The Maladjusted Read online

  The

  Maladjusted

  The

  Maladjusted

  Derek Hayes

  © Derek Hayes, 2011

  All rights reserved

  No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

  Thistledown Press Ltd.

  410 2nd Avenue North

  Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, S7K 2C3

  www.thistledownpress.com

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Hayes, Derek, 1969-

  The maladjusted / Derek Hayes.

  Short stories.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-897235-90-4 (pbk.).—ISBN 978-1-927068-15-1 (html).—

  ISBN 978-1-77187-042-9 (pdf)

  I. Title.

  PS8615.A8385M34 2011 C813’.6 C2011-905350-0

  Cover and book design by Jackie Forrie

  Printed and bound in Canada

  Thistledown Press gratefully acknowledges the financial assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Saskatchewan Arts Board, and the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for its publishing program.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thanks to Rob Galikowski, Jon Millard, Ramona Sattaur, Kelly Hayes, Tim Hayes, Lily Tse and members of my writing group for reading earlier versions of these stories.

  I am grateful to Ed Zile, David Drouin and Lauretta Hayes for reading them and providing suggestions. I’d especially like to thank Daniel Garber for reading each story thoroughly three times, for his editing and for giving me helpful feedback along the way. Finally, I owe thanks to Michael Kenyon for his editing and keen eye, and to Thistledown Press.

  For Lauretta Hayes and in memory of Doug Hayes

  CONTENTS

  A Feel for America

  The Maladjusted

  That’s Very Observant of You

  In the Low Post

  A Good Decision

  Green Jerseys

  Maybe You Should Get Back There

  An Empty Tank of Gas

  The Runner

  A Wonderful Holiday

  Tom and Wilkie

  The Revisionist

  Shallowness

  Inertia

  My Horoscope

  The Lover

  A FEEL FOR AMERICA

  WE’RE WAITING FOR MR. HOU, THE OWNER of our school and this building, to arrive. Adam’s striking a soccer ball with his right foot, aiming at meat-eating cockroaches that scuttle over unidentified particles on our red tile floor. A solitary, insolent cockroach clings to the bathroom door, one tenacious limb gripping a groove in the woodwork. With his toe, Adam takes a violent stab at the ball, which flies at the door, squashing the cockroach, leaving it dangling. The ball bounces away, but Adam remains where he is. Apparently he’s waiting for me to fetch it. Which I do, returning the ball with an insouciance that hopefully preserves some of my dignity. In our two months together, although I haven’t witnessed hostility, Adam has carried himself with a belligerent ferocity that reminds me of the glass-breaking thug in the movie Trainspotting.

  Mr. Hou calls our names from the other side of the screen door. “You guys have a new housemate,” he says with a lisp. His hair has been dyed black, which looks strange considering that he’s over seventy and his face is wrinkled. He was probably attractive in his younger years. “No more funny business. No more drugs.”

  “Nobody was using drugs. Iggie and Steve just seemed like they were on something,” says Adam.

  “I like you Adam, but this is your last chance. No more hiring. No more training. If this doesn’t work, I’m selling the franchise and I’m firing everyone. I’m going to start a kindergarten,” Mr. Hou says.

  “You’re just busting my nuts,” Adam says. “You won’t fire us.”

  “I’m not busting your balls. I’ve had enough. You’d better make him feel welcome. He’s getting his bags from the taxi. He’s North American, too. He’s a nice guy like you, John,” he says, pointing in my direction. “No more teachers from England.”

  “I’m English,” says Adam.

  “You English are all drunks, drug abusers and sodomizers. I’m tired of you,” Mr. Hou says. “Now behave. Samuel’s here.”

  The new guy has a blond beard, is pear-shaped like me, but much taller and about thirty pounds heavier. He’s standing on the other side of the screen door, his suitcases at his side, an expression on his face both dopey and abstractly intelligent. He’s most likely heard everything. I don’t know what he makes of it.

