Beaver At His Parents' [1]

by Norman Crane

Rosie instinctively jumps back.

  “I loved you,” I say.

  She brushes locks of hair out of her eyes. “In which case you made an elementary mistake,” she responds. “You became emotionally involved in a practical matter.”

  “I’m not talking careers.”

  “There’s nothing else to talk about.”

  The man with the garbage bag takes two steps forward and asks if everything is OK.

  “Everything’s alright,” I say, and ask Rosie, “So now what?”

  “Now you leave.”

  “I’ve got no place to stay.”

  She sighs. “Surely if you graduated from law school you’re capable of paying for a hotel room and finding your own apartment. If not, stay with a friend. Email me the address and I’ll have your things delivered.”

  I have no friends. I had Rosie, I knew Boris. I gave my phone willingly to him, too. He uploaded the video, sure, but he didn’t take it. Oliver only smiled and tossed me a beer. Winterson fired me. A convenient division of guilt made possible by a worldview saturated by theories of liability. I don’t want to be alone, not tonight.

  “That’s it?” I ask.

  I slap the door again. Harder this time.

  “Don’t be pitiful, Charlie.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  For a second, I think the words are mine, but actually they belong to the man with the garbage bag. “I’m sorry,” he repeats, “but I do believe the woman wants to be left alone. I don’t know where you’re from, but around here we find this type of loud and violent behaviour unwelcome and upsetting.” The little girl holding his hand has brown eyes the size of mini-CDs. “If you don’t leave, I will make a call to the police.”

  “I am leaving,” I say rather ostentatiously to Rosie.

  I remember last Christmas, how magical it was, how delighted and welcome I felt, and I want those feelings back. There’s even a cancerous part of me that still desires nothing more than to make Rosie smile. I observe her face through the space between the door frame and the door. Then I reach deep inside myself and cut that cancerous part out. I throw it on the floor. I stomp on it. “I don’t hate you,” Rosie whispers. “I know you must think I do, but I don’t. Do something with your life. Find what you love and make it great.”

  “Goodbye, Rosie.”

  Passing the man holding the garbage bag, I feint and he drops his garbage to cover his face in anticipation of a blow that never comes. The garbage spills onto the floor. I hope the guy’s married. I hope his wife is cheating on him. “Fucking Chink.”

  Before I get to my car, my phone rings.

  I accept the connection, ready to explode at whoever has the indecency to call me at a time like this, when I hear: “Morning, dude. How’s my favourite lawyer doing today?”

  It’s Frank Delaney. “I… uh…”

  “You ‘uh?’ Well, that’s boring. Better spill the beans about that big settlement meeting you had on Friday. Did you kill ‘em? Did you grab ‘em by their throats, electrocute their balls, rub their snotty noses in their own senses of entitlement and force them to sign on the dotted line?” He clears his throat. “Or whatever it is that goes down during these fucking things.”

  “I got the settlement,” I say.

  “That’s ace!”

  “And how’s your hand, Mr. Delaney?”

  “Bloody, painful, still attached to my arm. It’s healing.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “Charlie, be honest. Are you really glad? Because you sure as shit don’t sound like it.”

  I reach my car. Nobody stole anything despite the door I left open. Not that I any longer have anything worth stealing. “I’m sorry, Mr. Delaney, but I have to go.”

  “Spot a juicy ambulance?”

  “I…” I jump up on the hood of my car, recline, and with a burst of outraged brevity usually reserved for my best Statements of Claim, I tell Frank Delaney everything. I lay it out bare. It’s not a confession, but it sure feels like one, and when I’m done I feel both exhausted and expunged. Through the silence that follows, I wait impatiently for the one sentiment I’m desperate to hear, that I so selfishly crave above all else.

  “Damn. That’s rough. Those cunts,” Frank Delaney says.

  I need this.

  “They fucked you over.”

  Sympathy. Being told I’ve been wronged. Knowing that someone cares about and understands my side of the story. It fills with me energy, and I don’t care how temporary or superficial it is. I see the world sharply again. I get off the hood of my car, stand on the asphalt and realise that for the first time I know exactly what it’s like to be the voice on the other end of the telephone call, the nail biter waiting in reception to complain to a lawyer about the injustice done to him and seeking to be made whole. I always knew what the client needed. Now I also know what he wants; and how easy and disgusting it is to take advantage of that to make money.

