The Gum Thief (19 page)

Anyway, Bethany’s family used to argue
constantly.
The moment they walked into the room, everybody's T-cell count plummeted. And the noise they made! But Bethany always sat there dutifully and never got involved in the fray.
If
she recognized me from Survival workshops the other day, she didn't let on.

Hey, don't feed Zoe any sugar, not even fresh fruit. It sends her through the ceiling.

Brian will be back in exactly three hours to collect her.

Enjoy your time together.

J.

Bethany

Mr. Rant was in today. I saw him arrive (it was pouring rain out, so he was doubly irritable; he made a big show of shaking out a Dole pineapple promotional collapsible umbrella with two broken spokes inside the doors). Kyle and I followed him, waiting for an outburst, and we weren't disappointed.

You know how every so often you get those guys in their fifties who walk up and down the aisles, whistling or humming tunelessly? There was one of those guys standing in Aisle 3-South, directly in Mr. Rant's way. The whistling guy seemed to be savouring Shtooples's premium selection of binders and Day-Timer products, humming that pointless, melody-free deedly-deedly music. Mr. Rant lost it: "What is
with
you people who whistle tunelessly? What is your problem! Why can't you either learn a proper song or simply keep your noise to yourself. "

I piped up: "Are you finding everything you're looking for, sir?"

"Tell Mr. Microphone here
to
shut the heck up."

(Me, ingenuously) "Sorry?"

Mr. Rant ignored me and directed his anger at the Happy Whistler. "I used to think that you guys who whistle or hum tunelessly in public were simply idiots, but I think the truth is that you were all molested by your Boy Scout leader when you were eleven, and you haven't dealt with it yet, so instead you tunelessly whistle. Go get some therapy and leave the rest of us alone."

The Happy Whistler was obviously a therapy junkie. "Sir, you know, if you could keep your opinions to yourself, that would be really great."

Mr. Rant exploded:
"'That would be great'?
God, I
hate
that expression. It's passive-aggressive, it's condescending, and what you actually want to say is, 'I want you to keep your opinion to yourself,' except you're too chickens hit to say it flat out, so instead you say, 'That would be great.'"

The Happy Whistler went silent ... a lone tumbleweed cartwheeled down Aisle 3-South.

Mr. Rant went for a hat trick: "Who designed the lighting in this place-the Nazis? Jesus, it makes everybody's skin look like eggs Benedict. And how many different kinds of blue ballpoint pen does the world need? I think a whole aisle dedicated solely to blue pens is an unhealthy thing for society and the environment." He looked at me. "Hey, I need a replacement toner cartridge for an HP LaserJet 1320. Where do I find one?"

Me: "Aisle 10-North, right-hand side."

As Mr. Rant walked away, he began whistling a note perfect version of the "Mexican Hat Dance."

He made my day.

Roger

Hi DeeDee, Bethany's at an age where she doesn't listen to anybody, so I don't think my opinion counts for squat here. But isn't it sick how she's ended up dead-ending here at Staples too, even though our lives are so different?
Laugh!
That was a joke.

DeeDee, hey, I got to thinking about you back when we were in school. I remember you used to paint-you did that big mural with melting clocks and an angry winged unicorn in the stairwell that led down into the smokehole. How about following up painting again?

Here's something: I've noticed that when you get 01de1; you not only have a To-Do list but you could start making a Things-I-Used-To-Do list, too. Yesterday I found an old chunk of ski wax in the back of a drawer, and I could barely look at it because waxing my skis was a Thing I Used To Do-and then I finally took the wax out and threw it away. Which is all to say, if getting out the brushes and linseed oil freaks you out, I totally understand. It's strange how things leave you one by one, isn't it? Old friends. Enthusiasms. Energy. But Bethany inspires me to do something new. At the moment, writing keeps me sane.

R.

Glove Pond

Kyle was staring at his fork, Steve-like, trying to bend it by the use of his telekinetic rays. "You know, when we mentioned their kid, it was like we toasted Hitler at a bris or something."

"There aren't any photos of him anywhere in here," Brittany said.

"They don't seem like the kids type."

"And they've been gone for ten minutes now. How long can it take to find a bottle of soy sauce?" "I didn't see any soy sauce in the fridge. Only that jar of pickle juice."

They poked at the cold remains of the Chinese food.

"What do you want to do?" asked Brittany.

"Maybe we should just get out of here and cut our losses. These people are living car crashes."

"Yes, but there has to be a reason they're such disasters. I'll go look for them. We can't leave without saying goodbye."

"Be my guest. In the meantime, I'll be here reading a-" Kyle reached over for a magazine on a nearby table "-June 197I issue of
The New Yorker."

