The Complex Arms Read online

  “You loved the swings the most,” she would tell him while he puffed on a Montecristo No. 2 with a thoughtful nod. He would let her ramble on, acting like a used-car salesman who, desperate for a sale, pretended to be interested in what potential customers shared with him. Although she was eighty-two and suffered from numerous conditions, her mind was razor sharp, still there.

  “Must you smoke those vile cigars, Barney?” She would fan the smoke away with her purse, exaggerating a cough like a patient dying from tuberculosis, but he would always ignore his mother’s requests, toss an ugly stogie in the sandbox, and light another one. She would clean up after him, as she always did, retrieve the dead cigars, and chuck them into the nearby garbage can.

  “Barney, the children. The children …”

  And he would always say, “Ma, you didn’t have to do that,” and she would reprimand him like he was twelve again, caught smoking behind Mr. Schmidt’s hardware store in Bruderheim.

  Barney never had the decency to escort his mother to her apartment after one of their jaunts. He’d sit in the car chewing on another unlit cigar and wait as she struggled to make her way with her cane to the front door of the building. He was that kind of son. Once in the lobby, Mrs. Lapinberg would ring Adeen’s doorbell and Adeen would come scurrying to guide her home.

  “Where’s that moron?” she’d fume, and Mrs. Lapinberg would say, “He takes after his father. May he be resting in peace wherever he may be.”

  It was not unusual for tenants to find Mrs. Lapinberg sprawled outside on the cement walk, inside the doorway, in the corridor, or even in front of her own apartment door. “Bubbe down! Bubbe down!” Derrick, like a town crier, would alert the building whenever Mrs. Lapinberg had one of her episodes.

  They were both loners, she and Derrick, becoming a team over the summer months — adopted grandmother and grandson. They looked out for each other, held hands, and waited for the ice cream man to roll down the street on his adult tricycle with its stash of various summer lickings in the icebox behind the bike. The annoying bell lured kids like baby mice racing toward cheese in a mousetrap. Still, Mr. Softie was music to everyone’s ears that summer of intolerable heat, when everyone and everything seemed to be dying.

  “You sure you can have ice cream, Mrs. Lapinberg?” Derrick would tug her cotton floral skirt. She took so many pills for so many health issues that she wasn’t sure herself.

  “Pshsst!” she would hush him. “I can have once in a while. Don’t tell Barney.”

  Adeen would often find the boy and his bubbe sitting on the front step, each licking a purple Popsicle, their favourite flavour.

  The tenants shrink back to give Mrs. Lapinberg breathing space.

  There’s Jack, dressed as his alter ego, Jackie, in a silken blue Japanese kimono, decorated with spatters of paint from a morning spent creating another watercolour portrait of dying flowers, lilies this time. He was returning with his mail — an assortment of bills, his monthly dose of art magazines, and the New Yorker — when he felt the swoon of a large package dropping behind him. Mrs. Lapinberg had just entered the lobby and was reaching out for Adeen’s doorbell when she became disoriented and fainted.

  Zita, Derrick’s mom, who lives on the second floor, saw Mrs. Lapinberg go down, saw the body splayed on the floor like an art installation gone wrong.

  Shylene was scooting down the stairs to see what was keeping Frosty when Mrs. Lapinberg tumbled, right there, like Mother Mary at her son’s crucifixion.

  Rosemary was returning from her daily visit to the outpatient psychiatric clinic at the Royal Alexandra Hospital downtown when she was confronted by the mob of tenants.

  Payton, the Jehovah’s Witness, servant to Jehovah, keeps tolling his bell in sync with Mr. Softie’s ice cream truck as it passes by, sounding the alarm that the end is near, or that it is the last chance for one of Mr. Softie’s Popsicles or for Mrs. Lapinberg to repent and save her Jewish soul, if not her son’s.

  “Everyone, get on your knees,” Payton orders, but no one obeys his directive. Instead, all eyes gawk in silence at the downed body. There is a concern for an old woman who is beached in the lobby with such predictability.

  Cody, the teenage boy who lives on the fourth floor with his father, Wayne, skips down the stairs with a punk beat and leaps over Mrs. Lapinberg as though he were jumping a hurdle in an Olympic meet.

