Small Claims

by Andrew Kaufman

  Kevin commands the attention of the court by tugging the French cuffs of his crisp white shirt a quarter inch past the sleeves of his grey woollen jacket. He looks directly at Mr. Harrison and smiles the smile of the initiated. This is not a smile designed to express friendship, but membership in a club so secret you and I aren’t aware we’ve been excluded from it.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Harrison. Before I begin, I’d just like to say that I, obviously, am aware of your work and reputation. Your legacy. Although the circumstances are unfortunate, it is a pleasure to finally meet you.” This may be the first time anyone in small claims court has taken the time to begin their cross-examination with a compliment. Kevin keeps on with the superlatives, turning his hands in a circle, like gears in a compliment-generating machine. Mr. Harrison does not resist these adjectives. He nods, executes a slight bow each time Kevin uses a phrase like “very senior,” or “much respected,” or “greatly distinguished.” Somewhere around the three-minute mark, Justice Underwood crosses her arms over her chest and tucks her thumbs into her armpits, making her robed forearms look like wings. Her dark eyebrows arch above the thick black frame of her glasses. She has become birdlike, an owl shocked to find herself indoors, in daylight.

  “You don’t have to apologize for cross-examining him,” she says.

  “That being said”—Kevin adjusts his tie fine silk and smooths out the bottom of his jacket—“I’d just like it to be known that…”

  “We all understand that you respect your elders, but this isn’t a job interview. Is it?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “Then let’s get on with this.”

  “Of course.” Kevin clears his throat, looks down at his notes, and hands Mr. Harrison a single piece of white paper. “Please read this email sent on August 20, 2011. Was it sent by you?”

  “Yes. I sent that email.”

  I have a primal desire to believe everything Mr. Harrison’s deeply confident voice says. I know that who I think Mr. Harrison is doesn’t really exist. I’m aware how much I’m projecting into him. How could anyone eliminate decades of post-modern thought and re-establish the modernist notion of absolute truth with the utterance of a single declarative sentence? However, I’m so desperate for someone who can turn back the philosophical clock that I’m willing to believe, at least for now, that Mr. Harrison is capable of anything. Just the timbre of his voice is enough to evaporate doubt, to bring certainty and objective truth into daily life, leaving no room for anyone to question, or even merely suspect, that his point of view isn’t intrinsically accurate. It’s a con job pure and simple, but one that’s so perfectly performed, so seductive in the black-and-white view of the world it presents, that even Kevin is falling for it. Although, to his credit, he manages to continue his cross-examination.

  On August 20, Mr. Harrison sent Michael an email. In it, Mr. Harrison stated that Michael owed him $11,866 for services rendered and offered to reduce the outstanding amount to $5,000. However—and this is the point on which the entire case rests— five weeks earlier, Michael sent Mr. Harrison a cheque for $5,000. Although Mr. Harrison admits to receiving and cashing this cheque, he forgot to include that money when listing the payments Michael had already made. So, no one disputes that these are the facts in the case, but while Michael claims that the July cheque makes them square, Mr. Harrison thinks he’s still owed another $5,000. This is a straightforward case that rests entirely on interpretation, a reality complicated by the fact that Michael, Kevin, and Mr. Harrison are all lawyers. This is a trial where a lawyer, represented by a lawyer, is suing a lawyer for lawyer’s fees. And the final ruling will be made by Justice Underwood, who before becoming a judge, was a lawyer.

  Today is Tuesday. I’m in my second week of coming to small claims court. Out of all of those mornings, today is the only day Jenny has taken my hand. Shortly after her brother rounded the corner and went out of sight, I felt a tug at my sleeve, looked down, and saw her open palm waiting for me to grasp. It felt good to have her hand in mine. She gripped it tightly, which meant there was something important she wanted to tell me, some newly discovered fact she needed to make me aware of. I couldn’t wait to hear what it was, but I knew enough to remain silent, that any inquiry into the nature of her concern would scatter her ability to talk about it. So I did nothing but shorten my stride, ensuring that there would be as many steps as possible between where we were and the corner.

