Small Claims

by Andrew Kaufman

  “Would you like to make a grand entrance? Or would you two like to come in together?” the officiant asks. Calina does not understand. She looks at Sergei.

  “Me here, then you to enter?” Sergei opens his hand, points to the tips of his fingers and then to the base of his palm. “Or the same?” He uses his pointer and middle finger to walk across his palm.

  “The same!” Calina’s face lights up. She takes Sergei’s arm.

  The officiant ushers the bridesmaids and groomsmen into the chamber, shows them where to stand. She aims a remote control at a spot in the ceiling and pre-recorded classical music begins to play. I hang back, trying to make myself inconspicuous. My efforts are wasted: they’ve already forgotten about me completely. When the bridesmaids and groomsmen finish arranging themselves at the front of the chapel, the officiant once again aims the remote at the ceiling and a fluttering graceful Mozart begins to play. Two or three seconds later, the bride and groom come in, arm in arm, together.

  This is where my anxiety returns. It is as pervasive and crushing as it was on the subway platform. I want to run away, but the chapel doors are closed. A hasty exit would require opening them, a gesture so obvious and interruptive it would be impossible not to interpret it as a statement. Even so, I still consider doing it: the only reason I don’t is that I don’t have the nerve. As the handsome groom and the beautiful bride look lovingly at each other, their perfectly blue eyes sparkling from the middle of their symmetrical faces, I struggle very hard to remain silent, to stop myself from taking a deep breath and yelling, “It will not always be this way!

  “Yes, you have love! No doubt! And it feels as forever as sunsets and rainbows, but it won’t always be! Either something horrible will happen to one of you, or both of you, or to your kids, or you won’t even be able to have kids, or one of you will and the other won’t, but some tragedy will befall you! And as your feet are kicked out from under you, sending you tumbling into a spiral of despair, blame, and disappointment, the love you feel right now will be taken down, too.

  “Or nothing will happen, which is even worse, because then you will have to sit there, watching, powerless, from the other side of an empty room that you are, for invisible reasons, unable to cross as your love evaporates. Your love will leave you one molecule at a time, like water left in a boiling pot, the love that was once stronger than anything you’d ever felt in your entire life turning into steam, floating away until all of it’s gone. The pot will boil dry and all you’ll have left is the pungent calcium stink of overheated metal.”

  What gives me the strength not to say any of these things is observing how tightly Sergei keeps his arm around Calina. I stare at his arm. I know that if he moves it, if he lets go, I will begin screaming. And I get lucky—the only time he lets go is to take her hands as they exchange vows.

  “I do,” Sergei says in his thick Russian accent.

  “I do,” Calina says in her thick Portuguese accent.

  They kiss, deeply. Hand in hand, they move to a small table, where Sergei keeps his right hand on the small of Calina’s back as she signs the marriage licence. She keeps her left hand on Sergei’s shoulder as he signs. Their arms encircle each other’s waists as they pose for pictures.

  What happened to true love? There was a time when questioning the reality of that concept was unthinkable. The existence of true love was undeniable, and those who couldn’t believe in it were to be pitied, handled gently, like baby birds fallen from nests. Capitalism and science have combined to liquidate romance from our concept of love. Romance was sold off to the highest bidder so that desire could be marketed as genetics, lovers perceived as partners, the bed transformed into a boardroom table. Marriage has become nothing but a mutually beneficial merger, featuring terms negotiated through combined earning potential and the division of labour.

  My perspective on love has been so corrupted that I can’t even remember what I thought true love was supposed to be. A soulmate? The idea that the perfect person is out there, waiting to be found? That God made a whole, then split it in two, scattering the parts as some sort of metaphysical scavenger hunt? These ideas are ludicrous, but metaphorically correct. I don’t believe in true love because I no longer believe that a person should need someone else to be whole. I’ve been conditioned to believe that I must function on my own, that if I’m not absolutely independent, I’m broken. The notion of love itself is increasingly difficult to believe in. What economic sense does love make? It doesn’t contribute to a stable emotional environment. Love does the opposite. It makes me vulnerable and frail and submissive to another’s will. I miss being those things, even if culture tells me they’re worthless. The idea that love can be free of self-interest and functionality is such a beautiful, optimistic thought, having so little to do with the real estate market or gross domestic product, that I’m not surprised it’s fallen out of fashion.

  Love hasn’t changed. We have.

  Sergei and Calina are certainly looking at each other like they believe in true love. As they leave the chapel, they don’t look back at the officiant. They don’t even look at the groomsmen and the bridesmaids. They look only at each other. They have not stopped touching since they were still girlfriend and boyfriend. They race down the foyer, cutting between the next bride and groom, and then they’re through the glass doors. The elevator arrives and they step inside. The rest of the wedding party waits for the next one. As the doors close, Sergei and Calina are still holding hands, happy, elated, firm in their understanding that these thirty minutes have changed their lives forever. They are an inspiration to believe in love, to reclaim a belief in true love, and yet my tongue, my restless independent tongue, continues to run over the broken side of my tooth, again and again, as if to say, We’ll see, we’ll fucking well see. Decay is inevitable. Nothing can withstand it: nothing at all.

