We Don't Listen to Them

by Sean Johnston

  In the winter, once, Ron sat in a chair like this. It was long ago and he is finished thinking of it. So, where now?

  Now he’s in a white plastic chair outside the room of his motel. It’s a small town in the interior of BC and the highway he faces seems particularly lonely today. It’s October and the day is cool even though the sky is bright. It’s before the sun has had a chance to touch everything, and he is just waking up.

  His girlfriend, Jane, is gone into the city. It is not difficult to think of her as his girlfriend even though they have been together only two months. Not here, anyway, not where they have lived their whole time together. If they walked down a street in the city it would be hard. His wife lived there. Of course she is not his wife any longer. A lot of the thoughts he thinks need correction.

  Jane goes to the city where they can’t go together and gets meat and bread, gets wine that you can’t get here. He sits outside their simple little door and waits for his brain to wake up. Then he’ll take their laundry down to the hotel at the other end of town, the hotel where she’d stayed until all of this happened. Her company still paid, so what the hell? The laundry was cheaper there, but the room was smaller. Just a room. Here they had a kitchenette. Here they could cook. And now already they have their own jobs, he and Jane.

  Somewhere on another planet his ex is describing him to her new lover. Not generously, but fairly; and only the parts that concern this new man.

  “When you come home from work, you’re not dirty,” she tells him. And somewhere along the line, her new lover whispers words she can’t hear.

  “And I know you would never hit me.”

  Wait a minute. That was his new girlfriend. He had never hit anybody. That was her ex.

  Sitting outside the motel, he waits for Jane, but she’ll be gone all day. He doesn’t think much about the story this is making. He doesn’t think at all about: this really is the beginning. He’s come into this life somehow. Here he is. Everything is better.

  All the lines move quicker, because he’s been in so many — bank lines, grocery store lines, traffic lines at bottlenecks of bridges. Lines outside bars don’t move quicker, but he doesn’t stand in them anymore.

  But this is the beginning of his life. He’ll learn it starts from here in a month or two. There is a doctor in town who takes on new patients. He’ll go there for a yearly checkup. Nothing to worry about at all. There are pills for what will be discovered, and, actually, later he will feel perfect, because it was just a scare, nothing to worry about, and he and Jane will rent a home. It will be two years before his sudden awakenings end. They come without warning and he stares at the ceiling afraid that he’s betrayed his ex-wife. In those spells, he cannot forgive himself for loving a new woman. He wakes up as fearful as if the doctor had found his life almost over, as if the determination was made that he should get his affairs in order.

  He can’t. His ex lives in the city and she is still the beneficiary and though no one is asking him to, he can’t change that. He won’t. But nobody is asking.

  The story can start anywhere and most days it starts here, just before the laundry. He has brief spells of knowing the story begins years ago in the city. But here, in his daylight, by the side of this underused highway in October, Ron makes a decision to quit smoking. He imagines his deathbed and tries to feel Jane beside it, but cannot. His ex in the city is there, and he apologizes for everything, including killing himself the easy way. Now, it’s hard to swallow. He doesn’t want to regret out in the open, in this daylight. He stands and goes to pack up the dirty clothes.

  And now, the man will go to do their laundry, perhaps picking up a story by Raymond Carver to read while the washing happens. He’ll remember things in his own life that somehow resemble the things in the Carver story — not things like drinking on a couch on the lawn, urging a young couple to dance to a record played on the outdoor record player. Not things like that, but things generous to both of the women he loves — things like becoming friends with his ex-wife, things like all of them from everywhere having Christmas together somewhere warm while he tries his best to stay sober. That’s something he could appreciate.

  He will sit and read these old beautiful stories while his new girlfriend is in the city and their laundry tumbles in the machine. The smell of the softener when he holds her Cats shirt to his face will be the most tangible evidence of his new life. If he were more of a ladies’ man he would know there are not enough scents in the world, not enough variety, for the smell to matter. But now all he knows is he likes this vanilla that Jane uses. He’s been sick of his wife’s floral scent for as long as he can remember.

  He is only a stick figure, grown flesh by the motion of walking into the imagination, then being seated — he became human because he needed to rest. Work is implied, or fatigue. It’s so easy to burden characters with weariness.

  His flesh is becoming invisible again because his girlfriend, Jane, has just opened the door to his ex-wife’s apartment. His ex-wife is about to say hello, but first she must take a lot in.

  Jane is the first woman Ron has been with since they parted. She wants to like her, she really does, but must first take a look. Jane is a simple name. The woman named Jane has put on a little makeup, something unexpected. It looks unexpected, as well; a bit under-thought. Jane should be a thick woman, with a face brown and wrinkled by the weather, but she’s not. Her lines are from laughing, but they’re not sharp, they aren’t cut in like the lines in the faces of women she sees holding stop signs by the side of the road, waving at traffic and smiling the best they can. She’s a petite woman with hair she doesn’t dye. She’s a salt-and-pepper woman with a startled look in her eye.

  “Hello,” says Jane again.

  “Hi,” says Rhonda. “Come in.”