  I waited for Jenny to say something, but she remained silent. It was garbage day and the large wheeled bins stood on the sidewalk, forcing us to serpentine around them like they were obstacles in a game show. We passed the yard where the Portuguese woman sets out fig trees in large terracotta pots, available for sale at $25 each. We walked in front of the house where a small brown dog stood on the back of the couch in the window, barking. Jenny didn’t notice any of these things. She walked with her head down. She was lost in thought. Soon we’d reached the house on the corner surrounded by the white iron fence and all the flowers, which meant we were running out of steps.

  “I want to be a radio singer.”

  Her voice was small. Her eyes studied the sidewalk. Mine did, too. Shaw Street was less than three steps away, and I still hadn’t responded. Jenny’s grip became tighter, as if applying enough force could push an answer out of my mouth, like moving air around a balloon. But we continued walking in silence, and I mentally ran through various scenarios, contemplated and calculated the different ways I could respond to her statement. Every possible answer felt pat, or easy, or an echo of wisdom someone had given me that’d turned out to be wrong. I couldn’t think of what to say and I had three steps to figure it out.

  Kevin keeps returning to the wording of the August 20 email, presenting arguments for his interpretation of Mr. Harrison’s offer, pointing to this detail or that phrase. I judge him harshly, consider him petty and manipulative, until I realize that his strategy is my own. Case in point: the descriptions I’ve presented. I told you Kevin’s tie was silk, but I didn’t mention that it’s slightly frayed at the bottom. I’ve said that Mr. Harrison has good posture, but I haven’t told you that the age spots on his hands and cheeks make him seem frail and old. I’ve given details and bits of dialogue that increase Justice Underwood’s authority, but I’ve left out the part where she’s asked Kevin to slow down and speak louder, which embarrassed all of us, this symbol of authority having a hearing problem.

  All the details I’ve presented are real, authentic, and factual. But each has been selected to serve a purpose, to create an impression, to subtly encourage you to see the conflict in a certain light, to support my interpretation of the events. It’s all put together to share my point of view, which I’ve presented as if it were the truth. This is exactly what Kevin is doing. What all the people in this room are doing. What everybody everywhere is doing. It is perhaps why words were invented: to give us the power to use facts in the service of our own perspective, then to try to convince someone else—a justice, a reader, a lover—to share that point of view. To see it the way we want them to. The vast majority of a human life is spent trying to construct a convincing story. And while it can be argued that this, on occasion, involves telling the truth, it’s certainly different from giving the whole story.

  What I wanted to tell Jenny, what I’d always promised myself I would tell her when I found myself in this parental situation, is the following: I love your singing and I will support it in every way I can, but the chances of your voice making you enough money to live on, or even channelling significant praise and recognition toward you, are extraordinarily slim. But when I looked at Jenny, steeled myself to tell her these things, I saw so much optimism gushing out of her eyes, along with joy and certainty and a belief in the world as a just place where dreams are goals you have to work hard to achieve, I couldn’t do it.

  And that, I realized, is how it happens. It’s why I believed that my books would be read and cherished by millions, that I would end up sitti
ng in a room being paid to write a world-altering work of literary fiction instead of a manual for the Morris T4-Automatic Dishwasher. All my disappointment in my writing career, my inability to appreciate what I have instead of what I don’t, is the direct result of the fact that my parents loved me. They loved me too much to smother my dreams beneath the bleach-scented pillow of realism. Just like I love my daughter too much to rip her treasured aspirations out of her heart, toss them to the sidewalk, and grind them into the concrete with the heel of my boot, as if I were extinguishing a cigarette.

  I do not make a lot of money. I cannot frame a house, or drive a car in a snowstorm without fear, or fix simple machines. I am not a fighter. If confronted by a man with a gun, I would encourage my wife to hand over her purse. If our family came across a bear in the woods, I would tell them to run, and then I would run, too. Because it’s stupid to risk your life for forty bucks and an iPhone. Because, outside of the movies, no one fights a bear and wins. I wish I had handyman skills, but the truth is I can cheaply hire someone to do a much better job than any amateur could. For the last forty-odd years, not conforming to the lumberjack notions of masculinity seemed not only logical, but subversive. I was okay with defining my own version of manliness because I knew truth to be a relative thing, flexible and malleable. I was strong and confident enough to come up with my own definition of gender, to create a version of male that I felt to be true for me.