  Adam and I are friends. Sort of. He’s introduced me to his mates, all from some small district outside London. They’re usually wasted on either ecstasy or booze. Except Adam. He’s stayed away from the heavy drugs so far. He’s also a very dedicated teacher, so for this reason Hou has kept him on for five years — the last two as Academic Director. He plays SimCity 4 on the computer and tells me about all the Chinese women he’s shagged. I listen to him attentively. I prepare my English lessons. This is what I do. It’s simple and it’s enough. I’m happy.

  But I can remember a time when I wasn’t — happy, that is. In Toronto I was a mope. It doesn’t matter why. When you’re happy, especially after a long period of misery, you have two thoughts: why so miserable in the past? You also doubt whether things could get much better and sense that, in fact, they can only get worse.

  Why am I here? I stumbled upon this advertisement in the Toronto daily Metro:

  Teachers in Taipei, Taiwan needed!

  Do you want to meet friends? Visit a foreign country? Be part of an exciting organization that pays well and that will provide on the job training? Call (416) 975 0092.

  I believe in entropy. There’s a set amount of energy in any contained area. By this I’m referring to Taipei or maybe even our school. Perhaps even this apartment. The addition of a new variable can cause the entire system to become a discordant flux. The new guy’s threatening to upset the dynamic. You see, this is at the heart of my current anxieties. I’m aware of how things are with three people. Usually one person is the object of ridicule, even if it’s subtle. With three people, someone is always pushed to the margins. I’ll end up working hard to counterbalance Adam’s Machiavellian tendencies. Samuel will quit or have a mental breakdown and then what are we going to do?

  “If you have any problems, Samuel. Like if this guy here is keeping you up at night.” Hou is pointing at Adam. “You’ll let me know, okay? Call me anytime. I’ll let you gentlemen acquaint yourselves.” He says this last part with one foot out the door.

  “Hi, I’m John,” I say.

  “Hi. I’m Samuel.” The new guy wraps his massive purple hand around mine, rigorously pumps, and then does the same to Adam. He gives us a toothy smile.

  “I’m Adam. Do you mind if I don’t call you Samuel?” Adam says. “I think I’ll call you America, instead.”

  Samuel is wearing flip-flops and he’s carrying a bag of noodles in a Styrofoam bowl. “I guess I don’t care. I’m a little hungry,” he says sitting down to eat. “There wasn’t enough on the plane.”

  “Go right ahead and eat, America,” says Adam.

  Samuel pulls chopsticks from his backpack. He pinches the noodles with resolve but they slither off the wooden chopsticks and land on his lap. Eventually he lifts the bowl oafishly with his hands and swallows a mouthful. After he’s finished he stuffs the chopsticks into his pants.

&n
bsp; “Aren’t you going to wipe off the juice?” I say.

  Samuel smiles. “Why are there clothes all over the place?” He’s pointing to Adam’s briefs, which are hanging on the computer monitor.

  “They’re Adam’s.”

  “But why?” says Samuel.

  “Because it’s humid. It often rains in Taipei,” says Adam.

  I shrug. Adam believes that mildew grows on his T-shirts and socks and his clothes rot in his drawer, so he hangs them all over our apartment. I open the fridge and I’m confronted with his underwear. I have to move his sweater to watch TV. I brush aside his socks whenever I’m getting a glass from the cupboard. This is annoying but I don’t complain. Adam doesn’t respond well to constructive criticism.

  Samuel sits down at a table, takes a calligraphy set from his backpack and practices writing Chinese characters. “I’d like to get a lot of studying done while I’m here,” he says. “I studied Mandarin while I was at the University of Colorado.”

  “This is brilliant,” Adam says. He’s picking at his toenails with his fingers. He works at a sizeable clipping and eventually tears it off, then gets to his feet. “You see, we’re surrounded by Chinese culture but in our very midst we get a little of America.” With incisors bared, he hunches over Samuel. His gold chain hangs in Samuel’s face. “Are you writing actual characters? You don’t act like people in Hollywood, do you America? You think you’re actually Taiwanese.”