  “Show some respect,” Adeen calls out in a commanding, no-nonsense tone of voice, “or I’ll tell your father.”

  But Cody is oblivious to the commotion blocking his exit; his flashy boom box blares throughout the building as he manoeuvres his way out the front door, without even a polite nod to the unconscious Mrs. Lapinberg.

  Jack adjusts his hearing aid and says to nobody in particular, “Kids today!”

  Payton blasts his angry bell in Cody’s direction as though he were conducting an exorcism. “You are doomed, son, doomed to the fires of hell, I tell you! Come back to be redeemed.”

  “Cut it out, Payton,” Adeen says. “What did I tell you?”

  Mrs. Lapinberg is now stirring, moaning, mumbling, “Sorry, sorry.”

  Frosty gives her a hand; her fingers spring to her forehead as though the brain cells are about to escape and she needs a moment to hold them back.

  “I’m so embarrassed,” she says, barely audible.

  Jack returns to his apartment to complete his masterpiece of dying lilies. Zita drags Derrick upstairs for another dinner of canned spaghetti, his father still up at Fort Mac, not home for another week. And then there’s Wayne, Cody’s dad, just returning from work at the carpet warehouse. He missed the excitement. Rosemary has already disappeared into her apartment, but Payton continues sounding the alarm while Mrs. Lapinberg blocks her ears and says, “Make him stop, Adeen. Make him stop.”

  “Frosty, I’ve been waiting for you,” Shylene has nuzzled beside him and whispers from the side of her mouth.

  “I heard that,” Adeen says to Shylene as she guides Mrs. Lapinberg back to her apartment.

  “It’s still uncomfortable in my place, Adeen. Frosty said he’d adjust my new window air conditioner because he didn’t get it right the first time.”

  “Sure.”

  Shylene ignores the comment and lopes up the stairs. Everyone can hear her slam the door.

  “I’m so sorry, so sorry to cause so much trouble.” Mrs. Lapinberg is on her feet now.

  “No trouble. I’ll call Barney and have him come over.”

  “Oh no, dear. Then I’ll really be in trouble.”

  “All right, Mrs. Lapinberg. Do you want to come over for supper later?”

  Frosty is standing nearby, consuming the dialogue.

  “Oh, thank you, Adeen. That would be lovely. Just don’t tell Barney I fell again.”

  Everyone has scattered like cockroaches to their usual living places, and life resumes. For the moment, any more drama has been averted for another day.

  Mrs. Lapinberg, in a tremble of profuse sweat, is determined to stand firm against the assault of age, despite swollen ankles heavy like matzo balls.

  Frosty picks up the half-empty glass of orange juice, shakes his head, and turns to Payton, who says: “The end is near. The end is near. Be prepared.”

  “Fuck off, Payton.”

  ADEEN

  That was the core of them. My tenants. Good people all, carrying their quirks and human frailties to my doorstep. I gave them what they needed: love, companionship, even food and drink. A bed sometimes if I found them on the street in tatters. I didn’t tell the Swanks. They’d have fired us for sure. And I would never have heard the end of it from Frosty.

  Tenants came and went, but those stuck to me like Velcro. Unshakable. I guess they all had their reasons. It sure wasn’t the building. Oh, it looked new from the outside, but it was constructed in a hurry, below standards, like a lot of things out here. Pop-ups, I call them. One minute there’s nothing there, then they appear. Out of nowhere. Of course, it doesn’t take long
before they begin to fall apart. Every ten years or so it seems these buildings have to undergo major repairs. I could see already where there were water stains on some of the ceilings on the top floor even though they were plastered with stucco to conceal any moisture leaks. But still, whatever savings at the start, the Swanks would have to pay in the end. Do it right the first time, I say. What do they care? They can declare bankruptcy and move on. Write off the Complex Arms. Well, I’m just saying. May not happen.