  But I’m tired. Nothing else has changed—I still know that the notion of absolute truth is bullshit, or at least that truth isn’t something firm and consistent that can be carved into stone tablets and raised aloft, that truth can be created, won or lost, by the phrasing of a sentence or the conviction with which it’s uttered. In this urbanized, capitalistic world, where we select gender expectations like items at a buffet, balancing an ineptness at auto mechanics with the doing of laundry, setting your personal definition of gender is pretty much a requirement. But lately, I’m just too exhausted to sustain this perspective. I have begun longing for a return to the status quo, circa 1950, or at least the pop-culture version of it. I’ve become exhausted by the constant need to build the truth.

  These days, it’s easier to simply conform. I have begun nurturing the ability to accept gender stereotyping, to accept all aspects of social conditioning, from parental expectations right on down to what T-shirt to wear on Saturday afternoons. I’m too tired to fight and, in the absence of my own criteria, I’ve begun using traditional expectations against which to measure myself. Even though I’m perfectly aware these call for skills I can’t be expected to have and for me to form conclusions I could never authentically make, I feel not only that my masculinity is suspect, but that it has been for decades. So now, my core response to my identity as a man is to see myself as someone failing to live up to expectations I don’t believe in. I am no longer able to commit to the small claims to subversion I was capable of through my thirties and early forties. Most of the time, this is simply because I’m too tired to confidently venture beyond the white-fenced yard of my social conditioning. But sometimes, as in that moment with Jenny, it’s because there are times as a parent when you don’t get the luxury of doing what you know is right.

  “I think that’s great! I think you’ll make a fantastic radio singer!” I told her. My tongue ran along the jagged edge of my broken tooth. Jenny beamed. Her grip on my hand became looser, less needy. She was so happy that I began to wonder if everything I believed and held dear wasn’t wrong. After all, lying to her, my moment of wilful manipulation, had ultimately created a greater good. So perhaps all my lefty political ideas, all this striving to become a better person, doing my part to shoulder the endless burden of making the world a better place, is stupid after all. We skipped around the corner, and it seemed obvious to me that my friends and I had it right back in high school, that we should do whatever made us feel good, that the yoke of responsibility must be shrugged. The path forward seemed clear and easy. I skipped along beside my daughter. We rounded the corner so quickly that we even caught up to Jack. The three of us crossed Shaw Street together. I felt that despite my rotten tooth, despite the trouble Julie and I were having, despite my mounting sense of professional disappointment, somehow everything was going to be okay.

  Then the school bell rang. I looked at my phone. We were running late, very late, and I hadn’t even noticed. Late is something Jack does not like to be. Taking Jenny’s hand, he pulled her toward the school and glanced briefly over his shoulder, giving me a look that expressed his disappointed, that said, How could you do this? How could you let this happen? It’s your job to keep us safe, and you’ve failed.

  “In July, he paid five thousand. That wasn’t accounted for, was it?”

  “I’ve said that.”

  “So you admit to receiving that payment?”

  “I was looking for a further payment.”

  “No further questions.” Kevin piles up his papers, folds his hands on top of them.

  Mr. Harrison leaves the witness stand, returns to the far right end of his long wooden table. Justice Underwood asks for summations. In ninety seconds, Mr. Harrison acknowledges that the mistake was his, apologizes for it, then repeats that the language of the email clearly anticipates future payment. Kevin uses four minutes to say, basically, hey: a deal’s a deal.

  “If Mr. Harrison made an oversight, the result of an honest mistake, that would make your version of the truth little more than a financial opportunity. If this is the result of an honest mistake, should he be held to it?” Justice Underwood waits for Kevin to respond. The pause is lengthy.

  “Yes.”

