The Unexpected and Fictional Career Change of Jim Kearns
Chapter 3
I know Maddy does it, too (the giveaway for her is the distinct I’m-not-really-here look in her eyes), but sometimes when I’m sitting in the overstuffed chair wedged into the southwest corner of the living room, the chair set right by the cold-air return, I’ll place my newspaper or book in my lap, turn off the CD player, and furrow my brow in concentration. When I do that, I can’t help but overhear all conversation coming from the rec room in the basement: the boasts, the taunts, and the beautiful notions, too, that twelve- and thirteen-year-old children share amongst themselves.
I don’t think of it as deceitful; as a parent, you take what you can get without pressing your ear to a milk glass placed against a wall or hovering, breathless and statue-like, just outside a closed bedroom door for minutes at a time. If it’s in the air, it’s public domain.
Still, what am I hoping for when I sit there with my head cocked, with every fiber trained toward them, and try to intercept their unguarded thoughts? A whiff of their secret lives, drifting upward like a wisp of smoke? The secret lives that I’m sure exist but I’ve never been made party to, accidentally or otherwise?
Absolutely not. I have enough trouble handling my face-to-face interactions with Rachel and Eric and coping with the small, nagging doubts those moments leave — simple doubts like Geez, could my casual comment have been misconstrued as some kind of scarring put-down? and Should I step in with some advice now, or is this the time to stand back?
And when I compare my life at age twelve or thirteen to what Eric and Rachel are experiencing now, when I search for any kind of reference point to help in the intricate task of parenting, I just complicate matters. I’m peering back through a window frame that’s cracked and warped with the passage of time, and the pane of glass it holds is flawed, caked with dirt; I’m imposing values that were applicable to a different generation — or, worse still, I’m imposing values that I never bothered with myself. I find the thought of either of them putting a cigarette to their lips unfathomable.
Of course I’m a hypocrite, employing reverse what’s-good-for-the-goose-is-good-for-the-gander ideology at every turn. Maddy’s far better at being fair, at articulating the voice of reason, of just knowing what’s right, for Christ’s sake. When our term is up and Eric and Rachel have blossomed into adults straight and true, Maddy’s contribution will have made all the difference. Still, I have to admit, I have been donating my particular share.
Case in point: not that long ago, I took Eric to a National Sport (the big one up on Bayview Avenue that caters mostly to country club members and their young heirs) to replace the baseball glove he’d left on the park bleachers a few weeks earlier. The summer’s first heat wave triggered this action; after more than a week of everyone staying close to home and the central air whenever possible, it dawned on Maddy and me that we were in danger of becoming a household of recluses.
It came to us as a family (the adult portion, at least), as we sat huddled in the basement, sipping iced colas and watching Killers from Space, one of those god-awful horror movies from the fifties, on the Scream Channel (#148 on the infinite dial — no, make that the Möbius strip, which is worse than infinite) one Saturday afternoon.
During a commercial, Maddy scanned the curtain-dimmed room, her gaze stopping on the two youngsters sitting cross-legged on the broadloom directly in front of the TV.
“Can anyone here tell me,” she asked, pausing dramatically, “what is wrong with this picture?”
I knew where she was headed so I kept my mouth shut; quite probably, Eric and Rachel knew, too.
“Well, the special effects are poor,” Eric said, straight-faced. “The acting’s a bit wooden … and the least they could have done is colorize it.”
Maddy might have sensed that she was being played with — just a bit. A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth.
“Nooooo,” she said. “That’s not exactly what I meant.”
“Oh, oh, I know,” Rachel said, thrusting her hand in the air with the urgency of a brown-noser. “We’re all sitting around the basement like a bunch of mushrooms when we should be out enjoying this scorching summer day.”
“Bingo,” Maddy said. “I couldn’t have put it better myself.”
Rachel eyed her suspiciously. “I said scorching. That’s sarcasm, Mom.”
“I’m fully aware of that,” Maddy said.
“I think what your mother’s trying to say,” I said, “is that you can’t let a little thing like weather keep you in the house. When I was a kid, I’d be out playing football or baseball or whatever all day, even in a heat wave like this. I’d crawl home for supper drenched in sweat.”
