Small Claims

by Andrew Kaufman

  I go home. I write these notes. I kiss my sleeping children. I pack a bag and write a note. My cab will arrive in ten to fifteen minutes.

  Part three

  lionized

  14. Spelling Lessons

  There was a pattern in the carpet, wheat sheaves embroidered in golden thread, that I followed, foot over foot, arms extended like a high-wire artist, all the way to the front desk. The sound of a vacuum cleaner came from the mezzanine. The operator remained out of sight. The slender ivy-leaf hands of the large, elegant clock in the middle of the lobby said it was 2:17. I put my hands on the white marble counter, which was cold. There was nobody behind it. A sequence of nature photographs saved the computer’s screen. Sesame seeds rested inside the yellow paper that a fast-food bagel had come wrapped in. White stringy headphones lay beside the computer like something aquatic found on a beach, stranded and dead.

  There was no bell to ring. Six minutes passed—a figure I know to be exact because I repeatedly, compulsively, checked the time on the large clock behind me, and then a young woman returned to her post. Her name tag said Brenda. Her pupils were gigantic. She smelled like skunk. Jiggling the mouse, Brenda brought the computer back to life. She checked for email, her phone for texts, and after confirming she’d received no new messages, Brenda turned her attention to me.

  “How can we help you?”

  I contemplated the many ways I could answer this question. The first that came to mind was tossing my hastily packed suitcase into the air, jabbing my index finger toward the elegant clock, and asking her what she thought I wanted. Another option was to let this be the moment I broke down, the moment I let all of the sadness and fear pour out of me, to cease resisting my ever-increasing sense of feeling unsafe and finally collapse into a weepy puddle of middle-age failure on the embroidered carpet beneath my scuffed leather dress shoes. It occurred to me that the opposite approach was available, too, that I could repeatedly raise and lower my eyebrows, slap my credit card on the marble countertop, and make innuendo-soaked comments that strongly imply a passionate devotion to decadence and vice, behaviour that would culminate in whichever king-sized bed she assigned me. What I actually said surprised us both.

  “Forgive my eccentricities as I forgive the eccentricities of others.”

  “Excuse me?”

  The vacuum from the mezzanine stopped running. The sound of traffic leaked through the rotating doors. I closed my eyes to enjoy the stillness. When I opened them, Brenda was checking her phone.

  “A room. I just need a room.”

  “For one night?”

  “Yes. Possibly more.”

  Inside the elevator, the button for the twelfth floor lit up as I pressed it. The doors closed, making a mechanical clatter rarely heard in the digital world. I found it soothing. The elevator began to rise, and something about this motion, so slow and smooth with a clear end in sight, triggered the understanding that I was in the middle of a mid-life crisis. I was doing my best to pretend that I wasn’t having one, but clearly that’s what’s happening to me. And there, in between the third and four floor, it became clear that my mid-life crisis is not the result of dwindling power and limited opportunities, but of sincerely questioning whether I want to keep fighting. Whether the consequences of continuing to strive, both mentally and physically, are sustainable or desirable. A mid-life crisis isn’t provoked by an inability to move upward, or the realization that long-held goals are no longer attainable, but from questioning whether fighting to achieve them is worth it. That the destination I’ve spent my whole life travelling toward may not actually be a city I want to visit, let alone a place where I want to hold the mortgage on a five-bedroom, three-bathroom detached with a nice backyard. And standing behind this difficult realization, eager to gain my attention, was an even bigger one: that my goals were never worth it in the first place.

  The elevator continued upward. I remained the only one in it. It was somewhere between the seventh and eighth floor that I lost all hope. I’m not saying that right then and there, as the overhead indicator lights flashed their predicable sequence, I made the decision to type “tie a noose with curtains” or “ways of breaking unbreakable glass” into Google. But for the first time in my life, suicide seemed pragmatic. As the elevator rose, I felt an extraordinary pressure, self-produced and even more insistent for it, to make a decision how I was going to react to this urge before I arrived at my floor.

