Small Claims

by Andrew Kaufman

  When the pretty black-haired dental assistant calls my name, I look at the guy beside me. Several seconds pass before I admit who I am and follow her down a hallway, walking beneath six florescent tubes, three sets of two, and into a room that turns out to be windowless. The dentist’s chair is white and looks like leather, but isn’t. On the far wall is a Monet print, a lily-pad jumble of pinks and greens that, although it’s one of my favourite paintings by one of my favourite painters, provokes seasickness. I sit in the chair. A blue napkin of thick paper is tied around my neck. Beads of sweat pop through my skin like air bubbles in boiling water. My hands become fists. I close my eyes, but it feels like the world is suddenly sloping to the right and I open them just in time to see a pointed metal spear inches from my eyeballs.

  “Can you open a little wider?” Dr. Nashid has an Egyptian accent, the body of a long-distance runner, and the ability to see the fear in my eyes. Her voice becomes gentle, compassionate, and I open my mouth wider.

  “I’ll have to have it a bit more open still.”

  “I’m not sure my mouth can open that much more.”

  Dr. Nashid sets down the tiny silver spear. Her gloved right hand rests on my chin, pushes gently downward. Then she turns the lamp so that the glare is all I can see. As I close my eyes, it becomes vitally important she understands that as a teenager, I believed in God. That this faith then dwindled until I was in my twenties and all I believed in were people. That my faith has kept losing power, and now that I’m closer to fifty than forty, the only belief I can sustain is in the absolute self-centredness of humanity; that our basic selfishness has prompted us to build a society with just enough justice to keep most of us safe. I need her to know, desperately, that I’m afraid of losing this last shred of my faith, that should I stop believing this, if my fingertips lose their tenuous grip on the ledge of plausible deniability as the rest of my consciousness dangles over the endless gulf of pessimism, I really don’t know what I’m going to do. That the decay of my teeth seems like nothing more than a concrete representation of the unavoidable reality that I will soon be forced to accept that nothing is impervious to time—not tooth enamel, or marriage, or the perspective that everything will be okay—no matter how entrenched my denial is. Then, the shiny metal instrument touches what feels like an open nerve, and my body jumps.

  A shock of pain runs from my mouth to the toes. I issue a whimper as involuntary as the sweat that dampens my armpits and the back of my hair. She pokes around, touches various teeth, and each point of contact makes me cling to the armrests, like a child, as the same shocks of pain run through me. I am desperate to flee and visualize an escape route; jumping out of the chair, down the hallway that smells like antiseptic, through the waiting room, and onto Queen Street. The muscles in my legs are tensing and I’m ready to go; Dr. Nashid pulls out her tiny silver spear and pushes away the bright white light. I remember to breathe.

  “There is a lot to do in there. A root canal, I fear. Some gum surgery. Many cavities, five, maybe six. We’ll have to take pictures first to know the truth. But all those must wait. First we must get the wisdom tooth out before, ah…before things get worse.”

  She could not have said anything more terrifying. Her words rip the tenuous seams of my self-worth. I am not flying the X-1. I am not sitting not in the pilot’s seat, but in a dentist’s chair, and the reality that I’m currently experiencing far more fear than Chuck Yeager ever felt at the controls of his experimental airplane drenches me with shame. This anxiety makes me wish I were a completely different person, while at the same time confirming my darkest fear that I’m not strong enough, not man enough, to become anything other than the puddle of failure slumped into this fake leather chair.

  “Should we set up an appointment so I can come back and you can pull the wisdom tooth?”

  “No,” Dr. Nashid says. She turns the overhead light back on. “We’ll have to do it now.”

  Monica continues failing to ask Ted questions, unable to make eye contact or complete sentences. When she does manage to implicate a verb around an object and subject, her construction makes it a statement, not a question. All she’d really have to do is raise her voice at the end of her sentences, but she’s too flustered to even succeed at a task that simple.

  “I wasn’t fully in my senses.”

  “Are you asking me if you were?”