Brittany went into the kitchen.
It
was empty, and the back door was open. She looked outside. The smell of rotting leaves was delicious, and she could see her breath in the porch light. On the back lawn, lit by a street lamp, two sets of footprints broke the frost. They led to the back alley. She followed them and, while doing so, caught her reflection in the window of a Ford Explorer parked in the rear lane. So
that's me.

She shivered and looked at her feet, where there lay a Halloween residue of blown-up pumpkin chunks, dead fireworks and candy wrappers. She thought about her new makeup and the way she looked tonight. She thought of how rare it is that we catch glimpses of ourselves in mirrors-usually in public spaces-and see ourselves first as strangers see us. Then, upon recognizing ourselves, we're back to being stuck inside our bodies again, and back to having just a fuzzy sense of our being.

She carried on tracking the footprints until she lost them in a thicket of weeds.

Which way should I go?

Damn-it's that interior voice again, never shutting up.

She strained to hear Steve and Gloria, but all she heard was an electrical humming sound. She looked up and saw transformers atop the utility poles. She had never noticed transformers before, but now she saw that they were as pervasive in the urban world as street lights, parked cars and trees.
Why are they everywhere? Aside from simply being called transformers, what do they actually
do?
What do they transform? How do they do it?

She stopped and huffed out a breath, and it hung there in the cold as though in a museum's showcase. She was cold.

And then she heard what sounded like small drums beating a few backyards over. In spite of the chill, she went to investigate. Peering over the fence in a neighbour's yard, she saw Steve and Gloria under the moonlight, stealing armloads of plastic children's toys-a Fisher-Price plastic scooter, a hula hoop, a red plastic pony-shaped rocking toy and other coloured vinyl forms she couldn't make out. They were so loaded down with stolen swag that in silhouette they resembled deformed Christmas trees.

Brittany ducked behind a shed as the couple began heading back to their own house. The plastic toys, bouncing against each other, sounded like bamboo wind chimes. It was a pretty sound, blameless and kind.

Brittany followed. At the back door, Steve removed a key, and he and Gloria took the load of stolen toys into the basement. This was her chance to get back into the house unnoticed. She darted back
to
sit beside Kyle.

Steve and Gloria ever so casually came into the dining room. "The soy sauce was a little bit hard to find," said Gloria, "But voila!" With the air of someone producing difficult-to-obtain food-fugu livers, say, or absinthe-she dropped a six-ounce bottle of La Choy soy sauce on the table, a sauce so old that it had turned solid inside the bottle.

"Soy sauce. I hope the food hasn't gone cold."

Glove Pond

Steve and Gloria had hastily grabbed a series of sweaters and overcoats from the alcove beside the rear kitchen door and were trying to don gardening gloves caked with brittle summer dirt.

"Bloody guests-they're never anything but trouble. First they arrive, and then they sit there and eat your food."

"You
invited them. And it's been so many years now without guests."

"Well, I
had
to invite them. You know how interdepartmental politics are. Everything was going just fine until that young maverick, Fraser, from Humanities brought in his ergonomically correct Balans chair to meetings. I've been out of kilter ever since. And then I turn around, blink, and suddenly I'm railroaded into having this Falconcrest idiot here for dinner."

"Balans chairs? Those are those chairs with no backs and all the pressure is on your knee-"

"Yes, yes."

"I saw a PBS documentary on them. They'll soon be replacing every chair on earth."

"Wretched things. God, I hate the present."

They stepped out into their backyard, the frost-covered
lawn altering the night air in a way that made Steve feel as if all sounds were moving away from his ears.

Gloria asked, "What are we going to do now?"

"Same thing as last time."

"Last time we did this it was summer. I'm cold."

"So am 1."

"Let's just hurry, then."

The couple walked down the rear alley, peeking into

successive yards in pursuit of something decidedly specific. "There?" asked Gloria, pointing to a white plastic pony with a pink fringe and a purple tail.

"Gloria, Kendall was a
boy."

"I'm not stupid, Steve. I just thought it looked ... cheerful." "Don't think about it too much, Gloria. You know it'll only make you hurt." "Steve, I keep waiting for that to change. But it never does."

"It doesn't.
It
won't."

"How can you be sure?"

"Because I've read everything I can about it. The important books, the unimportant books. Even an article in
The New Yorker.
The most you can ever expect is that you'll simply get used to it." Steve stopped looking into other yards and looked only at his toes.

Gloria stopped and said, "But it's been so long now, and I'm not used to it. How could a person possibly become used to it?"

"Don't ask
me,
Gloria. I'm not there yet, and let's change the subject.
It
never goes anywhere but down."