  When the doors opened on the twelfth floor, I knew that the only course of action available to me was my old friend procrastination. So I continued down the hallway and slid the plastic card into the door marked 1207. The lock clicked open. The small room was filled with furniture that had been mass-produced to give the feel of hand-crafted antiques: a writing desk, a wardrobe, a king-sized bed. I stood in the hallway, looking in. When the door grew too heavy to keep holding open, I took my suitcase with me into the bathroom, and from it I retrieved the translucent yellow pill bottle.

  The lighting in the bathroom made me squint. I avoided eye contact with the mirror. My intentions were to take a single pill, but it did not take long to realize that this was a metaphoric task, which, if achieved, would have mythic ramifications provoking ironic punishment. It was a dilemma: one pill would eliminate my anxiety, but once the bottle was open, there would be no taking just one pill. So I didn’t open the bottle. I had a long bath. I tried to get myself off but I couldn’t conjure a fantasy, and the overpriced high-production-value pornography available through the in-room entertainment system was so choreographed that actual penetration seemed stagy and fake. The room felt very small. I had to leave it. I rode the elevator up and down for half an hour, until the motion made me seasick. Wobbly, trying to regain my balance, I walked through the silent, Brenda-less lobby. Outside it was cold and I could see my breath. I widened my stance, tipped my head backward, and breathed in and out, watching thin white clouds leak out of my body. I closed my eyes. I listened to the city until I wasn’t dizzy anymore. It was too quiet. The abandoned streets felt unsafe, and I twirled through the circular door, back inside.

  Returning to my room, I inspected the emptiness inside every drawer, then had a second bath. I dried myself off. I tossed the towel onto the floor. It fell into the shape of a P. Crouching down, I took the towel and shaped it into an L. With the addition of a washcloth, I made an E. I continued to do this, making letters, using the same towel and washcloth to shape an A, an S, another E. I made an L, an E, a T in sequence. I continued until I’d formed the phrase “please let me sleep,” a silent plea to an absent god, heliographs carved not in of rock but from linens scented with lemon.

  Whether superstition or answered prayer, it was in this moment that I finally began to feel sleepy. I closed the curtains, pulled the comforter off the bed, and collapsed face down on the mattress. I was exhausted but still awake minutes later when the sun started to rise. I turned my head and stared at the white wall to the right of the curtains, watching the colours shift and change as more and more light crept around the heavy fabric. When the room was filled with that optimistic yellow light only sunrises provide, I managed to fall asleep.

  15. Heirloom Ring

  I’m underground, standing on the King subway platform, waiting for the northbound train, when the relative emptiness makes me realize it’s Saturday. Small claims court is closed on the weekends. I have no technical writing to do, since the Howlstein Corporation still thinks I’m on vacation. I cannot go home. The sixteen hours between the present moment and two this morning—a time when I’ll finally, possibly, feel tired enough to attempt falling asleep—seems like a sentence, run-on and incoherent. I leave the subway. I get coffee. I look at records in records stores. I go to the Art Gallery of Ontario and stare at million-dollar paintings. It’s not even noon. It really isn’t a surprise when I find myself returning to the wedding chapel at Toronto City Hall.

  Using the Globe and Mail cover story again, I approach various wedding parties, but they’r
e more interested in privacy than publicity. Then, just before 2:30, I catch the attention of a mid-twenties bride and her groom as they step out of the elevator, and deliver my pitch. The sequins covering the bride’s gown and the tiara in her hair make it seem like she’s wearing a costume, not a wedding dress. He’s dressed in grey denim jeans and a white turtleneck sweater. Their faces express interest: raised on celebrity-gossip websites and reality television, they are clearly taken with the idea of their nuptials receiving media coverage.

  “You just want to…what? Be there?” the bride asks.

  “I’ll stay at the back. Keep perfectly quiet. Just taking notes.”

  “I’m okay with it,” the groom answers.

