The Maladjusted Read online

  At the Lucky Dragon Restaurant Melanie and Nicole took a seat at one of the round tables and looked at the menus. Nicole said she needed to wash her hands, and then got up and went to the washroom. Unfortunately, the waiter chose this moment to take their order. Melanie sniffed sadly. “Would you mind coming back? My sister was just here. She’s in the washroom.”

  When her sister returned, the nice-looking waiter asked them if they were ready to order. With her hand reflexively covering the pockmarks on her cheeks, Melanie introduced her sister to him and ordered a plate of gong bao chicken.

  Melanie had difficulty responding to her sister’s inquiries about her job during dinner because she was trying to think about what she might say to the waiter when he returned.

  “Why don’t you ever eat here alone, Mel?” said Nicole.

  “Oh I could never do that! I mean — where would I sit?”

  Nicole pointed to an older woman in a corner, eating by herself. Melanie first thought she was a businesswoman because she was wearing a suit, but on second thought she wasn’t sure. The lady was reading a magazine, an In Style magazine that was suitable perhaps for someone creatively inclined. The lady was odd. She was alone, spread out as if she were sitting in her own sunroom. She had on a fuchsia blouse and suit jacket, her grey hair perfectly pinned, her eyelashes done but not gaudily and yet here she was blowing her nose in public, not discarding the tissue in her purse but placing the bacteria-infected rag next to her plate of fried noodles — and she was doing this entirely unselfconsciously. Melanie thought, I could be this woman. “Do you think she looks distinguished, Nicole? Do you think she’s married?”

  Nicole patiently answered these questions, and then said, “Why don’t we invite her to sit with us, Melanie?”

  “Oh God,” Melanie said. “If you did that, I’d die of embarrassment.”

  Melanie was at her desk organizing a meeting with CIBC, but also listening to Becky Charles, whose large front teeth were shiny white. “I’ve been so tired,” Becky said. “You know, the long hours here and then my children, bless them, are growing into their bodies, and their hormones are raging. I really needed some time to myself. You’re going to think I’m totally spoiled, but I booked a weekend at the Beild House Country Inn and Spa in Collingwood. Joe took the children for the weekend so there was no one to burden me when I ate, and I could get tipsy on red wine. I met this woman, Linda, who’s about my age and we had a wonderful time, taking long walks in the garden and sharing our life-stories.”

  “Really?” Melanie said.

  “Like I said, I needed some time for myself. Some me time. I think sometimes that I’m my own best company. You know what I mean?”

  The phone ringing in the next cubicle irked Melanie. I do know what you mean, Becky. You’re talking about human dignity, right? We all have dignity — you’re a very strong woman, Becky Charles, and don’t worry because I will never, ever steal your dignity. You’d have loved to meet this lady, oh, I never actually got her name, but she was at the Lucky Dragon Restaurant with my sister and me the other day and she reminded me exactly of you. She was a powerful person, too. I wish I’d gotten to know more about her. I wish that I could have told her what kind of impression she left on me. We all have our dignity. You were so nice to me when you caught me in the boardroom, eating where I wasn’t allowed. You have a kind heart, Becky.

  Melanie rarely spoke to anyone at work, but today she got up from her chair, and walked over to Becky, who looked unnecessarily taken aback, her eyebrows raised, her supple lips formed into an ‘O’. A palpable shock ran from woman to woman. Oh God, thought Melanie, this was embarrassing. She gathered a faint steam of courage, and said, “Could you get me a brochure for that hotel?”

  It was Sunday night. With a touch of blush hiding the scars on her face, and adorned with a recently purchased brown leather coat, Melanie walked Spadina Avenue, first to Dundas Street and then back to College Street, her eyes fixed on the yellow neon sign, LUCKY DRAGON RESTAURANT, and below, the Chinese characters. She thought, this is just like going to get my haircut — there’s no reason for it to go badly. Nicole is praying for me. She wants this oh so bad to turn out okay for me so I have to do this for her, really. Oh, let’s just get it over with. I just want to eat, right? I make money like any normal person, and I need to eat or I’ll be hungry, right?