  “No. It’s just that…”

  “Your Honour,” Diane says.

  Justice Royal nods, acknowledging that certain rules are absolute and must be followed, while simultaneously raising his eyebrows, gesture as judgment that makes Diane fall silent. “Monica, I wonder if you might want to go into the witness box. I think you might just want to tell your story.”

  “I’m so sorry. I’m messing up the procedures.”

  “Not at all. You’re doing fine. Would you have an objection to that?”

  “No, your Honour.”

  Ted steps down from the witness box. Monica takes his place. Her hands tremble as she gets sworn in. It is not a pleasant tale she tells. It starts with a description of the injuries suffered after she was run over by a car: a concussion, compound fractures in both arms and her left leg, torn rotator cuff. The car that hurt her was driven by the father of her newborn child. He’d just pushed her out of it. Body and spirit broken, with a newborn to take care of, Monica went to her doctor, who prescribed a heavy dose of opiate-based painkillers. She was under the influence of this medication when she signed the agreement with Mutual Benefits. She believed that the form Ted put in front of her gave him permission to investigate the legitimacy of her claim. She did not understand that it also gave him permission to go forward with it. Over the next three months, as she was trying to nurse her newborn child, sleeping in a sequence of friends’ apartments, single and alone, no fewer than nine different representatives of Mutual Benefits called her. Each time, she explained her circumstances to the representatives, who called as early as eight in the morning and as late as ten at night. Finally, she’d had enough of them, and told them that she wanted the case dropped.

  “They never told me that I had to follow up with a letter, that the ‘no’ I gave them over the phone wasn’t enough. That it had to be in writing. Nobody told me that.” Monica looks down at the short grey carpet and nods to indicate that she’s told her story to the best of her ability.

  Diane stands, quickly. She tents her fingers on the surface of her long wooden table and leans forward, a bull preparing to charge. It’s clear that mercy is not among her objectives.

  “Did you sign a contract with Mutual Benefits?”

  “Let me explain…”

  “Did you?”

  “I signed a form but…”

  “Is that a yes?”

  “I didn’t know, or it was never made clear …”

  “Is this the paperwork you signed?”

  “It is.”

  “Is this your signature?”

  “It is.”

  “Did you receive a disability refund from Canada Revenue Agency?”

  “I did, but…”

  “Did you submit the application for that refund?”

  “I didn’t want you to.”

  “Did you?”

  “Did I what? I’m sorry. What are you asking?”

  “Did you submit an application for a refund from Canada Revenue Agency?”

  “No.”

  “Did we?”

  “Yes.”

  “No further questions.”

  The needle must penetrate a nerve. I attempt to prepare for this by choosing the most relaxing music I have on my phone, Brian Eno’s Music for Airports.

  “Are you ready?” Dr. Nashid’s voice is calm.

  I nod, lie back, cover my ears with my headphones, and close my eyes. The music I’ve picked is too calm, the distance between what I’m hearing and feeling too vast, a gulf that my nervousness fills with the anticipation of pain. Squinting against the clinical light, I wave my hands while
trying not to look at the needle, which is much larger than I thought it would be.

  “I just need different music.”

  “That is fine. What are you thinking? Adele? Adele is good.”

  The needle is silver. The part that will be pushed into a living nerve is three centimetres long. It is impossible to ignore this reality. In fact, it is all I can think about as I scroll through my phone, not knowing what to pick, since there is no Music for Dentists. Eventually, I settle on an eighties playlist, because I need something soothing that doesn’t sound soothing and I’m hoping nostalgia will provide this.

  “You ready?”

  Keeping my eyes closed, I return my headphones to my ears. I nod, then open my mouth indecently. Dr. Nashid touches my lower gum with a Q-tip, as if she’s making a bull’s eye inside my mouth. That area of my mouth goes numb, and I consider, in a rush of self-esteem produced by the thrill of conquering my fears, the possibility that this might not be so bad after all. I am just riding the wave of this feeling, as the Bunnymen continue bringing on their dancing horses, when the needle pierces. It is an electric, searing distress, a sustained intrusive pain. It is much worse than I had possibly imagined. The needle goes in further. The pain increases. My fists clench. My muscles tighten. I am a fish hooked and I dare not move until the needle is extracted.

