The Unexpected and Fictional Career Change of Jim Kearns
After the Incident: Chapter Fifteen
I stepped into the hallway and caught a new rush of music from the exercise room — a brash, video-channel sound, probably emanating from the forty-two-inch flat-screen TV that dominated the entertainment cabinet. The kids seemed to be having a whale of a time with Chloe, so I walked away and regarded the first few stairs to the third floor. Golden sunlight filled the small landing before me and as much of the bright, broadloomed staircase as I could see, leading me to believe that at least one skylight, possibly more, existed where none had in my day.
Back then, the third floor consisted of two separate bedrooms, one at the front of the house and one at the back; both were cold and dim (the front room actually accumulated a quarter-inch of frost on portions of its north wall in the winter). Still, they’d been the rooms of choice due to their isolation, and as I stood there with my kids bellowing in the background, I could almost recall the rush I’d felt when Jen finally packed her bags, leaving me with more than just a bedroom but with the entire top of the house to myself: my sanctuary until it was my turn to cut the cord.
Yet despite this little jolt of pseudo-excitement in remembering one of my first true steps towards autonomy, my mind reacted the way it normally had throughout this ordeal when tweaked, not by bringing forth a joyous, reinforcing event, but by coughing up some pointless meandering — this one as madcap as the MTV clip churning in the background.
It was a night in late May, Grade 12, and I struggled over my final term paper in American history: an essay of no less than two thousand words defending the American South’s pre–Civil War, slavery-driven economy.
I’m not even sure that topic would be legal in high schools today (although the concept of slavery itself still seems okeydokey, from McDonald’s to Nike to places far worse than that when employed by the proper circle of rich white men). But once more I digress. I believe back then I’d gotten as far as saying something about inflation being easier to control with minimal labor costs when I realized I was in for a long couple of nights and that I’d have trouble digging up even two words in defense of any form of slavery.
I think that’s how it started, anyway, with me struggling so earnestly and futilely with my topics that I decided to compensate for said misery with a smoke break. So I stopped and threw Who’s Next on the turntable before plucking a joint from a dresser drawer and lighting it by my bedroom window.
I sat there, toking, grooving, staring out from my lofty third-floor perch, and (if I can speculate as to what hash-induced hyperbole might have been crowding my head at the time) fully appreciating that I’d finally staked claim to the best seat in the house — to one of the best seats in any house, anywhere, at anytime. When a gentle breeze started pushing my joint’s smoke back into the room, I hoisted up the screen and leaned over a bit.
Outside my window, early summer foliage filled the street’s numerous trees. Below, well-spaced streetlights lit their underbellies to a burnished bronze; up top, I could hear more than see the network of branches rustling at eye level in the moonless, almost black night sky.
Across the street, the north-side houses radiated that particular summer-night glow, and in the distance, good chunks of Baymore Terrace lights, maybe even some from Val Creighton’s place, glimmered and winked through the dark web of leaves before me. I couldn’t see the creek in between, but I knew it was there, fresh and lush: even the water turned green around that time of year, sprouting emerald patches of algae for a week so at the end of May.
If Patterson’s Creek had a flaw, that was it: it was too lush. With the algae came the mosquitoes. During hot, moist summers especially, the basin became a breeding ground for them, with vast clouds of the little bloodsuckers springing up overnight. They’d hang down there in clumps, waiting for unwitting non-locals to stroll through what, from a distance, looked like rustic paradise, but was, in essence, their ’hood.
Of course, food chains in different areas have different pecking orders, and in the valley, mosquitoes brought bats. Where they nested, I didn’t know (although, allegedly, the hills north of the city were rife with catacombs). All I knew about them for sure was that they were a common sight, and as much as they were needed, they were feared, especially by the kids. Rumor had it that it took one shot a day for seven days with a twenty-one-inch needle (which had to go right through your stomach and into your spine, for whatever reason) to cure rabies.
But that night, with the combination of a blaring LP and a moonless sky masking their presence, I hadn’t noticed any bats; in fact, I’d given them no thought at all as I dangled my head out the window and hauled on my spliff . . . until one shot by my ear, through the open window, and into my room like a leather bullet
.
Its sudden appearance blew me out of my chair, and as it ricocheted around, skimming walls and matching Roger Daltry screech for screech, I flopped around on the floor like a piked trout.
