Small Claims

by Andrew Kaufman

  ‘Oh, baby. That’s a beautiful idea. But it doesn’t work like that. What else can I say?’

  ‘No?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. You’ll always be a person. You’ll just be a bigger one, like me or your mom.’

  “My daughter, she begins to cry. She would not stop. She cried until we were almost at our destination, wherever it was, and she’d only stopped because she’d cried herself to sleep.”

  Here Knausgård pushed a large breath of air past his lips, making what could only be described as a fart sound. He lifted his drink to his mouth and poured what remained inside him.

  “Do you know what I mean?” He turned and looked at me. His eyes were blue. His stare was easy.

  “Yes. Very recently, but yes.”

  “Very nice to meet you.” Knausgård ignored my protests, took several twenty-dollar bills out of his wallet, and placed them on the bar. When Sheila returned from the bathroom, he was already gone.

  19. Debts Owed

  The defendants stand behind a polished wooden table at the front of courtroom 301, wearing coats. The room is overly warm. Marie’s coat is thick and blue. She’s in her forties, frail, running her fingers through her hair, trying to tame it. Ray, her husband, who’s acting as her lawyer, is beside her. His coat is red and his hair is grey, stringy, and needs washing. Marie and Ray stand close together. They don’t touch. Both their heads jerk to the right as Justice Hermes enters the room.

  Justice Hermes has a slight limp, a military haircut and already seems annoyed. He sits down. On the wall behind him, the Royal Crest hangs on an angle, noticeably crooked. He circles his arms to make some room inside his robe, pushes his glasses up to the top of his head, and looks at Marie and Ray. The rules of small claims court, of any court, allow the wearing of suit jackets, but never coats. He doesn’t ask the defendants to remove theirs.

  “Ready?” he asks.

  Marie looks at Ray. Ray nods his head.

  “You?” he asks the plaintiffs.

  “Yes we are, your Honour,” Perry says.

  The plaintiffs are also a man-and-woman team, but are so dissimilar from the defendants they seem a sort of scientific opposite. Their clothes are black, fashionable, wrinkle-free. Their hair is recently cut, well-behaved. It’s a professional relationship, with Perry in charge. He pulls papers out of a black leather briefcase that looks brand new.

  “I have just one witness,” Perry says, and nods at Doris beside him. She wears bangs and silver jewellry, and has been sitting to my right, staring blankly ahead, for at least the twenty minutes I’ve been in this room. Doris strides over to the witness stand, gets sworn in. It is quickly revealed that she works for the debt recovery firm that’s hired Perry. He asks short questions. Doris gives precise answers. They’ve clearly done this before.

  Doris’s employer, Recovery Premium Management, buys debts that other banks and loan companies have given up on. RPM pays cents on the dollar, then unleashes its collection agents, who do whatever they need to in order to turn that paper into cash. Over the next fifteen minutes, Perry and Doris provide a paper trail proving Marie once had a loan with Morris Investments, which she defaulted on. According to Perry, RPM bought that debt from Morris Investments, and he wants the court to make her pay it.

  “A total owing of $5,500,” Perry says.

  Hearing the figure makes Marie look at the floor.

  “Okay.” Justice Hermes flips through several of the documents Perry provides. He pulls his glasses down off his head. “Where’s the document that proves you own this specific loan?”

  Perry pauses. Several moments pass. He produces a document, earlier presented to the clerk, who hands it to Justice Hermes. He looks it over.

  “This just proves that RPM bought a bulk of bad debts from Morris Investments. Where’s the paper that says you bought her loan?” Justice Hermes asks.

  Perry pauses again. This pause is very long. Marie and Ray are the only people in the courtroom who fail to notice this.

  “Do we have it?” Perry finally asks Doris.

  “No,” Doris says. “Maybe I could try again?”

  “You have that documentation?” Justice Hermes asks.

  “I have no more questions.”

  Ray starts his cross, mumbles some questions. He does not ask Doris for proof that RPM owns Marie’s loan. The rest of his questions go nowhere and then he calls Marie to the stand. She has a French-Canadian accent and is extremely soft-spoken. Justice Hermes asks her to speak louder. She doesn’t. He loses his patience, commands her to do so. She looks up, speaks up, angry.