  “I’m sorry. So sorry to do that.”

  “Blardon?” I pull down my headphones, allowing Echo and the Bunnymen to leak into the small clinical room. I can’t seem to uncurl my fingers.

  “So sorry. So sorry to do that to you.”

  “Of dorce.”

  I reapply my headphones. The dental assistant mops my brow. Her eyes express maternal concern from above her papery blue mask. My shirt is wet. My heart is scared. There is nothing I can say. I close my eyes. Dr. Nashid taps my shoulder, and I slip the left side of my headphones from my ear, but my eyes remain closed.

  “I will have to do some drilling before we pull. Are you okay? Can you continue?”

  “Of dorce.”

  “Then we continue.”

  Her gloved hand gently pushes my mouth further open. Something metallic knocks against a tooth, making me jump. The insect buzz of the drill enters my ears through my teeth. I can’t feel my lower jaw. My heart won’t slow down. My tongue is a piece of meat in my mouth, frozen. At least the needle has worked, the freezing has taken effect. The timbre of the drill changes as it intersects with my tooth. The drill reverberates. I feel no pain. And then I do—a sharp stab, like someone’s touched a broken bone.

  “Waid! Stup!”

  The drill is turned off. The room is quiet. I open my eyes, and Dr. Nashid tugs down her mask.

  “You can feel that?”

  “Yeth.”

  “Much pain?”

  “Yeth.”

  “Your adrenaline! You’re having too much adrenaline. It’s making your system go faster, burning the freezing away.”

  “Do you have to try again?” I am suffused with fear, waiting for her answer.

  Dr. Nashid pulls off her white plastic gloves. She rolls on her stool to her desk, picks up a pen, and begins writing.

  “Here’s what we’ll do. We will set up an appointment for tomorrow. You come back, we will pull the tooth. But I give you this…” Dr. Nashid hands me the top page from the small rectangular pad of paper. “You take two of these, under the tongue, half an hour before you arrive. It will make you calm. Then we can pull the tooth. Okay?”

  I nod and I pull my damp shirt from my chest. My hair is soaked, but it’s okay. It will all be over in twenty-fours, I tell myself, but when I go to make the next appointment, the pretty dental hygienist tells me there isn’t an appointment available for three days.

  “Let’s hear summations,” Justice Royal says.

  As Diane stands up, I do, too. The tips of her sharp fingernails are assessing which tab to select as I bow in the general direction of Justice Royal, then turn my back and use a quick pace to reach the door. I wish Justice Royal luck. I respect him. I can feel the compassion and empathy he has for Monica. He seems like an honest, educated, fair individual, the kind of person I truly would want to be hearing a case like this one. Still, I cannot hear his verdict. The light behind the down button has burnt out so it’s impossible to know if the elevator is aware of how badly I need it to arrive. I repeatedly jab the button, as if there’s a certain number of times it must be hit before the elevator magically appears. I’m in no hurry. I have nowhere to be. I’m just afraid of the verdict. They have a signed contract, a professional lawyer, legal precedent. All Monica has is sorrow and tragedy and moral superiority. This does not seem like nearly enough. It doesn’t even seem like a fair fight. I’m not sure I could face a verdict that didn’t go in her favour right now. I don’t think I could witness such undeniable evidence that we’ve set up our society to reward the strong and punish the weak, and continue living in it. The elevator arrives. The doors open. It’s too crowded to hold even one more person, and I push my way in.

  09. Forgive Us Our Eccentricities as We Forgive the Eccentricities of Others: Part TWO

  In Chapter Two of my literary disasterpiece, Simon drives around with Ást, just two green-skinned fellows trucking through Northern Ontario, for three days. Riveting! Exactly what they’re doing for these three days is unclear. There isn’t any dialogue in Chapter Two, none at all. This is not only absurd for its complete and utter failure to be entertaining in a narrative sense, it’s simply wrong. You can drive from Toronto to the Manitoba border in twenty-five hours. So, quite literally, Chapter Two of Forgive Us Our Eccentricities as We Forgive the Eccentricities of Others features the main characters driving around in circles.

