That first dissonant chord filled the kitchen like an old friend. Aficionados still argue whether it is an F-major or G-major 7th. In his book A Day in the Life, Mark Hertsgaard writes that the swelling opening chord of the album sounds like a hijacked church bell announcing the party of the year.Dave smiled, turned up the volume, sat down at the table, and poured himself another glass of wine. After all these years. The music washed over and through him. He played the album twice and then got down on his hands and knees and pawed about and finally found Abbey Road.
He killed the bottle of wine, sitting on the floor, listening to the second side of the album. The side with the incomplete song fragments. He had forgotten how much he loved the way the uncompleted songs had been mixed into one glorious movement. Woven together like that because McCartney and Lennon hadn’t had the stomach to work as a team anymore and couldn’t finish writing the individual numbers.
Dave staggered to bed after midnight. He never watched his movie.
On Friday, when he woke up, he didn’t want to listen to CBC radio. He reached over and sleepily changed the station to CHUM—hits of the fifties and sixties, the music of his life. He brushed his teeth to Paul Simon’s “Kodachrome.” When he was eating breakfast, they played the title song from the musical Hair. He ran his hand over his head.
He felt … buoyant.
All day at work, old pop tunes kept bouncing into his imagination. He didn’t know what the hell was going on, but he liked the way he was feeling. He usually played jazz in the store. On Friday he played rock and roll all day long.
Rock and roll had once been a big part of Dave’s life. But lately, his tastes had shifted. He had become more aligned with the likes of Gershwin and Billie Holiday. Louis Armstrong and Gene Ammons.
Slowly, he had left rock and roll behind him.
As a teenager, he had spent hours gazing into Renee Atwater’s eyes, strumming a guitar and singing Beatles tunes.
Actually, the guitar was imaginary. Actually, he was staring into his bedroom mirror, not Renee’s eyes, but it was almost as good.
In his adulthood, these private performances had evolved into grander and more theatrical moments. Dave had a favorite Sondheim album that had a live-audience track. He would put it on and then run out of the room and wait for the applause to begin. As it built, he would walk into the living room with his head down and then, as the audience went wild, he would acknowledge the cheers and smile coyly at someone in the upper balcony. A friend, perhaps. Maybe Renee Atwater. She is married, and she hasn’t seen him for years, and when she does, even from way up in the balcony, she thinks of what might have been and her heart breaks. Dave always dedicated the third number on the album to her. “I’d like to sing this one for someone special,” he’d say. “Someone I used to sing to a long time ago.”
When his son, Sam, was very young, Dave would involve him in these shows. He would hold him over his head and present him, and the crowd would go crazy when they realized he had a child. Eventually, Sam got too heavy and Dave couldn’t use him in the shows anymore.
Dave kept the radio on CHUM all weekend. At night he sat in the kitchen playing old records. He was working his way back down the evolutionary chain of rock and roll. Not into the authentic blues stuff he knew he should be listening to, but down the glorious tributary where he had paddled as a kid.
Neil Sedaka’s “Happy Birthday, Sweet Sixteen,” the Happenings’ “See You in September,” Lesley Gore’s “It’s My Party,” and, while he made supper, “Leader of the Pack” by the Shangri-Las. Dave was in pop heaven. It all sounded good to him. His sense of discrimination and good taste had been blown away by a primal memory that was almost physical. He was in the elevator of adolescence, and it was descending—dropping deeper by the hour. Twenty, nineteen, eighteen, seventeen, sixteen! He was dancing around the kitchen singing, “Dook, Dook, Dook, Dook of Earl.”
He was banging his hand on the steering wheel. Geez, he was having a good time.
On Monday and Tuesday the whirling feeling in his stomach was with him all day long. He was moving in a kind of dopey haze. He wasn’t paying attention to any details. He was … grooving. Suddenly, his life was colored only in primary colors.
Debbie Anderson, the girl who came in on Wednesday and Friday nights, had, since he hired her, been his favorite part-timer. Debbie had short blond hair, an elfish smile, and big brown eyes. She went to the University of Toronto. She wanted to be a phys-ed teacher.