  “Have you planned your next move yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  I hear the crumple of paper, a drawer closing, footsteps. “And this video they got, think you can get it taken down?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’m poison,” I say. “No firm in the city will take me on.”

  “So try a different city.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Hey, Charlie?”

  “Yes, Mr. Delaney?”

  “Call me Frank. Also, you have to get those fuckers back.”

  I stay quiet. “Revenge,” he clarifies. “If they want to play life by business rules, we’ll play life by business rules. How lucky for you that I’m a businessman, eh? Listen, you ever hear of Vlad the Impaler? Actually, you know what? Never mind.” He gives me an address. “Meet me here in an hour. Just make sure you’re not being tailed.”

  He hangs up before I can decide if he’s being serious or deadpan, but the address is legitimate. I look it up on Google Maps. It’s in an industrial district and looks to be some kind of storage complex. Because I figure I’ve got nothing left to lose, I start the engine and go.

  Frank Delaney is already waiting when I arrive. He waves to me with his bandaged hand, which thankfully is no longer stained with blood, and I pull up slowly, taking in the landscape of low, long buildings, before stopping my car beside his. There’s not a third person in sight. I could have driven to the moon or into the post-apocalypse, for all I know.

  “Your old office,” he says. “Can you still get inside?”

  I’ve already handed over my key, but Winterson did say I have until the end of today to get my belongings. “I should be able to,” I say. The “Why?” is implied.

  “Great.”

  I follow him down an alley between two rows of numbered storage buildings to #11. Like its neighbours, #11 is divided into a dozen sections, A through L. Frank Delaney kneels before C, inputs a code, unlocking its orange, garage-like door, and pulls the door up—revealing: shining guns mounted on a wall rack.

  My bones stiffen.

  Before I can say a word, he ducks into the storage shed, removes one of the guns and points it at the wall.

  “Frank,” I manage to say.

  Even if I wanted revenge, which I’m not sure I do, because I’m not sure of anything other than wanting to be told I’ve been cruelly mistreated in the Holy Trinity of love, friendship and employment, I surely don’t want this flavour of it. Whatever Frank Delaney’s planned, it’s insane. Events have blown by me and are rocketing farther and farther forward, leaving me alone and behind. I need a place to stay, for Christ’s sake, not a weapon!

  “Watch this, Charlie.” He pulls the trigger.

  The gun barrel spits out a metal shaft topped with a white flag that unfurls lazily, revealing the message “Bang!”

  My skeletal systems remains intact.

  “Ever been to The Joke’s On Us downtown?” Frank Delaney asks, pushing the shaft back into the gun. It resists.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “It’s a gag store I
bought into a few years ago. The owner, Bob Bittlesworth, keeps his excess merchandise here,” he says, finally succeeding in returning the fake gun to its natural state. He hangs it back in its place. “Bob’s got some real gems stashed here. Some of them not exactly legal. But, cross my heart and hope to die, I believe we’ll find exactly what you’re looking for.” That’s unlikely, because I don’t know what I’m looking for, but I don’t say that and, instead, let Frank Delaney show me object after silly object. He explains the use of each in tender detail: from the obvious, like stink bombs, to the more technologically advanced, like tiny speakers that moan in sexual ecstasy, as if you’re watching porn. I’m relieved he doesn’t want me to threaten, injure or kill anyone. In the end, I leave storage shed #11C with a wide sampling of gadgets for what Frank Delaney calls “our first salvo against the enemy”.

  Armed with this weaponry of mischief, I approach Winterson & Partners.

