I wonder what happened to Davenport

Domestic life has always been the butt of humor. There is something funny and comforting about the ongoing contentions between man and woman. One of my favourites when I was young (and still is) was The Thin Man Series.

It is all based on a set of rules. Domestic life. Unfortunately the rules haven’t been written yet. And so we bungle our way to old age. And then realize at some point, in the Home, that we might have linked up with the wrong girl (or guy). I wonder what happened to Davenport.

This morning I dropped my wife off at the hair dresser. She gave me a kiss and said, ‘you are a gentleman, aren’t you.’ ‘That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,’ I responded.

This story is based on the golden rule. ‘She is always right.’ It is part of a series of stories I wrote in my book Women Gone Mad: Part One.

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THE POINT SYSTEM

 

I knew she had arrived home by the sound of the brakes on her Honda. No one else applied their brakes in quite that fashion. It is a kind of jerk then a shriek like she’d run over the cat.  There was a courteous nod as she stepped in the door, her shoulders slouched, her briefcase dangling on the end of her arm, which she set down on the stairs to be retrieved later. Her heavy footsteps plodded consecutively up the steps like a slovenly drum roll.

“How was your day?” I asked trying to stay upbeat and perky.

One of the kids upstairs was playing their CD player loudly. I am used to it, have in fact become immune to all adolescent noises. She has not. Her eyes rose to the ceiling.

“I’ll get you an aspirin,” I said, rushed to the washroom for drugs and on my way yelled up the stairs for Brian to turn his music down. Brian did not comply. I hadn’t expected him to respond on the first shout.

“I’ll heat up your dinner in a minute,” I said as I handed her a glass of water and a bottle of aspirin.

She fell into a chair in the living room slipping off her shoes.

“The kids and I have already eaten,” I said. I knew this would lose me points but Debbie was going out and Brian was starving. Of course Brian was always starving so this would hardly carry much weight with her, but I was hoping that she would see how impractical it was for all of us to eat at the same time.

“Debbie went out with Laura,” I yelled as I slid down the hallway. “She said they were studying for a history exam tomorrow. I took it for granted that she was lying. No doubt they’re going to the mall to check out CDs and boys. Don’t worry. Laura’s a dog. The boys won’t be pestering them much.”

I turned into the kitchen where I shoved a plate with pork chops, mashed potatoes, and string beans into the microwave. I grabbed a small tossed salad and a bottle of soda water from the refrigerator and put them on the table. By this time she has come out of the living room and taken her place at the table. I cleared the table of the dirty dishes and hurriedly put them in the sink.

“Would you like a glass of wine with dinner?”

Not hearing any answer, I poured a glass of Ontario red table wine in a glass then turned and shouted once again up the stairs to Brian to turn his CD player down. I didn’t expect a response on my second shout. I returned and placed the glass of wine in front of her. She smiled with gratitude. She had that weary look of utter despair in her eyes. I wondered if it was the right time to talk.

“The tests came back,” I said, taking a seat opposite her at the table.

She nodded and sipped on her wine. The bell rang on the microwave. I rushed in and grabbed the plate. It was too hot. I knew she was famished by now and was almost at the edge of exhaustion, but the food was too hot and she would have to wait. This would cost me points. I blew on the food as I carried it into the dining room, but I knew it was a lost cause.

“It’s hot,” I said hoping that by warning her I would have deflected some of her irritation at having to wait for dinner.

“I’m not that hungry,” she said. “I had a bite before I left the office.”

That was strange. She’d never had a bite before she left the office before. In one sense I felt relieved because I would not lose points over having served too hot a plate. On the other hand, why had she eaten? Was she getting tired of my cooking? I knew I was.

“What were the results?” she asked.

“What?” I asked still pondering over her lack of appetite. She’s always hungry. Not that she’s overweight. That has never been a problem for her. No matter how much or what she ate, she never put on weight. It has made her the envy of all the girls in the neighborhood. I have told her this on many occasions and it had been a wonderful way to accumulate points.

“The test results,” she repeated.

“Oh yes,” I nodded. “Dr. Davy phoned up and said that he’d like to see us. Nothing to worry about. All the tests came back negative. Brian is healthy enough but Dr. Davy thinks that he has Attention Deficit Disorder. And Tourette Syndrome.”

“He told you that.”

“Yes. Well, I had to weasel it out of him. But that is his diagnosis. He wants us to bring Brian along.”

“Why do we have to have an appointment with him if we know the results of his tests?”

“Medication. We have to decide on some medication for Brian.”

