Ken Sparling - Dad Says He Saw You at the Mall

What I hated about those rubber things was having anyone see that I had them on. I would take them off in the car and then run into the office, trying to dodge the puddles, landing on my toes, trying to make the least amount of shoe as possible touch the ground.

It stuck out, but it stuck out in such a way that it made you think it was not sticking out. She must have used a lot of hair spray, some kind of hair spray that makes it look as though you didn’t use any hair spray.

What I wanted to touch was the backs of her arms. The backs of her arms looked soft. It looked as though the skin on the backs of her arms was going to fall off. I wanted to touch those arms and say, “There,” and then wait to hear her say, “Thank you.”

I think they can make hair spray where it looks as though there is no hair spray. I think it’s just a matter of cost. I think it’s just a matter of the cost of the thing they want to do, and if they want to make hair spray where it looks as though there is no hair spray, it’s just a matter of cost.

I wanted to get the best deal I could on those rubber things.

You thought you could smell it, the smell of the stubble coming out, dark like that, when she lifted her arm. It made you want to taste it. You wanted to taste the smell. Just seeing the stubble, and the bra, the way the bra looked, dark where you could see it at the edge, just seeing the bra and the stubble when she lifted her arm, you got the feeling you wanted to taste the smell.

I wanted her to say it as though I had slipped her something, and what I had slipped her made her eyes grow wide. Only it would be as though her eyes had not grown wide at all. This is how practiced I think she was.

She said, “Thank you,” as if she was sorry for me. As if she wanted to give me something. Like opening her eyes wide. That was what she could have given me. Her eyes, wide open, and me seeing her eyes, wide open like that.

They try to make those rubber things look like real shoes, but if you ask me, it doesn’t work. I don’t know. Maybe if I spent more money. I tried to get the cheapest ones I could find. They raise the rubber on top to try to make it look like laces, but who are they trying to kid? I try to look at those rubber things with an open mind. I really do. But please, who are they trying to kid?

~

You can only get the money in factors of twenty. Sometimes the machine will give you more money than you have in your account.

The question on the machine was: Which account? Press a green button .

~

Before I left, I made him pancakes.

Then I went around the corner, out of the kitchen, and he went, “Daaaddy,” and started to cry.

So I went back in the kitchen.

I had on one shoe.

I turned his high chair around to face the window. I wanted him to look out and blow me kisses when I got out in the driveway. There were still some pieces of pancake in his bowl.

I find empty rooms to sit in. Then I listen to footsteps outside. I wait for the footsteps to stop. I listen for the door to open. This is it , I think.

I turn his chair around and I say, “You wave bye-bye to Daddy. Blow kisses,” and I walk out the front door.

When I was a little guy, my dad used to tie our sled to the back of his car and drive us around the streets in our neighborhood, my sister and I dressed up in our coats and boots, propped up like little dolls, the snow white and clean around us.

TOM GOESacross the parking lot in the early morning light. He goes into the mall and meets up with the other guys, who are all hanging about by the railing on the overlook. All the guys, hair stiff with gel, are smiling and they all have wonderful gray complexions. Tom has this lick of hair which falls over his forehead. For a while he stays near the guys, listening to their jokes. Eventually, though, he drifts away to buy a coffee at Druxy’s. He stands at the condiment stand, stirring his coffee. He watches the lady behind the counter in the way fellows named Tom do.

Tom goes back out into the parking lot and buys a paper. He tucks the paper under his arm and carries it back across the parking lot to the office building where he works. He goes in. Rhonda is there, sitting at her desk, staring off into nowhere, with her red hair and freckles.

“You’re in early,” Tom says.

“I was over near here, so I thought I might as well just come on over here and be here. So here I am.” Rhonda often talks like this, especially early in the morning.

Her hair is especially red today , Tom thinks.

“Did you dye your hair?” Tom says.

“No,” Rhonda says.

Tom takes sips of his coffee. He keeps taking sips until all the coffee is gone. He closes one eye and squints the other so he can look into the little hole of the takeout cup.

“I think I have some kind of perceptual problem,” Tom says. “I think there’s something going wrong with me. I keep cutting my fingers, for example.” He holds up his hands to show Rhonda he has two Band-Aids on one hand and one on the other. “I think there’s something really going wrong with me.”

“You should see a doctor,” Rhonda says.

Anyway, that’s it for Tom. Thanks again.

ONE TIME, Wiley Pocock wrote this long, convoluted poem and read it to the class. This was in grade three. It was the assignment. It didn’t have to be a long poem. Some of the kids wrote short ones. One kid, whose name was Chuck, wrote a poem two lines long, with the word “time” at the end of the first line and the word “lime” at the end of the second. At recess, after Chuck read his poem to the class, he went outside and beat up a bunch of kids in the school yard. He went around the school yard for fifteen minutes beating up kids.

~

I used to drive a school bus in the summer, taking kids to a camp in the city. I picked up kids in the High Park area. It was always warm and humid, even early in the morning. I would go down to pick up the kids and I would have the door of the bus open to get air into the bus to cool me down. The area where I picked up the kids was the same area where I one day wanted to live. I would drive down early, park the bus in front of the school where I made the first pickup, and then I would get out of the bus and walk around, looking for someplace where I could buy a coffee. There was a girl, Sarah, and a guy, Brett, who were counselors at the camp and who were in love. Sometimes they came to the bus stop early and sat together against a wall of the school. Sarah was like summer, because she looked warm and swollen and ready for anything.

~

The other day I took Tutti and Sammy to Guelph. I told them Guelph might be a good town to live in. Tutti wants to live in another town. I had heard about some parks in Guelph that were supposed to be fun for kids, so we went to look at these parks to see if Sammy would have fun playing in these parks. While we were there in Guelph walking in one of the parks, Tutti got poison oak. A couple of days later, Sammy got it, too.

~

Say I knocked, though, and Tutti would not open the door. Say she had the baby in her arms and she was saying, “Hush, that’s your daddy out there. Hush now, and don’t make a sound.”

~

Somebody has been ripping out the pages with naked pictures of Madonna on them. This is happening with all the magazines, including the Greek ones, which always have pictures of naked women in them. Just so you understand, what we are talking about here is every single article with naked pictures of Madonna, in every single magazine we have here.

The other thing you ought to know is, someone is randomly deleting people’s reserves for the book where the naked pictures of Madonna are coming from. We are talking about an employee here, someone inside the system, someone who is going into the computer, calling up the reserve list for the Madonna book, and telling the computer to delete people’s reserves. We don’t know who it is, but whoever it is is deleting vast sections of the reserve list. Management has come out with a strong statement concerning the seriousness of this crime. In the statement there is no mention of the missing naked pictures.