  It’s fitting I don’t remember the drive over here. I was on the moon, now I’ve stepped into a western. In my head, I’m wearing the white cowboy hat, and the black one, blown out of all proportion, rests crookedly on the building itself. Not only has Frank Delaney succeeded in sympathising with me but he’s also infected me with his boyish exhilaration of life. Truthfully, I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. I’ve been an automaton since last seeing Rosie’s face, but automatism is a valid criminal defense in many common law jurisdictions, including Ontario, where it complicates the mens rea, or guilty mind, which along with the actus reus, the guilty act, is necessary to prove guilt. There are exceptions. We are speaking of the law, after all. The law excepts: this is the law. And I, of the white hat and fart spray in my pockets, am merely its humble servant, the lawman, whose justice shall be done to the tune of an Ennio Morricone score playing in my head…

  “Good afternoon, Charlie,” Amanda says to me in reception.

  The music stops.

  Immediately, I sheepen.

  “You already returned your keys. Are you here to see someone or did you forget something?” Perhaps she spies something unusual in my eyes, because she continues in a less formal and more maternal tone, “Talk with me a minute, hun.” She takes off her headset. She stands. We’re both standing, and she’s so much shorter than I am but she commands my attention. I take my hands out of my pockets out of fear of accidentally setting off a moan or an unpleasant odour. “Will you listen to a story?”

  I nod, certain she’s figured me out. But how?

  “Really, it’s not even a story. It’s about my sons. You’ve seen them, right?” I have. They’re big, wide guys who play football on college scholarships in the States. “And you also see me. Long ago, I stopped being able to force my sons to do what I want. You can’t scare seventh grade six-footers with an ear pulling if you can’t reach their ears. That would be ridiculous. Yet I couldn’t let them do what they wanted. That would have been irresponsible parenting. So do you know what I did?”

  “You reasoned with them?”

  Amanda’s phone rings. She picks up, does her standard greeting, and puts the call on hold. She moves her attention back to me. “No, Charlie. If I was good at reasoning, I would’ve become a lawyer. Besides, reasoning usually answers the question: what can I get away with? Sometimes you can get away with things you shouldn’t be doing. Life’s not always about consequences. When my sons were acting in a way I thought was wrong, I asked them merely to consider how their actions reflected who they were. Because unless you stop living, you can get rid of everything you own, end all the relationships you have, and move half way around the world to start over, but the one thing you can’t leave behind is yourself. So even when I couldn’t reach high enough to smack my sons upside their heads, I could still ask them: is this who you are. Is this who you are, Charlie?”

  Her eyes are drills. “I’m a lawyer,” I say.

  “That’s what you do, not who you are.”

  But what we do is a fundamental part of who we are. It’s shorthand for class, education, erudition, and a hundred other categories. Actions, the saying goes, speak louder than words. Though not all actions are dictated by our jobs, and that I’m a lawyer does not mean I have to act lawyerly in every sphere of life. And there are other spheres. Rosie was right to draw the border at the apartment door. Here the job ends, and private life begins. In theory. In practice, she became synonymous with her legal sphere, which obliterated her private life and encased her like a bubble. I don’t want to be like that. My mind’s a mess, but Amanda’s question cuts gracefully through all the gunk sliding down its walls. I answer more forcefully than I expect:

  “I don’t know who I am.”

  “Then it’s best you figure it out before committing.”

  That night is the first night I spend sleeping in my car—or, more accurately, tossing and turning while parked next to the curb. The seat makes an uncomfortable bed, and I could easily afford a hotel room, but the dimestore romance of being on the street is too much to pass up. It’s an experience, a story to tell, and I need those in my life. Of course, the romance is tinged with reality. I’m finished as a lawyer and it’s easier to repeat that I don’t want to be one, leaving on my terms, than to accept that I can’t be one, at least not now and in this city. But that doesn’t change the outcome. At some dark hour of the early morning, as I’m flitting between dreams and cramped wakefulness, unsure if I’m out of job and out of Rosie or suffering a nightmare, I remember my dad’s upcoming birthday and make the decision to go home early. Home, I think, is a flexible concept. Since January, Rosie’s apartment was my home. I’ve regressed to an earlier definition, rolled back to a older version of myself. Am I a child again? Was I ever an adult? To visit my parents, to see Quarterville again after psychologically cutting myself off from both—to go home early: I sleep on the idea.