Finally, it settled on top of my bedroom door frame; I scrambled to my knees, terrified, and scanned the room, looking for a proper (but highly unlikely) bat-fighting instrument — a tennis racket or fan rake or lacrosse stick — before settling on the semi-ironic and not very efficient baseball bat leaning against my dresser.
I crawled to it and gripped its handle. Clutching a bat made me feel a bit braver than holding a joint did — though not by much. Nevertheless, I stood and approached my nemesis in a crouch, waggling the bat as if I were waiting on a sweet, high-arced, slo-pitch softball. And that’s when it attacked.
It whipped by my head, but more like a Phil Niekro knuckler than a slow pitch. I swung and missed, pirouetting with the momentum, only to find it circling back. Again I swung and missed.
And again it dove.
I don’t know how long this scene went on; it seemed like five minutes, maybe more. But in reality, it couldn’t have been more than a minute, playing out as “Baba O’Riley” blasted out its see-sawing violin solo in the background like a frenetic soundtrack.
Then, in a stroke of blind-as-a-bat, bullshit luck, it found the open window at the tail end of a swoop, disappearing into the night just as the song ended, just as I swung from my heels one last time, and just as my mother called out from the landing to the third floor.
“Jim?” she yelled. “Is everything all right up there?”
“Uh, yeah . . . everything’s fine,” I answered, sucking wind in the silence for an instant before rushing back to the window alcove. I scooped up the cold roach lying on the hardwood floor, pocketing it as I added, “I was just exercising.”
More silence followed as my mother considered my statement. This was, after all, a decade before Twenty-Minute Workout, and half a decade at least since I’d bounced on the bed or played sock hockey in my bedroom.
Finally, just as the opening chords of “Bargain” started up, she replied. “All right, then. Just try to keep it down a bit.”
Why that particular memory came to me, I couldn’t say. Maybe I was supposed to acknowledge the concept that having to deal with vile, stupid situations — e.g., being forced to defend slavery for school credit or defend my turf (screenings, that is) from the privileged — would always be a part of life, and, as a result, fear would always find a way to fly through life’s windows. Or, maybe, if I were way less full of shit, I’d have recognized it as a bombastic enough occurrence to be the first thing I remembered when I’d stepped back onto that staircase for the first time in however many years.
Either way, the event had reeled me back into the past, until I suddenly found myself in the present again — seated, cheeks-in-palms, on the lower portion of the stairs to the third floor, eye to eye with a slick-browed, red-faced Eric.
“Need … cola … quick.” He squeezed out his words in a theatrical pant.
I looked up, smiled, and said, “All summer long I couldn’t force you to break a sweat, when all it—”
Then I stopped myself, realizing just how angry I could have made him if I’d said, when all it took was a pretty, perky twenty-two-year-old woman to lead the aerobic charge.
Instead, I reached out, gave his shoulder a light knuckle-dusting, and said, “Let’s go. I could use one, too.”
Eric and I walked past the master bedroom doorway; Anita and Jen stood at the window now, talking, pointing out to the street, totally unaware of our departure. The tour, I assumed, was officially over; supper would be next on the agenda.
And what a supper it was: scrumptious and effortless. Chinese food cartons and aluminum containers crowded the kitchen table. We milled about in convention fashion, lugging paper plates filled to the brim with giant prawns, crispy chicken, savory vegetables, and spicy lo mein; the Cantonese egg rolls in particular, impossible to find back home (despite a Chinese population of more than half a million), replayed the best part of the beavertail incident, wowing Eric and Rachel with new sensory delights and reintroducing my taste buds to forgotten flavor.
To wash down all this food, the beer and wine flowed. This time, though, in a refreshing turn of events, I wasn’t a major contributor to the alcohol consumption. Back on the third-floor staircase, when I’d told Eric that I could use a cola, I’d meant it. I wanted a clear head for our getaway.
John, on the other hand, was well oiled by the time we’d moved to the back patio to indulge in post-dinner vices. He sat ramrod straight at the end of a chaise lounge, his feet splayed and his face red. He peeled the label from a Heineken as Anita, Jen, and I lit cigarettes.
In the distant past, when I’d seen him on a more regular basis, I’d often wondered why, as an actuary for a major insurance company, he hadn’t exhibited … I don’t know, some level of disdain or disgust towards the plethora of mindless Kearns smokers gracing his presence. But he hadn’t, never quoting a single statistic on its hazards — at least not to me.
