Disclaimer (with apologies to Dave Eggers and his genius)
All characters appearing under the label Pants on Fire now exist and events are shamelessly lifted from real life. Any resemblance to fictional or imaginary persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental, does not constitute intentional plagiarism, and occurs through no fault of the author’s but rather can be attributed to the over-active imagination of the reader or to the reader’s questionable reading habits, or both.
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Lingering
Yah . . . it is true. I do linger . . . loiter . . . take my time making my way home from school. Dawdling she calls it, like doodling, like I’m some stub of a pencil aimlessly inscribing a path through the snow covered street. Dawdling. . .
“Jack, get the hell in here right now.”
I laugh (just in my head though). She’s got on Sam’s old rubber boots, the black ones with the green stripe running ‘round them, with her jeans stuffed right down inside and dirty old rubber bands stretched around the tops of the damn boots holding in her jeans. She’s got those bright yellow rubber kitchen gloves on too, but that’s nothing new. It’s the rubber bands I can’t get over - wrapped around her wrists and ankles like she doesn’t want to expose any skin or nothing.
Kali is propped on the floor in the living room crying; her dollhouse stuff is semi-circled around her caging her in, her half empty bottle lying just outside the arc of toys. I can hear the twins, Jacob and Daniel, upstairs play wrestling and laughing and I hope they stay up there and keep it down, ‘cause I know someone’s in for it.
Rubber-handed, she grabs me by the sleeve of my jacket— my favourite one, the navy hoodie that’s worn so it feels just right, the one that used to be Sam’s—and, yanks me into the hall.
“For Christ’s sake, get the broom and kill it,” she says.
Peeling gloves, reaching for her cigarettes, she heads out the front door for the porch.
Man, I should have guessed. She must have been freaking out all afternoon. I scoop up Kali and her bottle and plop her in the big armchair in the living room and make my way into the kitchen where the broom is tucked in beside the fridge.
I feel queasy, sick inside. I can smell the mouse now, close, heavy with rat poison, hiding somewhere, knowing, waiting for death. The broom feels odd in my hands, too long for me, not sturdy enough. I wish I had gloves. I stop in the middle of the kitchen listening, waiting. If I’m lucky, it’ll be in the kitchen and make a scurrying sound on the linoleum ‘cause I don’t want to think about having to search the rest of the house. I stand there - oh so still - trying not to think, listening to the sound of my own heart.
Kali starts crying again and I have to go into the living room to soothe her.
“Kali, Kali, shh, shh, I need to listen for the mouse,” I say.
A basket of unfolded laundry, greying socks and underwear, is piled high on the pink (dusty rose, she calls it) chesterfield and I pray that the mouse hasn’t curled up inside searching for its last warm bed. I can hear the twins arguing now and I yell at them not to come downstairs.
I listen and wait.
I am sure I see movement in my peripheral vision and I feel a tight knot, a kind of ache, forming in my chest. The movement is quick, but I am good at sensing their presence. Sometimes I see them in my dreams—a tail disappearing under a pedal of the old piano or, worse, under the oven drawer. My eyes scout the room wanting, and not wanting, to find that mouse. Again, I wait and listen. Kali whimpers.
For one brief moment everything is still.
Across the room I see it: the fish-shaped ceramic soap dish (the one I made for her last year in Ms. Abel’s Grade Five art class) resting on the mahogany end table by the armchair, a half-smoked cigarette crushed into its stomach. Soiled. Dirtied. Two near-empty hi-ball glasses, liquid amber, ice not yet melted, stand by its side.
Through the window I can see my mother in her ridiculous get-up pacing on the porch. Some thing like anger rises inside me. I look at Kali; she looks at me. I raise my arms over my head and bring the broom down on the rug with a loud thwack.
My eyes lock with Kali’s, willing her not to be scared. She giggles and that’s when I do see the mouse. It’s sitting quietly, unmoving, bathed in a ray of sunlight in the corner by the TV. I’m not sure what’s worse: when they scurry or when they just sit and wait for death. I know I need to get it over with but I don’t think the mouse is going anywhere. Kali smiles at me. I inch forward and turn on the TV and flick the channels until I find Mr. Dressup.