  The dawnlight, however, changes nothing. I use bottled water to wash my eyes, then buy a full tank of gas and hit the highway. I try calling Rosie once while I’m still within city limits. She doesn’t answer. She’s probably still asleep. It’s early. The road is clear. I turn on the radio and listen to music for a while. At around nine I call my mom. I have plenty of fabricated explanations ready for when she asks why I’m on my way, but I don’t need them. “Of course you can come today. Of course you can stay here,” she says, her voice unable to mask her enthusiasm. She covers the receiver with her hand and calls out to my dad, “Beaver’s coming home!” Then, back to me: “You didn’t have to call to ask. This is your place as much as ours, and it always will be.”

  That leaves one more call to make.

  For this one, I stop at a service station. My hands tremble as I dial the number. Winterson’s voice booms, but only in my imagination. He’s not the one I’m calling. “Hello?” Mrs. Johnson says.

  “It’s Charlie.” Birds fly overhead. “I’m not going to be your lawyer anymore.”

  “What?”

  “I’m no longer at the law firm. Someone else will take your case. They should get in contact within a week or two, but if they don’t, you get in contact with them.”

  “Charlie, what happened?”

  “It’s not important, Mrs. Johnson.”

  “Jeez, I can’t say I was expecting this. I don’t know if I like it. What if this new lawyer ain’t up to snuff.”

  “Mrs. Johnson,” I say, “may I tell you something as a friend?”

  “Shoot, Charlie.”

  I remember Frank Delaney’s toy guns. I’ll have to pay him for all his stuff I never used.

  “Don’t proceed with the lawsuit. Don’t mortgage your house, don’t sell your assets. When Winterson’s talks to you, tell them you want to end it.”

  “I don’t know… I’ve already spent so much money. Those experts, and your fees…”

  “The hospital won’t settle and you’ll lose at trial.”

  “But you said we had such a good chance. Thirty percent of one, you said. And we could win so much money. Charlie, you know I�
��m hardly drowning in savings. And Jack. It would help out a lot if we won.”

  “Thirty percent is a ghost,” I say. “It’s a number pulled from the air. Even if it’s true, which I doubt, that’s a seventy percent chance of losing.”

  “So you lied to me?”

  I don’t know. “Yes, I lied.”

  A stretch of silence separates me from Mrs. Johnson, who is no longer my client and was never my friend, and I struggle to conceptualise our relationship. We are strangers.

  She hangs up.

  I try the number again. No luck. I get out of my car and stretch, pushing my arms toward the July sky. My body crackles, complaining about how I’ve treated it. At the same time, the sound reminds me of eggshells breaking. I have a craving for pancakes. Although I may not know who I am, I have an idea of who I want to become, and that’s a start. I get back in the driver’s seat and turn the ignition. Ever since I knocked out the dashboard clock, the engine’s been purring like a kitten. Coincidence? Undoubtedly. I return to the flow of the highway. Traffic’s picking up and I’ve hours of driving left to go. My stomach makes itself known and, for once, I can hear it clearly over the rumblings of my other noisy companion: my conscience.

  Perhaps it knows I’m heading home. Perhaps it’s not so broken yet.

  I am optimistic.

  I will put myself back together again.

  But there are hundreds of cars on the highway and in each sits a person just like me. My optimism wavers. I am not alone. I am in competition with these other drivers. We all want to be ourselves, whole and happy, but there is a limited, shared pool of the materials we can use achieve this universal goal. Jobs, friends, apartments, lovers, money. We need, want and are these things, and my supply of them is dangerously low. My tank is almost empty and all the positive thinking in the world won’t fill it with anything but illusions.

  Ahead, a car’s hazard lights blink at me from the paved shoulder of the highway.

  I’m in a fix.

  Reality is an axeman.

  Over the the past four days, I’ve lost everything: my love, my job, my professional future. Sleeping in my car for a night and vowing to change who I am is fine. Returning home is fine. But they’re not answers to the one question that’s tethered to my brain, the one that comes flying back, unsatisfied, each time I smack it with an idea. It’s a question I already posed to Rosie through the open sliver of our apartment door. She answered purely for herself. “Now you leave,” she said. Now I keep trying to answer for myself.