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THE UNEXPECTED AND FICTIONAL
CAREER CHANGE OF JIM KEARNS
THE UNEXPECTED AND FICTIONAL
CAREER CHANGE OF JIM KEARNS
A NOVEL
DAVID MUNROE
Copyright © David Munroe, 2005
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.
Editor: Barry Jowett
Copy-editor: Jennifer Gallant
Design: Jennifer Scott
Printer: Transcontinental
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Munroe, David, 1955-
The unexpected and fictional career change of Jim Kearns / David Munroe.
ISBN-10: 1-55002-567-8
ISBN-13: 978-1-55002-567-5
I.Title.
PS8576.U5745U54 2005 C813′.54 C2005-903475-0
1 2 3 4 5 09 08 07 06 05
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and The Association for the Export of Canadian Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program, and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.
Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credit in subsequent editions.
J. Kirk Howard, President
Printed and bound in Canada.
Printed on recycled paper.
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For Sam, who can now look his
friends and teachers in the eye and
answer, “My dad’s a writer” instead of
“He’s my chauffeur” when asked what
I do for a living.
And for Anita — thank you.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank Tony Hawke, who opened the publishing door for me each time I came to him and whose encouraging words in the early stages of this novel helped me stay with it.
I also gratefully acknowledge the support of the Ontario Arts Council’s Works in Progress Program.
CHAPTER 1
BEFORE THE INCIDENT
The man was typical of the neighbourhood. Tall, straight of limb, with a hint of Aryan smugness, he sauntered across the intersection as if a slight break in traffic hadn’t created an opening for my left turn; and as cars sped up to fill the void, he swivelled his head, stared through the windshield, and arched an eyebrow at me.
“You fucking piece of yuppie shit,” I said, mouthing the words carefully for his benefit. But too late; he’d looked away and slipped into the corner Starbucks.
I looked over at my wife, Maddy. “Did you see that? I should have turned anyway and knocked that asshole right out of his stain-resistant Dockers.”
“Just the asshole, or the whole fucking piece of yuppie shit?” Maddy asked.
“Well ... you know what I mean.” “Yes, I suppose I do,” she said. “Unfortunately, so do Eric and Rachel.”
I glanced at the rear-view mirror. In the seat behind us sat our son and daughter — both beautiful, angelic, and smiling.
“Next time,” Eric said, making eye contact with me, “smack the friggin’ rectum clean out his name-brands, Dad.”
Another gap in traffic occurred. I took advantage of it this time, cranking the steering wheel and accelerating, causing a conga line of pedestrians to stop.The lead dancer gave me what looked like a salute. I ignored him and peeked at Eric in the mirror again. His smile had grown.
“Are you trying to get me in trouble?” I asked. “Because if—”
“Don’t try to pin anything on Eric,” Maddy said.
“Aw, c’mon,” I said. “You heard him — he was mocking me. And it’s all just words, anyway. He hears worse at school every day.”
“But it isn’t just the words, Jim,” she said. “It’s their intent. Not everyone in the world is an asshole, and you shouldn’t be teaching your children that they are.”
A strained moment followed, then she added, “And by the way,you own a pair of stain-resistant Dockers, too.”
“Yeah, but at least mine aren’t khaki.” That was it — my big retort.
As soon as the word khaki left my lips, giggles issued from the back seat — just a trickle, but with the promise of more.
Maddy turned to them and said, “Your father isn’t funny, you know.... Well, okay, he is sometimes. But not this time.”
“Khaki,” I said in rebuttal, turning the giggles into howls of laughter.
Maddy swivelled, looked straight ahead, and muttered, “Three children are just too much for a single mother.” Then she sighed, somehow creating an icy silence amidst the guffaws. I sat in the chill and followed her lead, keeping my eye on the road directly in front of me.
We now drove through a part of the city dubbed “the Estates,” a parcel of midtown land that at one time held historical significance. Five- and six-bedroom houses dotted the area — three-storey Victorians and sprawling centre-hall plans that, come summer, sat under the shade of 150-year-old maple trees. The neighbourhood lay north of the haughty retail strip we’d just left, creating the second leg of a route back from our weekend grocery outing that I found hard to resist. Quicker and more direct ways home existed, but none held the je ne sais quoi of this way.
For the moment, though, I continued to wear the hair shirt, drinking in the neighbourhood with peripheral vision only. Middle-aged women crowned with bandanas and wearing Roots windbreakers conferred with landscape architects about where to place the new season’s arrangements and accessories. The husbands, investment bankers, corporate lawyers, and men of that ilk, clad in crisp jeans and crewneck sweaters, wanted no part of the talk. The weekends they didn’t spend in the office, especially spring weekends, meant action.They busied themselves cleaning eavestroughs and lugging unused firewood from the porch back to the coach house, flexing their well-toned gym muscles.
I looked forward to this drive every weekend, revelling in the opulence: the ivy, the granite, the leaded glass and the oak. And, despite what Maddy may have thought at the time, I wasn’t