  After an hour Samuel drops his pen and puts away the calligraphy paper. He mumbles something about third down and five, and then scans the sports section of a USA Today. He’s aware that I’m watching him, so he puts the paper in his backpack.

  “Are you coming to the pub?” Adam says. “It’s your first night in town. Let’s get you initiated.”

  “I’m suffering from jet lag,” Samuel says. “I won’t be much fun.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll be enough fun for the three of us,” Adam says.

  What I love about being in Taipei is that I’m a part of something — how after evening classes we sit in the park on the benches next to the palm trees, with a bag of Taiwan beer, sometimes smoking weed even though signs at the airport read: Anyone caught with illegal drugs will be executed. Still full of beans because we’ve just finished class, the last fifteen minutes on the topic of differences, always differences, those between us and them; dojiang versus milk; the number four versus thirteen; senior homes versus children taking care of their elderly parents; how second-hand furniture is sometimes tasteful in the U.K., but here it is taboo; fat North American rumps versus their flat Asian counterparts (my students laughing then, pointing at mine as evidence). Our company, Hou’s English School, is comprised of three Taiwanese secretaries, three foreign-born male teachers, and one frumpy woman from Manchester, who lives in Hou’s other apartment with Hou’s niece. She’s lots of fun because we have no desire to sleep with her. Expats who teach at the local schools in Taipei are young men in their twenties from the U.S., Canada or the U.K., sometimes South Africa or New Zealand — a few like Adam having stayed too long and gone batty as a result. After class we climb on scooters and go to the Titanic Pub, if lucky with a secretary in tow, practically piggybacking, as we weave around cars at the traffic lights, riding in formation.

  Samuel’s obviously tired but he’s making the trip with us. He’s riding with Adam, on the back of his motorcycle. At the Titanic Pub we greet the other teachers. But we present a united front. This gives me pride, not the nationalistic variety, but one that has developed out of an awareness that we work at Hou’s English School, the highest paying, most prestigious bushiban on the island. Knowing that I make twice as much as some of the other misguided ex-pats, I walk into the pub with a swagger. Our contract is that much better because, unlike other foreign teachers, we don’t have to pay rent. I love teaching. I put ample time into my lesson plans. Teachers wear ties at Hou’s English School — well, all but Adam, who says he’s never given a fuck about proper work attire. You’d have thought others would have followed his lead — he is after all our Academic Director. At Hou’s English School we also have to have graduated from university. Adam, of course, hasn’t, but he’s done a brilliant job of forging a degree from Cambridge — has, as a matter of limited public knowledge, paid for the transcripts off the Internet.

  Samuel, now snug on a bench between two Englishmen, one of them Adam, is waiting his turn at darts, looking as if he’d rather be practicing his characters.

  “He was answering me just using phrases,” says Adam. “I asked him to answer in complete sentences. I said, ‘When did you eat dinner today, Guo?’ He said, ‘After I came home from school.’ I told the little tosser to give me the entire thing, not just the first phrase.”

  “Actually,” Samuel interrupts, “it’s a fragment.”

  “What’d you say, America?”

  “It’s a fragment. Actually a subordinate clause to be exact.

  An adverb clause. Time clause to be even more precise.” Samuel’s glasses are wiggling now. “Phrases lack a subject or a verb. ‘After I came home from school,’ has both.”

  “Are you being wise?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Are you trying to teach me English? Five hundred years ago, Shakespeare was doing his thing. You were speaking Apache or some kind of foolishness. Who the fuck are you to teach me the Queen’s tongue?”

  I take the dart from Adam. He’d been twirling it in his hand, and was poised to jam it in Samuel’s ear. “Look Samuel,” I say. “It’s a phrase. You’re wrong. Cut it out, man.”

