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A Sack of Teeth (Raincoast $21.95)
In Grant Buday's third novel, A Sack of Teeth (Raincoast $21.95), it's 1965 and Jack Klein, age six, is having a harrowing first day of school. His mother, Lorraine, didn't help him find the right classroom. She was too distracted by the dead body in their basement suite. Antoine Gaudin, the dead renter, is the man Lorraine has fallen in love with. After the police arrive, Antoine's 36 canaries escape. Lorraine calls her husband at work, only to learn Ray has called in sick. And so has his secretary.
Ray can be found cruising in his Thunderbird towards Charlene's apartment. That Thunderbird is his life. Ray Klein is an engineer, a war vet and a happening guy who yearns to hang out with the Rat Pack in Las Vegas. The traffic snarls around the courthouse, where a mob is gathering to monitor the court case of Albert Schell, a Nazi found living in Vancouver. Frustrated that a bunch of hippies might cut in on his time with Charlene, Ray remembers Zsa Zsa Gabor's concise guidance on how to get through the day: 'Formula for a Happy Marriage: Every man should have a mistress.'
Whereas Lorraine has grown weary of Ray's car and his dreams of the Nevada desert, Charlene digs it all. "Ray's Vegas fantasy involved doing it in the Bird with the top down under that desert sky. Charlene would kneel above him all naked and pink and she'd call him Dino, or Sammy, or better yet, Peter. Later-gowned and tuxedoed-they'd catch the midnight show at Caesar's Palace, get a table right up front where they could hob with the nobs, wink and smile, sip scotch and water, snap their fingers and-while the roulette wheels turned and the dice tumbled-admire the shine of Sammy's conk.";
This is the garish side of the Sixties that is so often overlooked, that finger-snapping Sammy Davis Jr. era that featured Dean Martin swaggering on his TV show; Frank Sinatra crooning for the Mafia; gas guzzlers and Zsa Zsa saying, 'Oh, Dahhhhhling' on talk shows. All that lounge music is making a comeback 40 years later as something cool; Buday is just old enough to remember it wasn't.
Lorraine remembers why she married Ray. She was 18, he drove, he had a degree, he had been to Europe, and he had a career. She was working as a waitress and dreaming of France. As an added bonus, Ray was Jewish. "To Lorraine, being Jewish meant being part of rituals ancient and awesome and she wanted that; she believed she needed it. She was crushed to discover he was an atheist. "Ray summed up his attitude toward religion in one word: 'Bunk'. That had been their first argument.";
Ray ended the fight by telling her that she was 'his people.' Lorraine was touched, and gave up on converting and rituals. Ham with applesauce was Ray's favourite dinner. Jack was circumcised, but only for hygiene.
This is not giving too much away.
As in his connected short stories for Monday Night Man and Grant Buday's acclaimed novel about night shift workers in an industrial bakery, White Lung, Buday's characters in A Sack of Teeth, seem to have infinite backgrounds and traumas.
The schoolboy Jack? He is not enjoying his first moments of Grade One. The teacher, Mr. Gough, has a Sink or Swim method of education. He slaps his yardstick across his hand while posing a question to the kids. "What happens when words get together?"; The six-year-olds are dumbstruck, mesmerized by the rhythm of the yardstick. "Sentences! Words join hands to make sentences!";
The bell rings, the yardstick slams the desk, sending the kids off to recess, Mr. Gough informs the children they will return to this room one day to thank their first grade teacher. Jack escapes through a hole in the schoolyard fence, the first chance he gets. He wants to go back to his mom, to Antoine and those frantic canaries.
Lorraine? As a teenager, she took care of her doped-up mother. The only thing worse than a drugged mother was a mother in public. Once in a while Estelle would decide to straighten up and briefly rejoin the world. "She'd drag herself from her fog, smear lipstick around her mouth, resurrect her hair then bus across town to the Arlington Cabaret to hunt a man and drag him back.";
Lorraine would cover her ears, trying not to hear her mother's gin-slurred pleading and the excuses of the desperate man who tried to escape her clutches. Other times, Estelle would stumble around the apartment, talking to her dead husband. At school, Lorraine had to listen to other girls gossiping about her mother's trashy behaviour. How the boys would buy her drinks to egg her on.
Ray? He'd worked from the age of 12, filling in for his bedridden father whose lungs were gassed to rags in World War I. Ray would have to listen to his father wheezing and speaking the Yiddish of his childhood in his sleep. Scared of the German-sounding language, Ray would ask his father about it but he would insist Ray must have dreamt it.
To earn money from the bedroom, Ray's father would fix watches. "One day his father pried the back off a pocket watch with the point of a jack knife, and invited Ray to admire the intricate world of twitching gears. That's what Ray's father had loved about clocks, they were a world unto themselves that you could control and comprehend. Side-by-side, shoulder-to-shoulder, they'd gazed into that watch, his dad pointing to the various components: main wheel, first pinion, spindle, second wheel.";
Ray decided to become an engineer.
Do we get to choose who we love?
At the wedding, Lorraine's mother had announced calmly to Ray, "You're a fool,"; in front of the entire wedding party. That day Ray explained to the crowd that Estelle was on medication, that they probably shouldn't have let her leave the institution. Lorraine was happy to send her mother back to the hospital, and to start caring for Ray instead.
Lorraine also loves the Beatles, and studies French in hopes of visiting Paris. One day Antoine buys her a globe for the living room. She and little Jack spin it around, imagining a new adventure with each place their fingers land.
Eventually Lorraine tells her 65-year-old French renter that she loves him, offering to leave Ray.
