First Times Page 3

  “Where did you meet this Patrick person?”

  “At the Tastee Treat. It's next door to the Drive Away office. Patrick told me and Charlene and Cheryl and Jane he'd give us jobs if we got licenses. So I said I had my learner's and he said he'd teach –”

  “You are taking lessons! Proper lessons. With a certified instructor. Someone who has a brake on his side of the car.”

  “Fine, then, but it has to be fast because I need to start work.”

  My mother just shook her head. She did not, however, forbid me from taking the job. In our family, work is a religion. We had been indoctrinated in its importance practically since infancy.

  THE TEN RULES OF WORK,

  ACCORDING TO MY MOTHER

  You must have at least one job by the time you are seventeen.

  You must have at least two jobs by the time you are eighteen.

  You must take any job you are offered, so long as it's not seriously against the law.

  You must not ask how much you will be paid. To do so is rude. You will find out if and when you get your first check.

  It doesn't matter how much you are paid. What matters is that you work.

  You do not have to be qualified for your work because work is the most important thing.

  People who don't work are bad. They are probably not going to heaven.

  Teenagers who don't work are spoiled. They aren't going to heaven either.

  Everyone in heaven has good jobs. Lots of them.

  Retirement is when you switch to a job that is suitable for older people.

  The rules had infiltrated my brain, but in a modified format. My motivation was less about the soul-saving aspects of having paid employment and more about the opportunity to (a) drive new cars (b) get paid for driving new cars and (c) wear my fanciest clothes. Career woman clothes!

  So, with the apprehensive blessing of my mother and a week's worth of driving lessons under my belt, I took the test for my license and, by some miracle, passed. This was cause for much celebration. In fact, I was so excited driving home in my mother's car, a bright orange tin-can Lada, that I mixed up the brake and the clutch and accidentally hit the brick wall at the end of the driveway.

  “Let me see that piece of paper,” Mom said.

  The next day, I arrived at my new job at Drive Away. Patrick, in a manner that suggested that it was all just a silly formality, barely worth our time, showed me how to fill out rental-car applications, how to wash the cars when they came in, and how to check that they hadn't been damaged in any way.

  “Sometimes,” he said, “we'll need you to deadhead cars to Prince George and Terrace.” These were cities four and two hours away, respectively. Even I was a little shocked at his recklessness in suggesting I was ready to go on road trips by myself.

  And, of course, Patrick's confidence in me proved premature. It soon became evident, for example, that I did not excel at customer service. Strangers made me nervous. Especially adult strangers, which is pretty much the definition of rental-car customers. And when I got nervous, I'd forget to take down important information, such as when and where the car might be returned. And other details, such as the customer's name. That sort of thing. There was also a problem with my adding skills. I don't actually have any. Rental-car charges are all based on mileage and other complex calculations that were completely beyond me. So Patrick took me off the counter and put me on car-washing duty.

  You'd think, given my family's obsession with work, I'd have been one of those eager employees, willing and able to roll up the sleeves of my paisley satin jacket and get to it. You'd be wrong. I was indoctrinated enough to go out and get a job (or, at least take one that was offered to me at the Tastee Treat), but I was in no way interested in physical labor. This included cleaning dishes, my room, or some car that, as far as I could see, was basically spotless.

  My ability to wash the cars was compromised by my obsession with dressing like a career woman. I favored white pants and multiple strings of waist-length multihued pearls, pumps, and knee-length satin blazers. As if I was about to climb into some car and vacuum it! That might bag out the knees in my stirrup pants! I developed a technique of standing at a good distance and aiming a limp stream of water at the cars, without benefit of soap. I never got close enough to get so much as splashed. I'd use a rag to dab at the dirtiest bits, inside and out, much the same way you'd shoo away a spider. It was a point of pride that I never took longer than five minutes to “detail” a car.

  Patrick would come into the office and find me sitting down, reading a book or talking on the phone to my friends.

  “Uh, Susan. Did you clean those cars that came in today?”