  The handsome waiter packed her dumplings and fried rice in a bag. When he handed it to her, Melanie said, “Actually, I’d prefer to eat here tonight if that’s okay.”

  “Of course it’s all right.” The waiter smiled. His dark-brown beard glistened.

  She motioned to grab the bag so she could take it to a table, but he told her that he’d do that for her, and that she could eat with a knife and fork or chopsticks if she so desired. At the table Melanie used her R.T. Williams mystery novel as a shield. When the waiter asked her what she wanted to drink, she didn’t lower it. She asked for a glass of water, her words muffled by the paperback just inches from her face. When he brought her food, she said, “Thanks.” The waiter smiled and this calmed her. Oh, what did I want to say to him?

  Melanie slowly chewed her dumplings. From behind her novel she watched a couple eating in a corner of the restaurant. The man and the woman had at no point during their dinner spoken to each other except to ask about pedantic matters such as the amount of the bill and the way to the washroom. Again, she began to think about the woman with the In Style magazine and about Becky Charles. The imagined conversations, and the insightful remarks by her in her daydreams left her with a faint smile on her lips. Her mood improved considerably. She came to an understanding — what she thought of as an epiphany — that no one was watching her and that nobody noticed her. Sitting down in the restaurant had indeed been difficult, but once at her table, she realized that she didn’t stand out. She was in a comfortable environment, where she could wipe chili sauce from the bottle so it wouldn’t stain the marble table, where she could stab each piece of shui jiao and plunk it in her mouth, and swirl the chopsticks in the rice, these actions as natural as a female cat licking the dust and hairballs from her fur. And best of all was that the food tasted as good as take-out. Now, all she had to do was get the ball rolling — the waiter probably wanted to talk to her just as much as she wanted to talk with him.

  She left the Lucky Dragon without saying anything to him but promised herself that next week she would.

  The next day Melanie got up from her cubicle, and stood in front of Becky’s desk. “I went to the Lucky Dragon Restaurant last night,” she said. And then hastily added, “My friend came with me.” She went back to her desk. Five minutes later Melanie returned to Becky’s desk to tell her that what she’d said earlier hadn’t been true and that she hadn’t eaten with a friend, that she’d gone by herself. “I needed some time for myself. I’m feeling really good these days.”

  “That’s great, Melanie.”

  Melanie thought that Becky’s reaction this time had been considerate. In her look had been the right amount of interest, and no sign of wanting to cut off the conversation.

  This was the second Sunday in a row that Melanie ate alone at the Lucky Dragon. The waiter with the dark-brown beard rhythmically tapped a pencil on a note-pad, and asked her what she wanted for dinner.

  She knew her sister was praying for her. She ordered some fried noodles, and then with the precision that comes with rehearsal, she said, “Hi, I’m Melanie. I’ve wanted to introduce myself to you for a while.”

  “Hi, Melanie. It’s nice to meet you.”

  “You look busy today,” she said.

  He looked around at the half-empty restaurant, raised his eyebrows in a bored manner, and then caustically said, “That’s very observant of you.”

  Melanie missed her streetcar stop on the way home that night. She rode three extra stops and had to double back east to get to her apartment. In the building she got off at the wrong floor and decided to walk up the flight of stairs instead of waiti
ng for another elevator. The superintendent hadn’t fixed the malfunctioning light in the elevator, and of course someone had tracked dirt in here and so why wouldn’t she be distracted? Oh I wish I’d said something clever to that waiter! Inside her apartment she couldn’t remember eating her fried noodles and she agonized as to whether she’d paid her bill or not. She called the Lucky Dragon and spoke with the owner. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve had a long day at work. I was just at your restaurant and I’m not sure if I paid.”

  The owner rifled through the receipts and found that she had.

  She said, “Good,” and then hung up.

  She set her clock so that she could get to work early the next morning. After the alarm sounded she remembered the events of the night before, stared at her walls for forty minutes, and ended up being late.