I have an idea and I go back into the kitchen and get the dust pan from under the sink. Back in the living room, the mouse is still there, basking in that bit of light. I walk right up to it – no more than a foot or two away - and I can tell it’s alive because I can see it breathing now; but, it still doesn’t move.
For a while I watch the mouse breathe, Mr. Dressup laughing with Casey and Finnegan in the background. Then, ever so gently, I bring the broom down behind the mouse and slowly sweep it into the dust pan. Its tail twitches, but the mouse doesn’t run, so I carry the dust pan to the back door and set it outside on the steps. I don’t know what to do because the mouse won’t get off the dust pan, so I just leave it out there, dust pan and all.
Tomorrow I’ve got a spelling test. I grab my backpack from the front hall and climb the stairs to my room, stopping on the way up to wrestle a bit with the twins. My room is the small one: two single beds with not much space between, a beat up desk that used to be my Dad’s when he was a kid, a cubby hole of a closet. There is no space for a dresser. My desk is covered with junk – old comic books, rocks, feathers, beer caps - stuff I’ve collected and can’t seem to part with - kid stuff. I flop on my bed with my spelling words.
We are on “F”. The words move on the page flowing and merging into one another: FALLACY, FRAGILE, FORTUITOUS, FRAUGHT . . .
I look over at Sam’s empty bed and the knot forms in my chest again. I can hear her in the kitchen, Kali in the living room gurgling happily, Mr. Dressup opening the tickle trunk humming and singing, Jacob and Daniel racing one another down the stairs. I don’t go down for dinner.
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It is spring now and I still linger on the way home from school making small waves in the puddles, soaking my runners through to my socks. Now that the snow is gone I find more rocks and feathers. It is warm enough that my hood is off and the sun feels good beating down on my face promising summer.
“Jack, get in here and get the broom,” she calls.
I take my time. In my mind, I can see the drink glasses on the end table – sweat rings forming on the wood, a half inch of Bacardi and coke, pale now, long since diluted by melted ice.
“Why the hell can’t he kill the effing mice?” I say, but . . . just in my head.
Ode to Hemingway
I am not, I think, a violent man. I can, and do, on occasion, take part in light-hearted fraternal one-up-man-ship usually involving good quantities of alcohol, but more times than not limited to the standard and unimaginative—beer chugging, cards, snooker, or, that old stand by— the sword fight. But, since my college days, when naively thinking it was the right thing to do, I pummeled Eddie C. black and blue for something he said to a less than comely girl whose name I have since forgotten (if, in fact, I ever knew it), I have channeled my aggressions to the odd boast or dare or arm wrestle.
Channeled is perhaps the wrong word. One I do not like and one that seems to imply a conscious effort. My wife uses it often, probably on the advice of her well-intentioned, but less than helpful marriage counselor. I say “her” because, as far as I am concerned, we have no need for counseling. Seeing a counselor is, in my humble opinion, simply one of those “in” things to do. It is difficult for me to envision what in the hell they, the counselor and my wife, talk about. Caroline is a “no nonsense” mid-western girl, straight talking and right to the point—no heavy-handed abstractions for her, just tell it like it is. I imagine poor Harry Dueck has trouble charging her, although, I am sure, there is due compensation in leaning back in his chair gazing at my wife reclining just short of seductively on his couch.
Most likely though, Harry doesn’t use a couch, preferring a “business” approach, new age music, and a clean air policy. Poor Harry, he doesn’t know what he’s missing. Me, if I were a therapist, I’d have a dark cluttered office at the end of some dingy hall, dim lighting, overstuffed chairs, books strewn haphazardly about, and old Van Morrison tapes crooning in the background encouraging intimate talk—or, better, no talk at all.
But Harry. Harry is a different guy. Nice guy. Sincere. Earnest. A hard worker. Good at what he does without getting too involved. That’s the key— not getting involved. That’s where I’d come apart, get lost in their lives, add to their entanglements, and send them off with bad advice.
What Harry and Caroline talk about? Gardening? Our friends? Harry’s wife Beth? Harry’s kids? Caroline probably gives him advice. The funny thing about Caroline is, even if she did have something to say, I doubt she’d confide—she’s just not that kind of woman. Hell, for all I know they won’t even talk about last night other than to worry a bit about how I’m doing or to wonder what the hell came over me. Harry will say it was the liquor and Caroline will just let it go at that.