She shook her head and began to pick at her food. I wished that if she wasn’t hungry she wouldn’t touch her food. I could have put it away for lunch the next day.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“I don’t want my kid taking drugs,” she explained as she picked up her knife and began to dig into her meal. Now, what was I going to have for lunch tomorrow?

“Don’t you think we should discuss it with the doctor?” I asked.

“What’s there to discuss?” she asked as she washed down her beans with a swallow of wine.

“Why did you eat before you left the office?”

She pointed her fork at me.

“I think they’re going to offer me a partnership,” she said, her mouth filled with food. Her appetite had returned. I turned away. I couldn’t stand watching someone talk with their mouth full.

“You look worried,” Betty said to me the next morning as I hung some sheets up on the line. I love the smell of sheets freshly dried in the wind. They don’t have that musty smell of sheets from the dryer. Betty was my next door neighbor and like a sister for me. We had gone to college together. She had studied urban planning while I was in theatre. We met while double dating. My best buddy who later married Betty was dating her while I was going out with Betty’s roommate. I can’t remember the girl’s name, but it was our first and last date. Betty and I, on the other hand, became fast friends and ironically ended up buying houses next to each other.

“Nothing,” I smiled. I don’t know why I lied. Betty could always see through me.

“Michael, I know you better than that.”

I pinned my last sheet on the line and stepped over to the fence that separated our lots.

“I think my breasts are getting larger,” I said.

Betty howled with laughter. She had one of those infectious laughs that made you feel as if the whole planet was in good spirits.

“Do you and Doug still talk?” I asked once Betty had gained control of herself.

“You know Doug as well as I do. If more than a dozen vowels pass through his lips in one day, it means he’s been drinking. But we communicate in other ways.”

I glared at Betty. Ever since her and Doug  had begun to date, I had envied their relationship. They seemed to have the perfect melding of the female and male of our species.

“Are you having sexual problems again?” Betty asked.

“We go through the rituals but there isn’t much fun there.”

“And you’re following the point system?”

“I try,” I sighed.

It was Betty who had introduced me to the point system. It was a system in which one performed actions or deeds for the other party in a relationship so that later one could trade in these accumulated points for favors of one’s own. Betty called it the Adam Smith system of love-making. How could you argue with success?

Betty raised her eyebrows. I gave her an account of the incidents of the previous day, the good, the bad and the indifferent.

“Doesn’t sound like your breaking even,” Betty said.

“Don’t I know it,” I said shaking my head. “I always seem to be in the red with her. It’s not as if she says anything but I get the impression that nothing I do quite pleases her. And the harder I try the more irritated she appears. And the kids don’t help. As soon as she steps in the door they’re on her for one thing or another.”

“She feels under siege,” Betty suggested.

I nodded.

“Lot of pressure at work?”

I nodded. “They’re making her a partner.”

“That’s too bad,” Betty said shaking her head. “Worse thing that happens to a marriage is promotions. She’ll be expected to work longer hours now.”

“Longer hours,” I groaned.

“Of course there’s more money. But then there are more expenses. A cottage will really set you back.”

“A cottage!” I cried. “I don’t want a cottage. I hate cottages. Hated them when I was a kid. Mosquitoes and card games. And there’s still housework for me. I’d rather go to a hotel. At least I get someone else to serve me.”

“And then there are the dinners with the other partners,” Betty continued. “You can’t believe how boring some wives have become sitting at home for twenty years.”

“Dinners! We hardly have time to see our friends. Why would we want to start socializing with the people at work?”

“How are you going to get back in her good graces?” Betty asked. “You’ve got to do something to jar her out of her nine-to-five rut. This could be a turning point in your marriage.”

I took a deep breath. What was I going to do? All of this seemed so far from the lives we had led when we were first married. We used to go to movies, the odd play, long drives in the country, browsing through used bookstores. Now all she wanted to do was come, put her feet up and watch figure skating on the box. I hated figure skating but felt obligated to watch. It helped accumulate points.

Betty smiled. She had an idea.

I rushed around for the remainder of that day to clear up all the business of the day. Then I managed to farm out the kids, sending Betty over to Laura’s for an overnight, and Brian to his aunt Eunice’s across town. Brian was more difficult to persuade than Laura, twenty dollars more difficult. That’s what child rearing had come down to in our household – bribes. I visited the grocery store and bought all the ingredients for a romantic dinner. She loved roast beef, especially the way I cooked it, juicy with the beef a rosy sunburn in the middle. I baked some tea biscuits from a recipe my mother had lent me, prepared some fresh broccoli and cheese sauce, baked potatoes, horseradish, and beets. I hate beets but she had a craving for them every few weeks and we hadn’t had them for months. The kids hated beets. Debbie called them gory. I set a small table up by the dining room window, with candles, a new tablecloth, a bottle of expensive Italian wine. I cued some classical music on the stereo, a tenor called Bocelli. Everything was ready for her arrival.