“There weren’t any heat waves when you were a kid,” Eric said. “You were born during the last ice age.”
“That’s Cold War, baby boy, and you’re not the least bit funny,” I said. “But we’ve all been through this before, so we’re not going to go through it again. You two decide what you’re going to do.”
What we’d been through was this: Eric and Rachel, though merely middle-class, suffered from an embarrassment of entertainment riches — endlessly redundant television, video games, computers that linked them to the entire world, and much, much more — and were capable of staying indoors and interacting with, while not actually seeing, friends for three or four days at a time. Their friends, similarly equipped, fell into the same trap. And the parents, selfish, stupid, lazy, or just filled with misguided love (okay, we never belabored these points), indulged their children in this behavior. On the odd occasion, a boy or girl not ours might wander by, slouched and wan, and utter a “Hey, Mr. Kearns” or a “How ya, doin’, Miz Moffatt?” before stepping through the doorway to the basement; undoubtedly banished from a foreign residence for the crime of over-familiarity, the interloper would then descend into the void with a cache of video games or DVDs clenched in his or her fists.
Heat, rain, soothing temperate breezes, none of these factors influenced this pattern; kids, at least ours and the ones we knew, lived this way during the summer (or any time, actually, when free of school for a decent stretch). What severe weather tended to do was coop families together for extended periods of time during non business/school hours and draw attention to this problem.
So Maddy and I issued our worn but simple edict: step outside. It was that basic. Sports, a walk, even something as passive as standing beside a tree and taking in the air would fit the bill.
After Killers from Space and by a third of the way through The Man with the X-Ray Eyes, we’d winnowed it down to this: Rachel, cell phone in hand, would trek the three blocks to Chantal Watson’s house without calling in advance, guaranteeing herself a walk. If Chantal was home, Rachel would call to let us know she was staying. If not, she’d come home and help Maddy in the garden.
Eric, slyer still, had opted for the baseball glove purchase. Not baseball itself, or at least a game of long toss or five hundred with me over at the park (using Rachel’s glove for the afternoon), but driving up to National Sport and picking up Slurpees on the way home. This, of course, was one of Eric’s famous back-end deals. Not much in the way of outdoor activity now, but the promise of substantial frolicking in the sun later: “A whole summer’s worth, for cryin’ out loud! Starting tomorrow!”
So we drove north, away from midtown traffic, up to National Sport and its fashionable-suburb prices. But we’d dallied till late afternoon, allowing the heat to climb from uncomfortable to punishing, and Eric’s face, shiny and red to start with, now beaded over at the forehead and lip as we travelled.
For an instant, I felt sorry for him. After all, late last fall, in a fit of thrift, Maddy and I replaced our aging auto with a newer aging auto, laying down five thousand cash (but taking on no monthlies) for a seven-year-old Mustang. Mechanically sound, rust-free, and with minimal mileage on it, the car held two major flaws: racing stripes (which we knew about) and no Freon in the air-conditioning unit. It blew, all right — just not cold.
Yes, poor Eric. But bad-taste Biafran jokes aside, I’d heard somewhere recently, in a World Vision commercial, I think, that twenty-seven thousand children die daily throughout the world from malnutrition and disease. Twenty-seven thousand. Daily. The sound byte had stuck, popping into my conscience on occasion and diluting at least some of the empathy I might have for a daughter whose jeans just weren’t faded enough, gosh darn it — could we run them through the washer again? And a son who, although quite sweaty, was on his way to buy an apparently disposable ninety-dollar baseball glove and an iced sugar drink verging on poisonous. He could roll down his window to cool off.
He had, of course, as had I, and we now bombed up Bayview with the wind tousling our hair and the stereo rumbling. Mixed tapes filled the car’s glove compartment: Maddy/Rachel mixes, Maddy/Jim mixes, Rachel/ … actually, every combination possible except for Eric/Rachel mixes because neither of them drove by themselves. Sometimes we’d spend a Friday or Saturday night laughing, razzing, and gnashing our teeth as we chose cuts for the next car tape, goading each other into more personal and vexing choices as Cat Stevens followed The Stranglers who followed Pere Ubu who followed Nelly, all the while kicking each other’s butts at blackjack or three-card draw; and other times, we’d behave with a social conscience, trying to satisfy all tastes concerned as we played a civilized game of Scrabble or Trivial Pursuit.