On Wednesday night, when they were closing, Dave said, “Have you had dinner? I’m going to El Basha for falafel if you want to come. Morley’s away,” he added.
“I have to study,” Debbie said. “I have a physics test tomorrow.”
On Thursday, Dave woke up at six-thirty without the alarm. He felt bright and alert. It was the second day in a row that had happened. Didn’t the Monkees have a song about that? It wasn’t even seven, and he was … excited.
He turned on the radio. The Lovin’ Spoonful, “Younger Girl.” He thought about Debbie. He wished she had gone to dinner with him. He imagined the two of them walking down the street together. Wondered what it would be like to hold her. Maybe he would ask her again on Friday.
On Friday morning, while he was shaving, he was surprised to see a blemish on his cheek. A small red dot had appeared on his face overnight. He didn’t pay any attention to it at first, but as he was leaving the house, he thought about it again and went back to the bathroom to check. A pimple? He hadn’t had a pimple in years. He got to the front door again and was about to pull it shut behind him when the thought crashed down on him. He was forty-five years old. Forty-five-year-olds don’t get pimples. They get skin cancer. He was back in the house in a flash. He found Morley’s magnifying makeup mirror. Was that how it happened? You woke up one morning and you had skin cancer?
Dave couldn’t get the blemish out of his mind. He checked it three times before lunch. He thought about phoning Dr. Freeberg and having her look at it, but what if it was a pimple? He didn’t want to risk sitting in the doctor’s office and hearing her tell him that. He wished Morley was home so he could show it to her.
Like many men, Dave had a complicated relationship with his body. He inhabited it the way a nervous traveler settles into a commercial airliner—carefully monitoring every arrhythmia—continually aware that only through a force of his will does it stay in the air. When Dave and Morley got married, Dave’s friend Dorothy suggested the minister change the marriage vow for Dave, from “in sickness and in health” to “in sickness and in remission.”
Funny, said Dave, very funny. He couldn’t help what his mind did with a list of symptoms.
The cancer, as he had come to think of it, preyed on his mind all day. By closing time, he had decided to treat it symptomatically, like a pimple. If it wasn’t better by the time Morley got back, he’d go to the doctor. He wasn’t going to show it to Morley. She wouldn’t take it seriously.
He had planned to hang around until closing. He had planned to ask Debbie out for a drink. Instead, he asked her about the blemish.
“Do you think this is skin cancer?” he said.
She looked at Dave and then at the spot on his face. Then she laughed and said, “Oh, yeah. All the skin cancers I’ve seen started out like that.”
Dave left at six. Alone.
He went to Lawlor’s drugstore and picked up a tube of Clearasil. As he headed toward the cash register, he looked around to see if he knew anyone. He felt like he was buying a pack of condoms, and he wanted to do it privately. He walked around to make sure he was safe.
His heart froze when he saw the blood-pressure chair. It was in the corner at the back of the store. Over the years Dave had had his blood pressure tested on a number of occasions. Dr. Freeberg had always reported a more or less normal reading. Dave suspected that these normal readings were not an accurate reflection of reality. They were always taken after he had been left in the waiting room for twenty, thirty minutes. Why shouldn�
��t he be relaxed? He suspected that the normal readings were, in all likelihood, abnormal. Sometimes, when he was upset, he felt his blood pounding in his ears. Surely that wasn’t normal. He decided his blood pressure was variable and dependent on stimuli beyond his control. He had never had an opportunity to check his theory.
That was why the chair terrified him. It was one thing to suspect you had high blood pressure. It was another thing to know it. Dave didn’t want his body to know its own blood pressure. He didn’t want his body to be given strategic information at the cellular level that it could use against him. He suspected that if his body knew how close it was to making the leap from borderline to hypertense, it would abandon everything else—all the various viruses and bacteria—and launch a frontal assault on his circulatory system.
The blood-pressure machine looked like a self-service electric chair. There was a slot on the armrest to slip your arm through, and a cuff that presumably inflated when you started the machine.