She was late. Time crawled along. I put the roast back in the oven. She liked her beef medium rare but she hated it cold. After waiting for half an hour I poured myself some wine from the house wine we always had sitting around. Neither of us was crazy about it, but it was cheap and did the trick on a Saturday night. Into my second glass of wine I began to worry. What if she had gotten into an accident? It wasn’t like her to be this late without calling. What if the car broke down? She would have phoned. By the time I finished the bottle of wine, I hardly cared why she was late, I just wanted her home.

Just as I was about to dip into the expensive Italian wine I had bought for our dinner, I heard the sound of the Honda turning into the driveway. No one else applied their brakes in quite that fashion – the jerk and then the shriek. There was a courteous nod as she stepped in the door, her shoulders slouched, her briefcase dangling on the end of her arm.

I stood at the top of the stairs looking down at her.

She looked up at me with a puzzled expression on her face.

“Where are the kids?” she asked, setting her brief case down on the stairs to be retrieved later.

“How was your day?” I asked trying to stay upbeat and perky.

“Unbelievable,” she moaned. “It was one rush after another. I thought I’d never get out of there. I hope you didn’t wait up for me to eat. We had a bite at the office.”

I turned toward the kitchen. She trudged up the stairs and stepping into the dining room, cried out.

“Oh, Michael!”

Stepping into the kitchen behind me as I sliced the roast beef, she put her arms around me and gave me a hug.

“This is so sweet.”

“Have a seat,” I commanded.

She did as she was told. I poured her a glass of wine, lit the candles, turned on Bocelli, and returned a few minutes later with our dinner.

“I’m not really hungry,” she smiled.

“Eat!” I demanded.

There was an awkward smile on her face. From across the table, it looked like a smirk.

She cut into her roast and took a bite.

“This is a little over done,” she said.

“A little over done!” I barked, reached across the table, picked up her plate and tossed it out the window.

 

THE END

Karl didn’t know his Frederick

I was watching the debates the other night. We all look for gaffes. Mistakes. But standing up in front of an audience (knowing that there are millions of people watching you) takes a lot of courage. And the advice you get before you go on. Relax. When I defended my Master Thesis in philosophy I was told that there were be a small panel of professors to ask me questions. And a handful of people to watch. It would last 45 minutes. Perhaps it was because of my thesis (I was arguing that Karl Marx had misread Hegel and that communism was thus based on a flawed theory) but the room was packed. There were people in an adjoining hallway. The experience would last over 2 hours. I was doing fine until a Professor Pinto stood up to ask a question. He asked a four part question. By the time he got to his fourth part, I could not remember the first part. I survived. But I had nightmares about that experience for months afterwards. And so the seed for this story. From my novel, The Adventures of Fred and Me: Episode 1, Divorce and Kitty Litter.

 

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Panic in the Lecture

 

I took a swallow of water and put the cup down. By now Fred had passed out, curled in a ball with his chin resting on his right forearm. Dr. Blackstone had returned to his seat and was waiting for me to begin.

“I left home early that evening. I met Claude on the way out.”

“Whose Claude?” the doctor asked.

“My landlord’s son.”

“No one of importance to you,” the doctor said impatiently.

“Not exactly.”

“Just continue on, David.”

“Fred slept most of the way there.”

“You took your cat?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why?”

“Fred and Ann don’t get along too well. Ann says that Fred is always correcting her grammar. Ann does not like to be corrected on anything.”

There was a long pause as the doctor stared out at our non-existent audience. He shrugged his shoulders and waited some more. It was as if he was listening to the audience laugh.

I continued my story.

“There were many photographs on the walls of the cafe. It was the first thing I noticed when I entered the room. They were photographs of other rooms, identical with this room, with people standing side by side. These were photographs of people who had participated in earlier readings. They all looked serious, responsible, reading their work, cradling the Holy Grail of Canadian culture in their verse. And everyone in the photographs was waiting, looking in on this room, waiting for me to speak. Perhaps I, too, was in a photograph on a wall in one of their rooms waiting for them to speak. The wallpaper behind the photos was tacky, maroon and gold paisley in relief, like a view from the inside of a hooker’s heart. There was plenty of smoke drifting through the room, heavy and curling in upon itself like a dense fog off the Grand Banks. It reminded me of an old sailor I met once in the Spadina Hotel who claimed to have seen the Titanic go down. He was on a fishing boat with his father miles away from the scene, but because the night was so clear and quiet, he said he could hear the music from the ship and the screams of voices across the water, and he said he could see the lights as the big ship, nose down, sank into the stillness.