  “Yeah,” I'd say if he was lucky. Sometimes I'd just nod without looking up.

  “Well, the thing is, they're still sort of dirty You've got to wash and wax the whole outside. Not just the bumper and hood. You've got to Armor All the interior. And, uh, you should at least empty the ashtrays.”

  That was my cue to sigh hugely and roll my eyes. Poor Patrick was discovering what my mother already knew: I was difficult to be around.

  “I don't trust that Armor All stuff,” I'd say. “It doesn't seem healthy.”

  Armor All, a spray that gives a plasticy sheen to car interiors, was remarkably similar in fragrance to my ultrahold hairspray But I wasn't going to say that, was I?

  Incredibly, my work performance, if you could call it that, wasn't enough to get me fired. Nor was my lack of driving ability, although at the beginning I was careful of the cars. The first time I was asked to drive one to a nearby town, I obeyed the speed limit. I played Tears For Fears as loud as I could and came back sure that I had matured, now that I'd experienced the freedom that only a solo road trip can bring.

  But that solo road trip made me cocky. Soon I was taking cars to school and driving my friends around in cars that were waiting to be rented. On one of those semi-illicit trips, I pulled out of the agency lot too quickly and lost control. We fishtailed all over the road and were almost hit by the oncoming traffic. Lucky for me and the four friends I was driving, there wasn't much traffic along the two-lane highway that ran through the middle of our small town. It was also lucky for me that Patrick wasn't at work that day so he didn't see the close call or hear the screeching tires.

  One night, I decided that Patrick wouldn't mind if I took a car to a party at the local water tower. This time I piled several of my girlfriends into the car. On the way, we took a detour along a straight country road with some dips that, when taken fast, could give a car “airtime.”

  When we arrived at the party, all jacked up on adrenaline and berry wine coolers, I left the doors open and the keys in the ignition. A few hours later, I was shocked to find that the vehicle was gone. I was, however, in no shape to drive, so it was just as well that someone had stolen it.

  When the culprits returned they'd taken the car for their own thrills on the country road they got an earful and then drove the rest of us back to town.

  We left the car in the Drive Away lot at an angle that suggested it had been abandoned rather than parked. Still Patrick didn't fire me. By this time, the agency was swarming with teenage girls, all of whom wanted rides. I was the best taxi service in town, more popular than I'd ever been. He got to play the amused overlord.

  Finally, however, I unleashed my patented eye roll on him one too many times.

  “Uh, Susan. Have you cleaned the car that came in yesterday?”

  I shrugged. The more lenient Patrick was of me, the less respectful I was of him.

  “Well, do you think you might do that?”

  I sneered at him and rolled my eyes with such feeling that it's a miracle they stayed in my head.

  He recoiled like he'd been slapped. Suddenly he seemed to remember he had a backbone.

  “I don't think this is working out,” he said.

  I was shocked. Shocked! “Are you firing me?”

  “Yes, I am. You'd better go.”

&nbs
p; I gave him a little half-gasp, my way of saying, I don't believe this! And, This is completely outrageous and unfair!

  “I heard that you nearly wiped out in front here, the other day. And that you took one of the cars to a party”

  I narrowed my eyes. Patrick was so easygoing, I'd gotten it into my head that he was someone who could be pushed around. He'd never had standards before! It seemed unfair for him to get some now

  I made a noise, something between a tsk and a sharp sigh, and stormed out of the office, doing my best to slam the door behind me.

  How dare he fire me! He was the one who'd hired me. He should have known I'd be a crappy and irresponsible employee! And, anyway didn't my career woman clothes count for anything?

  Patrick fired me on October 31. I'd like to suggest to other employers who are thinking of getting rid of employees with bad attitudes and vindictive streaks that they don't do it on All Saints' Eve.