Dave was aware that if he sat down and surrendered his arm to the machine, horrible things could happen. Someone who knew him could waltz in as the machine was printing his score. The idea of Dorothy Capper knowing that his diastolic blood pressure was north of 180 horrified Dave more than the implications of the information. He knew it didn’t make sense, but he felt that if no one, including him, knew what his blood pressure was, then it didn’t count. It was like cheating on a diet.
There was a stack of instruction pamphlets beside the machine. Dave slipped one into his pocket. He didn’t read it until he was out on the street. It opened up a whole new realm of possibilities, including step-by-step instructions of what he should do if his reading was zero over zero. Something even Dave had not imagined. He forgot about Debbie Anderson. He went out to supper; then, instead of going home, he went back to the drugstore and cruised by the chair the way he had cruised by Renee Atwater’s house when he was a teenager. He felt the same way. Oppressed, anxious, hopeful, hopeless.
Just thinking about the chair raised his blood pressure. He knew he was going to try it. He knew he wouldn’t be able to stop himself. He knew he was doomed. He also knew he would have to try it when there was no possibility of anyone seeing him.
He decided early morning would be best.
The drugstore opened at nine.
Two days later, Dave showed up ten minutes before opening time.
He waited on the far side of the street.
He felt like a bank robber.
When they unlocked the doors, he was the first person in the store. It couldn’t take over a minute to do the test, he thought. He could be gone before anyone saw him. He went right to the chair. He rolled up his sleeve. He sat down. He put his arm through the metal slot. He pushed the large green button that said BEGIN TEST. He felt the rubber cuff inflate and tighten around his forearm.
He felt his heart pounding.
And then he felt an excrutiating pain run down his arm.
Sweet Jesus. He was having a heart attack.
The machine was squeezing him tighter than he thought it should. Surely it shouldn’t feel like this. Surely it shouldn’t hurt.
He tried to pull his arm out of the cuff.
It wouldn’t come.
He pulled again.
Still it wouldn’t budge.
He looked at the black screen. It was like the screen on a bank machine. It began flashing his score in bright red numbers: 130/75. Not bad. Better than he had thought. Well, within normal limits.
Okay, thought Dave. Now let me go. But it didn’t. It wouldn’t.
Dave felt panic surge through him. He was trapped in the chair. He pulled again, more vigorously this time. Still nothing. He looked at the screen. His blood pressure had risen to 135/78.
He tried to relax.
Then he jerked his arm violently.
Still nothing.
Now his blood pressure was 140/80. That was borderline hypertense.
Oh God, he thought. This is crazy. He tried to calm himself again. He sat for a full minute without moving. He tried to figure out what was wrong. Something had happened to the machine. The rubber cuff would not deflate. And until it deflated, the metal slot that was holding his arm to the chair would not release him. Maybe there’s some button I’m supposed to push, he thought. Maybe there’s a release button somewhere.
He couldn’t see a release button. He pulled his arm again. Still nothing. He didn’t know what to do. Collect your thoughts, Dave. What is the worst thing that could happen?
Someone could see him. Someone he knew could see him.
No. The store could catch fire.
He wondered if he could stand up and hump his way out of the store with the chair attached to him. He imagined getting as far as the checkout counter and then getting wedged in the aisle by the cash register. He thought of dying of smoke inhalation by the cash register, with a blood-pressure chair attached to his back like a tortoise’s shell. It was the kind of trivial death that Dave had always feared. Like being hit by a diaper truck. The kind of death after which his friends would gather quietly in some solemn funeral parlor until someone started to giggle. He didn’t want people giggling at his funeral. He wanted a death with dignity.
He began to struggle so violently that the chair started rocking.
He heard a man’s voice say, “What’s going on over there?”
Dave looked at the screen. The red numbers were blinking like the clock on a broken VCR. Except they were ascending. His blood pressure had sailed through borderline and was now firmly entrenched in hypertense: 160/93.