  “I took out a loan to buy a car. The car never ran well,” she says. Marie explains that shortly after the warranty expired, the engine blew. The car sat in her driveway for the next four years, during which time she was still paying for it, unable to afford to get it fixed.

  “Then my husband had a heart attack,” she says. Her voice cracks. She can’t look at Ray. It’s clear that this husband is not the one she lost. With no income, she fell behind on her payments. Morris Investments refused a lower monthly. She defaulted on the loan, sold the car for $200.

  “But you did default on the loan?” Justice Hermes asks.

  “Yes,” Marie admits. She looks back down, leaves the witness stand. There’s the distinct impression that this is a woman who hasn’t gotten a break since she bought that car, as if the purchase put a curse on her. She’s still looking at the floor as she stands beside Ray. Small claims court judges have up to three weeks to render a decision. Justice Hermes does not need this much time. He calls for lunch, and when court returns, he’s ready. Ray and Marie, Perry and Doris rise in unison to hear the verdict.

  “I see absolutely no evidence before me that the plaintiff has received acquisition of this particular debt. Since the documents are from May, records should be available. The case is dismissed.”

  At first Marie does not move. It’s like she’s scared to break a spell. Then her shoulders start to shake. She begins to cry. She tries to cry quietly. She cannot stop. She’s still crying when the sound of the next plaintiffs and defendants drowns out the sound of her tears.

  I guess the knowledge that I’m walking on a tiny, thin wire, that there is a lethal drop between the bottom of my feet and the ground far below me, was inevitable. In my twenties, it was pure confidence, however unearned, that propelled me forward, and I never paused long enough to look down. I just keep going forward, living life as a series of uninterrupted steps, each one bringing me closer to whatever goal I was chasing in the moment. Then, somewhere in my late thirties, I had my first glimmering realization that failure, that a lack of arrival, is possible. But it was in my forties, after my forward progress had slowed, and the firmness of my conviction in the righteousness of that goal grew soft, that for the first time I looked down.

  The act of looking down, this phase of my life forcing me to see the catastrophic consequences of my every misstep, knowing how easily everything can go wrong, the gravity-assisted pace with which failure arrives, has been overwhelming and undermining. None of my usual strategies have worked to resist it. It’s not a realization I can fight and defeat. It isn’t knowledge that I can forget—I’ve tried to push it down and each time I do, somehow, in unpredictable ways, it bubbles back up from the depths of my unconscious, madder and meaner for having been repressed.

  My age, however, has also given me a weapon, a strategy as unsexy and pedestrian as it is productive: insight gained through failure. Here in middle age, my confidence is no longer the result of naïveté or bravo but repetition and endurance. I’ve been walking this tightrope for more years than I care to admit. I know how to do this. Knowledge of how high up I am and how easily I can fall, while initially shocking, doesn’t actually affect how I put one foot in front of the other. It is at this point, as I sit in the courtroom, tears streaming out of my eyes as quickly as, and perhaps even faster than, those coming from the defendant’s, when I realize that once you’ve looked dow
n, the secret is remembering to look back up.

  I go to Canadian Tire. I buy an orange plastic bucket and J Cloths and Pine-Sol and those orange-and-yellow sponges that come in packs of three. I get back into my car. I drive east on the 401. The traffic is light because it’s just after noon. I go by feel because I can’t remember what number the exit for the gas station was. I park by the pumps, but I don’t begin filling up. Finding the key in the glove box, mixed amongst paper napkins and the owner’s manual and the last three CDs I will ever own, is harder than finding the gas station itself.

  The place is busy. No one notices me. Unlocking the trunk, I take out my bucket and cleaning supplies. I go to the bathroom, fill the bucket with hot water, and begin to scrub. I clean the sink. I wipe off the mirror and the walls. I take a deep breath, then I get down on my hands and knees and clean the toilet. I scrub every corner. I make it as clean and shiny as anything short of a new coat of paint could possible achieve. Then I go back out to my car, put ten dollars in just to get the tank topped off.

  When I go inside to pay, I leave the washroom key on the counter.