  By this time, another friend had gotten a car, a subcompact Honda with a top speed of 70 km an hour. It was no Grand Am, for sure, and I resented the fact that I was no longer the big mama of our automotive world, but at least we had wheels. Four of us drove around in the Honda, and I told my friends how senselessly, cruelly even, Patrick had turned on me (us, really. Because all for one and one for all. Right, girls?). We got quite worked up. How could Patrick fire us from, our first job?

  Obviously, retribution was called for. Who suggested it first? Who knows?

  “Hey! Let's egg the Drive Away office!”

  “No. Let's egg some Drive Away cars!”

  “Right on!”

  “We'll go after the ones at the airport!”

  I would love to say that I put up a mature hand and said, “Oh, no, girls. We mustn't. It would be wrong. And immature.” Instead, I howled like the vengeful banshee I was. “Yeah! That'll teach him!”

  We collected a few dozen eggs and drove to the airport, where several Drive Away cars were kept for incoming passengers.

  I remember feeling as if we were a gang from the movie Warriors. Only instead of emerging from the subway we piled out of a tiny car, boiled over to the first Grand Am with a Drive Away sticker, and furiously pelted it with eggs. Take THAT, Grand Am! And THAT! Laughing uncontrollably, we gave that car an egging it would never forget.

  Then we raced back to the baby Honda, piled in like so many clowns, and sped off at 60 km an hour down the highway, the car's little engine roaring under its heavy load of hysterical teenage girls.

  We'd just reached the alley behind Cheryl's apartment building when we heard it. Laughter ceased. We stared at each other, all thoughts of revenge blank before the prospect of punishment. A siren? More than one, and headed our way!

  The driver and front-seat passenger practically flew out of the car. They hit the ground at a dead run, reached the door of the apartment building, went in, and let it shut and lock behind them. Jane and I struggled to climb out of the backseat of the two-door car. She made it halfway down the alley, only to find the exit blocked by a police car. In a panic, I saw that the other exit was blocked by another cruiser, with its lights flashing. Trapped! I turned my head to see a uniformed officer leading Jane to the cruiser. I dropped to the ground and rolled under a derelict van that was parked beside the Honda. And there I lay, Ms. Sophisticated Career Woman.

  The officers walked up and down the alley.

  “Where'd she go?”

  “There's no way she got out.”

  “Keep looking.”

  Holy Canada's Most Wanted! My heart thumped painfully. But even more painful was the dawning embarrassment at my predicament. I was a recently employed career woman. I wore suits to work. How many people my age could say that? Now I was hiding under an old van, while potentially hot RCMP officers called my name in an alley. And not in a nice way, either.

  “The one I've got in the back said the other one's name is Susan.”

  “Okay, Susan. Come on out now. We've got you.”

  I wanted to say, “Would you mind just turning your back while I climb out from under this van and wipe a bit of this oil off my satin suit jacket so I look nicer when you arrest me?” But I was too embarrassed to speak. Or move.

  Flashlight beams crisscrossed the alley, coming closer. And then one beam slid under the van and made contact with my high heel. I was only wearing one. The other had been left behind in the minicar during the rush to get out.

  “Okay, little missy. The gig is up,” said the officer attached to the flashlight.

  I scraped myself out from under the van and stood wobbling unhappily on one heel while the two cops stared at me. They directed me to the second cruiser, where Jane wasn't sitting. Then I was driven up and down Main Street, on display to all the other teenagers who might be thinking of taking revenge on former employers.

  For several weekends, I cleaned rental cars sans pay, after writing Patrick an apology. And I was subject to my family's enjoyable company for the two months I was grounded.

  I didn't drive again until I was twenty-seven years old. Not because my parents wouldn't allow it, but because some of the stunts I'd pulled with those brand-new rental cars scared me so much I gave it up.

  I suppose that's the only silver lining in my unfortunate working career. During my high-school years, our town lost five kids in accidents. Drunk driving, excessive speed, and inexperience combined for lethal results. The further I got from that first job, the more I realized that it was only due to dumb luck that my friends and I didn't meet the same fate.