But right now, as Eric and I cruised the boulevard, we listened to an Eric/Jim mix, a father/son showdown, a no-holds-barred goad-a-thon, the speakers vibrating as we crested Bayview’s long rise and turned onto York Mills.
The next tune up was by Pale Prince, the music industry’s latest attempt to loosen Eminem’s stranglehold on the trillion-dollar angry-white-suburban-teenager rap market. “Pale America” I think the rhyme was called, and it opened with a sonic blast:
Open yo’ eyes, The Man is whack
Been thirty fuckin’ years since he knew what’s mack
See him smoking’ his ceegar in his Lincoln Continental
He’ll tell ya what to do ’cause he’s mutha’-fuckin’ mental
So listen up good, listen up Jack
If you fuck wit’ me, I’m gonna fuck you back
I glanced at Eric, who purposely looked straight ahead, nodding in time with the beat. This song was one of his knockout punches on the tape, a statement, but Maddy and I had already discussed it in private, again coming to the conclusion that sometimes the message wasn’t as important as the messenger. This pale guy was The Who forty years later, except surlier and with a fouler mouth, but that’s inflation for you. I’d gone the same route. Eric was smart enough to take any clever things from his songs without embracing the not-so-clever (although we were aware that other parents had made the same general assumption only to find it faulty). And then, of course, there was this: banning a popular form of music from a thirteen-year-old boy wasn’t just Amish in nature, it was like lighting a one-inch fuse on a hundred-pound-plus keg of dynamite.
We continued along York Mills, which grew into a busy three-lane thoroughfare running east-west through the north of the city; around us, streams of cars jockeyed for position, closing up openings in the blink of an eye. I looked below us to south, to midtown, downtown, and the lake beyond. A vast, dirty yellow cloud hung over everything, a duvet of crap smothering the top of any building over sixty stories tall. It stretched west for forty miles, where you could watch it meld with the vapors oozing from Hamilton’s steel mills.
The city hadn’t been this way when I moved here twenty … twenty-what? twenty-four years ago. The population seemed to be growing exponentially, here, there, everywhere, spreading, hugging the waterways and rivers, befouling them in the same way fatty yellow chunks of cholesterol choked arteries. And now the heat pinned down our collective stink; I could smell it blowing through the car.
I looked back to Eric; he continued nodding, looking straight ahead. And, as sometimes happened when I looked at him or Rachel for too long, I was struck by this recurring thought: the number of ideas they hold in their handsome heads don’t nearly add up to the amount they share with Maddy and me. Of course I know my children well, but only as much as they’ll let me. So I asked: “Hey, Eric. Are you happy right now?”
He looked at me quizzically. “Huh? You mean right now?”
“Well, yeah, right now. But in general … with life, I mean?”
“Uh-huh, it’s pretty cool,” he said, still nodding.
Always quick with a quip or a comeback in response to day-to-day things, Eric often turned reticent when challenged with those deeper questions — like “How’s life?” and “Are you happy?” Their answers scared him, I think, now that his life was becoming so much more complicated than Winnie the Pooh videos and who got the most pudding for dessert, but who was I to help supply the real answers?
So there we sat, side by side and on our way to the sporting goods store, both two-thirds full of testosterone, him filling up with the stuff as he aged and grew, and me pissing it out as I aged and shrank. Hormone flow and rational thought never mixed well to begin with, and our positions, me searching for footing as I slipped down the north side of the slope and him struggling past obstacles as he started up the south side, made it that much more difficult. All of those steps he now approached, first girlfriends, sex, fitting in, were difficult enough without some fragile, finger-wagging know-it-all looming over him with outdated tips and a list of rules. Of course Pale Prince made sense to him. Who else to help with the fear and anger? But where was my knight in shining armor to help me understand and accept that although once a week may seem vexin’/you couldn’t fuckin’ stand much more sexin’ and issues much more important than that?