  ≈

  It was 3:15 when I arrived at their school, which was cutting it close but within acceptable limits, satisfying the promise I’d made to Julie that I’d pick up the kids. All the other mothers and fathers were already there. I stood just back from them, close enough that I wouldn’t appear anti-social, but far enough away so I wouldn’t have to make conversation. Five minutes passed. The bell rang. Hundreds of children poured out of the school, my two kids amongst them. Jenny held my hand, and Jack was at least happy enough to see me that he didn’t run ahead. We all arrived on the east side of Shaw Street at the same time. We all looked to the right and all three of us saw the bicyclist. He was coming toward us, quickly. It seemed unlikely that it was the same bicyclist as before. I knew that the odds were very low. But in my mind it was and will always be the same guy, coming south on Shaw at an accelerating speed, displaying the same disregard for two children and their father waiting to cross the street. Jenny’s grip on my hand got a little tighter. Jack looked up at me, worried, fearing that the peace and reconciliation of this moment was about to be shattered by rage and anger and a quick reveal of his father’s dark side.

  But I just stood there. The rage did not return. What I felt instead was concern. Knowing that the cyclist was about to blow through the stop sign, I looked over my shoulder to make sure there wasn’t a car coming. And this concern, this compassion, wasn’t generated because I’d somehow accepted the bicyclist as one of the things in the world beyond my control. Or because I held Jenny’s hand and Jack’s attention, so I knew that the bicyclist wasn’t a threat. As he came toward us, speeding up instead of slowing down, I was able to see him as just some kid racing somewhere. Maybe he was in a hurry, prompting him to make a bad decision. Maybe he just didn’t think it was a big deal if the three of us waited three seconds to let him pass.

  All I wanted for this kid was exactly what I wanted for my kids, for my wife, for myself: to be safe. For a brief moment, this is what I wanted for everybody alive. I saw the whole world not as my rival, an adversary for a diminishing pile of resources, but slight variations on the same theme. What we all need, more than riches, or recognition, maybe even more than love, is to feel safe. Then, this feeling was gone. I could remember the construction of the sentiment but not the insight, what it felt like to fully understand it. But that was enough. I watched the bicyclist zoom over the last two metres of pavement between him and the stop sign.

  “Be careful. Okay?” I said quietly, as he passed us.

  The bicyclist didn’t even look over his shoulder. Or maybe he did. I’m not sure. I didn’t really check.

  “Who wants to go swimming?” I asked.

  “We have to do spelling,” Jack said.

  “I do!” Jenny said.

  “Let’s go swimming!”

  Jenny’s hand was in my left and I took Jack’s with my right and the three of us crossed Shaw Street together and went back to our house. I packed a suitcase. I packed another for my son and a third for our daughter. We got into the car. They strapped themselves in, and we drove west on Highway 401, past Milton, past Guelph. We kept driving west, eventually stopping at the Stay Awhile Motel, because the sign outside said it had a heated pool.

  20. Cannonball

  The left wall, the one against which the cheap, prefabricated headboards of the two queen-sized beds have been pushed, is a floor-to-ceiling mural of a tropical sunset. I sit in the room’s only chair, facing the sunset, my back to the television set, which leaks sound and colour into the motel room. My children have each claimed a bed for themselves and they leap from one to the other, each invading their sibling’s realm as they fight for control of the remote. When one of them gains a strong enough grip on it, they flick to the show of their choice until, seconds later, the other wrestles it away, aims at the television, and changes the channel.

  I stare at the sunset. Or maybe it’s a sunrise? I decide that it’s definitely a sunset. Although the code of sibling conduct prevents them from voicing their curiosity, they both wonder why I haven’t intervened, re-established order by decreeing some time limitation on the remote, ten minutes for you, then ten minutes for you. They continue fighting and bickering as they wait for me to provide justice. When I don’t do this, their sense of safety begins wiggling away, like the last tiny strands holding a loose tooth in place. The absence of parental authority makes them fight harder for the remote control, but the louder they get, the more urgency they use to defend their perspective of fair, the more effectively I’m able to tune them out. I sit motionless, staring at the sunset until I hear a clumsy crash and Jenny screaming as she loses her balance and falls into the space between the bed and the wall. Her body hits the floor with a snap-sudden thud. Jack freezes, stands motionless on the bed with his pillow-holding arms locked at the end of his swing. A cartoon explosion fills the room. The sound of an eighteen-wheeler on the highway gets louder and then fades away. Finally, Jenny’s head, unbloodied and unbroken, pokes up beside the bed.