  Later jobs were less exciting. I worked as a video-store clerk and a server. After I left home, I managed a record store and spent summers working in a fly-fishing camp as a housekeeper. And even though some of those jobs didn't end particularly well, none of them ended with me hiding from the police. Call it progress. That's the thing about a first job that goes so wrong. There's nowhere to go but up!

  Blue Jeans

  ALAN CUMYN

  When I was growing up, we had a thing called the Generation Gap. Every family seemed to have it. It was like root rot or Dutch elm disease it soured everything for a time. But it came on different families in different ways, and wasn't always predictable.

  For my family, and for me, it came on over the issue of trousers, which was what we used to call pants. My parents had certain ideas about the proper trousers for a young man to wear to school. They were brown, mainly, although they could be green or gray or even black, and perhaps blue. But they could not be blue jeans. Blue jeans or, as my parents called them, dungarees were for wearing on the farm while you slopped out the pigsty or shoveled horse manure. There was nothing wrong with dungarees; they were perfectly suited to such tasks. But if you didn't live on a farm and we didn't then you had no need or excuse to wear them.

  “But, but, but!” I would say, and explain to them, patiently and at length, pronouncing the words slowly so they could understand. “Everybody wears blue jeans now!”

  By everybody I meant everybody at school, and that was everybody. Nobody else counted. If some people still lived on farms and shoveled horse manure in their dungarees, that was fine with me. At my school at every school in the known universe, in fact kids were wearing blue jeans, and if you didn't, then who were you?

  Nobody.

  I kept it as simple as that, although, of course, it was much more complicated. Yes, everybody was wearing blue jeans to school, but wearing the wrong type was almost as bad as wearing no blue jeans at all. The very worst thing was to wear parentally approved gray or green or black or brown trousers with a sharp crease down the middle of each leg, signifying to all the world that you were still a child who had to follow directives from misguided and uninformed adults.

  In Ottawa, where I lived, only one store sold the correct type of blue jeans. It was a huge blue-jeans store downtown, at the corner of Sparks Street and Elgin, and you could see it for miles. That much, at least, I knew. Everyone at school knew the right store. If you didn't know, then people told y
ou about it. Some had been driven there by parents, although they would never admit to such. To do the thing properly, it was understood you had to take the bus, on your own, and find it for yourself. It was a rite of passage. You left your home a child, but returned completely grown and adult, with the proper pair of blue jeans.

  I set out on my own, one Saturday, without telling my parents. I had learned which bus route to take, and although I'd never been downtown on my own before, I knew how to read the street signs and keep my eyes peeled for the proper jeans store. As soon as I saw it, I knew. It was enormous, with a big oval-shaped sign in red lights, and it towered over the corner of Elgin and Sparks.

  I walked through the heavy doors.

  Inside, shelves of blue jeans stretched floor to ceiling. Gazing around, I felt instantly dizzy, as if I'd put to sea and my legs weren't used to the roll and pitch of the ship. I immediately headed to the nearest shelf to pull out a pair of jeans. It seemed to me, in that moment of confusion, that really any pair would do. This was the right store. I could pull this pair, say, off the shelf, and they would be fine.

  They did look fine.

  I gazed around to see where to pay, so I could be outside as soon as possible on solid ground.

  “Can I help you?” somebody said.

  “No,” I replied. I'd taken the bus all by myself and come all the way downtown alone. I'd found the right store without parents or friends. I had a perfectly good pair of blue jeans in my hands. I was growing up as we spoke. I didn't need any help.

  “Those are for girls,” the salesgirl said. She was perhaps a little older than me, although shorter. Girls were starting to be shorter. And she was quite pretty, with long black hair scooped behind her ears, held there with a white hair band. She had big dark eyes and a real smile not the fake, mocking sort of thing girls in my school had perfected. No, a real smile that reddened my face to the roots of my hair. I dropped them, those blue jeans for girls I'd unwittingly pulled off the shelf, and I stood dumb as a statue being pooped on by pigeons.