  Later that day, she discovered that somebody had parked in her designated parking space. What kind of person does that? The offending person was, of course, her neighbour’s boyfriend, the ponytailed jerk who was over almost every night. She could put a note on the windshield of his car. She’d get the wording just right, but then she dismissed this. After all, if she acted, it would be their prerogative to react and she didn’t want to — what was the saying? — lob the proverbial ball onto their court and give them the advantage. She thought about perhaps waiting for them in the dark, perhaps behind a pillar, so as to casually come across them and mention that she needed the spot. They’d say, “We need it.” She’d say, “You’re being really unreasonable.” The man then, the one with the loping gait and the jet-black hair tied back in a ponytail, would say, “Fuck if we care!”

  It’s been mine for three years. I’d pay less rent if I didn’t have it. I put some cones there, but they move them. I set up twenty-five cones, covering every square millimetre of my space, space that I can do whatever I want with. They drive over the cones. I put them back. They drive over them again, and then they find a cone on top of their car like a dunce cap, saying, how dare you drive over me, this space belongs to Melanie! If I wanted I could let a homeless man camp there. I could decorate it with flowers and put a patio set on it so I can read and have some lemonade now that it’s getting warmer. People will take my side. We’ll vote at the next meeting, and everyone’ll vote for them to leave.

  Melanie hadn’t called Nicole for a few days, so she wasn’t surprised that her sister phoned her at work, and said, “I think you should talk about it with them first, Mel, but if it’ll make you feel less anxious, then I guess maybe you could call a tow truck.”

  “They’re in my spot and it’s Wednesday. It’s not even the weekend. I can’t even do my grocery shopping.”

  “Why do you care so much? You don’t own a car. You can leave and do your shopping. They’re not keeping you there. Will you please try to do something to ease your anxiety, Mel?”

  “You’re right. I can’t seem to get it out of my head. I don’t know what I can do though.”

  “Talk to them.”

  When Nicole arrived, Melanie was frustrated because her neighbour’s boyfriend hadn’t parked in her spot. How could they have known Nicole was coming? Are they listening in on my calls? They deliberately didn’t park there to embarrass me in front of my sister, the one person who trusts me. They’re trying to take away the one person who fully believes in me, and all that I’m worth. Together we’re formidable. Wait till they see the wrath of my big sis.

  After dinner, with a panic attack imminent, Melanie watched from her doorway as Nicole knocked on the neighbour’s door. The young woman answered, her boyfriend standing behind her.

  “Sorry to bother you,” Nicole said. “I’m Melanie’s sister — the girl that lives down the hall — I was wondering if you could do us a favour. Could you please ask your guests not to park in her spot? I sometimes come down for the weekend and I need to park there and even though Melanie doesn’t have a car she likes to keep it free.”

  “We didn’t realize it was a problem,” the man with the ponytail said. “We’ll tell our friends not to park there. I’ve parked there myself before, but I won’t anymore. I’m sorry if it’s inconvenienced you or Melanie in the past.”

  By the time Nicole had pushed her into her apartment and had shut the door, Melanie was crying inaudible grotesque sobs.

  “You need to tell people how you feel, Mel. You need to tell them your feelings before you get so upset. You have to work on your communication skills, or you’re going to go through a lot of unnecessary heartache.”

  Melanie noticed that the waiter had a vaguely bloated stomach, not the loose, flabby waistline you find on middle-aged men, but the distended type on malnourished children. When he came over, she said, “Hi, do you remember me from a while ago? I said, ‘You look busy.’ And you said, ‘That’s very observant of you.’ Well I happen to think that, ‘That’s very observant of you’ is a clever retort. And while it’s quite clever, I also think it’s an inconsiderate and ill-tempered thing to say.

  “You’re an intelligent, physically attractive person but you lack sensitivity. The appropriate response on your behalf would’ve been to smile, maybe say, ‘Enjoy your tea,’ and then move on.

