Truth or Claire

When asked why he won’t, at thirty years of age, find a job that pays at least on par with minimum wage, Norman explains that patience is a virtue.  He says he’s most likely next in line for the managerial position, and that it’s only a few years before his double shifts pay off. “I also stay for you girls,” he adds. “You make it all worth it.”  I once convinced him to go to an interview at a chain book store, and he returned claiming they just couldn’t match the benefits the sports centre offered. When I asked him what those were, he said, “Beautiful women and The Space Channel. What else?” Couldn’t argue with that.  However, I sensed there was something else keeping him there. Someone else, rather. And it was anything but beautiful.

Charlie was another contender for the position of recreation manager, should the seas part, exposing the pale buttocks of that opportunity.  He too worked in the bowling alley, but unlike Norm, Charlie’s schedule varied to accommodate his drinking habit. He missed shifts regularly, showed up hours late, and left early.  This affected Norm on a weekly basis, and I often watched the consequences of Charlie’s hangovers from the bowling alley windows. The clock struck four and Norm was ready to go home, waiting for Charlie to replace him, the appendages of his red hat tied around his chin in preparation for the December wind.  At four fifteen, he would start to sweat, and would take a seat among the anxious birthday bowlers waiting to receive their bowling shoes.  By half past four, the red hat became the birthday bowlers’ pet as Norm assumed his duties once again, mumbling threats to kick Charlie’s ass.

“You should make him your number one enemy,” Adam once suggested to Norman.  “That way when he goes ‘ga ga ga ga ga ga ga ga!’ with a Type 81 you’ll know why he did it. Well maybe not a Type 81, but as long as it’s powerful but slick.” The best part about that conversation was that Norm and I often sketched evacuation plans for the day Adam would come through the doors shooting at us.  When I heard this suggestion, I felt a chill running down my back. He was a step ahead of us.

The only thing worse than seeing Norman’s skin turn into a lava lamp of anger and composure was knowing that the recreation managers couldn’t care less.
To be completely honest, I found it funny. Maybe it was because I’ve had personal conversations with Charlie and knew that he meant absolutely no harm by his laziness, or maybe it was because his ridiculous idea of punctuality was a signature part of his erratic personality, which I always found entertaining.  There was also the fact that Charlie enjoyed telling the occasional lie, which certainly kept our conversations exciting. What made him particularly special was that his lies didn’t benefit anyone at all. Ever.

“The smell coming from that box is amazing, Chuck!”

“It’s poutine!”

“..it’s a pizza box, Chuck.”

“Oh, yeah. This box. I thought you meant another one.”

For a fifty year old man, his lies were seriously undeveloped. The first two years I worked there, I thought he was retarded. But as I got to know him, I realized he was quite astute, but was hiding his intelligence under fluorescent cloaks of madness, and I loved to see them spinning. The fun part wasn’t the topic of our weekly conversation but my success in identifying the lies from the truth.  Sometimes he made it very easy.

Monday, 11:03 pm, MSN

BeerMan69 says: “hey, how r u?”

Cakelover says: “Not bad. I’m actually only online to transfer some photos over.  I’ll see you tomorrow at work, okay?”

BeerMan69 says: “oh, this isn’t charlie. its his buddy. i am on his comp!!!!”

Cakelover says: “Haha…nice to meet you! Bye for now.”

BeerMan69 says: “do u like him?”

Cakelover says: “Who?”

BeerMan69 says: “charlie”

Cakelover says: “Uhh….”

BeerMan69 says: “u can tell me. i wont tell him. he is sleeping now anyway. i am on his comp!”

Cakelover says: “See you tomorrow, Charlie.”

(User Cakelover is offline)

This routine was something we engaged in at least once a month. No matter how many chances I gave him to come clean, Charlie stuck to his guns and assured me that it was indeed a fellow middle aged friend of his that was at his computer that night, and not Charlie, alone and drunk again.

“Sorry about last night,” Charlie said one afternoon following such conversation. “My friend was over and he was on my computer.” “Hmm,” I answered, without looking up.  “I was asleep though, so I couldn’t stop him. Did he say anything weird to you?”

“Yeah, he told me you like watching children at Dairy Queen,” I smiled. He blew a bubble with the nicotine gum he was chewing and walked off, leaving his newspaper behind.

A few hours later, my shift was over and so was Charlie’s.  He walked by my desk and jingled his car keys. “Want a ride?” he asked. We lived on the same street, and he had driven me home before.  I grabbed my things and got into what he identified as his mother’s Cadillac.  For all I knew it could’ve been stolen.

The ride home was comfortable. I flipped through a pile of his CDs and he talked about his new tenants.  He owned several apartments and was always renovating something that left his fingers stained in white paint. He bought the apartments several years ago, and always asked when I was going to move in, despite the fact that all of the apartments were occupied. The only thing that kept me from being creeped out was the smirk on his face when he asked.

“When are you gonna move in?” He asked that night as well. I looked at his face as he drove, but the smirk wasn’t there. I laughed. He didn’t. The car stopped. We were in front of his building.

“Come look at my apartment. I just finished renovating,” he invited me, getting out of his car without waiting for my answer.  I followed him out noticing how neatly the grass was cut.  “There’s no one living in this one,” he opened the door to a basement bachelor.  He slowly walked across the empty room into an equally empty kitchen, and opened the fridge. In it stood four beers.  He pulled two out, and I noticed a cluster of burnt light bulbs laying in the corner, like caviar. On the counter was a banana hook with two bananas hung over it, completely still.  The room smelled of wet wood and wallpaper glue. “What do you think of these knobs?” he asked, pointing to the cupboards. “My mother gave me these. They’re marble.”

