Scene 12

It is the end of the day at the end of the week. Being a stay-at-home dad Monday through Friday makes him love going to work on the weekends.

He is strung out on longing and frustration, over what he doesn’t know. He thought he had traced this recurring aggravation back a generation and determined a root event, but this doesn’t quite explain it all; the cursing, the object-punching, the tongue-biting and the under-breath muttering. And the shame when it is over.

Having suffered through dinner time with an attention deficit and a sensation of weeping. Having cleaned up and relaxed enough to read two picture books, both on ladybugs, to the kids. It is time to go.

He comes up with an errand that he has attempted (and failed at) twice already. This is his escape plan for the evening. While he once resorted to late nights out and not calling home to explain his whereabouts, now a trip to Wal-mart is the most he gets on a semi-regular basis.

“I’m leaving,” he reminds her and heads out the front door after he is acknowledged.

He drives, without his gloves to cover his cracked, bleeding hands, to Dartmouth Crossing. A place for mass shopping where there once was nothing but tall trees by the highway.

He parks, enters Wal-mart. Goes to the back of the store, the automotive center, hoping to get a key cut. His key to their apartment broke off while he turned it with one hand (the other was securing the baby to his left hip) on a -15 C winter’s night the week before.

In his two previous attempts to have a new key made, he was told to keep the receipt and forewarned that it may not work. Neither of the two keys did.

It is nearly eight o’clock and no one is in the auto-centre. He figures that perhaps this portion of the store is closed. He does not want to find someone who may be able to help him, so he just stands there... at the counter... waiting, blank-faced. After a while he returns to his car.

He drives through several maze-like parking lots and gets out at a gourmet coffee shop. He enters and orders a tea and a cookie. The comfortable seating area is quiet, but crowded, and on this night, like many others, he wants some space.

He goes back to the front of the shop wheres a small counter with tall stools sits in front of the window looking out into the parking lot. The scenery doesn’t matter, as he takes off his coat, and removes a book from a large interior pocket. It is by his favorite writer. He has been reading it since Christmas, having been hard-pressed to find more than ten minutes at a time to read.

He sips, takes bites and turns pages until a group of people come in talking loudly. Just his luck, they sit at the table closest to his private counter. They put their coats down and order. He considers making for the door, but still has some tea left. He enjoys it more than he expected and figures it would be a shame to rush through it or finish it off while splitting his attention with driving.

But then the noisy people come back. He heres constant chatter, but a girl who’s speech is less than refined rises above the others. “My boob is buzzin’.” She says. “Must be Colin.” He infers that her jacket is still on and thinks, that’s great, shutup.

She continues talking about who is or is not texting her for a few minutes, interrupting herself periodically to announce that her boob is buzzing again.

Why do people have to talk? he often wonders. This girl is from Newfoundland. While he has learned to tolerate the accent, the strange foreign sounds, it tears away at him tonight with every syllable she speaks.

This is what he cannot trace. Why has he learned to be so bothered by people he doesn’t know, by someone he could tune out if he just tried a little harder? There can be no event in the history of a family that would dictate his emotional response to this.

He does not leave though. The conversation continues and is then dominated by a guy’s voice (also Newfy.) He repeatedly refers to Nikki, an ex maybe, or maybe just a hopeless crush. The content of his mostly monologue, however, is drunkenness. Shots. Shots of jagger, Jack, tequilla, “no, that’s too girly” and “yeah, I was so drunk that night I passed out in someone’s garden on the walk home” and he couldn’t leave out “My worst drinking experience was when Nikki got ridiculously hammered. She was just so drunk that she was real upset- and, so... that’s why any time Nikki is too hammered is always- automatically, my worst drinking experience.”

Is he drunk now? his mental battering of this table of people resumes. When I don’t have anything to say, I just DON”T TALK!”

He tries to cut this guy a break. He must be my age, or younger. Unmarried, of course, and childless, as anyone would expect of someone in their early 20s. I am sure I was loud and obnoxious before, and it very well may have involved stories of alcohol and hopeless crushes.

Well. He tried, but he’s had enough. The relief of the warm tea and the dim lighting and the thoughtful evening decor is outbalanced by the stress that these people are causing him. Again, he cannot explain this away. So he just leaves.

While throwing away his trash he decides he’s got to get a look at the people he’s been eavesdropping on. So he turns and goes to the door in a way that puts their table in view.

He is surprised. They are actually much older than him. Mid-to-late thirties. They are all overweight, except one guy, bearded and wearing a ball-cap. The exception guy looks closer to his age and, oddly enough, looks vaguely like him.

That’s it. He thinks, feeling justified in his judgements. They really shouldn’t be allowed out in public.

He returns to his car, scrolls on his iPod until he finds some francophone musique. He wants to hear something, to feel some emotion, without having to hear the words that will remind him of how difficult it is to truly communicate with other human beings.