Now the smell of poop swirls towards his nostrils, mingling with that of fried mushrooms and baked butternut squash. Frowning, he sits up. “Karen? What’s that smell?”
Karen pauses on her way down the hall and sticks her head into the living room. “The cat had an accident in the closet. I’ve cleaned it up.”
“The cat?”
“Dilly.”
Alarm flickers across Morris’s cheeks, and he sits up straighter. “Good grief, you can’t let it into the teahouse anymore if it’s going to do that sort of thing.”
“I’m sure this was a onetime accident —”
“We can’t take any chances, though, can we? Imagine if it starts defecating all over the sculptures!”
“That won’t happen. Cats need something soft —”
“No, Karen, I’m sorry. The cat can’t go into the teahouse again. You understand, don’t you?”
Karen swallows, fingers twining around her skirt. Of course she understands. The shrine cannot be desecrated. She nods once, tersely, and returns to the kitchen. Deliberately, she burns the tofu burgers.
The teahouse: a shrine settled back among towering hemlocks and stately cedars. It exists because of Lynn Canyon Suspension Bridge.
Only a quick drive from the bowels of downtown Vancouver, the bridge draws an endless number of tourists each year. Made of rattling wood, it is suspended by enormous wire cables draped across a fern-dripping gorge some 150 feet deep. Marilyn Monroe once crossed its creaky planks.
The North Shore, separated from downtown Vancouver by Burrard Inlet, boasts two such suspension bridges. One, Capilano Suspension Bridge, charges an exorbitant entry fee and has plastic tepees, carved Indians, and garish totem poles liberally decorating its grounds. Tour buses constantly clog its environs. The other one, Lynn Canyon Suspension Bridge, is buried amid suburbia and forest, is free to walk across, and has headstones for decoration instead of covered wagons. The headstones commemorate those who have died in the park. There are many.
In 1985 Morris and Karen purchased a tiny house at the very end of Peters Road in North Vancouver. (Actually, Morris purchased it. Being eighteen and pregnant, Karen didn’t have a great deal of purchasing power.) The broadside of the small, neglected rancher bared its peeling clapboards to the large gravel parking lot of Lynn Canyon Suspension Bridge. Together Morris and Karen sanded the clapboards and painted them powder blue. Following her husband’s instructions, Karen meticulously painted an enormous foot upon the broadside of the house.
“Welcome to the Footstop Café,” she calligraphied across the ankle. “Tea, scones, fresh cream, and soothing foot massages inside.”
“It should read teahouse, not café,” Morris said, chewing on his knuckles in agitation. “Teahouse.”
“I didn’t have room.”
“But this has to be a teahouse, Karen, not a café. A place of leisure and beauty, of learning and comfort. Not a greasy spoon.”
“It will be a teahouse. I promise.”
They planted fuchsias, petunias, snapdragons, and delphiniums on either side of the river-rock path that wended its way to the refurbished potting shed at the back of their house. Above the shed’s crooked red door they hung a foot-shaped sign that declared: “Welcome to The Footstop.” (Karen, yet again, ran out of room, and rather than offend her husband by inscribing “Café” upon the board, she decided to punctuate after “Footstop.”) Quaint flower-print curtains hung in the windows, and red-and-white-checkered tablecloths beamed up from Formica tables. Vases of flowers and walls of sunny yellow invited tourists to enter. Mozart played in the background.
Within five years of opening, the Footstop became such a success that Morris and Karen expanded. The potting shed grew as large as their rancher. Shrouded by trees and shadow, exposed only to the gravel parking lot, the addition to the tiny house brought nary a peep from the local building inspectors. The neighbours watched and, bemused, attended the open-house party where Morris, Karen, and baby Candice personally massaged each and every foot present.
Although Morris was inclined to believe that the success of the Footstop was entirely due to its lofty merchandise, it was instead because most tourists, after the initial gasping at the bridge and canyon, were disappointed that the park was, indeed, little more than a park. They eagerly waddled to the Footstop in search of something to do.
No one left without buying at least one foot.
Control in a life where control is cloud-like, nebulous, blowing like cotton-tree fuzz and catching in snags of wood and piles of clay-clammy pebbles — that is why Karen masturbates. It isn’t that cleaning up her son’s defecation sparked some fetish deep within her, and it isn’t in defiance of the ugliness of his deed; it is a cry, a lifeline, a buoy thrown out from a pitching boat. To masturbate is to connect with herself, with all that she holds secret and longs for. It is mining, core-tapping, plunging into treasure-filled depths. She masturbates to remind herself that she exists. That in something she still has control.
They eat dinner in silence, Candice skewering each marrowfat pea on her plate with angry precision. Andy eats methodically, head lowered, eyes blurred behind smudged glasses. Oblivious to the tensions around the table, Morris savours each forkful of his food, contemplatively rolling it around his mouth before swallowing. Karen watches each of them closely, seeking evidence that she knows these people.
After dinner, Morris retires back to his sofa and Candice to her room. Andy — who never needs to be reminded when it’s his evening for dish duty — languidly fills the sink with steaming water.
“It’s okay,” Karen says, tousling his orange hair with one hand as she squirts blue liquid soap into the sink. “Your father thinks it was Dilly.”
“So?” He whirls on her, his face screwed up in an anger so intense that Karen steps back. “Does that mean I should thank you?” He starts weeping, his neck flushing crimson, his cheeks billowing in and out like the gills of a puffer fish. “What am I supposed to do, anyway, with that stupid microwave in the bathroom?”
“Andy —”
“She thinks I’m a moron! She hates me!” He throws himself against Karen’s bosom and blows small bubbles of mucus against her sweater. “She’ll never speak to me again!”
“Oh, Andy, that’s not true,” Karen murmurs, rocking him slightly. “She loves you. You’re her brother.”
“Big deal.”
“I’ll move the microwave somewhere else. The furnace room.”
“So? How will that fix anything?”
“I’ll talk to her —”
“No!” He pulls away and stares up at her in alarm. “You always make things way worse!”
Inwardly, Karen shrivels. She forces her face blank. “All right,” she says mechanically. “I won’t say anything.”
“Promise?”
“Really, Andy ...”
“No, Mom, you’ve got to promise! Promise me you won’t say anything!” His pale fingers embed themselves in her forearms.
“But —”
“Mom!”
“All right. I won’t talk to her. Promise.”
Andy shudders in relief and releases her. “Good.”
Karen washes the dishes in a daze. Beside her, Andy carefully polishes each one dry.
“I think I’ll go for a walk,” she whispers as she places the last dish in the cupboard.