Small Claims

by Andrew Kaufman

  “I can’t do it! Nobody can make a fire underwater.”

  “I agree.”

  “Then why did you make me try?”

  “Because it is essential to learn that some things are impossible.”

  12. Anzigity

  The directions tell me to, “PLACE 1 UNDER TONGUE LET DISSOLVE BEFORE SWALLOWING.” Such bad writing. Why remove the your between under and tongue? The pill between let dissolve? Whose tongue? What should dissolve? To save eleven characters they’ve eliminated an exponential amount of clarity. But what do I care? The pills are small and blue and I’ve already taken three. A streetcar goes by Dr. Nashid’s office, rattling the windows, producing what seems to be a symphony of rumble, and I realize the benzodiazepine has already taken effect.

  There is no sense of transcendence, no enlightened insight or rush of self-confidence, but even without any of these properties, I can tell you that benzodiazepine is the drug I’ve been looking for all of my life. The pills have not only removed my anxiety, they’ve washed away any residue, removed even trace amounts, made me so free of it that I could confidently hand over my passport and attempt to cross the border into the state of self-assuredness. This elimination of worry has made me realize how much worry I routinely carry, like the loudness of a construction site revealed at quitting time. Could the majority of the world really feel this good most of the time? Are there men and women walking around this full of security? Feeling this safe? I feel slightly resentful, thinking about everything I could accomplish without the invisible vultures of anxiety continually perched on my shoulders.

  I’m still revelling in this potential, knowing that there are at least seventeen more pieces of magic in the translucent yellow white-capped container, when Dr. Nashid comes into the waiting room. She sits down beside me. She spends a few moments looking directly into my eyes.

  “How are you feeling today?”

  “Fantastic!”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “You’ve taken the medication?”

  “Yes!”

  “So you feel that you are ready?”

  “Let’s do this!”

  Dr. Nashid doesn’t laugh at my enthusiasm, just leads me down the overlit corridor into the small, windowless room. The instruments gleam on their silver tray. The capped needle makes a forty-five-degree angle across the manila folder that bears my name. Blissed on benzodiazepine, I feel no fear when I see these things. I know my fear is there, but it’s in a cage, sleeping in the corner of the room. As the pretty dental assistant ties the blue paper bib around my neck some behind-the-camera part of me, for reasons that are still unknown, prompts me to snap my fingers.

  “So. You are ready. Then if you could lie down, please?”

  I do. Dr. Nashid pushes my mouth a little wider open. She dabs my lower left gum with a Q-tip. The needle still prompts me to close my eyes. It hurts. I breathe deeply. I picture my heart beating slowly. Then I can’t feel the needle anymore. I open my eyes. A sequence of large steel instruments goes into my mouth. The drill sounds. And then, using a surprisingly consumer-grade pair of pliers, Dr. Nashid reaches into my mouth. It’s almost through sound that I feel the ends of the pliers grasp my tooth. She begins to pull. Dr. Nashid tugs harder. I can feel my wisdom tooth resist, then begin moving, pulled out of its socket and through my flesh. It isn’t painful. Not even metaphorically. My mind conjures no allegory for the trials of acquiring wisdom itself. I just sit there, eyes open, focusing on the feeling of the tooth, which is no longer part of me, moving through the flesh that still is. I close my eyes as well. I listen to the sound of water running. Sometime later, the pretty dental assistant taps my shoulder.

  “Here you go,” she says, and hands me a clear plastic container, the kind that would come filled with ketchup alongside a takeout hamburger. Inside it is my wisdom tooth. I can see the tooth’s jagged edge, the rough patch my tongue loved so much. I sit in the chair, grinning, shaking the plastic container, examining the tooth’s unexpected size as it rattles around, some sort of rare specimen, a butterfly captured in a faraway climate and brought home to study. This is when the words of a woman I saw earlier that morning, in the hallway outside of courtroom 313, come back to me. She was a strange, frail creature in her early twenties wearing too much mascara. Her black roots had grown three centimetres into her platinum hair. Her fingernails were bitten. Her shoulders were hunched. All of these things combined to create the impression that her spirit animal was a raccoon, although she radiated not impish confidence but worry and anxiety. She spoke in a quiet, husky voice that I heard only because I was walking past her.

  “When I’m scared, it’s hard for me to believe that anybody knows what to do more than I do,” she said.

  I will never know the context in which these words were uttered. The man she spoke to could have been her lawyer or her social worker, but based on the way the two of them were conspiratorially huddled together on the hallway’s only bench, how their fingers reached out toward each other but did not touch, I’d say they were in the very preliminary stages of becoming more than friends. He caught me staring at them and then led the raccoon girl farther down the hallway, where they continued their now-animated discussion by the elevators.

  Her phrase stayed with me as I took the pills and got into a taxi. And as Dr. Nashid finishes packing my mouth with gauze, I feel a desperate need to say them out loud, as if the phrase is an oath or a spell, something that must be spoken out loud for its power to fully take effect.

  “When I’vm scared it’z ’ard fer me to bulieve anzone znows what to do butther thzn I do,” I whisper.