  This is where the story ends. Jane walks in and Rhonda lets her. Ron washes clothes and enjoys his time alone as only a new man can — without fear, without anticipation, sated. Nothing on TV matters to him but he watches it anyway.

  There is a window downtown that shows the same game show Ron watches. Cheering and clapping you can’t hear behind the glass. A short pudgy boy looks through the window at the prizes. Kids aren’t allowed to make fun of his weight, though they do when they can, but they are allowed to make fun of the way he smells. He smells of urine. The teachers don’t notice when the kids call him Cat, because his name is Tom, or so the teachers think.

  It’s short for cat-piss, really, because he smells like urine. He told one boy it’s because his mother has so many cats, they piss all over his clothes. It’s not true. The urine is his. He can’t help it — he gets scared to move. People laugh at him when he moves. He tries to sit still at his desk until the next period. But he dribbles sometimes.

  So these are the truths: the woman is his aunt, not his mother, and the piss is his own, not the cats’. But he has never had a better nickname. The boy Tom sits down on the sidewalk and watches the game show. The prizes bewilder. His nose runs a little and he uses his sleeve.

  This is not where the boy imagines his own story starting, but it does. The aunt is trying her best but just wants to drink herself blind for a little while; she just wants to forget all the things she’s done wrong. One of the things she’s done wrong may turn out right. She’s no good at raising Jane’s boy, but Jane’s all right now. She’s much better.

  She’s sent a letter, about her life and the new man, Ron, who would never hit her. Tom hasn’t met him yet, of course, but Jane knows they will love each other.

  Who am I, anyway? the aunt thinks. I’m no better than Jane. Not at all. I’m the one who drinks, not her. Tom should be with her, that’s true. With Jane and the new man who won’t beat anyone.

  Rhonda is just now consoling Jane, who’s come to ask, to really ask, about Ron. She says I can’t take the chance, I just can’t. He never hit you, did he? And Rhonda answers, No, he never did, though he’s got a temper. Jane looks up and her eyes are wide, her mouth is open. But w
ho doesn’t? Rhonda says, and Jane looks relieved. I want my boy back, she says.

  Ron always wanted a son, he has always wanted a son but Rhonda doesn’t say that. She looks at Jane and knows she feels anger, so she gets up and paces. She looks out the window at the same beach she has always stared at. Tiny people, of course. Tiny people too far away to be people. She knows they’re people, of course. Everything is inevitable, she says out loud.

  “What?” asks Jane.

  “Why are you here? Get out. You can’t just come and ask people questions. What kind of person — ”

  Ron never wanted a boy like this boy, wrecked already by something nobody could ever see. He wanted a son to pop into this world like an idea in the morning, fresh as hell, free all day. But Tom never wanted a father like Ron, who’d failed at everything until he met Jane. He didn’t want to end up spending holidays with all these different characters. He wanted his fictional father to come home. He wanted his fictional mother to stop grieving his loss. He wanted his father to take shots on him then say you don’t have to be goalie, you can skate if you want. He wanted his father to know that he smelled like his own urine and not hate him, which would never happen anyway.

  Ron has finished his story so he looks up. The dryer is done just then. What luck, he thinks, and stretches. He doesn’t know what he’ll say to the boy when he meets him, but he’s been thinking of it. He has no detail, no rich and gauzy scene set up for it. He won’t tell him, look, I’m sober two years now, I’m the best I’ve ever been, I was not good for a while, but. He might say: But, look at it this way. I’m forty-five and I’m just learning how to be a father. I never thought I would. You got thirty-five years, mister, to catch up to me.

  A Long Day Inside the Buildings

  I ROLLED UP MY SLEEVES JUST to keep cool. The bus driver had his window open, too. What a day, he said, every time a regular stepped on. I’m done at two, he said, then I’m going down by the river with a cooler of beer.

  It’s the juxtaposition that does it, you know. This last winter had been cold. Cold. No respite. Cold and long. You walk away from the bus stop all those times and it seems like there will never be sunlight. You’re either rich, with money to burn, or you’ve got to economize, and, out of guilt, or this desire to pinch pennies, you are rarely, if ever, comfortably warm.

  Then, one day, warmth that seemed to happen as quickly as the flick of a switch. My mother always warned me not to stick my arm out of the bus. But I wanted to. That bus driver was taking a risk; he was letting everyone know. You can’t always do that; a cooler of beer down by the river is fine but keep it to yourself, we’ve got a long day inside the buildings, ourselves.

  The superintendent had explained the initiative in the new year. There is a dedicated phone line in the classroom. This is for one call; this is for when the head will answer a question. It was in reaction to all the clutter in the cellular and satellite communications. It was a return to the old days; a hard plastic phone on the wall, with a thick curled cord.

  And today was the day. My children all had questions and we were to narrow them down today. Today we would ask our question. There had been no emergencies; we had not used the telephone in the room. But today the head would call us and we would ask our question.

  They said keep the lines open and I knew what they meant. No ideology. Emergencies only, aside from the prescribed purpose. For example, a student of mine brought forward the notion, one day, of phantom pain.

  “Where will you feel this pain?” the boy, Tommy, asked. “Will it be the exact dimensions of real pain? That is, will a size eleven foot still feel like a size eleven when it’s actually gone?”

