Small Claims

by Andrew Kaufman

  Sam is dressed much like Tony, only his suit is tailored, cut from more expensive cloth, and doesn’t look slept in. He wears a tie and his full Windsor knot is perfect. Sam’s hair is parted on the left and sits obediently on his head like a purebred with papers. He looks both fantastic and sleazy, the sort of man whose wife continues to love him specifically because of how much she hates everything about him. Sam does not glance up at the proceedings. He acknowledges neither Tony nor Conrad. He does nothing but move an expensive-looking pen across a pad of crisp white paper housed inside a leather portfolio.

  The facts of the case are simple. Sam, the guy making the notes, is a stockbroker working at Eternally Expanding Investments. Tony is, or at least was, a cardiac surgeon—I’m not sure, since he has referred to his profession in both the present and past tense—whose net worth once exceeded $1.7 million. Sam served as Tony’s stockbroker for seven and a half years. He’s now suing Tony for $25,000 in unpaid commissions. This amount is the absolute ceiling allowed to be sought in small claims court. If Sam wanted just one cent more, they’d all be downtown in civil court, playing with the big boys, not out here in a windowless courtroom wedged into the third floor of a building near the suburbs, literally where the subway ends, on the docket between a woman suing for $2,700 in babysitting fees and a homeowner demanding damages from High and Mighty Interior Design because they painted every wall in his condo the wrong shade of green.

  “He recommended to sell Cisco! Google! I had six hundred shares of Google! Do you understand? Do you? Insane! Insane! Insane advice!” Tony’s open palm slaps the wooden railing.

  “But those were your own traaaaaades.”

  “He gave me his opinion. How can he ask for money for such opinions?”

  “But you. Made. Those…traaaaaaaaaaades.”

  Although he remains on the witness stand, Tony has stopped listening. He’s gone somewhere else, mentally checked out, forgotten that he’s in a courtroom in the middle of a cross-examination. He stares straight ahead, frozen. The pause is short, maybe three seconds, but long enough for everyone—Conrad, the judge, even Sam, who looks up from his scribbles for the first and only time—to realize that being sued for $25,000 is not the heaviest concern weighing on Tony’s mind. This trial may not even make his top five. What these other things are remain undisclosed, but his haunted look, like something very large is moving very quickly toward him, the startled stare of a man accessing something sharp and jagged inside his psyche, scares the fuck out of me.

  This morning I called the Howlstein Corporation, asked for an extension on writing the manual for the Gleam 4-19 Automatic Dishwasher, and then invoked the thirteen days of vacation I have banked. I lied to my wife and children as well. As far as my family is concerned, I’ve rented a temporary office space because I’m overwhelmed by deadlines and am unable to concentrate at my desk in the den, that I need the focus and privacy only an office can provide. My family knows that my occupation is stressful, filled with tight turnarounds and unrealistic expectations, the sort of job where success goes unnoticed and only failure brings attention. That’s where they think I am, hard at work, toiling for the good of our nuclear family.

  The consequences of this deception will be upon me soon enough. Sometime in the next two or three months, when we gather around the kitchen table and try to decide on a destination for this year’s vacation, I will have to admit what I’ve done. That I’ve already taken my vacation, that there will be no all-inclusive ten-day stay in Acapulco, or trip to Disneyland, or European tour now that the kids are finally old enough to appreciate it. My wife and children will be angry. They’ll call me selfish. I’ll take the hit. I am only too aware that if I don’t do this, and do it now, there will be no family vacation of any kind this year or any other. If I don’t sit here and figure out where all my anger and frustration and aggressively simmering rage are coming from, why I constantly feel unsafe, as if some great disaster perpetually lurks just offstage, waiting for its cue to enter and begin the rampage, if I do not discover what is making me feel this way, I will experience a meltdown that will cause our nuclear family to decay, sending radioactive particles scattering outward, contaminating everything for generations.

  There was a time when I wouldn’t have hidden what I’m doing from Julie. When she would have been the very first person I’d told. When I would have tried to convince her to come with me. But it’s been a while.