Antoine replies, "When you want to punish yourself you make someone who loves you hate you.";
Two days later Antoine's body is found. He leaves one horrific World War II photograph for Lorraine, a suitcase full of European currency and a sack of teeth.
And don't worry, that title makes sense in the end. 1-55192-457-9
[Lisa Kerr / BCBW SUMMER 2002]
Ray can be found cruising in his Thunderbird towards Charlene's apartment. That Thunderbird is his life. Ray Klein is an engineer, a war vet and a happening guy who yearns to hang out with the Rat Pack in Las Vegas. The traffic snarls around the courthouse, where a mob is gathering to monitor the court case of Albert Schell, a Nazi found living in Vancouver. Frustrated that a bunch of hippies might cut in on his time with Charlene, Ray remembers Zsa Zsa Gabor's concise guidance on how to get through the day: 'Formula for a Happy Marriage: Every man should have a mistress.'
Whereas Lorraine has grown weary of Ray's car and his dreams of the Nevada desert, Charlene digs it all. "Ray's Vegas fantasy involved doing it in the Bird with the top down under that desert sky. Charlene would kneel above him all naked and pink and she'd call him Dino, or Sammy, or better yet, Peter. Later-gowned and tuxedoed-they'd catch the midnight show at Caesar's Palace, get a table right up front where they could hob with the nobs, wink and smile, sip scotch and water, snap their fingers and-while the roulette wheels turned and the dice tumbled-admire the shine of Sammy's conk.";
This is the garish side of the Sixties that is so often overlooked, that finger-snapping Sammy Davis Jr. era that featured Dean Martin swaggering on his TV show; Frank Sinatra crooning for the Mafia; gas guzzlers and Zsa Zsa saying, 'Oh, Dahhhhhling' on talk shows. All that lounge music is making a comeback 40 years later as something cool; Buday is just old enough to remember it wasn't.
Lorraine remembers why she married Ray. She was 18, he drove, he had a degree, he had been to Europe, and he had a career. She was working as a waitress and dreaming of France. As an added bonus, Ray was Jewish. "To Lorraine, being Jewish meant being part of rituals ancient and awesome and she wanted that; she believed she needed it. She was crushed to discover he was an atheist. "Ray summed up his attitude toward religion in one word: 'Bunk'. That had been their first argument.";
Ray ended the fight by telling her that she was 'his people.' Lorraine was touched, and gave up on converting and rituals. Ham with applesauce was Ray's favourite dinner. Jack was circumcised, but only for hygiene.
This is not giving too much away.
As in his connected short stories for Monday Night Man and Grant Buday's acclaimed novel about night shift workers in an industrial bakery, White Lung, Buday's characters in A Sack of Teeth, seem to have infinite backgrounds and traumas.
The schoolboy Jack? He is not enjoying his first moments of Grade One. The teacher, Mr. Gough, has a Sink or Swim method of education. He slaps his yardstick across his hand while posing a question to the kids. "What happens when words get together?"; The six-year-olds are dumbstruck, mesmerized by the rhythm of the yardstick. "Sentences! Words join hands to make sentences!";
The bell rings, the yardstick slams the desk, sending the kids off to recess, Mr. Gough informs the children they will return to this room one day to thank their first grade teacher. Jack escapes through a hole in the schoolyard fence, the first chance he gets. He wants to go back to his mom, to Antoine and those frantic canaries.
Lorraine? As a teenager, she took care of her doped-up mother. The only thing worse than a drugged mother was a mother in public. Once in a while Estelle would decide to straighten up and briefly rejoin the world. "She'd drag herself from her fog, smear lipstick around her mouth, resurrect her hair then bus across town to the Arlington Cabaret to hunt a man and drag him back.";
Lorraine would cover her ears, trying not to hear her mother's gin-slurred pleading and the excuses of the desperate man who tried to escape her clutches. Other times, Estelle would stumble around the apartment, talking to her dead husband. At school, Lorraine had to listen to other girls gossiping about her mother's trashy behaviour. How the boys would buy her drinks to egg her on.
Ray? He'd worked from the age of 12, filling in for his bedridden father whose lungs were gassed to rags in World War I. Ray would have to listen to his father wheezing and speaking the Yiddish of his childhood in his sleep. Scared of the German-sounding language, Ray would ask his father about it but he would insist Ray must have dreamt it.
To earn money from the bedroom, Ray's father would fix watches. "One day his father pried the back off a pocket watch with the point of a jack knife, and invited Ray to admire the intricate world of twitching gears. That's what Ray's father had loved about clocks, they were a world unto themselves that you could control and comprehend. Side-by-side, shoulder-to-shoulder, they'd gazed into that watch, his dad pointing to the various components: main wheel, first pinion, spindle, second wheel.";
Ray decided to become an engineer.
Do we get to choose who we love?
At the wedding, Lorraine's mother had announced calmly to Ray, "You're a fool,"; in front of the entire wedding party. That day Ray explained to the crowd that Estelle was on medication, that they probably shouldn't have let her leave the institution. Lorraine was happy to send her mother back to the hospital, and to start caring for Ray instead.
Lorraine also loves the Beatles, and studies French in hopes of visiting Paris. One day Antoine buys her a globe for the living room. She and little Jack spin it around, imagining a new adventure with each place their fingers land.
Eventually Lorraine tells her 65-year-old French renter that she loves him, offering to leave Ray.
Antoine replies, "When you want to punish yourself you make someone who loves you hate you.";
Two days later Antoine's body is found. He leaves one horrific World War II photograph for Lorraine, a suitcase full of European currency and a sack of teeth.
And don't worry, that title makes sense in the end. 1-55192-457-9
[Lisa Kerr / BCBW SUMMER 2002]
Submitted on June 12, 2003 in By David.