  “What’s that?” Dr. Nashid asks. I hadn’t meant her to hear me. But now that she has, encouraged by the continuing effects of three hundred milligrams of benzodiazepine, I feel a desire to explain myself.

  “Zan I hell you sumting?”

  “Are you being frightened?”

  “No. I vant to hell you hhy I’m zo frighzed by denizry, luve, zyah fuzure.”

  “You’re having a good day if you can tell me that.”

  “Whin I’m szared it’z ’ard fer me to bulieve anybody nows wuat to do butter than I do. Tis da root of my anzigity. Makes me gate convol—even if it’s somethin I now nothung aboat. Meh fear iz zo shrong zat I half to do somethig. I gate convol! The ting iz, sumtizes I shold gate control. Nd sumtizes I sholdnt. But I dnt mate zat dezizion based on facks but anzigity.”

  “Of course.”

  I shake the plastic container. The wisdom tooth rattles. Dr. Nashid and the pretty dental assistant are eager to attend to their next patient. I know that. I have no desire to stay in this windowless room. But still I seem unable to convince myself to go. I continue sitting, giggling slightly because the idea that dental surgery has just changed my life seems very strange to me.

  13. Only the Captain May Lower the Lifeboats

  Justice Olivetti tilts back her tiny grey head and stares at the flickering fluorescent lights on the left side of courtroom 317. The bailiff, a tall, thin man several years beyond the age of retirement, stands at the back of the room with his hand on the light switch.

  “Flick it now,” Justice Olivetti calls.

  The bailiff flicks the lights, off and on, several times. The plaintiff, Alex, a middle-aged man in a white shirt so new that the folds from the packaging are visible, is already in the courtroom. So is the defendant, Sarah, a middle-aged woman with red hair, whose fist holds a lipstick-stained tissue. They both crane their necks backwards, looking up as if they’re expecting rain.

  “That’s enough.”

  The bailiff stops flicking the lights. The long tubes illuminate fully. The flickering has ceased.

  “Much better.” Justice Olivetti looks down at the defendant and the plaintiff and smiles broadly. It is a smile that neither Alex nor Sarah is able to return.

  Today I woke up with my son’s eyes, bright and green, less than three inches from my face. His entire hea
d floated above me like some divine embodiment, a minor god from the cosmology of a culture I’d never heard of. I had to look up at him, which was a perspective neither of us had ever experienced before. Jack’s head tilted to the left, as if he were encountering a mystery. The sunlight came through the front windows, revealing how badly they were in need of washing. My neck was stiff from the unnatural position in which I’d slept, and my face was sore from the rough texture of the white canvas covering the Ikea couch.

  “How long have you been there?”

  “Why are you on the couch?”

  “I fell asleep watching TV.”

  Jack looked over his shoulder, saw that the screen was black. His eyes became filled with a skepticism beyond his years. “Then why isn’t it on?”

  “I turned it off.”

  “While you were sleeping?”

  “Do you want breakfast?”

  “Is this your bed now?”

  “Waffles? Syrup?”

  “Yes!”

  “How many witnesses?” Justice Olivetti asks the defendant.

  “Just her,” Alex says. He points a .22 calibre finger to his right, directly at Sarah. He continues pointing at Sarah long after these words have left his mouth. It should be noted that at no time has Alex made eye contact with Sarah, that he seems unable to even turn his head in her general direction. Sarah looks down at the thin grey carpet like she’s scared of the walls.

  Justice Olivetti takes all of this in and releases a sigh that ruffles her bangs. “Then call her.”

  Sarah takes the stand, gets sworn in. Her hair falls in front of her face as she looks at her folded hands. With a slowness employed in the hope of producing a dramatic effect, the plaintiff raises his head and, for the first time, looks at the defendant. There is a pause. He continues to stare. The clock hums.

  “Use your words, Mr. Bert.” Justice Olivetti leans back in her chair and crosses her arms.

  “I’m waiting for her to look at me.”

  “She’s not required to look at you. She only has to answer your questions.”

  Alex runs his hand through his thinning hair, straightens his tie, which doesn’t need straightening, and buttons the top button on his jacket. All these gestures combine to form a note-perfect imitation of every television lawyer about to question a hostile witness and win the big case. “Were we married?”

  Sarah looks from her hands to Justice Olivetti.

  “It’s a valid question,” Justice Olivetti says.

  “Yes.”

  “For how long?”

  “Six years.”

  “At 173 Russet Place?”

  “You know this …”

  “Yes or no?”

  “Yes.”

  “Until?”

  “Until what? The day?”

  “That’s what I asked…” Alex’s voice is patronizing, scolding, getting louder. The construction of his question asks for information, but the tone asks for a fight. Sarah drops her gaze back to her folded hands. What I took for being meek and submissive might actually be an attempt to avoid getting sucked in.

  “September.”

  “That’s when we were divorced.”

  “It is.”

  “I asked you when you moved out.”

  “Wednesday, October 14.” Her voice is suddenly proud, and there’s a significance given to the way she pronounces this date, as if it were the birthday of a national hero or the end date of a long war that had ravaged both sides. Sarah looks up from her hands. She stares at Alex. He looks away first.