I had no Pale Prince, but as he faded out and Neil Young’s nasal voice leapt through the speakers, I started to feel better again. Not that I considered him a spokesman for my generation or a great reliever of my particular stress; I just liked his music — and, almost as importantly, Eric didn’t. I grinned, anticipating his response.
“Oh no, not this guy!” he said, as “For the Turnstiles” wafted through the air.
“The Godfather of Grunge,” I said, grinning wider. “A rock and roll icon.”
“He can’t sing,” Eric said.
“He can, but you’re missing the point,” I said. “It’s not about clarity of voice, it’s about clarity of style, the combination of persona, talent, meaning. It’s the package. Your doofus is no different.”
“No way. Rapping’s not singing.”
“That’s for sure,” I said.
We could have kept bickering, but we’d come to National Sport’s parking lot. I signaled and wheeled in, immediately falling into cruise mode as I looked for an empty space. The lot hugged the west side of the store, and I followed its one-way arrow, painted onto the pavement, past the single row of cars parked on each side of us. I could see that the lot blossomed to full size at the rear of the building, but here it was just the two rows, one on either side.
Halfway down the strip, I noticed an empty spot and drove towards it, signaling, assuming it was ours. But even as I made this assumption, a Lexus SUV, waxed and polished and glowing like a comet, swerved around from the back of the store; ignoring all arrows, it streaked toward our space, trying to make up twice the distance in half the time.
Eric and I stared, dumbfounded, as a young couple, beer-commercial extras bedecked in dazzling tennis whites, hurled their van toward the open spot in front of us. I punched the car forward and cranked the steering wheel hard right. We hit the brakes simultaneously, coming to lurching halts with a yip of spent rubber and a kiss of bumpers. I thrust my head out of my open window.
“What the fuck are you doing, jerk? It’s a one-way!”
He reached for his door handle, and my heart, already hammering, picked up its pace. This was it, I was sure. I was seconds from rolling around in a parking lot, kneeing, punching, pounding, with Eric looking on in terror. I felt my scrotum tighten.
But before the other driver could open the door, his girlfriend flung out her hand and grabbed his shoulder; I could see her fingers dig into the flesh beneath his shirt.
They talked, both anonymously and animatedly, in their climate-controlled cab as I waited with my head still thrust out my window and a tough-guy sneer masking my mounting fear. They kept arguing, with the man — no, the boy, really — occasionally jabbing a finger in my direction. Twenty at best, whippet lean, with corded forearms and a head of curly black hair, he looked like a pro tennis player — or at this point, with neck veins popping and spittle flying, a pro tennis player wanting to punch the shit out of a line judge.
Who knows what they talked about. Maybe the woman swayed him with reason, pointing out that, yes indeed, they did speed the wrong way down a one-way parking aisle to try to steal this spot from us, and they’d best move on. Or maybe her part went something like this: Don’t do it, Chad! My high-powered lawyer/father couldn’t possibly finagle you out of a third straight assault charge! And who knows, you might kill the old fart!
But whatever she’d said, he’d agreed to it, throwing the Lexus into reverse. Then, as he lurched forward and sped past our car (continuing in the wrong direction) he somehow managed to mime, with passable accuracy, that I fellate him. For a fleeting second rage flew over me, equaling my fear, and I wanted to back up and ram him. But just as quickly it passed and I rolled into the parking spot.
I sat motionless for a moment, gripping the steering wheel with both hands, my elbows still locked, before I finally blew out a huge breath. “I need a smoke before we go in,” I said, cutting the engine and opening my door.
Eric and I met at the trunk; both of us propped our butts against it and I lit my cigarette, taking in that first big, greedy drag, getting some nicotine to my brain. I watched the smoke leave my mouth in staccato puffs as I turned to him and spoke: “Do you remember that trip to the grocery store a couple of months ago?” I asked. “The one where your mom got all PO’d?”
“The day she walked right into the house and left all of the bags for us? You bet.”