  Clearly, Samuel, his elephant-sized eyes watery, hasn’t seen Ben Kingsley in Sexy Beast because he says, “Check the Betty Azar, the blue textbook, one of the later chapters, I think.” At least he isn’t making eye contact — never make eye contact, and turn your back first chance are techniques of self-preservation that have gotten me this far.

  “Yeah, I’ll check the fucking Betty Azar,” says Adam. This is lame, especially since Samuel, who is paying his tab at the bar, hasn’t heard him.

  Adam and I stumble home at two o’clock. Adam, hand on crotch, runs to the balcony to relieve himself. Samuel has placed a Buddhist shrine on the mantel piece under Adam’s Union Jack. Incense burns directly under it. I rush over and snuff it out with my sleeve. I upend the shrine, cradle it in my biceps, and take it to Samuel’s room, where he’s studying Chinese characters. “This isn’t the best thing to be near Adam’s flag,” I say.

  “You don’t have to take it down,” he says.

  “Yeah, I probably should.”

  I go out to check on Adam. He’s singing the Star Spangled Banner and peeing over the balcony. This is making a lot of noise because the awning below is tinny. I sing with him and try to match his volume but my voice lacks conviction. The concrete buildings in direct view are all drably built. They’re also coloured a soot-black because the wind blows pollution onto them. Even still, they fascinate me. Who is on the other side?

  Samuel joins us on the balcony.

  “Just takin’ the piss, America. Hope you take no offense.” A cat is creeping onto the flat part of our roof. “Look America, I’m willing to concede that your culture — that is, Hollywood — has influenced the world more than anything coming out of the UK. Isn’t there anything you want to tell us about your mates or way of life back home? You’re such a mystery, America. What’s the U.S. of A. all about anyway? Why don’t you give us a feel for America?”

  “I need to get some sleep,” Samuel says. He goes back to his room.

  “How about a feel for America,” Adam slurs.

  Five minutes before class, I’m writing on my white board. A desk at the other end of the room is askew so I straighten it. From back here I see that the students won’t be able to read the past participles, written in faint green, on the white board. I erase them, careful not to take out any of the other colours. I’m printing them in blue now. Frantically, because I don’t have a lot of time, but it also
needs to be neat. If not, I’ll have to start over again. Some of my intermediate students are streaming into the room. I’m looking over my shoulder. “Winny,” I say. “You’re with Ricky.” They’re both single parents in their forties. Why not match-make? “Jupiter, you’re with Wynona.” I’ve noticed Jupiter has been sitting with Greta, who’s younger too and they’ve been speaking too much Chinese lately. Wynona’s in her 60s and loves to learn. 7:00 now. I can’t wait for anyone else. If they’re late, though, that’s okay. “How are you? Nice day? Let’s start with the warmer. Ask the questions. English, Jupiter, English. Full sentences, Joanna. We’re doing the present perfect. Ask the first in the present perfect and the second question in past tense. Use the past participles. The constructions are on the board. It’s going to be a great evening. I’m really excited,” I say. I say this every night. The Chinese have a smell, probably sweat — tofu and chilies secreted through their skin — that I can’t get enough of. I’d like to bottle it and sprinkle it throughout our apartment. When my tiny classroom fills up with enough people, the scent’s there within a few minutes. When everyone files out at the end of class I sit in my chair and inhale.

  There’s some yelling in the hallway that I’m ignoring now because everything’s going well and because I get to teach the present perfect tonight — a grammar lesson with some interesting role-plays. The office role-play. The son/ daughter coming home late at night role-play. Plus, my tape-recorder’s all set. They will listen to the South African accent tonight. I have memorized a new line in Chinese and I’m going to pounce on the first opportunity in class to use it. Surprise them a little. Someone’s yelling in the hallway. It’s just barely audible above the din of my class — my student’s voices are reaching a crescendo now. “Have you been to Yang Ming Shan?” “Yes I have.” “When did you go?” “I went in June.” I always wait for the energy in the classroom to peak before I move on. This keeps the pace moving. More noise outside. I open my door and stick my head in the hall.