  “Cool with me, too,” the bride says.

  The elevator doors open behind her. The rest of their wedding party step out. As the party moves into the wedding chapel’s foray, they seem to have already forgotten about me.

  Time is succinctly measured at the city hall wedding chapel. On busy days like Saturdays, weddings are performed sequentially, one right after the other, in half-hour intervals. A wedding had just concluded when Andrea and her party came into the chapel. Another one is scheduled to begin in sixteen minutes. This is why I’m surprised that at 2:42, even though twelve of their thirty minutes have been spent, the ceremony has not begun, let alone concluded. The groom is outside, smoking. There are four other people in the wedding chapel accompanying the bride: a bridesmaid, the bridesmaid’s boyfriend, the bride’s mother, and a bald, quiet man who has a tendency to stand a little back from the action, leading me to assume he’s the mother’s second husband. The bride, Andrea, speaks in a loud hush as she continues talking on the phone. The officiant, whose short silver hair, thick black eyebrows, and long black gown create the impression of an affable crow, points a remote at the stereo, changing the New Age spa music to Mozart in harpsichord. Then, he approaches Andrea, smiles reassuringly, and hovers until she feels obligated to lower her phone.

  “Is everything all right?”

  “It will be.”

  “We’ll need to start the next ceremony at three.”

  “I understand.”

  “Are you waiting for someone?”

  “My fiancé,” Andrea says.

  The officiant nods, walks away. But Andrea’s bridesmaid, Pam, who wears a green low-cut dress that in no way matches the bride’s, isn’t buying it. She knows that David, the groom, is merely outside having a cigarette, retrievable at a moment’s notice. Pam whispers something to her date, a tall, stocky man with unnerving pleasantness, who might be cast in a frat-house comedy as a character named Moose, then she joins Andrea in the middle of the room.

  “What’s wrong?” Pam asks.

  “I texted them to go to city hall.”

  “Okay?”

  “They went to the one in Brampton.”

  “Oh. That’s bad. But if the next one starts at three…”

  “She has his ring.”

  “Yours or his?”

  “His. His dad’s. The one I’m supposed to give him. I didn’t want to lose it, so I gave it to Stephanie.”

  “Fuck.”

  “I know.”

  “They’ll get here.”

  “They’re on the Gardiner.”

  “It’s important?”

  “It’s an heirloom. It’s crazy important to him. It has to be the family ring.”

  “Then they’ll get here. It’ll work out,” Pam says, although she does not look convinced.

  Last night I missed my kids, so I called Julie. The phone rang six times and then Jenny answered.

  “Daddy!”

  “Hey, baby. How are you?”

  “Great.”

  “How was your day?”

  “Great.”

  “What did you do today?”

  “Stuff.”

  “What kind of stuff?”

  She sounded farther away than sixteen city blocks, stranded on the other side of everything that stands between me and her mother, all the unsaid and oversaid things currently making it impossible for me to return home. The phone call was having the opposite of its desired effect, making me miss her and her brother more than not talking to her would have. My heart was breaking a little bit, and so I began looking for ways to end the call as quickly as possible, like a pilot in a malfunctioning aircraft desperate for a runway.

  “But you’re good?”

  “I’m great!”

  “Okay. Good. Let me talk to your brother.”

  “Jacccck,” Jenny called in a loud and confident voice. The phone slips from her hand, and for a brief moment it’s not just the phone that’s falling but me as well. Only it doesn’t feel like a downward motion but a falling upward, a floating, like a helium balloon accidentally released from someone’s grip, suddenly free but doomed to keep rising until atmospheric pressure causes it to pop.

  It’s 2:47 when the groom, having just consumed what he assumed would be his last cigarette as a bachelor, walks back into the wedding chamber. He’s visibly nervous, his large Adam’s apple bouncing up and down as he takes Andrea’s hands.

  “Let’s do this,” David says.