I began to panic.  What made me so sure he wasn’t bringing me there to murder me?  I had known him five years, but how did I know he wasn’t waiting all these years for this exact moment?  What if he had renovated that apartment just for me? I pictured myself sitting in the pile of light bulbs, shivering, naked and peppering my own thigh in preparation for dinner.

He handed me a beer and sat at the empty kitchen table.  “So, my friend didn’t say anything embarrassing last night, did he?” he asked again.   My stomach turned. I thought of making a scene and yelling that I needed to be driven home, but that never seemed to work in movies, so I decided to ride it out and befriend my way out of this mess.  “Not that I can remember. So, how long have you been living here?”

“Oh, years. Or months. I want to show you something.”  He stood up and walked past me, into what looked like his bedroom, from which I heard his voice again: “Come and see something.”  I dug my hand in my pocket, where I felt my cell phone.  The back of my neck began to sweat.  I quickly glanced around searching for a knife or fork, but everything was neatly stored away, most likely inside the ribcage of his latest victim.  I tore a banana from the hook and shamefully shoved it down my shirt. What was I going to do with it? Peel it and throw it behind me to throw his Mario Kart off balance? I followed the sound of his voice into the bedroom where he was sitting on a mattress, his beer on the bedside table.

“I’ve kept it here because it’s a secret for now.”  He looked at me and I felt the shape of the banana swelling through my shirt. I wasn’t good at keeping secrets anyway. He reached into a drawer in his table and a drop of sweat slithered down my spine. What would he produce? A gun? Was Adam right? A knife? I was hoping for a banana. I watched his hand fumble around. Finally, he pulled out an envelope.

“I have a daughter,” he said.  “I just found out last week. She sent me a letter. You look shocked already, but wait until you hear it!”  He must’ve noticed me pressing my head against the wall to stop it from spinning, eyes bulging out like a child’s googly eyed craft.

“Go ahead,” I mouthed.

He took a quick swig of beer and cleared his throat.

“Chuck, you are my dad. I didn’t want to tell you this before, but I am really your daughter, and now you know. I don’t want to see you yet. I am not ready. But I want you to know that I exist, and that- ” he paused and looked at me, “that I love you.”  He put the paper back in the envelope and took another drink. “What do you think?” he asked.  Having calmed down a little more, I exclaimed, with genuine amazement, “That’s so crazy! How did you not know about her? I mean, how old is she?”

“Well, how old are you?” he asked.

“I’m in my twenties..”

“Well, so is she,” he said.

“So, how did you…I mean, did you ever, you know, not use what you were supposed to use when, you know..” Charlie had never been married, and said he was too busy making money to ever consider a woman in his life.  He laughed.

“I can see that banana in your shirt.  Let’s go get a bite. My treat.”

Putting the banana on the table, I followed him out, smiling at the burnt light bulbs in the corner, and running my hand against the cupboard knobs. What a nice apartment it was, after all. It’s material occupants smiled back at me, no longer torture weapons, but well-wishing tourist attractions I promised myself I would never visit again.
We drove to a diner where we caused a stir among our patrons. Apparently a fifty year old man and a twenty something year old girl weren’t a common pairing, but still high off being given the option to live, I didn’t care how we looked.

“So I dated a lady many years ago. I think she’s the mother,” Charlie said, biting into his roast beef sandwich.  I took a sip of my cherry Coke and asked, “Well, where is this lady now? Can’t you contact her?”  Charlie looked out the window and thought, for a minute.

“No, because she’s crazy.”

“You dated a crazy woman? Details please!”

“Well, no..” *pause* “She wasn’t crazy when I met her, but she became crazy after.”

“How do you know? Did you stay in touch?”

“I found out.”

“How?”

*pause*

Either it was a painful subject, or I was visiting Charlie and the lie factory again. He finished chewing his sandwich and finally replied:

“It was on the news.”

“That she went crazy?” I asked again, beginning the detective game.

“She was committed, you see. I sent her money because of Claire.”

“Who?”

“My daughter.”

I wondered how he made such a sloppy slip up when the rest of the evening was so well executed.

“So you already knew her name?”

*pause*

“No, I just found out! Didn’t you see that letter? She sent it!”

He was losing the game quickly, but I wanted to keep playing. He deserved a little punishment for forcing me into his apartment.

“So you sent your crazy ex-girlfriend money for no reason?”

“Because she was crazy and a single mom! Jeez, you’re unsympathetic!”

I started laughing. “But how did you know she was a single mom if you just found out-“

He ignored my attempts to straighten the story out.

“Anyway, I told you she was crazy. Maybe she was a single mom, and maybe she wasn’t.”

I nodded and he continued.

“So years went by, and now I get this letter from Claire, who says she is my daughter.” He waited to catch my eye before he finished. “And that she loves me.”

I watched Charlie sink his teeth into his sandwich. A piece of roast beef fell out and onto the table by his elbow, where I noticed a patch of psoriasis. I put my sandwich down and looked away, feeling slightly queasy.  Was I vigilant or heartless? Ten o’clock and there I was, sitting across from a man I had thought was going to murder me, who had just wanted me to know that he was loved as well. I had almost fallen for another one of his lies, but could I, should I have caught him on this one? The desire to be loved seems to know no boundaries. Some marry, some buy a pet. Some conceive unconditional love: a child. To Charlie, that conception was bound to his mind.

I let it go, and ordered another Coke.