Ruby Walker is Concordia’s 2023-24 undergraduate winner of the Creative Writing Award for Fiction
I’m one of those guys who started balding in my late twenties, so I bought a baseball cap, it’s like a normal baseball cap except it’s made of denim, so my ex-wife Lauren called it my “jat”, like a jean hat, same way as “jorts” or “jeggings”. Anyway believe it or not the jat was the cause of our divorce, which is so stupid it made me cry once actually but I always cry about things like that, not dramatic things, just things that are tiny and ridiculous.
We had the argument in the foyer of our house, which is now her house. She said, I’ve figured you out, Davis.
She kept trying to figure me out like I was a combination lock on a box and there was a great husband inside, if only she could open it. You don’t respect people. When we spoke to Redding you didn’t take your hat off.
She called it “hat”, not “jat”, because she was mad and didn’t want to be funny. Come on, I said, It’s just my jat, I wasn’t trying to be rude or anything.
I called it “jat” not “hat” because I wanted her to remember that we made jokes, and therefore had a good relationship. But she just looked at me with her forehead all pinched up. To be fair we were going through a stressful time. Our son Aiden, who’s twelve, had just announced he was a “furry”. Lauren was worried this meant he was a sex freak, and apparently that’s what his classmates thought too because they spread rumours that he fucked a squirrel in the bushes at the end of the football field, which was why we went to see Principal Redding that afternoon, and Lauren was picking everything apart.
It’s polite to take your hat off to make a good impression, especially in the office of an authority figure, she said.
I was sure that she’d have a sharp little dart to throw at every one of my arguments, so I took refuge in not giving a shit, and started talking about dinner plans. I hoped this would disarm her but it was exactly the wrong move. She said, That’s exactly what I’m talking about. If you respected me, you wouldn’t ignore me.
Maybe she really had figured me out. That’s what I thought every time she analyzed me, though. I always thought, yeah, that sounds about right. Everything sounds about right to me. That’s how I got into this mess. When we were in our late twenties she took the same tone of voice, sort of diagnostic, and told me we were in love.
Anyway she did a whole spiel about how she’s always the one putting in the effort, to figure me out, and I told her, I don’t need to figure you out, you tell me every thought you have.
And she said, Why don’t you try telling me every thought you have, then.
So I did, and she didn’t like my thoughts, basically. It was terrible. I don’t really want to go into it.
Anyway once it had all blown over, I started to sense the rotations of The Machine. I mean, I’d always suspected it was there. But lying awake that night, I knew: deep below, something turns. There’s something there, man. The world’s spinning like a big wind-up toy. I feel it strongest when something happens that makes me go, what the hell, seriously, why. And the answer is, why not. Like, right after something shatters on the floor, and everyone stands there and looks at it. Or when I hear a story about someone dying in a stupid way, like, falling off a ski lift. Or when my marriage ends because I failed to remove my jat at a meeting about squirrel sex. It’s all so underwhelming that it overwhelms me, like, everything’s so bullshitty, so so so dangerously thin that I feel the vibrations up through my shoes. The vibrations of The Machine. The endless rotation that churns out this big featureless reality and spreads it flat like concrete.
I dunno. Maybe it’ll pass. Maybe everyone feels this way when they fail at the one thing they explicitly vowed to do.
It’s been a month since me and Lauren split, it’s December now. Usually, when winter comes, I put away my jat and start wearing a toque, but I still haven’t made the switch. It just feels like it would be a surrender to take the jat off.
Ruby Walker grew up in Toronto and is currently pursuing a BA in creative writing at Concordia. She serves as a prose editor for Soliloquies Anthology. Her work has previously been published in Cold Signal and Pixie Literary Magazine.