  I tend to fashion my life into epochs based on the cars we’ve owned. It seems to me that our love was strongest during the Echo Years, when we lived in a one-bedroom apartment and didn’t worry so much. In those days, it would have been unimaginable to discover myself running down the middle of Shaw Street, or any other street, screaming as I chased a kid on a bicycle. I have fond memories of those days, and not just of the sex, or the bohemian-inspired drinking of cheap red wine by candlelight that would continue far into the night because whatever we had to do the next day was of such little importance it could easily be procrastinated without consequence. It’s very tempting to romanticize my pre-marriage-and-kids lifestyle, to forget how frustrating those days were, how underused I felt, how the talent I knew I had remained untapped because I didn’t have the skills to harness it. But one thing I definitely miss about those one-bedroom-apartment days is the trust I had in my wife’s opinion.

  It used to be so easy to take in Julie’s perspectives and insights, to let those things change the way I saw the world. In the one-bedroom-apartment days, I routinely, without pause or politics, valued her opinion over my own. I turned to her to explain the things I didn’t understand.

  Take the Lipstick Couple. They weren’t exactly street people, but there was something a little off about them. They were the kind of people you could imagine subsisting on social assistance, living in a tiny apartment filled with items it made no sense to keep in the modern day and age, things like typewriters and mannequins and a hatred of capitalism. They were always together. If you saw one, you knew the other was close by. The Lipstick Couple bought a disproportionately large number of apples and cherries at the same corner store where my wife and I bought ramen noodles and popcorn. They ate breakfast late in the afternoon at the diner near our apartment, then spent hours trying to touch the bottoms of bottomless cups of coffee, just like we did. Rarely a day went by without a sighting of the Lipstick Couple.

  When we first started noticing them, she never wore any makeup. It was September when she started wearing lipstick, applying a thick coating over her lips, creating a glossy, uninterrupted circle of red. Sometimes she coloured a little bit outside the lines, the lipstick slipping toward her chin or cheeks. Usually there were flecks on her teeth. The look was unsettling, but it didn’t become disturbing until I noticed that he’d started wearing lipstick, too. The lipstick he wore was the same shade, but the application wasn’t nearly as thick, and his skill at applying it was extremely poor—it was always smeared around his mouth, smudged above and below his lips. His lipstick was so sloppy and haphazard I interpreted it as a sign of mental illness. I grew concerned about him, fearing a period of mental decline that would bring both of them down. I got so worried that I brought it up to Julie.

  “There he is,” I said. The Lipstick Couple were walking west on Queen, wearing complementary colours. Bright red lipstick was smeared on both of their faces.

  “There she is, too.” Julie went back to her over-easy eggs.

  “I’m worried about him.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re not worried about the lipstick?”

  “So she likes bright things. She’s eccentric. Let her be.”

  “Not her: him.”

  “Well, that’s the price of love.”

  “She could at least help him apply it better.”

  “Wait. What?” That Julie had been only half paying attention to me became clear as she set down her fork.

  “Couldn’t she at least help him put it on? How hard is that?”

&nbs
p; “He’s not wearing it. It’s from kissing her. He just has it on his mouth because he kisses her so often.”

  “My marriage is…in jeopardy,” Tony says. “Because of his recommendations!”

  “No further questions,” Conrad says.

  “Don’t you understand?”

  “No further quessssstions!”

  Tony comes off the stand, sits at the left end of the wooden table. He does not look over his shoulder to see if his wife is in the courtroom. He has no lawyer. The chair beside him remains empty. His hair needs cutting. His shoes are leather and grey, but one shoelace is black and the other is tan. His fingers clutch the edge of his chair, tightly, as if the world is tilting and he’s trying to hold on.

  Justice Smith asks for summations. Conrad stands, begins speaking. He holds a single piece of paper that contains bullet points upon which he expands. He speaks well, sums up his case with elegance and brevity, the timbre of his voice alone earning his hourly.

  “Your summation?” Justice Smith prompts Tony.

  Tony looks up. He stands, takes from a red nylon backpack some papers that he holds in his hand but doesn’t look at.