  06. Supposed Cures & Battle Plans

  The clock in room 337 emits the same electric hum as all of the others, but the minute hand doesn’t sweep—it jumps, filling the courtroom with a predicable yet still surprising CLICK every sixty seconds. Both defendants, Frank and Brad, have noticed. Frank, sitting in the middle of the long wooden table on the left, marks each second with a tap of his weathered brown shoe, then executes a heel stomp when the hand CLICKS forward. Beside him, Brad, with a thin smile on his lips and an even thinner moustache underneath, nods as Frank stomps. The CLICK also triggers the tip of my tongue to run along the jagged edge of the broken tooth. All three of us commit these gestures nine more times, silently, without acknowledging that we’re doing them until Lance, the plaintiff, arrives.

  Lance is a very tall man with a beer gut just coming into bloom, who wears a blue suit, black tie, and fashionable shoes. He sets a bulging manila envelope on top of the wooden table on the right. The court reporter disappears into the back room. Moments later, she ushers in Justice Remington and we all stand.

  Justice Remington is thin and old. His side-parted white hair has been brushed so perfectly that there’s a sense of tension to it, as if at any moment it could suddenly snap upward like a bear trap. He takes small steps. He pretty much falls into his chair. He twirls sideways and lets momentum carry him until he’s facing all of us. He does all these things and yet, somehow, maintains his judicial authority. Just seeing him like that, his eyes magnified and blinking behind the thick lenses of his black-framed glasses, makes me fall a little bit in love with him.

  Justice Remington studies the plaintiff and the defendants. His shoulders slump, as if he is experiencing a slow leak. The cause of this isn’t clear. It could be because both parties are self-represented. Possibly it’s the way everybody continually refuses to look at each other. Or maybe it’s some sort of judicial sixth sense, the hard-won ability to smell pettiness in the air. Whatever the motivation, the sigh Justice Remington releases causes him to become just a little more deflated. He looks over his shoulder at the clock. It CLICKS. Although his eyes and shoulders don’t move, his hands ris
e and fall. They do the shrugging for him.

  “Let’s try to stay calm. Everyone will have a full opportunity to give their side of things. It will be hard, but let’s not become argumentative.”

  Lance takes the stand and gets sworn in. His story is not a complicated one, although he does seem to go on and on. A professional bus driver and tour guide, Lance took his Honda Odyssey into the dealership that Frank manages. The minivan needed an oil change and had a slow leak in the front right tire. Forty minutes later the work was done, Lance paid $168.07, and everyone was happy. But as Lance drove off the lot, he noticed a flashing light on the dashboard. Returning to the service station, Lance called it to the attention of a mechanic, Brad, who told him this was standard. Brad explained that there was a sensor inside the tire and that the light would go off after he drove for a while.

  It didn’t.

  Three weeks later, Lance returned to the dealership, complaining that the light was still on. Brad told Lance the same thing—that it was a sensor in the tire, that it would eventually go off. So Frank did more driving. The light continued to stay on. This bugged the bejesus out of Lance, so he took his minivan to another mechanic, where the sensor was replaced for $56.

  “When was this?” Justice Remington asks, proving me wrong in assuming that he wasn’t really paying attention—that he, like everyone else in this courtroom had drifted off.

  “July 3, 2012,” Lance answers.

  “You waited six months?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the light was on the whole time?”

  There is more than a little accusation in the voice Justice Remington uses to ask this question. Enough to make Lance pause and rethink the answer that was already on the tip of his tongue. And that’s the thing about small claims court. Things are more casual here; it’s the judicial equivalent of spending time with a father who has access every other weekend. Whereas in civil court or family court, the justices strive to create the appearance of neutrality, here in small claims they allow more of their true feelings to bubble to the surface. They say what they’re thinking. I don’t know if this is official policy, but I have no other explanation for the disdain, the almost teenage sarcasm, that empowers the deeper registers of Justice Remington’s voice.

  “It was six months later and the repair cost you $56?” Justice Remington says, and I fall in love with him a little bit more.

  “That’s right.”

  “Then why is your claim is for $3,000?”

  “With the company I run, I charge $150 an hour. So I added it all up. That’s how I got $3,000.”

  “You’re tallying twenty hours?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re asking them for twenty hours of your time?”

  “That includes the money I spent…”

  “That’s $56?”

  “And what I paid before.”

  “That’s…$200? So…$2,800 is for your lost time?”

  “Correct.”

  “How do you figure you spent nineteen hours of time?”

  “I have a four-hour minimum.”

  On this, Lance rests his case. Justice Remington’s hands make the shrugging motion. He looks over his shoulder at the clock. It CLICKS. Frank, who’s wearing a three-piece suit like it’s a Halloween costume, begins his cross. His voice struggles to hide frustration as he asks a list of prepared questions. The information they elicit is exactly the same as what Lance has volunteered, facts that are revealed for a third and final time when Frank mounts his defence. At the end of which, Lance has no questions, and both parties rest.

  “Let’s have a forty-five-minute recess,” Justice Remington says. He stands, turns his back to us, and exits.

