apart from her sigh, the only sounds in the house on 77th Avenue were the turning pages of her novel and the random plunks and creaks of furnace and settling softwood. Outside, the neighbour's modified Honda Civic accelerated from its parking spot and whined down the avenue.

”Why does he do that?”

”I don't know, Stanley.”

”Why would someone pay extra for a noisy m.u.f.fler? The word itself: m.u.f.fler.”

Frieda didn't respond. The novel she was reading for her book club, as far as Stanley understood, concerned life in India. It seemed every novel she read was about life in India, with poetic descriptions of vegetation. In the silence, as the minute hand slid forward again, Stanley considered pursuing this with Frieda: the political and social foundations of her obsession with India.

The spring sun was about to set, sending an orange light into a corner of the house. It illuminated the dust, revealed the window streaks, and ill.u.s.trated the particularities of his wife's beauty: small green eyes, long fingers, a larger than average nose.

Five past seventhe hour had now officially pa.s.sed. Stanley shrugged. ”That's our boy.”

”Why are you surprised?”

”Because in the e-mail he promised to call.”

”He promised, he promised.”

Their son, Charles, lived in New York City. Charles was an investment banker with one of the most prestigious firms in America. When they visited, once every two years at Christmas-time, Charles attempted to be a good host. But he rarely had a free moment between seven in the morning and ten at night, even on Christmas Day. Stanley and Frieda rode around the park in a carriage pulled by steaming white horses, while the big bells rang. They went to museums and restaurants and delis recommended by guidebooks, and partook of Broadway shows that met Frieda's standards for musical theatre. Stanley and Frieda accepted that being a proper host demanded skills that Charles had never acquired; it had to be good enough that they were in their son's city, spending his money. At times, however, times like these, Stanley attempted to be angry with Charles instead of hurt. But Stanley understood he was the architect of his son's flaws.

”So what should I do?”

”E-mail him again.”

”How do I go about phrasing it?”

Frieda closed her novel about life and vegetation in India and slid a finger across her bottom lip. ”Dear Charles. h.e.l.lo, how is your money doing? Good? Good. So, remember that shortness of breath I mentioned? Turns out I have advanced cancer. I wanted to tell you over the phone but you're too busy to call us back.” Frieda took a deep breath and looked up at the white stucco ceiling. Stanley followed her gaze to a cobweb above the framed map of Clayoquot Sound. Finally, she finished. ”I'm dying. Love, Dad.”

Instead of arguing with Frieda about Charles and his maddening insensitivity, Stanley lifted the remote control and turned the Cuban music back on. ”Which song were we at?”

Frieda dabbed at her eyes with the pink handkerchief she kept handy and shook her head. It didn't matter. Neither of them spoke Spanish, so the lyrics would not become repet.i.tive. ”Put it on shuffle.”

”I don't like shuffle. It ruins the artistic progression.” Stanley did not wait for Frieda to respond. He started with song number one.

The oncologist and his family doctor had agreed that radiation and chemotherapy could prolong his life but would make Stanley miserable with nausea. Instead, they prescribed some drugs to dull the pain in his chest and aid his breathing. There was planning to do. The doctors figured Stanley and Frieda had a few months before things turned ghastly. Why not take a nice trip somewhere?

Frieda was furious at the medical establishment for not catching this sooner, at Stanley for smoking until 1991, at the oil and gas industry and the Alberta government for environmental pollutants that might have sparked the illness, and, most profoundly, at Charles for being Charles. ”We should have given him up for adoption. Or fed him to jackals at birth.”

”Frieda.”

”He defines selfishness.”

”He doesn't know.”

”And at this rate he never will.” Frieda stood up from the chesterfield and dropped her book on the coffee table. ”Let's order Korean and drink champagne until we pa.s.s out.”

”That's the spirit.”

It took some time for Stanley to get out of his leather club chair. The tumours in his lungs had spread, and his body's hopeless reaction to them left little strength for standing from a sitting position. Once he was up, he pulled his wife in for a hug. Stanley waited until he had enough breath, and then said, ”Let's go to the computer this instant and book a holiday.”

”No.”

”To Havana or Delhi or wherever you want.”

Frieda shook her head. ”You'll get diarrhea on the first day and die. Gosh, that would be wild fun for both of us.”

The song, a slow blend of acoustic guitars, hand drums, and horns, was a sultry provocation. Stanley forced Frieda into a dance. ”We can lie about on a beach somewhere and read. The ocean air will open my lungs. I'll be cured by cheap papaya.”

”Stop talking.”

For the rest of that song and half of the next one, Stanley and Frieda danced between the umbrella plant and the dining-room table.

Frieda held his hand, which had gone cool and moist. ”What time is your appointment tomorrow?”

”Two.”

She asked something else about the nature of palliative care but Stanley was not listening. There was a Korean restaurant in town and he wanted Frieda to phone it, but the name had fled from his memory. A result of the tumours that now lived in his brain, or possibly a side effect of the drugs. Something. It started with a B. Bap?

”Is it designed to prolong your life?” she said. ”Or do they just make death a more pleasant experience?”

Bim. Bul?

Frieda left the room and returned with a bottle. In the moment it took for her to strip the foil and wire away and ease the plastic cork out of their thirteen-dollar champagne, Stanley felt a buzz of antic.i.p.ation. It reminded him vaguely of that instant before a teenage kiss or the first time he held his son. The cork popped, bounced off the ceiling, and rested in front of the stereo. Champagne gushed and fell on the hardwood floor with a slap.

”Our final champagne.” Stanley smiled.