My Present Age (2 page)

The Beast gave Radioland a knowing chuckle. “No, I don’t, sir. And I guess I won’t until you let me in on the secret.” Rollins is such a dink.

“These guys who won’t work get me is what. We got one of them in our building here. Just a young guy. If he was crippled or simple or something that would be one thing. I mean now they even put the simple ones in those workshops and make them do
something
, don’t they now?”

“Retarded,” said The Beast.

“What?”

“We say retarded on
this
program, sir.”

“Yeah, well, whatever. Now you tell me, Tom, how does the government allow this guy, this guy in particular I’m talking about, not to work?”

“Well,” said The Beast, “I don’t know, sir. I’d be the last person to explain this so-called government of ours. It allows a lot of things which make no sense to me. But then you and I are just taxpayers, what do we know? They put child molesters in fancy hospitals and feed murderers steak in jail. Have you seen the price of steak lately? I don’t get fed half the steak your average murderer does. My wife’s got
me
on bread and water.” He chortled.

“It’s a damn crime, Tom. That’s what I used to say to the wife, I used to say, ‘It’s a damn crime.’ No wonder this country is in such a mess. Two months now and that guy hasn’t hardly stirred out of his apartment. Like I say, it isn’t that he can’t work. I seen him working once before, downtown in Eaton’s—”

Somebody in the studio hit the cut button; the tirade was scissored off. I froze, cheeks bulging with Cocoa Puffs. Two months? Eaton’s?

“Whoa there,” admonished The Beast. “Steady as she goes. We don’t want to get personal here. Let’s keep our comments nonspecific.”

“Well, anyway, what I mean to say,” the caller suddenly continued, brought back from the void, penitent, “is I seen him working once.” He sounded chastened by The Beast’s displeasure. For the huddled, wretched, and nutty the man is a tin god, I swear. “And he’s not working now,” said the caller, “so you got to figure he’s on the unemployment. What gripes me is how come I’m paying taxes to keep him sitting on his fat rear end up there, God only knows what he does all day, and I’m a pensioner?”

Sitting up there? Fat rear end? Pensioner? McMurtry. It had to be McMurtry. He had had it in for me ever since our quarrel over the parking stalls. Since that time I had occasionally caught sight of him peeking out from behind his curtains, watching me as I scraped frost off my windshield – or I’ve glimpsed a faded blue eye studying me through the gap between doorframe and door while I toiled up the staircase panting and puffing, lugging home the week’s groceries.

It all began innocently enough. I had been patient. I had been as understanding of human foibles as only Ed can be. He’s old, I told myself, perhaps his eyesight is failing.

But his fifteen-year-old Chrysler New Yorker kept slowly creeping to the right, week by week inching into my space until Leviathan one day firmly and triumphantly straddled both our parking stalls. McMurtry had finally shut me out.

I had no choice but to knock on his door and ask him to move his car. When he answered, an old man in khaki work pants, suspenders, and yellowed T-shirt, I caught a whiff of pungent socks and boiled turnips from inside his apartment. Past one bony shoulder I could see a shabby chesterfield pocked with old bum hollows; a blackened china cabinet festooned with family portraits; some dirty braided rugs; and a black felt pennant thumbtacked to the wall. In letters formed of silver sparkle the pennant recommended a visit to the Reptile Gardens in Montana.

“Yeah?”

“Excuse me, Mr. McMurtry. My name is Ed. I live upstairs. I was wondering if you could move your car. You see, the thing is, er …” Polite hesitation. “The thing is, I can’t quite get into my parking space.”

God, McMurtry looks old. There are wattles on his neck and canyons in his facescape that hold little white bristles he’s missed shaving. His ears are enormous. Years ago I read somewhere that as you grow older your kidneys shrink and your ears get bigger. If that implies some transfer of matter, McMurtry’s kidneys have dwindled to the size of raisins. At the time, his mouth was hanging open the way an old person’s often does. It was interesting to note it was no longer pink inside but the colour of raw liver.

“You the character drives that little yellow Jap thing?”

“That’s right. That’s me. Well, actually it’s Italian. That little yellow thing is—”

“You don’t need all that room for a car like that,” he said.

This claim took me aback. “Well, maybe not, but you see I need some room. I’ve got to get into my space.”

“You got room.” A pall of obstinacy had settled on his face. I was not sure what I had done. Had I annoyed him by implying he was an incompetent driver? I hadn’t meant to do that.