  “He lost all of my money. I can’t pay him for that. Can I?”

  “Anything else you want to tell me? Anything more…judicial?”

  “That’s what I got,” Tony replies.

  Justice Smith nods, closes the file in front of him, explains that his decision will be reserved, that he will set a date to read his verdict in open court.

  “Perrrrrhaps. If we could set a date now? Would that be possible?”

  Justice Smith nods, flips through a datebook, looks up. “I’m here on October 30. How about October 30? Ten o’clock? I’ll make it top of the docket.”

  Conrad produces his own datebook, leather-bound. He flips pages backward and forward as Sam takes out a Blackberry, presses buttons. Leaning close, they consult in quiet tones. Then they both nod, and Conrad stands.

  “October 30 would be fine,” Conrad says. “Ten a.m.”

  Justice Smith looks at the defendant. Tony stands. I can’t see his face, only the back of his head. He has produced neither a phone nor datebook. He looks at the floor. The silence is the only thing that makes him look back up. Tony sees that Justice Smith is staring at him. He turns to the left and sees that Jason and Conrad have made him the centre of their attention as well. Tony takes a blue disposable pen from the inside pocket of his blazer, opens his left hand, and spreads out his fingers. He scribbles on his hand, presumably the date of his next court appearance, in handwriting that slopes downward, a lifeline in quick descent, composed of information that will soon be washed away.

  PART TWO

  ONLY THE CAPTAIN MAY LOWER THE LIFEBOATS

  05. The Rough Patch of Missing

  The wedding chapel on the fourth floor of Toronto City Hall is an oasis of flowing white curtains and dark wooden furniture surrounded by twenty-three storeys of concrete, glass, and steel. In this regard, the wedding chapel is like marriage itself: a small, organic core encased in functionality. The chapel, although in a public space, is privately run. Weddings are not open to the public, although anyone can attend: they just have to be invited by the bride and groom. When I find myself sharing the elevator with a wedding party, I take it as a sign, tell the bride and groom that I’m writing an article on city hall weddings for the Globe and Mail. To my surprise, they agree to allow my presence. Is it my cynicism that made me think an act of such inclusiveness would be unlikely? Or is their openness sparked by nothing more than vanity at the prospect of having their wedding covered by the Globe and Mail? The significance of this question increases exponentially as the elevator continues to rise.

  There are ten people in this wedding party, and their nervous energy, combined with the sly smiles they pass amongst themselves, make it clear that they’re unable to think of marriage as anything other than the ultimate expression of love and romance. As the elevator rises above the third floor, an unexpected and reverential silence overtakes them. The only sound is the motor pulling the cables. Then, the bell dings. The doors open. The bride, groom, and their various attendants spill out of the elevator, a tipped carton of black suits and new dresses and hopes for a brighter tomorrow.

  Their laughter bounces off the high ceiling and concrete walls as they pull open the heavy glass doors of the wedding chapel and sit on the leather benches lining both sides of the foyer, organizing themselves by gender, girls on one side and boys on the other. At the top of the benches, closest to the doors of the chapel, which remain closed, the bride and groom face each other. The groom, Sergei, has a sharp, strong jaw and freshly cut short-cropped black hair. His suit is pressed. His tied is knotted in a full Windsor. Sergei adjusts the single white rose pinned to his lapel, then looks across the aisle, catches his bride’s eye, and smiles.

  The bride, Calina, returns Sergei’s smile with an intensity that’s impossible to sustain, causing her to look down at the points of her shiny white shoes. She adjusts her firm grip on the bouquet of white roses that she holds, and will continue to hold, over her belly. Calina’s body is athletic, her tan won through hours on the tennis court or jogging or playing pétanque or whatever sport it is that her youth and confidence allows her to excel at. She watches Sergei bend down and wipe an invisible spot from the toe of his left shoe, then reach into his inside pocket and pull out a pack of chewing gum.

  “Kameдь?” he asks in Russian.

  “Obrigado,” she replies in Portuguese.