Dave looked up and saw Doug Lawlor, the pharmacist, heading toward him.
To his horror, behind Doug, he saw Debbie Anderson.
He felt his heart accelerate.
He glanced at the screen: 172/90.
This was a nightmare. He had the blood pressure of a seventy-five-year-old man.
He twisted desperately in the chair and reached for the screen with his left hand, trying to cover the blinking red numbers the way a man caught outside his house with no clothes on might cover his groin. He felt naked, exposed, humiliated. Debbie and Doug Lawlor arrived at the chair at the same time.
“Hi,” said Dave, smiling weakly, still trying to cover the screen. “I’m stuck. I can’t get my arm out.”
Doug was staring at Dave as if he had asked for spare change.
“See,” Dave said, rattling his arm. “It won’t come out.”
He could feel the blood pounding in his ears.
He felt like he was going to faint.
I am not going to faint, he said to himself.
“Hi, Dave,” said Debbie cheerily. Then she said, “Your nose is bleeding.”
Dave’s left hand involuntarily flew away from the screen. He brought it up to his face, and when he took it away, he saw blood on his fingers.
And then everyone turned simultaneously from his red hand to the red numbers blinking on the now uncovered screen. The numbers reminded Dave of the digital displays in an elevator. Sadly, the elevator was going up. The three of them watched the screen blink from 172 up to 181.
“Geez, Dave,” said Doug Lawlor. “Are you okay?”
“I can’t get my arm out,” said Dave for the third time.
He felt a drop of blood land in his lap.
“I’ll get you some Kleenex,” said Debbie.
The fire department arrived forty-five minutes later. By then Dave’s blood pressure had settled at 178/95.
“Geez,” said the fire chief, looking at the screen. “Are you okay?”
The drugstore had taken on the festive feel of an accident scene. There were about fifteen people standing in a circle around the chair. Every few minutes someone new arrived. There was a blush of whispering as they asked what was going on.
After twenty more minutes of fiddling with the chair, the chief sent a man out to the truck to get the jaws of life. They were going to cut Dave out.
“Wait a minute,” said
Doug Lawlor. “You’re going to wreck the chair.”
“For Pete’s sake, Doug,” said Dave. “I’ll pay for it. Just get me out of here.”
It took five minutes. Everyone applauded when Dave stood up. He rubbed his arm carefully and said he was fine and looked at his watch and said he had to go. People slapped him on the back as he pushed through the crowd, as if he had just won a race or something.
Debbie Anderson said, “I’ll see you Wednesday.”
Dave’s family came back two nights later. He drove out to the airport to pick them up. He left the headlights on in the parking garage, and by the time they had corraled their suitcases and gone to the washroom and gotten out to the car, the battery was dead. It took Dave half an hour to find someone to give them a jump.
After they got the kids to bed, Dave said to Morley, “I have something to tell you. Something you better hear from me.”
He never took Debbie Anderson out to dinner. He still liked her, but he felt old whenever she was around. The red blemish on his face disappeared a week after Morley got home. He never mentioned it.
Burd
Early on a Saturday morning in May, Dave slipped out of his house while his family was still asleep. He was wearing a faded green sweatshirt, jeans with a rip at the right knee, and sneakers with no laces. He hadn’t shaved. He closed the door carefully behind him so he wouldn’t wake anyone and surveyed his backyard. The morning light was soft and silky, lending a yellow wash to the greenery of the garden. But Dave was more interested in the hedge in the shadows than he was in the rest of the garden. He stared at the hedge for a few minutes, and then he walked toward the bird feeder in the center of the backyard. When he got to the feeder, he stood on his toes and peered over the lip. There was a yogurt lid in the far corner. He brushed the birdseed away from the edge of the lid. Then he picked up the lid and carried it carefully to the picnic table by the fence. He dumped the contents of the lid onto the table and sat down. He was looking at a pile of mealworms about the size of a hockey puck. He frowned as he pushed at them with his finger. He counted the worms carefully … thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-five, thirty-six. The exact number he had put out the night before when he came home from work.
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