  Nothing lasts here in Alberta from what I can see, not even marriages. People live in buildings that are like temporary shelters. Then when they make enough money, they move on up to new developments: Beaumont, south of here, or St. Albert just north of Edmonton, where the hoity-toity live. Pretty there, but it’s pretty here, too. They talk about the crime rate in Mill Woods, but it’s all over, even in St. Albert. Guy got shot the other day over a drug deal. Small paragraph in the Edmonton Journal, but if it had happened in Mill Woods, well, the headline would read that we’re living on the south side of hell. What do you expect from a community with a population of almost one hundred thousand, the size of a small city?

  There were lots of problems. A tiny piece of siding goes missing from a corner near the balcony and never gets fixed. Sloppy work. So in the winter months, ice melts and causes damage to interior walls. Everything is cheap aluminum; nothing like the solid red brick or stone in Montreal that lasts for centuries.

  Frosty told me that because of the cold weather here, the bricks would crack after time, so aluminum and stucco are the way to go. Complain to the Swank Property Management Group and they just nod their heads, Yeah, yeah, we’ll fix it, and then they conveniently forget.

  I tried to keep my tenants comfortable. Maintain their apartments, maintain their lives. I couldn’t just turn my back on them. My tenants had fragile spirits.

  Anyhow, that’s the story there.

  THE NEW TENANT

  Frosty waits until Payton’s bell fades into nothingness and then checks his mailbox since he is right there in the lobby. The building settles into a sigh of relief that all is well after another day of Mrs. Lapinberg, or is that the sound of Frosty moaning and groaning over the influx of bills and circulars that now spill onto the floor?

  “Damn you,” he says, stooping over to gather the junk mail.

  A raspy voice from behind accosts him. “Who do I see about the vacancy?”

  His eyes flash toward a saucy young girl whose luminous, milky-white skin is now casting a moonlit glow in the dim lobby. She is leaning against the entrance door, one hand fisted on her hip, poised in faded denim overalls, the fabric clipped, chewed, leaving a fashionable fray of threads at midthigh, like minishorts from the sixties. Frosty is soaking in the freshness of this tart-looking girl. A sideways glance down her open bib reveals she is braless, shirtless, and blessed with substantial bouncy breasts. A straw cowgirl hat perches over the fluff of bleached cotton-candy curls that coil at her ears like commas. She knows men find her almost impossibly irresistible. She is radiant, a sexy portrait from a bygone era recalling courtesans lingering by the “batwing” doors that separated them from the “proper ladies” passing outside the dance hall saloons. She is that youthful Marilyn Monroe in Bus Stop. That old black magic has everyone still in a spell.

  “That would be me, Frosty Whitlaw, or my wife, Adeen Whitlaw. Here she comes now.”

  Adeen has just left Mrs. Lapinberg when she spots Frosty chatting with temptation. She approaches the duo, her face a scowl, ready for battle.

  “You got dirt on your face,” Frosty interrupts to avoid any embarrassing confrontations.

  Adeen’s immediate reflex: hand to face. Any pending skirmish now doused.

  “Oh, oh, leaky pen. I was writing the grocery list earlier.” She remembers Irene’s marker attack and smudges the offensive markings with her fingers, leaving a blush of Gothic black that accentuates her cheekbones further.

  “MOMMAAAA” echoes throughout the hollow hallway. All eyes are on Irene’s sliding Bermuda shorts, now hugging her ankles, a long midi T-shirt hiding her diaper. She stands at attention for a moment, a palace guard waiting to be relieved from duty. Poke her shoulder and she will sway to one side as though asleep. Suddenly, she awakens in a spooky, horror-film kind of way, hands in constant motion. Ping pinging, her fingers flick, and then the clapping.

  Adeen forgot she had left the door open.

  “MOMMAAAA. MOMMAAAA.”

  “You better take care of Irene and get your face cleaned up before people take to talkin’.” Frosty points with his chin in the direction of his stepdaughter.

  “Who’s the chick?” Adeen says nodding toward the possible new tenant, who is now fidgeting with impatience.

  “She’s interested in an apartment. I’ll take care of her,” he says in his best western drawl.

  “I bet you will.”

  Brushing by the girl as he moves toward Adeen, Frosty manages to just skim his hairy arm over the girl’s chest. The prickling sensation penetrates to the follicles of each hair, like erotic electrical currents.

  “You got the keys?” he asks Adeen.