I stared into the cafe. I couldn’t stop my lower lip from trembling. A room of eyes stared back at me like the lights on the Titanic. Outside on the Danforth a bus screeched to a stop. My body bolted alert. The bus doors opened with a yawn. Someone stepped out of the bus, walked a few steps across the sidewalk, dragging his left foot ever so slightly, and entered the cafe. I looked up. A beautiful blond stepped into the cafe and took a seat. Someone coughed. On the bar, coffee dripped in a coffee machine. Behind the bar, an elderly gentleman, who looked like Joe Dimaggio the Yankee skipper, grinned. Ice in someone’s lemonade began to crackle. I cleared my throat, took a mouthful of water, and forgot how to swallow. For a moment I considered spitting the water back into my glass. The blond got up from her chair and moved to a table closer to the podium. My teeth began to melt. I gargled. There was laughter and a round of applause.

I looked down at the podium. My paper lay there like a dove, cooing. I was afraid to touch it, lest it take flight. The print seemed to grow smaller. It began to disappear into the distance. I charged after it, hoping to retrieve it, banging my head on the podium. There was laughter. How strange it is that at the moment before disaster strikes, the scene appeared comic. The audience assumed that this was part of my presentation. I wondered if, when the Titanic first struck the ice, someone didn’t laugh. I grinned then forgot how to stop. Someone coughed. This wasn’t how I saw myself delivering the lecture. I’d seen many professors give lectures at the university and none had begun their talk using slapstick. The fellow who ran the coffee shop and who had introduced me, leaned against the bar watching. His name was Collins.

Collins was a bearded balding fellow with a beer gut that hung over his belt like a money pouch. His main claim to fame was that he had been at Woodstock and had made love with a famous folk singer, but couldn’t remember afterwards which one she had been. There was a terrible sobriety about his gaze, like a bird of prey soaring high over a meadow looking for lunch.

My eyes glided over the faces of the audience. The patrons of the cafe all looked like English majors, each one with a show me the good parts expression on their face. I thought of Ann watching television, lying on the couch in her bathrobe with a glass of coke tucked between her knees. I jerked my head. My grin fell off.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” I cried out of the side of my mouth like W. C. Fields. I began my lecture. Despite Fred’s criticism, the introduction was well received. At the end of my introduction, I paused to take another sip of water. Several people coughed. Someone lit up a pipe. Someone pushed their chair back, the screech hitting a high C. The blond parted her lips to receive a cigarette. The cigarette was so white. Her teeth were so white. Smoke seemed to rise out of her eyes. I cleared my throat and found that I needed to spit. There was no place to spit. I swallowed instead. Someone groaned, “Oh my God, I’m going to be sick.” The image of a long set of stairs crossed my mind. I couldn’t remember whether I was ascending or descending. I stepped into the body of my lecture with a discussion of the group, pushing my hair off my forehead.

“The Fatherland needs growing space,” I blurted out. The room was silent. It was happening again. The black hole in the center of my consciousness was growing. I paused and looked around the room. At the back of the shop near the entrance, two people were mumbling. The thought crossed my mind that they were from the police vice squad. I can’t imagine why this thought appeared except that I had parked my car in front of a fire hydrant. Everyone turned to look at the couple. It was William Powell and Myrna Loy playing their roles as Nick and Nora Charles from the Thin Man series. Nora nudged Nick in the ribs with her elbow. Nick smiled briefly, quit talking, and then when Nora wasn’t looking, stuck his tongue out at her.

I turned and stared at the floodlights focused on the podium. I saw Claude staring through the basement window into our apartment. Ann was lying on the couch in her housecoat watching television. Claude’s eyes were lasers, opening Ann’s housecoat, revealing her pale round marble breasts. I looked down at the pages in my hand. My palms were sweating, the sweat spreading across the page making the ink run. An ambulance cried out from the street. I looked up from my notes. At the back of the room I saw Ann in the shadows, naked, lying on the couch, her legs apart, moving her ass, asking someone, anyone to…

“Ann!” I cried. There was a stir in the room. I looked down into the glass of water. Claude’s face, like a bloated sucker, was swimming around, smiling up at me. “Good evening, Mr. Halliday.” I turned away. Ann looked up at me from the kitchen table, a cup of coffee in her hand. “Who are you, David? I don’t know you anymore. Did I ever know you?”