  So little happens in chapters three, four, and five that I’m surprised there wasn’t a Brechtian mutiny, that my characters weren’t provoked by such a profound state of boredom they simply refused to continue being part of this story. There is, however, one part in Chapter Six that doesn’t suck. Ást drives Simon toward an apple orchard, somewhere near the Manitoban border—again, the location isn’t specifically mapped out because I guess I thought that leaving things unclear would somehow make it arty, or possibly because I was trying to skirt around the issue that there aren’t any orchards in Northern Ontario, because the climate would make such an agricultural undertaking impossible—take your pick. Nonetheless, that’s where our two green-skinned heroes go, to an orchard run by your typical guru character mixed with a liberal dose of circus ringmaster.

  Ást introduces Simon to Wazzä, who reluctantly agrees to take the young frogling under his wing. From here the book degenerates into a sort of faux-religious writing, a mixture of cat posters and the training sequences found in kung fu movies, as Wazzä gives Simon a series of vaguely Eastern metaphorical tasks to perform. Think Taoism, but in eighties music-video form, cheap and instant. However, before any of that can happen, Wazzä, driving a golf cart—honestly, I have no idea what compelled me to make him drive a golf cart or what I thought that would reveal about Wazzä’s character— gives Simon a lift to the cottage where he’ll live for the remainder of his stay at the orchard. I kinda like this bit from the end of Chapter Six…

  I had not fully sat down before Wazzä drove off into the orchard. This was no grid pattern of trees. They grew in clumps, standing together like co-workers gone out for a smoke. Red apples grew beside green apples, and trees with yellow apples grew a little further down. Some trees were very old and some were quite young. And below all of this, winding through and around these trees, was the most complicated sequence of trails I have ever seen.

  Every twenty metres the path forked, then forked again twenty metres later, a web of dirt spun by a jokester spider. I had no idea how Wazzä was finding his way. I just trusted that he was. After some time, the golf cart skidded to a stop. Wazzä put his hands over his eyes to shield them from a sun that had already set.

  “Are you lost?” I asked.

  “Not yet.” The electr
ic motor whined as Wazzä drove up to the next fork. “Which way?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “Choose!”

  “I don’t know where we’re going!”

  “Choose! Choose! Choose!”

  “Left!”

  Wazzä turned left.

  “Choose!” Wazzä demanded as we neared the next fork.

  “I have no idea!”

  “Choose!”

  “Right!”

  He went right. At the next fork he did it again.

  “Choose!”

  “Straight!”

  “Nice!”

  For twenty-five minutes, maybe longer, Wazzä yelled for me to choose, and I screamed a random direction. Then, the sky now blue-black dark, Wazzä stopped the cart, and looked around.

  “Finally! I have no idea where we are. We are completely lost.”

  Without waiting for my response, Wazzä drove forward. Three minutes later, we crested a hill at the bottom of which a small cozy cottage sat on the edge of a six-acre pond.

  “How did you do that?” I asked.

  “Getting lost is the only way I know of getting found.”

  10. Small Claims

  Mr. Harrison, the silver-haired plaintiff, stands so erect he’s leaning slightly backward, a posture he maintains with such authority it makes the rest of the world seem crooked. He represents himself. The defendant, Michael, sits behind the wooden table on the left, wearing a neutral expression so extreme he appears to be hiding a tiny crime, like standing mid-line in the express aisle with fourteen items instead of twelve. Michael’s shoes, suit, and tie are all new and age-appropriately fashionable. His hair looks storm-proof. He appears to be the kind of man to whom flight attendants automatically give a window seat, a gesture he no doubt always fails to appreciate. He continues staring straight ahead as Kevin, his lawyer, stands.