  “Who’s the retard?” The abrasive cowgirl is unsympathetic and curt.

  “That’s my daughter and her name is Irene.”

  Already she has rubbed Adeen the wrong way. Adeen is no longer embarrassed by Irene’s public tantrums or displays of infantile behaviour, and she is prepared to defend her child against every slight, real or imagined. Everyone in the building looks out for Irene and Mrs. Lapinberg.

  “If you feel uncomfortable with my daughter and her mental challenges — because they are challenges — you can find yourself a cardboard box and live in it. She has other talents.”

  “Like what?”

  “She paints abstract art. She’s a genius, really. That’s what Jack, another tenant, who paints, told me.”

  “I suppose one man’s art is another man’s wallpaper.”

  Adeen glares. She really doesn’t want this character occupying Jan’s available apartment but the economic boom is now a bust and vacancies are plentiful. Property managers are luring new renters with various incentives. Edmonton is a city of transients, but luckily, there is a stable group of tenants in the building; some, like Mrs. Lapinberg, Payton, Jack, and Zita are permanent fixtures, who’ve lived there since the Swank Property Management Group bought the Complex Arms. But the market is beginning to change.

  “We’re full.”

  “Now, now, Adeen. You know that ain’t so.”

  “I’m being honest here, okay. I like to get these things out of the way pronto. You have a problem with my daughter?”

  “Whatever.”

  “All right.” Adeen sighs. “What’s your name?”

  “Blue Velvet but everyone calls me Velvet.”

  “Blue Velvet? Now that’s a blast from the past.”

  “Blue Velvet Coburn is my full real name,” she says, emphasizing each syllable like a note on the musical scale.

  “Really?”

  “I know it sounds made up, but my parents were hippies and my mom was pregnant with me at this outdoor concert in Sault Ste. Marie, Dick Clark’s Caravan of Stars, I think. Her water broke when Bobby Vinton came onstage.”

  “Yeah, Bobby Vinton would do that to any girl,” Adeen says.

  “Apparently, I slid onto the ground. They were sitting on a slope far back from the stage, and just as he started to sing ‘Blue Velvet,’ I decided to make my appearance. My mom said it was like he was the midwife. She was his biggest fan and hated that my early arrival made her miss his concert. I don’t think she ever forgave me. It was in the local newspapers the next day. ‘Baby Born While Bobby Vinton Sings “Blue Velvet.”’ I was going to change my name, but what’s the point? It’s a conversation piece, right?”

  “Okay, Velvet. Frosty, you go take care of Irene and bring me the keys. I’ll show the apartment.”

  “Ah, come on, Adeen.” Frosty is sulking like a tw
o-year-old.

  “Frosty.”

  “Shit.”

  Nonetheless, he obeys, walking back to the apartment in that halting manner familiar to cowboys who have sustained leg injuries.

  “You from the Soo you said?” Adeen turns to Velvet.

  “Yep.”

  “Guess you know that the Soo is the lousiest place in all of Canada to get a lift if you’re hitchhiking. Got stuck there once myself.”

  “I don’t hitchhike.”

  The two wait in the muted light of the corridor studying the linoleum floor and the turquoise walls needful of thicker insulation. What to say? They can hear the muffled conversations, raised voices arguing in a diversity of languages, music from various cultures, and a variety of cooking smells.

  “Now what’s taking him so long? Christ!”

  “Maybe I should check out other buildings first.” Velvet is on the brink of finding an exit when Frosty sticks his head out the door and slides a set of keys down the hallway toward Adeen. Show off! He is in a race as he shines the floor with his good leg, gliding, braking at Adeen’s feet. The keys win by a head. His racing days are a distant memory, but he still insists on playing “horsey” at every turn of a moment. “Heck, Adeen,” he would always say, “if you can’t have fun once in a while, what’s the point of livin’.”

  “Keys win.”

  “Frosty, for God’s sake.”

  “For God’s sake what?”

  She centres her attention on Velvet. “The heat’s getting to him.”

  “I hear you. No air conditioning in the building?”

  “Sorry. With the amount of hot days we have here, not worth installing air conditioning. You’ll have to get one of those portable or window fans. That’s what some of my tenants buy.”