Taking a handkerchief out of my pocket, I wiped my brow.

“Excuse me!” I said, trying to smile. Someone was standing behind me. I could feel their breath on my neck. My mouth was now racing through the text of my lecture as if the words were in a panic to be released from my tongue. I felt like a ticker tape machine in a pressroom spitting out the news from United Press. I stopped to take a breath. There was someone behind me. I spun around. For a brief moment I had a glimpse of Claude’s huge fingers crawling like a spider between Ann’s thighs, his huge thumbs parting the lips… There was nothing behind me but a blank wall with a poster advertising – DAVID HALLIDAY: THE GROWTH OF THE SELF.

I turned back to the audience. There was a shuffling of chairs. A few people had begun to mumble to each other. Someone coughed. The blond glared at me, her eyes like a gun, cocked. Collins had come to attention. He looked worried. I tried to recall where I had left off. I cleared my throat and took another sip of water and then spat it back into the glass. It tasted like vinegar. I wiped my mouth with my sleeve. The image of my father ran through my mind, my father wandering through the woods alone. “I was a son once too,” he said. “I had to deal with my father, as you have to deal with me. We’re all in the same boat.”

Collins stepped up from behind the bar and into the lights that were fixed on me.

“Mr. Halliday,” he said. There was a sudden pain in my side. I continued to speak, somehow determined to finish what I had begun, believing in some crazed logic that, if I finished, everything would be alright.

“We’ve heard enough, Mr. Halliday,” Collins cried out as he approached the podium.

I looked up. Claude approached the stage. Ann stepped between us, wearing her housecoat, knelt down on the floor, her back to me, and began to pull the zipper of Claude’s trousers, down. Nick Charles stepped up behind Claude and looked over his shoulders. There was an amused smile on his face.”

I fled from the stage, knocking over the podium, smashing my glass of water on the floor, and raced out of the coffee shop. The cool evening air hit me like a wall. And that’s how the evening ended.”

Dr. Blackstone chuckled.

“Continue, David.”

“That’s all there is, sir,” I responded.

“We know better than that, David.”

“Yes sir,” I replied. There was more. I had forgotten.

“The evening air was cool and light as I staggered out of the cafe and it hit me like a wall. I fell against a street lamp trying to catch my breath. An old woman stepped up to me.

“Have you seen my sparrow, young man? I’ve lost my little sparrow. He flew off, out of the open window when I took him out of his cage for a little exercise. He’s never done that before. And there are so many of those awful pussy cats in this neighborhood.”

I pushed the old lady onto the sidewalk and ran down the street toward the car. When I reached the Beetle, I vomited over the front hood.

“You alright, mister?” A voice cried. I turned around. A little kid, in T-shirt and shorts and bouncing a red rubber ball smiled at me. I climbed into the front seat of the Beetle and turned on the windshield wipers. I pulled out into traffic and raced down the Danforth, the events of the evening repeating themselves in vivid Technicolor in my mind: Collins standing at the bar, the blond blowing smoke rings, Nick Charles repressing a smile, Ann blowing smoke rings, Claude standing at the bar, Ann opening her housecoat, the blond opening her housecoat, Nick Charles pouring himself a drink at the bar, Collins burying his head between Ann’s thighs, Claude with an amused smile. “Have a good evening, Mr. Halliday.”  My father smiled, “I had to deal with my father as you have to deal with me.” A sparrow flew through the passenger window and out my window.  My father wandered through the woods. Coffee dripped. The Titanic sank. A ball bounced down the stairs.”

I turned back to the doctor.

“When I finally came to my senses, I realized that I must have been driving around for hours. I’d forgotten all about Fred. I dreaded going back to the coffee shop, but what choice did I have? Hopefully, everyone would have long since gone. When I returned to the scene of the crime, I found Fred waiting, leaning against a newspaper stand by the curb. I stopped the Beetle and opened the door. Fred jumped in. We moved west on the Danforth toward home. And that’s how it ended.”

The doctor looked at me for a moment, then slapped his knee with his hand, and howled with laughter.

“That is one heck of a story, David. One heck of a story. And what did you tell Ann when you got home?”

“I did what any man would do in a similar situation. I lied.”

The doctor slapped me on the shoulder and roared with laughter.

“Without a doubt, David, you are one of our most delightful guests.” There were tears in his eyes.

The doctor stood up, shook my hand and looked out into the non-existent audience as if he were listening to applause. Then the doctor checked his watch, reminded me to take my medicine and to report back in two weeks. I departed, waving to the non-existent audience as I walked off the set.