“This time of year,” I said, “with the snow and everything, it’s hard to see those darn white lines.” Ed mending fences.

“I ain’t blind. I can see them fine. And I seen you got lots of room for that Jap car of yours.”

To understand all is to forgive all, as Madame de Staël was so kind as to remind us. Had he been taken prisoner at Hong Kong in ’42? He looked a little old to have seen active service. Still, work on the Burma Railway would put years on a man and indignation at things Japanese in his heart.

“If I could get my car in my parking space I wouldn’t bother you. But I can’t. I’m very sorry but you’ll have to move your car.”

“Don’t put the blame on me for your lousy driving.”

I flared. “Lousy driving has got nothing to do with it. You couldn’t park a coffin in the space you left me. I defy anyone to get my car in there.”

“Huh!”

“I defy
anyone
to get my car into that space.” I was repeating myself, never a good sign.

“I’ll get her in,” he said.

“Well …”

“Singing a different tune now, eh?”

“I’m not singing a different tune.”

“Just lemme get my coat, Mr. Wiseguy.”

Jesus, I’m stupid, I thought as I watched him strike off down the hallway, struggling into his coat. He strutted with the deliberate jerkiness of the barnyard cock, head pecking forward, eyes frozen to glittering glass by his anger.

I sighed and trudged off after him.

Of course, if he was going to err he was going to err on the side of the garbage bin, not his precious New Yorker. Still, I am convinced he did it on purpose. While I shouted and frantically waved my arms trying to catch his attention, McMurtry kept gunning the engine as metal shrieked and a three-foot strip of paint was flayed off my car by the corner of a Sanuway Disposal Unit.

When I finally did get him halted, his crusty, malevolent old face betrayed not a flicker of contrition. He sat behind the wheel, stolid, his peaked cap pulled down level with his eyebrows in a futile attempt to get the flaps on his hat to cover more than half his enormous ears.

I must admit I lost control. “You stupid old fart!” I bellowed, beating the car roof with my fist. “Get out of my car! Get out of my car! Take a look at what you’ve done. This is an atrocity. This is carnage. I’ll never get a paint match. Never. Look at what you’ve done, you fucking, antiquated vandal!”

“There’s something wrong with your steering linkage,” he informed me, unperturbed.

“There’s something wrong with
your
steering linkage! Yours. Upstairs. Understand?” Picture this: I was actually jabbing myself in the temple with a stiff forefinger. “Get out and look! Look!”

He obliged me. McMurtry carefully eased himself out from behind the wheel, tottered around the car, and peered at the gleaming strip of exposed metal.

“I’ll never get a paint match,” I said. “Never. I’ll have to repaint the entire car.”

“You ask me,” said McMurtry, “I done you a favour. That yellow there you got looks like dog piss on snow.”

In a saner moment I would have had to agree with him. The yellow had been Victoria’s choice. Victoria, my estranged wife. She had read in
Consumer Reports
that yellow was a highly visible colour and for reasons of safety was an excellent choice for a car. That’s why yellow was replacing red on fire engines. She had insisted on yellow.

“Dog piss on snow! Dog piss on snow! That’s my car you’re referring to, you superannuated Hun!”

“That ain’t a car,” he said, glancing up at me from under his duck-bill cap, “that’s a sewing machine with tires.”

I let that pass. “What did I ever do to you?” I asked, trying to get a grip on myself. “What? For God’s sake, tell me!”

McMurtry pointed to my automobile. “Dinky Toy,” he said. He made a contemptuous putt-putt noise with his dry old lips.

Something snapped in my head. I lunged at his New Yorker. The terrible crack of cold metal breaking was succeeded by a silence wide and vast enough for me to realize what I’d done. I had a radio antenna in my mittened hand.

McMurtry’s eyes narrowed. “I’m calling the cops,” he said, creaked round on his heel, and began to shuffle for the apartment building as fast as his decrepit pins would carry him.

Cops. I saw immediately this was big trouble. You can’t wrench the radio antenna off a senior citizen’s mode of transportation without having society turn on you like a mad dog. And there’s no
point in pleading provocation. I was hip deep in shit on this one.

It took a half an hour of abject pleading and spectacular self-abasement outside his apartment door to get him to accept thirty dollars’ damages. Thirty goddamn dollars! He never did bother to get the antenna replaced, either. He just wound a wire clothes-hanger around the stump.