  It was my neighbour, Samantha, who told me about Dr. Nashid. I was outside on the porch, breathing deeply because I no longer smoke, when she returned from walking her dog, a beloved nine-year-old lab named Ramone, whose hips have pretty much fused and who has to be carried upstairs. I like my neighbour a lot. We have children roughly the same age. Sam lets them play video games and occasionally loses her cool and yells at them. I do these things, too, and it was a great relief to learn I wasn’t the only one. I see child-raising as a craft, whereas most of the parents in this part of Toronto consider it an art; I want my kids to go out and serve a useful role in society, instead of spending their lives in a white-walled cube, surrounded by security because they’re precious.

  I’m not sure why I told Sam about my tooth. I had never told her anything that personal before. I think I hoped she’d say my strategy of leaving the chipped tooth alone, that doing of nothing, was appropriate. That is not what happened. I told her the story of watching TV and spitting out the white something and discovering it was a piece of wisdom tooth.

  “Did they pull it?”

  “Who?”

  “Your dentist!”

  “I haven’t gone yet.”

  “What?”

  “Um…”

  “You have to go to the dentist. Like…today. Seriously. What are you thinking?”

  I wanted to tell Sam that I realized how ludicrous, stupid, and unreasonable I’m being. That I am fully aware of how anyone who avoids potentially painful situations will surely soon enter the only state nature can’t abide: stagnation. But one of the few powers that’s grown stronger during this journey into middle age is my uncanny ability to endure pain in small increments. I would rather withstand tiny repeated moments of pain than face one massive dose of it, even if it could potentially end the suffering. This goes for my teeth, my job, and my marriage. Conventional wisdom attributes this attitude to growing weak and fearful. I do not agree. Not at all. The difficulty I’m having taking potentially beneficial risks isn’t because the courage of my youth has faded, but because I’m smarter. I know that all those supposed cures and battle plans fail way more often than they succeed. God loves irony: more often than not it is the attempted cure, the final invasion, that brings about absolute demise.

  If my many years have taught me anything, it’s that victory is not assured. Twenty years ago, victory wasn’t even a variable. It was a given. Ten years ago, sure, I had some doubts, victory was taking much longer to arrive than I’d anticipated, but I still considered it to pre-exist at some point in the future, and all I had to do was continue moving toward it. This assumption made leaps of faith easy, rendered even the largest amounts of pain—broken hearts and shattered dreams—easy to endure. I could fall in love again, find another dream job to apply for, because my faith in a beneficial outcome was rock-steady. The use of a blindfold as a risk-management strategy may not be wise, but it sure is effective. Only, I can’t fool myself anymore. There’s a hole in the blindfold and through it I can see that there’s no guarantee of success, that even goals based on a solid belief in one’s abilities, combined with a realistic understanding of your personal limits, don’t guarantee victory. I know that if you build it, there’s a very good chance it will sit empty forever, slowly rotting, a monument to naïveté and self-delusion. If you have enough money, you can avoid taxes and delay death, but no one can live a life without failure.

  The last time I went to the dentist was eight years ago, in 2004, the year in which my faith in victory first began to exhibit signs of decay. My phobia, if you want to call it that, isn’t provoked by needles and shiny metal instruments on shiny steel trays—although I am afraid of these things—but by an inability to believe that dentistry can retard the corrosion of middle age, that even the pain suffered in the name of oral hygiene can elicit a positive result.

  Julie has repeatedly informed me that this is my solution to everything, that my default position is the doing of nothing, that I trust inaction over my own abilities, and just let it all slide. What she doesn’t understand is that my methods aren’t procrastination or avoidance or even laziness, but rather an acceptance that we are powerless against the forces of creation. No matter how much we want something, or how much effort we use to obtain it, victory is out of
our hands. The world will have its way with us no matter how much we struggle.

  In my twenties and thirties, this strategy functioned as a positive force. I was willing to let—in fact, I relished letting—the world carry me wherever it wanted me to be. But in the last eight years, something changed. The world and I had a falling out. A thousand tiny disappointments, events too small to be described as defeats, forced a distance between us. I lost my faith in the world. I stopped believing that the world was on my side, that it had my best interests at heart. When facing situations in which I need to be vulnerable, in which I could potentially be hurt, situations like a trip to the dentist or telling my wife how much I love and need her, I now assume that there will be pain, and that it’ll be both excruciating and useless.

  If you have too little faith in the world, you end up fearing everything; if you have too much, you turn into an asshole. My ability to locate a middle ground between these two poles, a land balanced between fear and pride, self-confidence and self-delusion, has been rendered inept by all the bad things I’ve seen happen to good people, the endless repetition of the best of intentions leading to nothing but failure and heartache. The needle of my internal compass does nothing but spin around and around and around.

  And that’s why I’m afraid of going to the dentist.

  Sam saw the fear on my face. She handed me the end of Ramone’s leash and went inside her house. She returned with a white, slightly bent business card that she handed to me. On it, in Helvetica, was the name, address, and phone number of a dentist. The letters were not raised. The card stock wasn’t thick.