In fact, during all our years as in-laws, we’d never exchanged anything more than small talk, nothing deeper than current events. This evening, though, his reserve seemed different, born more from anger or frustration than natural reticence; the entire household had seemed different to me, especially after he’d mentioned he was studying for his real estate exam and Anita had avoided clarifying the situation in his absence.
Their unspoken angst became clearer, however, when, to fill the stretch of dead air that followed our move to the lounge chairs, Anita said, “So, how did it go today, hon?”
John took a long pull on his beer before saying, “As well as can be expected, considering the hoops I’m having to jump through at this stage in my life.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Anita said. “You’re not jumping through hoops, you’re responding rationally to a totally unfair situation.”
“Oh, am I?” John snapped.
Anita turned away, wearing an expression that looked to hold equal parts worry, helplessness, and anger. As inexpert as I knew myself to be in divining the human condition, I began to sense a pall, similar but not identical, to the one that hung over my breakfast table not so long ago.
Now, responding tactfully in a delicate situation had never been one of my strong suits, but as silence once more engulfed the patio, I felt the need to say something, anything, and I asked: “So, tell me, John. What’s all this talk about being retired?”
He glanced quickly to Anita, raising the tension level even higher, before turning to me.
“I’ve been . . . given a ‘golden parachute,’ let’s call it,” he said churlishly. “An excellent deal, really — two years’ salary and full pension.” He paused to drain his beer. Then his face soured, either from the bottle’s warm dregs or the prospect of disclosing even more personal information to me. “I’ve not been left hurting, but the injustice of the act hasn’t left me any less angry, and I refuse to be pushed into early . . . into not contributing.”
He stopped now, as if I were supposed to comment on the inhumanity of the situation, but all I could do was nod my head and purse my lips, because if I were to open them, it might have been to compare notes: He’d received a golden parachute; I’d received a golden shower. He’d received hundreds of thousands of dollars to ride quietly into the sunset; I’d received a humiliating, public blackballing — without even a shot at unemployment insurance. Now, neither of us was contributing. Still, in applying knowledge from his old line of work, it must have galled him to know that, statistically speaking, he’d had 9.32 productive years stolen from him.
“How unfortunate,” I said at last.
“Unfortunate, yes — but not the end of the world,” Anita emphasized. “Real estate is valid work for an intelligent man.”
“Absolutely,” I said, nodding. If I could limit myself to short “yes” and “no” type answers, responding only when I agreed, maybe I could make it through this.
Across from me, Jen, cradling her drink and lighting a fresh cigarette from the butt of another, lay stretched out on her lawn chair. And from the basement, laughter and the clack of billiard balls filtered into the backyard as Chloe and the kids racked them up. Every guest but me seemed either at ease or entertained.
“All I know,” John said, “is that I’m following a salt-and-pepper herd into an over-grazed, early-retirement wasteland.” He looked down at his empty Heineken. “I need another beer.” He then stood and walked away, disappearing into the house.
When the back door finally eased itself closed, Anita said, “I think that’s what gets me most: the inequality of the so-called system. Here’s a man who gave his all for his company — nine sick days in thirty-one years, for Christ’s sake — and they discard him like yesterday’s newspaper.”
“Well, you know me, sis,” Jen said. She wasn’t slurring yet, but her S’s were starting to sound a bit suspicious. “I usually don’t have much sympathy for male casualties in ‘The Great Patriarchal System,’ but even I think that John was given the short end of the stick.”
“Suddenly, our whole world’s upside down — and it’s crippling everyone,” Anita said, staring down at her drink.
“Hey, don’t I know the feeling,” Jen said. “Not that long ago I was looking at a very similar situation.”
And really, that’s how the evening ended: with the two women once more locking into a conversation that didn’t exclude me so much as it didn’t include me; meanwhile John stayed absent without leave. Scarcely a half-hour passed before I pleaded exhaustion and found myself at the front door with the kids in tow.
A round of stilted goodbye hugs followed, and the next thing I knew, Anita, Jen, and Chloe had stopped waving and stepped back into the house as Eric, Rachel, and I looked back from the sidewalk.
We all regarded 40 First Avenue for another moment, sorting our various parting thoughts before walking away; I, for one, was confused. Regardless of what I may have said to Maddy before the trip, or what I may have thought to myself about Anita and Jen’s possible reactions to my situation, I hadn’t thought our visit would play out in this manner.
