The Spirits Up by Todd Babiak

Author:Todd Babiak [Babiak, Todd]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Published: 2021-10-26T00:00:00+00:00

THIRTEEN

Forty-five of the city’s most important philanthropists and leaders were invited to a special performance at the theatre. It was controversial on social media because the premier of the province had approved a one-night-only extension of the retail and religious rules—15 per cent capacity—for a pre-Christmas arts fundraiser.

Raising money wasn’t the issue. A boozy gathering of 1 per cent of 1 per cent of the local one percenters was the issue. For Karen, it wasn’t an issue at all. A few activists had stood at the entrance, taking photographs and shouting slogans. Was it the worst thing to be included in this crowd? Perhaps a photograph of her and Poppy would be included in the Twitter takedown, and Melissa would see it.

In the lobby, before and after the show, business leaders and city councillors and a few local celebrities introduced themselves and congratulated Karen for Kutisi. One or two of the men may have been flirting. It was difficult to tell, behind the masks. She carried the warm glow that came with being spoken of, and she adored it so much it inspired her to buy two juice boxes of overpriced, overwarm Merlot. Even the tall and gallant mayor congratulated her, and when that happened—during the intermission—Poppy squeezed her mother’s hand and cried a little on their way back into the theatre.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” said Poppy.

It was the night of December seventeenth and the lobby was ornately decorated. A jazz quartet played holiday songs from the 1950s. The theatre’s response to the activists was entirely sound: for artists this was going to be the hardest Christmas since the Great Depression. Tickets were five thousand dollars each.

Karen thought of Johnny Sjöblad during the first ghost scene in A Christmas Carol. When his crimes hit the newspapers, and spread through Western Canada, her feelings had a taste and a colour. Men came into their home in Edgemont and repossessed her jewellery, her bed frame, her Macintosh Classic II and her television, several pairs of her shoes and boots. They took her Cabriolet. They took her skis and her snowboard and her ice skates and her bicycle. She was seventeen years old, just about to graduate into the world, and suddenly the board of directors of the private school community that had been an enormous part of her life was having emergency meetings about whether or not to let her graduate with a Strathcona-Tweedsmuir diploma. The Glencoe Club removed them as members and banned them for life. There were columns about her father in the local, national, American, and British press. The phone rang at all hours, and when they picked up it was nearly always an investor who had been ruined by Johnny Sjöblad’s lies. Once when Karen answered the phone, a man said he was going to break into the house in the night and rape her. The police were only half-interested when someone threatened them with violent assault or death. Her mother was removed from every one of her board appointments.

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