  At breakfast, everything appeared to be fine. I made coffee. Julie came down in her housecoat. I made waffles. We went through the beats of a familiar morning: coffee, conversation, CBC Radio. We were respectful with each other. Our words were gently spoken. When I forgot that the kids needed to go to dance class tonight, we simply adjusted our plans. None of these triggers, these small things that we’d usually stretch and pull until they were large enough to carry our resentment and disappointment, set us off. There was no fighting, no name-calling or accusations, no turned backs and bitter silences—and that’s exactly what frightened me.

  It would have been easy to see this as a turning point, the moment we set all our resentments on fire, pushed them into the water, then stood on shore watching them burn. But it didn’t feel like that. The absence of anger left a vacuum that wasn’t filled by happiness, but a sort of low-grade despondency. There was no warm hug, no kiss at the door when I left to walk the kids to school. The absence of hatred didn’t allow love to reign, disappointment didn’t twist itself inside out and become joy. There were no transformations at all, just a slow-moving sadness that coated my heart with one more thick, toxic, tarlike layer of remorse and regret. Because it wasn’t that Julie and I had agreed to stop fighting, or even postpone it: fighting just wasn’t important enough to commit our limited energies to. It was simply something we no longer cared enough to do.

  For fifteen minutes, Alex asks Sarah questions composed of equal parts accusation and insinuation, and it soon becomes obvious that the justice Alex is hoping to extract isn’t monetary, but emotional. Although he is suing for $6,723—the calculated total of items Sarah kept in a storage locker that he claims were never disclosed when they agreed to the terms of their divorce—what Alex really wants is a judgment confirming that Sarah was wrong to leave him. He’d prefer this ruling come from Justice Olivetti, since she’s the highest authority in the room. But based on the number of times he turns and looks at those sitting in the gallery and the heavy dramatic length of his pauses, any of us will do.

  And then again, maybe we won’t. As Alex’s questions continue, he seems to forget all about us. He forgets about the bailiff and the court reporter and even Justice Olivetti. He tunes out the humming clock and the fluorescent lighting that has once again started flickering. There’s only one person he cares about, only one he wants to convince, and she’s in the witness box. Sarah answers all of Alex’s questions with simple declarative sentences, often one word long. Twice, she’s paused and looked over at Justice Olivetti to make sure she has to answer a question that seems particularly irrelevant, but this is the closest she’s come to cracking. Sarah has presented a demeanour so emotionless that Alex has been unable to find a way in; she’s a cliff made of glass, impossible to climb. Clearly Alex’s strategy is to wear her down, but it’s having the opposite effect. With each monosyllabic response Sarah gives, a little more exasperation comes into Alex’s voice, not hers.

  “In our settlement, were we not to divide our property equally?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you feel like we did that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Honestly?”

  “Move on, Mr. Bert.”

  “What about… Don’t you think… Aren’t there certain items in your possession that aren’t in mine?”

  “No.”

  “That belong not just to you?”

  “No.”

  “Aren’t some things worth more than money?”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you also agree that the things you got were worth more than money?”

  “What are you asking, Alex?”

  “You got things that were worth more emotionally!”

  “Just tell me what you mean, Alex.”

  Sarah says this calmly. Her shoulders relax and the tension leaves her face. There is a glimmer of what is unmistakably love on her face. She’s keeping it in check, but the look is there and Alex can see it. I can only assume the sight of this is painful for Alex. The look on her face reveals that at one point she really did love him. But it also has the feel of a ghost, something that used to be present but no longer is, an expression constructed from shards after the biggest pieces have been swept up, placed into an empty cereal box, and tossed away.

  “The photo album! I want the photo album!” His sudden anger is both shocking and expected, cliché.

  “I scanned all of those pictures. I printed them out. I
gave them to you. The digital files, too.”

  “That’s not enough! I deserve the originals!”

  “Mr. Bert, I believe you’re through with your questioning.” Justice Olivetti pivots in her chair and looks directly at the plaintiff.

  “I have a couple more.”

  “Do they open new and relevant areas of investigation?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do they?”

  “Yes!”

  “Are you sure, Mr. Bert? I want you to be very, very sure.”

  Alex looks up at Sarah. He sees that her smile, as small and fleeting as it was, is gone. For several moments he is still and the courtroom is quiet.

  “No. No they won’t,” he finally says.

  This is the problem with our perception of love. We’re told that real love is indestructible. The other side of this thought is the conclusion that any love that isn’t forever isn’t real. It’s not true, but most of us believe it. So when a relationship comes to its natural conclusion, as so many of them are intrinsically structured to do, we don’t know what to do. We sit there, knowing in our hearts that the love we felt was real. But we also know, with just as much certainty, that the love is gone. These two thoughts cannot be simultaneously held. This is why it’s so hard to let go of a relationship that’s ended—if we do, it means it wasn’t love in the first place.

  It is no surprise when Justice Olivetti decides in the defendant’s favour. She asks for the next case. Sarah quickly leaves the courtroom, her hands tucked into the ends of her sleeves. Alex watches her go. He does not return his notes to his backpack as the court reporter calls the next case and he’s pushed out of the way.