Now McMurtry had the effrontery to go public with his vendetta. Mouth crammed with Cocoa Puffs, spoon suspended in mid-air, I had heard him tattle on Ed to The Beast.

“I mean, Tom,” McMurtry said, “what can be done about these bums? I mean to say, is there somewhere I could call to have this here character looked into?”

“Far be it for me to suggest anybody report anybody else to the proper authorities,” said The Beast. “But doggone it, the fact remains there’s just too many freeloaders in this so-called country of ours. If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times. There are just too many unemployment benefits and welfare rip-off artists getting away with blue murder. Anybody that tunes in to my program knows that Tom Rollins isn’t afraid to use plain language. My motto is, call a spade a spade. I want to give a name to what your young friend is doing. Let’s call it fraud. Fraud pure and simple. And fraud’s just a highfalutin name for stealing. Stealing hard-earned money out of your pocket, sir, out of my pocket, out of our neighbour’s pocket, out of poor old John Doe Taxpayer’s pocket.

“Now the last thing I want to say on this matter is this. If we saw some guy ripping off our neighbour, stealing his colour
TV
, say, what do you think we’d do?”

“I know what I’d do. I’d call the cops.” He certainly would. The merest hint of the illicit had his dialling finger poised and quivering. I could testify to that. The old fart was just crazy keen to call the cops.

“And so would any other John Q. Decent Citizen,” said The Beast stoutly. “But please, sir, don’t misunderstand what I’m saying. It isn’t my job to tell you what to do. My role is that of communicator. Tom Rollins’s program exists only to facilitate an exchange of ideas. Which reminds me, by the by,” he said, “all my lines are lit up. You wouldn’t want me to deny an equal chance to all those folks out there to exercise their God-given democratic right to speak their minds on the issues of the day, would you? So …”

“So maybe I ought to call the Unemployment?”

“Far be it for me to tell you what to do, sir. We got to run now. But be sure to give us a call and let us know what the bureaucrats who hand out our money have to say for themselves on this one.”
Click
. “This is Tom Rollins here for ‘Brickbats and Bouquets.’ Speak now or forever hold your–”

I get hit with an anxiety attack whenever I think of those two. Right now I’m having a humdinger, a real Ed special. I’m sweating, my breathing is rapid and shallow, my heart is bumping my breastbone. I heave the covers off in one convulsive movement.

Calm down, Ed. Calm down. I roll on my back, stare down the expanses of my ample, pale body. Eyes trained between the little hillocks that are my breasts, I survey a white swell of belly; a little coppice of hairs rises in the vicinity of my navel. In the beyond, hidden below all this, lie legs and feet and orangish, ridged toenails.

God, The Beast is slowly, day by day, week by week, driving me crazy. He has sat in judgment on me and pronounced me guilty. There is no appeal from his terrible court. Just ask me how that loser, K, felt in
The Trial
.

Victoria used to tell me it was a symptom of my immaturity that I can’t let things like this go. The inability to make distinctions of value, she called it. But it isn’t that. Very well, I know there are greater injustices being borne than the ones I bear, there is injustice in the very air we breathe. Infants are scalded by hapless and drunken mothers, concert pianists contract multiple sclerosis, Martin Luther King is assassinated, and Idi Amin is
granted political asylum. In the scheme of things what has happened to me is nothing, less than nothing. I know that. For God’s sake, nobody even knows who McMurtry and The Beast are talking about, and if they did, no one would care except my father. He would be ashamed.

Pop sends me snapshots from Brownsville and on the back of them he writes things such as “Old Ralphy Madigan took this one. He admires your mother’s legs,” or “Photo courtesy of Shirley Phillipotts,” as if I knew these people. They are his world now, these new friends from Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, Michigan, and Saskatchewan whose life journey has been a pilgrimage to a shrine distant from the snows.

In these photographs he and my mother sit under a striped canvas awning tacked to their junky trailer and held up by spindly aluminum poles spiked in the dusty earth. I barely recognize them. In the freer air of the great Republic to the south, mother has dyed her hair chocolate and taken to wearing red rubber sandals and one-piece swimming suits. Pop is a stranger in a Detroit Tigers baseball cap, Bermuda shorts, and mirror sunglasses. I never saw him in shorts before in my life. Never.