She knows me better though.
I don’t think I have any regrets, just an odd sort of uneasy feeling. No, not unease— more like light-headedness—release. Christ, John deserved it. I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole damned bar was silently cheering me on hoping I’d spill more blood, leave more bruises, throw a few chairs. Not that I don’t like John, he’s a likable enough guy; no, nothing on such a personal level. Besides, I’m sure they’ve forgotten already—an event to be exclaimed over lending interest to an otherwise dull evening.
That I managed to be the center of this little brawl is not, you understand, true to character. I prefer a quieter kind of attention, you know, not-so-accidental glances held a moment too long risking just the slightest danger of betrayal. That kind of thing. I used to think Caroline indulged me in this. In a sense she does, but she misunderstands. She prefers what she, with emphasis, calls an honest approach—open flirtation. She wants the guy across the room to confront her and tell her how beautiful she is (and they usually do). Don’t get me wrong, I like this about Caroline, but, it’s not what I’m looking for.
What I want? I want to forget where I am, to reduce my existence to holding some woman’s gaze for as long as I can, to savor the moment, to hold on to the present as an ever possible future begging god to let that hand-worn ground-beaten pigskin ball hang in the air just a few seconds longer . . . and then, you’ll never ask for anything again.
Usually, about this time, Ed leans over and interrupts with something like, “Sure good to that dress isn’t she?”
I was born July 9th in a small mid-western town not that far from Iowa just seven days after Papa shot his brains out. It started around seventeen. I knew nothing about reincarnation, but it seemed a satisfying, quiet, economical idea, and seven days had a nice ring—enough time for the soul to pass through whatever dying and subsequent regenerative rites it must undergo before emerging (re-emerging) again in a suitable vessel.
My then newly invented faith happily did not include for such troublesome ideas as pilgrimage or progression, nor even eventual union with god, but simply allowed that certain traits and modes of thought would continue with, and characterize, each soul regardless of its attendant home. You must understand, this was not some sort of Shirley MacLaine trip; these imaginings were, I knew, little more than fancy, but, for years, I was able to let this notion pass in and out of my belief system, depending upon my need, with ease and with, I hoped, enough distance and humour to acknowledge that my fellow reincarnate Westerners, thanks to that great Dream, had too shared souls with only the very famous, the very notorious, the truly saintly, or the truly bad.
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Resurrection
It began again in September—her life. It began again, although, until it began again, she had not actually realized it had ended. The fact that September—that fall—with its last warm whisper of summer and inevitable promise of slow sure death, was the beginning was not unfitting for, as always, she continued to mark the years by that ever-recurring first day of school.
She was not (correction, was no longer) the jealous type. (Perversely this struck her as sad, jealousy, she believed, insinuating intensity.)
September 8, five years earlier – Toronto
The convention was at the Western Harbour Castle. As in other years she had wistfully read the online enticements for the hotel: Be Transformed. Guests can easily access the city’s most thrilling destinations, from the bustling financial district to the lively Lake Ontario waterfront. You’ll find plenty to keep you productive, relaxed, and feeling your best during your stay. Keep fit in the WestinWORKOUT® Gym, swim laps in the indoor pool, or take advantage of 75,000 square feet of meeting facilities for inspired, flawless events. Though “inspired” and “flawless” seemed the wrong adjectives (Could events be inspired? she wondered), it was the thrilling and taking advantage that attracted her. She browsed the guest room overviews and luxuriated in the pictures of crisp white down duvets and dark cherry armoires. She found herself seduced even by the “traditional” rooms with their partial views and standard amenities (not, in fact, yet owning a flat-screened TV). The rooms were an oasis of lush sheets, down duvets, a generous collection of pillows, and patented pillow-top mattress and, she was assured, boasting 10 layers of comfort, the Heavenly Bed [would] cradle and contour [her] body for an amazingly restful sleep.