  It was the first day of the year when we could open the windows, according to the rules, and according to the weather. I opened them all. Overnight, everything had changed, and here we were.

  It was coming up to noon. It was approaching the deadline. This is exactly what I was getting paid for; this was facilitation.

  “Okay, okay,” I said. I was prepared to draw a chart.

  The whole thing is lousy with implications. Think how easily you wave a hand in the air. If there is a ring on that hand, that can cut glass. Dangle your arm out the window of a truck, for instance, at the stoplight, in the summer time.

  There is nothing ticking anymore, but we imagine a clock. We still hear the old ways of measuring time but . . . what about the heart? Generally, the heart beats. It generally beats like waves on a beach — organic, natural, it beats in this world, it sounds in our ear.

  Think, Marshal, think! There is a way around this. Remember the rules. There are instances where a teacher, someone in your position, may override specific rules. Sure, sure, there are times, but these are also theoretical; they have to do with possibilities.

  The problem was, I could not remember Mindy’s problem, and to ask her again would be a disservice to her, as well. I had to remember they were all children, not just Tommy, the boy with the wrong foot.

  How did this happen? How does this happen?

  “Is it leprosy?” I asked, out loud, mistakenly. I had only been thinking.

  “What?” the boy asked quietly. The room around him was quiet too. Only Mindy, with her added authority, being one of the authors of the two questions in question, was able to speak. She also asked quietly “What?”

  “Never mind,” I said. “I’m sorry. I was thinking of something else.”

  “No you weren’t,” said Mindy’s friend. “You were not. You said is it leprosy. You meant his foot.”

  All the children looked at the boy’s foot. Tommy himself was ready to faint, it seemed. He was a shade that resembles, if nothing else, leprosy, or what I associated with the disease. A kind of yellow. A distorted and deimagined take on the basic yellow — paler and more threatening — a kind of process implied.

  “Jesus,” Tommy said. “Is it leprosy?”

  Now what? The children would tell their parents. They would tell their parents. Just what are you accusing this poor boy of? they would ask.

  I knew there was no accusation. There could be no accusation where a disease was concerned, surely, but still — it was the kind of thing I could get in trouble for.

  “Children,” I said. “There is no such thing as leprosy. I was just thinking of the times we’ve learned about in history, remember. There were all these different things that happened. Even my mother used to use a phone like this one. It was making me think.”

  I was fading fast and I didn’t know why I’d brought my mother into it. Many people had used these phones; there was no reason to implicate anyone.

  “I remember that disease,” Tommy said. I thought I saw him cheering up a little. I thought he changed back to his natural colour.

  “Right,” I said. “It was awful. But the one I was remembering was tuberculosis.”

  “That one’s still around,” Mindy said, sniffing.

  “No it isn’t,” Tommy said. For the first time they looked directly at each other. There was a brief flash of communication between them. There was a spark of contempt in the eyes of each child. These children could still be primal.

  “Not here, Tommy,” Mindy said. “But out in the country, where they don’t take care of themselves. My father told me.”

  We all knew who Mindy’s father was. He was on the rules committee. He was one of the owners of the city. He was a minority owner of the province itself.

  “Mindy,” I said, trying to scold her. “You know that’s not fair. Your father’s opinions have no place here. He’s just one person like all the rest of us.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, and turned on the tears again. Sue comforted her but I could tell she was on shaky ground with the rest of the class.

  I went to the window and leaned out, briefly. Spring air filled my head. I couldn’t get the bus driver out of my mind. A bit chilly to be down by the river, but I bet he was. I bet he was even there with a cooler of beer and his coat undone, smoking a cigarette and leaning
his head back in the sun.

  My father used to sit down by the river in the summer. He was the only smoker I knew and that was the smoking area. I would sit beside his lawn chair sometimes when I was Tommy’s age. My father would lean his head back and look straight up into the sky. I leaned back too. Naked except for my swimming trunks, I was turning slowly brown. My eyes were always stunned by the sunny blue and I was often briefly blind. My father squinted all the time. I was sure he saw something I missed in those brief moments.

  “Can’t get a thing done, sitting here all day,” he muttered once, just before I heard him snore.

  Now, I saw a mother walking her daughter to the bus stop at the other end of the parking lot. The little girl was walking as fast as she could, but seemed to have a slight limp. One of her shoes fell off and she pulled her mother to a stop. They both sat on the asphalt, facing each other, as the girl tied her shoe.

  I needed to get to the problem. “Listen, Tommy,” I said. “I understand your anxiety. I think we all do.” I looked around the class, raising my eyebrows.

  “Oh yes,” they muttered, especially Mindy’s contingent. “Of course,” added Mindy herself, at which point her best friend, Sue, put a hand on her shoulder.

  Mindy turned to Sue. There was such love in their eyes, they could not help but cry. So they did, falling into each other’s arms.

  Mindy said, wetly, through Sue’s hair and into her shoulder (though we all heard; the classroom was that quiet), “Let Tommy go.”

  All the other children were filled, enlarged by Mindy’s selflessness. I am supposed to facilitate, not adjudicate.