  “So…it’s his tough luck?”

  “Yes?”

  Justice Underwood nods. “Let’s take a recess. Ten minutes. Come back at…1:15.”

  She disappears into her chambers. Justice Underwood is the only one who leaves the courtroom. Men and women waiting to become plaintiffs and defendants talk amongst themselves. The court reporter flirts with the bailiff. When Justice Underwood returns to her elevated position behind the bench, she looks so refreshed I assume that the main purpose of the recess was so she could pee.

  “Judgment for the plaintiff,” she says.

  Neither the defendant nor the plaintiff seem disappointed, relieved, or happy. Kevin and Mr. Harrison turn, present hands to each other, and clasp with hearty strength. Both are careful to establish and maintain eye contact. Kevin looks away first, and order is re-established.

  I guess I should be happy, since I was cheering for Mr. Harrison. But in my heart it feels wrong, as if the truth, after centuries of versatile flexibility, has finally been pushed too far, given up any pretext of resistance, submitted fully to our will. I can see it lying there on the courtroom floor, defeated, floundering beneath the bright clinical fluorescent lights, the absence of shadows portraying its submissive posture with pure, unflinching detail. Do with me what you will, truth whispers as it lies on the short fibres of the grey carpeting. You were going to, anyway.

  11. Forgive Us Our Eccentricities as We Forgive the Eccentricities of Others: Part three

  Simon stays at the orchard for three or four weeks. I’ve skipped ahead eleven chapters, and yet I’m able to summarize what you’ve missed in a single-clause sentence. We’re now on page seventy-six of the manuscript. There is nothing worthy of saving in all of these pages, except, possibly, this scene from the end of Chapter Fourteen.

  Simon’s on the verge of having had enough, thinks Wazzä’s just dicking him around. You’ve seen this a thousand times before. It’s that scene. Simon has packed his bags with anger, he’s holding back tears, blah, blah, blah, storming away in a youthful huff of rage, when Wazzä appears out of nowhere.

  And yes, I have Wazzä driving around in the fucking golf cart again. Also, I’ve previously failed to mention that one of Simon’s biggest problems is that he has an inexplicable fear of water. Isn’t that brilliant! A giant talking frog who can’t get wet!

  En
joy…

  As I stormed away, I heard the familiar yet unwelcome sound of Wazzä’s golf cart. He came toward me, slowing to match my pace.

  “I will give you a ride,” Wazzä said.

  “You don’t have to.”

  “Come on. Hop in.”

  It seemed rude not to accept his invitation of assistance. Especially since I’d convinced myself so firmly that I had to go. He now had power over me—there was nothing more he could take from me, no more insult that would stick. I got in. We passed a pond that I hadn’t noticed before. Wazzä drove me down to the water’s edge.

  “How’s the pond look?”

  “It looks like it wants to kill me.”

  “What about those?” Wazzä pointed to a bunch of sticks just to the right of the water.

  “Those are much less threatening.”

  “Good.” Wazzä then pointed to the surface of the pond and handed me a Zippo lighter. “I want you to take this lighter and those sticks and start a fire underwater.” Wazzä crossed his arms over his chest.

  “I’m afraid of the water.”

  “Really?”

  “Don’t do that.”

  “Must have forgotten.” Wazzä raised his eyebrows like a bank teller in front of a gun.

  “But also—that’s impossible.”

  “Is it?”

  There was something about Wazzä’s phrasing, some sense of certainty and mystery, that got to me. I wanted to continue my exit, but I found I could not. I got out of the golf cart. I took the Zippo and carried the sticks down to the water’s edge. It took me several hours, but I finally put my hands under the water. Then, I tried to build a fire beneath the surface. I tried many different ways. I tried lighting the sticks above water, then bringing them down. I grouped the sticks into a teepee, lit the top, then blew on the flames to encourage them as they dipped below the waterline. I tried more desperate techniques. I spent the whole day doing this, alone. The sun was setting when I heard the electric whine of Wazzä’s golf cart as he pulled up and parked beside me. Once again, I was filled with a frustration bordering on rage.