It would be the sixth (or perhaps seventh) year that he had attended the convention. In the late 90s, when he had already been with them for more than 10 years, his firm had been bought out by an international organization and, in a convoluted restructuring, became a franchise. The attachment was beneficial to both parties with the “new” franchise from the small prairie capital jumping to 3rd in the country in sales within its first year (this, to the surprise and delight of the international firm), and with the existing salespeople benefiting from national advertising and exposure, free with their $285/month franchise fees.
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Escape
It struck him that if he could have sex with this girl for one second he could face his parents confidently, and that if he could keep on having sex with this girl once every minute for as long as his parents were in town he could survive their entire visit.
from The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen
She no longer remembers clearly when the visitants became rooted . . . became the host . . . stayed, but what she does know all too well is the guilt-ridden, heart-torn, angst-filled insistent (persistent) inner voice that forever upbraids yet silently wishes (oh so selfishly wishes) that they had not stayed, wishes, in fact, that they still traveled from afar leaving her innocently blithely free of the inevitable weighing decisions.
It is eating away at her—the waiting, the watching, the knowledge—the expectation that she, the first born, will step forward, take care, solve the unsolvable problem, provide the necessary relief. It is, after all, what she has always done. But this is Loyd's mystic square—impossible to resolve—the Manhattan distances insurmountable.
It is, she realizes, a love story; but this does not assuage her guilt. Her father unwilling (maybe even somehow unable) to get the diagnosis they all know is inevitable—unwilling to be sentenced. He, the survivor of three cancers—yet the caregiver, still the caregiver.
It is difficult for her to empathize with her mother. This saddens her. She does not feel she knows her mother and she wonders if she ever did. Ironically, soon her mother will not know her. Her mother is gentle, careful, kind—meek, in fact. But she feels indifferent. This is a true hard statement.
Try as she may, there is not a time when she can remember her mother as part of her life; which is odd as, apparently, her mother was always there. Her mother stayed-at-home abandoning the short-lived nursing career she had embarked on after high-school, in order to be with her children.
[When she was eight her mother said to her "I am afraid of you; you are more mature than I am." What kind of thing is that to say to your child? she thinks. And she imagines her mother envisioning the child "her" as some unblinking translucent-skinned girl-child in a horror movie.]
She is fairly sure that if her mother were not her mother, their lives would never intersect. She has tried (oh she is sure she has tried) to find a common bond, identify a thread, but it is not there: they share only blood. She thinks this is not a judgement, merely a fact.
[When she was seventeen, she had her heart set on studying philosophy (or perhaps archaeology) at college (in fact she had aced the SATs and had won scholarships and was not asking for financial assistance); her mother could not fathom this. "Did she not perhaps want to go to secretarial school?" her mother asked.]
Fleetingly it occurs to her, where was her father in this? but, she dismisses this thought. Her father is a saint.
It is, she realizes, a love story; but this does not assuage her guilt. Her father unwilling (maybe even somehow unable) to get the diagnosis they all know is inevitable—unwilling to be sentenced. He, the survivor of three cancers—yet the caregiver, still the caregiver.
It is difficult for her to empathize with her mother. This saddens her. She does not feel she knows her mother and she wonders if she ever did. Ironically, soon her mother will not know her. Her mother is gentle, careful, kind—meek, in fact. But she feels indifferent. This is a true hard statement.
Try as she may, there is not a time when she can remember her mother as part of her life; which is odd as, apparently, her mother was always there. Her mother stayed-at-home abandoning the short-lived nursing career she had embarked on after high-school, in order to be with her children.
[When she was eight her mother said to her "I am afraid of you; you are more mature than I am." What kind of thing is that to say to your child? she thinks. And she imagines her mother envisioning the child "her" as some unblinking translucent-skinned girl-child in a horror movie.]
She is fairly sure that if her mother were not her mother, their lives would never intersect. She has tried (oh she is sure she has tried) to find a common bond, identify a thread, but it is not there: they share only blood. She thinks this is not a judgement, merely a fact.
[When she was seventeen, she had her heart set on studying philosophy (or perhaps archaeology) at college (in fact she had aced the SATs and had won scholarships and was not asking for financial assistance); her mother could not fathom this. "Did she not perhaps want to go to secretarial school?" her mother asked.]
Fleetingly it occurs to her, where was her father in this? but, she dismisses this thought. Her father is a saint.
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