  Andrea looks at her phone, sees that there are no new messages, and suggests that they take pictures. Documentia takes over as everyone, bride and groom included, pulls out their phones. They hand their phones to each other and take various group shots. Soon it’s 2:51 and guests for the 3:00 have already started gathering outside the wedding chamber. Waiting is no longer an option.

  “If we do this fast, we can still have you leaving here as husband and wife.” The officiant’s voice is loud and attracts everyone’s attention. He stands at the front of the chapel, waving for David and Andrea to move toward him. They do. Pam and Moose, mother and stepdad, move too. The officiant steps forward, begins. He goes straight to the vows, which are standard, asking Andrea and David to unite in good health and bad, for richer or poorer, until death does them part. These are the same vows you’ve heard in movies and sitcoms and that they’re David and Andrea’s choice makes me question their sincerity. It doesn’t help that the bride and groom are trying to stifle giggles, that no one is crying or has noticed that the CD player is on repeat and “Ave Verum Corpus” is playing in a loop. I don’t know why these two decided to get married. I suspect it is from need instead of want, that this ceremony is solving some problem, either practical or emotional, which is why it’s being held here at city hall, and why the bride’s dress is a little too frilly and the groom’s attire is a little too casual.

  I’m about to paint this entire ceremony in Cynical Black when David reaches up and touches Andrea’s cheek with the outer edge of his index finger. The touch is light. It lasts only a second. But it’s enough to kindle a transformation, forcing the bride and groom to almost accidentally look into each other’s eyes, where they find a sincerity that surprises them both, an unexpected burst of authentic emotion that burns away all the kitsch, collapses the ironic distance, turns camp into heartfelt emotion. Unfortunately, it isn’t enough to provoke a miracle. The wedding chapel doors do not burst open. Stephanie remains on the Gardiner.

  “With this ring, do you take David to be your lawfully wedded husband?” the officiant asks. From the front left pocket of his jeans, David pulls out a silver wedding band. He has trusted this ring only to himself. Unlike the ring Andrea was in charge of, which currently sits inside a car stuck in traffic many miles away. David’s eyes well up as he slips the ring on Andrea’s finger.

  “And now for the bride,” the officiant says. Andrea looks at the floor. Her posture tells all of us that she has ruined everything. She begins to cry. Her mother steps toward her. There is whispering between them.

  “No?”

  Andrea does more whispering.

  “Really?”

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Why don’t you use mine?” the mother of the bride says. The bride and groom are motionless, silent. The clock continues
ticking. The next wedding party can be heard assembling in the foyer. The officiant raises his bushy eyebrows.

  “That’s weird, Mom,” Andrea says.

  But her mother is already tugging her ring off her finger. It gets a little stuck at the knuckle, and she’s forced to wet her skin with her lips, then pull and pull, the intrinsic slapstick comedy of this gesture provoking laughter from everyone in the room. Finally freed, she hands the ring to her daughter, who nods and says nothing so her tears won’t turn into sobs.

  This is the best introductory lesson on how to be married that I have ever witnessed. It is what marriage is. As far as I know, there are very few moments in any marriage in which things go as planned. In my experience, marriage is about nothing other than winging it, going forward even though there’s no solution in sight. Marriage is about having the faith to do this. It’s about knowing that success will never, ever, come in the form you pictured it would, yet will contain elements far surpassing it. Andrea pushes the ring onto David’s finger. It won’t go past his knuckle. This causes both of them to laugh. With her right hand, Sarah holds the ring in place. She holds it tightly.

  “I now pronounce you husband and wife,” the officiant says.

  The couple lean toward each other, kiss. Then they kiss a little deeper. Andrea wraps her entire hand around David’s finger, which she holds tightly, which she will not let go of.

  “Where are you?” Jack says.

  “I’m in a hotel.”

  “Why are you there?”

  “I’m working.”

  “Mom says you’re taking a vacation.”

  “It’s a working vacation. Did you finish that Lego thing?”

  “Yah.”

  “How’d it turn out?”