  “Not fair!” she says. “Not fair!”

  “Get changed! We’re going swimming!” I yell, masking my fear with anger. I look back at the sunset. A second later, I glance to the right and see that my kids are standing there, wearing their bathing suits. I have no idea how long they’ve been there like that, with their naked toes curled into the short brown carpet.

  “Are you okay?” Jack asks me.

  “I’m fine. Good. Great.”

  “Did you bring towels?”

  “Towels?”

  “For swimming…”

  “Right.”

  “Did you bring any?”

  “Aren’t there towels in the bathroom?”

  “You go check,” Jack tells Jenny.

  She does not protest. Walking with her weight on her toes, as if she were crossing a short distance of hot sand, Jenny makes her way to the bathroom. For a reason that will never become known to me, she flushes the toilet.

  On the TV, a man jumps out of a plane. He looks directly into the camera as he pulls the ripcord. Jack notices me staring at the screen. He turns off the television as Jenny returns from the bathroom. She has a thin, bleached-white towel around her neck. There’s another towel in her right hand. Several small square washcloths are tucked under her arm. Jack surveys Jenny’s discoveries and is unimpressed.

  “There were tons of towels in there!” One of the washcloths underneath Jenny’s arm falls onto the carpet.

  “Mom would have remembered to bring beach towels,” Jack says. I don’t correct him. For the first time since entering room 9, I get up from the chair. Opening the door, I squint into the suddenly stunning sunlight, and the kids follow me outside.

  The pool is empty, but three people sit around it. A couple in their early sixties have claimed the midpoint on the far side of the rectangular pool. The dyed-blond wife wears a navy blue one-piece and flip
s through a glossy magazine, flicking the pages like every visual depicted strikes her as a personal insult. To her right, her husband talks into an out-of-date cellphone, the kind that looks like a communicator from the first Star Trek series. He speaks with a stern voice, barking orders to an employee as the grey hairs on his stomach climb his beer gut like sherpas. Both the husband and the wife appear to be sincerely attempting to enjoy this one last warm day, an endeavour they are evidently failing at to an equal degree, which makes them perfect for each other.

  At the far end of the pool is a fifty-year-old woman wearing a red bikini. Her midriff is thirty years too young for her. Her skin is tanned. Her hands are wrinkled and ringless. The lounger in which she lounges is perfectly perpendicular to the black sans-serif letters that spell out DEEP END. The black circular sunglasses hiding her eyes create the impression of a wannabe starlet, possibly from the late seventies, someone who’s spent the last thirty years right here, at this pool, waiting to be discovered. She smiles as the three of us enter the pool area, while the couple of a certain age have rendered us invisible, so I sit closer to her, kicking a lounger with my foot to angle it into the sun.

  The white plastic looks dirty but it isn’t, just stained by dust over time, but the blue webbing sags as I sit, so I don’t lie down, choosing instead to perch on the edge of it and put the majority of my weight on my knees. When I look around for my kids, I find them in the air, their arms wrapped around their legs, having already leapt from the black-and-white-tiled edge of the pool, hovering three feet above the calm flat surface of the water, both of them mid-cannonball. Never before has time moved as slowly for me as it does in this moment. The sun is a performer stepping through the velvet curtains of a puffy white cloud. The wind is soft and warm. The surface of the water looks like Jell-O wrapped in cellophane. There is no fear, not even awareness that fear exists, in the faces of my children. Every inch of their skin, of the muscles beneath it, of the very bone structure contributed by me, my wife, and the countless generations that came before us is being employed to express nothing but this pure absolute joy. It is as if all evolution, the entire history of life here on earth, has been nothing but an orchestrated sequence of events allowing this moment, this articulation of fun and freedom.