The kids, on the other hand, had looked at the experience from a vastly different viewpoint. We turned, and as we started towards the car parked at the end of the street, Eric said, “Chloe might be the coolest person I’ve ever met.”
“Yeah,” Rachel said. “She’s going to be a VJ.”
The humidity of late afternoon had given way to the slight chill of an almost–Labor Day night, and if you concentrated on it, you could hear the bustle of the local fair, some five blocks south along The Driveway, with all of its trademark sounds: the high-pitched scream of teenagers hurtling towards the earth in the cockpit of the Bullet; the hum of a hundred other rides and a hundred thousand lights; the din of thirty thousand people yapping and yelling, stuffing corn dogs and cotton candy into their faces as they navigated their ways through litter-strewn grounds. I’d given it almost no thought at all during our trip, but its presence did help explain the number of cars on the street and our relatively distant parking spot from the house.
None of those things seemed to register with Rachel and Eric, though.
“And did you see all of her tattoos?” Rachel said — to Eric only, I assumed, since I’d not been party to any tattoo unveilings.
“Yeah, and how about the belly-button ring?” Eric countered.
What I found particularly ironic was that almost everyone else in the world had confronted me with their knowledge of my incident, from friends, neighbors, and foes, right down to acquaintances so far removed that they could have been classified as strangers.
But my immediate family?
We approached the Aztek; I aimed the keychain at it, thumbed the remote unlock, and its headlights flashed in acknowledgment. Just east of us, The Driveway wound its way north, over the arched bridge at Baymore Terrace, on to the drawbridge at Pretoria Avenue, and continued downtown; the canal beyond, lined with its walking paths and moon silver globes, followed suit.
At the risk of being redundant, the scene was pretty — postcard pretty — but all I could think about was getting back to our hotel room and partaking in the blessed sleep to follow. As we all reached for our door handles, though, Eric and Rachel stopped in mid-motion and cocked their ears skyward.
“What’s that sound?” Rachel asked.
“What sound?” I asked, all innocence.
“How about the one that resembles a huge outdoor party,” Eric said.
Sure enough, from where we stood now, and with the kids’ minds finally off of their newfound cousin, the carnival sounds were obvious, rolling raucously along The Driveway/canal corridor. Then, as if more physical evidence were necessary, a family strode into view at the First Avenue/Driveway intersection: The father of this unit had a three-year-old girl, as limp as a used bath towel, draped over his right shoulder, and he clutched the string of a bobbing, helium-filled balloon in his left hand; the mother, her face pinched and drained, pushed a giant stuffed panda along in their stroller; and two red-faced, fair-haired boys, maybe eight years old, probably twins, played out a frantic sword duel with partially eaten candy apples. I’d have been hard-pressed to try to bullshit away that sight, so I didn’t. Not really.
“That,” I said, “is the Ex. Like the one going on back home right now but smaller — way smaller. Almost like a county fair, but with crime.”
“Whoa! The Ex!” Eric said.
“Can we go for a while?” Rachel asked. “It’s only nine o’clock.”
We stood at our respective doors. The kids were galvanized; I was stunned.
“Exactly,” I said. “Nine o’clock. That’s kind of late, don’t you think?”
Eric studied me from the other side of the Aztek for a second before saying, “You are so old. It’s almost like we live on different planets.”
And I’ll be damned if that didn’t put things in perspective. There we stood, with our trip’s primary goal a journey of bonding, of getting to know each other better, and I wanted to go pass out back in our hotel room. If I couldn’t empathize with my own children, the fruit of my looms, how could I expect anything more from my sisters, living a full city and almost half a generation apart?
“All right,” I said. “Let’s go. But you’re not getting me on a single ride.”
As if choreographed, they cheered and reached for their doors in perfect unison.
“What are you doing?” I bellowed, freezing them both mid-motion.
“We’re getting into the car,” Rachel said.
“It’s five blocks,” I responded.
“And your point is?” Eric asked.
I aimed the keychain once more and hit “lock” emphatically.
“We’ve been through this before; you know perfectly well what my point is.”
I stalked off, pissed and petulant for an instant, then with the kids in pursuit, already regretting how quick I’d been to anger and silently vowing to show them a good time when we got there.
But maybe I was being a bit too hard on myself, because as surly as I’d become and as tired as I felt, I wasn’t so bad a father. After all, none of us would be looking to score a little pick-me-up from the guy at the tilt-a-whirl.
Just a few more chapters exploring Jim’s path to “redemption”. Thanks for reading.