  This is the thing. Between them, this couple can communicate in six languages. The problem is that English is the only one they share, and neither is very good with it. So the question I have—and forgive me, but there is no unsentimental way to put it—can two people without a common tongue really fall in love?

  It’s a cynical question, but I’m feeling cynical today, primarily because my teeth have begun rotting in my head. I’m not being metaphorical. Last night I was sitting on the couch, feeling lazy and dysfunctional because I’d spent the one hour I had to myself watching a Law & Order repeat instead of throwing my efforts behind another attempt to fix Forgive Us Our Eccentricities as We Forgive the Eccentricities of Others. As I watched the show, already knowing who the murderer was, I replayed in my head the fight I’d just had with Julie, trying to figure out who was to blame for transforming the task of determining what to watch on television into an allegory for our sixteen-year-old relationship. And then I felt something tiny and hard in my mouth. I spit a shiny piece of white onto my palm. Several moments passed before I realized it was a piece of tooth.

  My curious tongue ran itself along the bottom of my teeth until it found the absence, the rough patch missing on the left side of my right wisdom tooth. There wasn’t any pain, but my tongue couldn’t stop running itself over the ragged edge, as if some primal part of my unconscious believed that enough rubbing could counteract the damage and eliminate the need for a dentist. I wrapped the bit of tooth in a Kleenex, like you would a bug you’re saving to show the exterminator, as evidehhhhhhnce, and put it in the top drawer of my desk.

  The next morning, this morning, there wasn’t enough pain to prevent me from pretending everything was fine. I walked my kids to school, then I went up to the subway, prepared to go to small claims court. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary until, standing on the Bloor/Yonge platform, I lost my belief that everything was going to be all right. My heart began to speed. My lungs couldn’t pull in enough air. Everyone stood too close to me, and I couldn’t look any of them in the eyes. Significant concentration was required to stop myself from screaming, from issuing a pre-semantic growl that would, without words, tell everyone to step the fuck back, to leave me alone, to allow me a few precious seconds to pull myself together. But what scared me even more than the justifiable belief that I was losing my grip on sanity was, that no one noticed. Not even those standing so close to me that I could name the fabric of their clothes became aware of how tightly my
hands had turned to fists, how pale my skin was or the beads of sweat dotting my forehead. Dr. Jekyll was turning into Mr. Hyde beside them, as they waited for the northbound train to arrive, and it was just another day.

  This is when the idea of going to the wedding chapel at city hall, instead of small claims court, leapt into my mind. I don’t know where it came from. I’m willing to believe it was truly inspired, a correcting nudge from God, the divine fist hitting a 1970s television set in order to improve reception. Wherever the idea came from, it was a life preserver splashing into the Sea of Insecurity that was pulling me under. I pushed through the shoulder-to-shoulder rush-hour crowd, ran up the stairs, over to the south platform, and caught the next train down to the Queen stop.

  The wedding chapel doors burst open and, without groomsmen, bridesmaids, or family, a freshly minted marriage emerges. Radiating joy and confidence, they cut between Calina and Sergei, making their way out into the hallway, where the only thing holding them back from starting their new life together is the arrival of the elevator. Calina and Sergei stare at this marriage, three minutes old. It is unclear whether their immovable gaze is prompted by envy or gratitude, but they remain so transfixed that when the officiant arrives, she has to gently touch Sergei’s shoulder to gain his attention.

  The officiant is an owl-like woman who carries her plumpness with a buoyant grace. She begins to explain the stages of the ceremony, her hands drifting through the air like kites on the winds of matrimony. Calina looks at Sergei. Sergei holds up his hand, open palm.

  “Please be slow. English is second to us both,” Sergei says.

  “Of course. My apologies.” The officiant is receptive. She marries, on average, twelve couples a day, and the idea of a couple lacking a language in common registers low on the list of impediments. But more than that, the officiant long ago learned not to question anyone’s motives, not to judge, to embrace the statistics; since four out of ten marriages end in divorce, even for Calina and Sergei, the odds are on their side. Using simple sentences, the officiant walks through the stages of the ceremony—the vows, the rings, the document that must be signed. In less than five minutes, only one question remains.