Discounting the occasional well-deserved blowout, the odd raised voice or cold shoulder was memorable anger for Maddy. That scene had stuck with the both of us.
“Well, I’ve thought about it a lot,” I said. “Especially what she’d said when we were in the car. Do you remember any of that?”
He looked up at me. “Uh, which part?” he asked. “The bit about not everyone in the world being an asshole, and how you shouldn’t teach your children that they are?”
I smiled. “That’s the bit … more or less. And she had a point.”
Not only did she have a point, she’d reminded me of it since. But even now, as my nerves settled and the danger seemed to have passed, I wanted to overrule her; I wanted to go on a rant and tell Eric that the world brimmed with fucking morons just like that guy in the Lexus and what he truly needed was not forgiveness or rational conversation but a couple of shots to the teeth. Of course that’s what I wanted. But I knew better, and I knew if Maddy were here, she’d want me to extend myself, to find higher ground. So I took another drag and started talking, looking for the words as I went along.
“Your mother’s absolutely right. I can’t always be imparting those kinds of … values. It’s a big world, with lots of good in it — if you show some patience and don’t make assumptions. I guess what I’m saying is, not everyone out there is an asshole.”
Eric continued looking up, his eyes wide. Probably still scared (I know I was), wired from his brush with violence, his aura seemed receptive; at this point I felt as though I were in the middle of one of those father/son moments, a moment when I should pass on something long-lasting, something of value. A truly valid point. But what?
“It’s probably more like a seventy-five/twenty-five split,” I said at last. “With twenty-five percent being decent, thoughtful human beings most of the time.”
Still leaning, his arms crossed, and his lower lip thrust out slightly, Eric remained motionless for a beat, imagining what? His classroom? The schoolyard? Friends? Bullies? People and places I knew nothing about? Finally he nodded. “Yeah, that’s about right, I’d guess.”
Just at that moment, a woman approached. Probably in her early thirties, she favored the big look, sporting oversized sunglasses, huge hoop earrings, and large, shiny hair; no deus ex machina placed here to supply a punchline to our small talk, she lugged a National Sport bag, undoubtedly filled with boxercize and jazzercize apparel. In her other hand she gripped both a cellphone and an unopened pack of Kools. She pressed both to her ear.
“That’s right. Mr. Limpdick’s three days late with the child support already.” She paused for a moment, then: “You bet I’ve phoned my attorney … can you hold for a second, Becky?”
She took her phone and cigarettes from her ear as she passed us and began struggling with the pack’s cellophane wrapper, helping her cause with an emphatic “Son of a fuckin’ bitch.” Well past us now, a scrap of plastic fell in her wake, caught the breeze, and scuttled across the pavement in our direction.
I turned to Eric. His eyes were riveted to the Louis Vuitton jeans papered to her hips, and he kept staring as nature’s perfect billboard shifted and swayed into the distance. He didn’t even look down when her cigarette wrapper caught the tip of his running shoe, stuck, and fluttered, pinned by the wind; and there we stood for a moment, in our own little microcosm
Seventy-five/twenty-five? I’d been generous. No. I’d lied. My true feelings on the subject were this: ninety percent of the people walking the face of this planet exhibited truly stupid behavior most of the time, whether it be through racism, sexism, religious persecution, or whatever; I could go on and on about the depravity of human behavior in any society at any time in history. Even as scientists crack the genetic code, slaughter, oppression, and bigotry remain commonplace, and it seems unlikely, even with all our marvelous technological advances, that the identification and eradication of the asshole gene will ever occur. Three thousand years from now when humans attired in flowing robes and bearing expanded craniums à la Star Trek roam this earth, they won’t be bent on discovering a theorem for peace, love, and understanding. Their huge heads will be busy inventing better weapons — and at closer quarters will be much better targets for each other’s puny fists.
But hey, for the sake of Eric’s development as a human being, I was willing to concede seventy-five/twenty-five. And I assumed that Maddy would congratulate me for my flexibility if word of it ever got back to her. Go figure.
Chapter 4 next week. Happy Summer reading!