  “Do you have any idea how easy — how unoriginal — it is to come up with a sarcastic comment like that? Do you know how easy it is to ridicule someone who, like me, was trying to initiate a conversation? A stranger asks me for the time and I could say, ‘Why are you asking me?’ and this person would probably feel awful. You may be thinking that you had absolutely no responsibility to talk with me that day, and I’d agree with you whole heartedly — but I also add that like this liberty, the freedom to mistreat whomever you want, I’m afforded a similar liberty, to come in here and tell you how I feel.

  “You might be thinking that you should just get away from me. To this I say ‘walk away!’ However, having said all of this, I also want to say that for the last few weeks I’ve been staring at your lovely, thin hips and at your cute, tight bottom. And yes, if you’d asked nicely, I would have gone out with you. Instead, you said ‘That’s very observant of you’, and I went home and stared at my walls and got into fights with my sister and showed up late for work. I was so furious at you.”

  Melanie stopped. She was pleased, believing it had gone as well or better than the early afternoon dry run. When the waiter didn’t immediately respond, she said, “How do you feel about everything I’ve just said?”

  “I didn’t mean to upset you, Melanie,” he said. “I’m sorry if I did.”

  “Really? Perhaps I’m overreacting.”

  “We could meet for a drink after work,” he said, “if you want.”

  “Maybe.” She considered this. “I don’t know. Do you think we can be friends?”

  “Of course, we already are friends, Melanie.”

  The waiter walked away. She thought, maybe I was a little too hard on him. Should I apologize?

  IN THE LOW POST

  I HAVE THE BALL IN THE LOW post, my back to the basket. Adrian, a lanky eighteen-year-old kid, six foot six — his calves a third of this length — is draped over me. I pump fake and Adrian bites, leaving his feet. I dig my shoulder into his stomach and hook the ball over him, but even so he smacks it out of bounds. He knows better than to say anything. I grab his T-shirt and pretend like I’m going to slap him. “Just joking. Nice block, bro’.” All ten of us stand waiting for the game to continue, no one saying the obvious — that it is, of course, my job to retrieve the ball. I’m not going to make an issue of it. I might have as a teenager, but I’m twenty-five now. I follow the ball over a clump of grass to a chain link fence, where it rolls up against a leg. I jump back a step. The leg belongs to a kid, who is lying still. With the sun setting he’s difficult to see. His skin is lighter than mine. He’s dirty and he smells like vomit. His lack of expression and unwillingness to call out as the ball hit his leg is what trips me up the most.

  “What are you doing hiding over here, little bro’?”

&nbs
p; “I’m not hiding,” he says. “I’m taking a rest.” He brushes flies from his face.

  “Why don’t you come on over? This here’s my court. You can watch me dominate.”

  “That guy stuffed you.”

  “Well, that’s a matter of interpretation. Are you coming?”

  A flicker of hope on his face, he says, “Can I play you one on one?” He gets to his feet in one seamless motion, not even using his hands.

  “You don’t want to play with me,” I say. “But if you come to the court you can see better.”

  “I don’t feel like it. I’m just gonna rest.” He lazily turns so that his back is against the fence, and drops to the ground with a thud. He rolls in the dirt, lying on his side.

  “Suit yourself.” Fuck him, I think. Social work is for social workers. I’m here for the run. My blood needs to rush through my veins. I get enough talk at the office. “See ya later, little bro’. By the way, what’s your name?”

  “Karl.” He says this so softly that I wonder if he’s even said it at all.

  The next evening Karl gets up from the dirt and walks to the lamppost. He hugs its base and shimmies himself up with leverage from his legs, stomach and arms, like a squirrel climbing the trunk of a tree. From where I’m standing, his eyes and nose are exposed yet blurred by the light. He perches up there for half an hour, restlessly shifting his position as if he’s looking for something. After a while we forget he’s there.

  But now he yells, “Can you see me?”

  “Yeah we see you,” I say. “Hang onto something, Karl. I don’t want to scrape your guts off my court.”