Home from the Vinyl Cafe

by Stuart McLean

  “She’s not my mother.”

  “Great. That’s great. That’s really great.”

  Morley was picking up her pillows and heading out of the room.

  “Well, she isn’t,” said Dave as she disappeared.

  Dave said, “I’m sorry.”

  Morley didn’t say “It’s okay.”

  Dave said, “Listen. She hardly drives anymore. What does she do? She goes for groceries. How far is it to the grocery store? A quarter of a mile? Two turns? She goes to bridge. Those are the sort of trips you could do in your pajamas. Who’s going to see you? What’s going to happen?”

  “I know what’s going to happen,” said Morley. “She’s going to kill someone, Dave. That’s what’s going to happen.”

  “She’s not going to kill someone going to the grocery store.”

  “You know what happened last month? She got lost. You know where she got lost? She got lost in Scarborough.”

  “Scarborough?”

  “She went to dinner at Norah’s house, and she got lost coming home. She said she didn’t know where she was. She said she couldn’t see the numbers on the houses or read the signs. She said she was so scared, she was shaking. And then she got on the highway, don’t ask me how, somehow she found the highway, but she didn’t know where she was going. And you know what she told me? She said she must have been driving funny, because someone stopped and helped her. Someone stopped, Dave. She said they told her she was going the wrong way.”

  “I thought she didn’t drive at night.”

  “How else was she supposed to get there?”

  “She could have taken the subway. The subway goes to Scarborough.”

  “She hates the subway. The stairs are too hard.”

  “But she figured it out. Anyone could get lost in Scarborough. She got home. Right? She’s fine.”

  “You know what scares me, Dave? She said she was heading the wrong way. I don’t know whether she meant she was heading in the wrong direction or driving on the wrong side of the highway.”

  “Did you ask her?”

  “I was too scared to ask her. Somebody stopped. What do you think?”

  Dave was reading the paper. Morley was knitting.

  Dave said, “Did you know some guy in Kansas, some eighty-year-old guy in Lawrence, Kansas, has Albert Einstein’s brain in a pickle jar in his apartment?”

  Morley said, “No. Mom phoned today.”

  Dave said, “The guy was a pathologist. And he was on duty when Einstein died, so he did the autopsy and kept the brain to study it. What did she want?”

  Morley said, “Nothing. Every time she leaves a message on the machine, I feel guilty erasing it.”

  Dave said, “Listen. ‘The most celebrated brain of the twentieth century resides in Apartment Thirteen on the second floor of a nondescript brick apartment building here.’ Here is Lawrence. Kansas. The guy has it all cut up. He says he’s two thirds of the way through studying it.”

  Morley said, “I keep thinking it’ll turn out to be the last thing she ever says to me, and I will have erased it.”

  Dave said, “He keeps it in his hall closet.”

  Morley said, “I invited her for dinner on Friday. It’s Dad’s birthday.”

  Dave said, “Friday?”

  Morley said, “When did Einstein die, anyway?”

  Dave said, “Nineteen fifty-five.”

  Morley said, “How?”

  Dave said, “Automobile accident. He was hit by an old lady.”

  Morley said, “What?”

  Dave said, “Just kidding. It doesn’t say. It just says he was seventy-five.”

  There is a picture of Morley’s father on her bureau. It is in a gold frame. It was taken in Florida ten years ago. Roy was seventy-six years old. He looks impossibly young and vigorous. The sun in his face, the wind tugging at his hair. He is squinting.

  “Thirty years as a copper,” he used to say, “and the payoff is I get to go to Florida and squint for three months.”

  Ten years ago Helen and Roy used to drive to Florida and back and didn’t even think about it. Nobody thought about it.

  They brought back pictures of their friends, all of them holding drinks, standing around someone’s mobile home—“It’s not a trailer park,” Helen used to say, “mobile homes, mobile homes.”

  Six years ago, in January, he collapsed. Helen phoned Morley and said, “You better get down here.” She said it was like someone had unplugged him. Dave said, “What do the doctors say?”

  Morley had phoned the hospital in Clearwater and spoken to a doctor. He said, “You have to be philosophical about this; he’s had a good life.” Morley and Dave rushed down and put the trailer up for sale and sold some stuff and left the rest for whoever bought it, for whatever they wanted to pay.

  After two weeks the doctors said Roy could travel. Dave had already left with the car. Morley flew back with her parents. She couldn’t believe how old Roy looked. He could walk, but he was walking old. He didn’t seem to be paying attention to anything. He didn’t want to eat.

  Roy had always been so strong.

  When he was a young man, he played hockey. In 1927 he played center for the Toronto Granites. It was three years after the Granites won the gold medal at the Winter Olympics.

  He was a born athlete. He used to go and watch the Maple Leafs play baseball at Hanlan’s Point Stadium. He took his glove. If he got there early enough, they would let him shag flies during batting practice.

  He quit school when he was sixteen and worked on an ice truck. Two years later, the hockey team got him a job at the Inglis factory on Strachan Avenue. He stayed there, working in shipping and then on the line, for almost fifteen years.

  When he and Helen got married, they got a place in the suburbs. He used to run a mile every morning to the end of the streetcar line so he wouldn’t have to pay two fares. In those days, when you changed cars, you had to pay a second fare.

  He got a weekend job with the Mounties, and when the war came, they hired him full-time. They gave him a rifle and one bullet and sent him to Port Colborne to guard the Welland Canal. He wasn’t allowed to put the bullet in the rifle in case he might hurt someone. He used to say it was the most boring job he’d ever had.

  Dave tried to tease him about it once. He said, “But you must have been good at it, Roy, you must have done a great job. At no point in the war did the Nazis make it anywhere near the canal.” Roy looked at him like he was nuts. He wasn’t going to let anyone say the job was unnecessary.

  After the war, Roy left Inglis and got a job with the North York police force. It paid less than the factory, but it was with the township, and that meant job security. There were only fifteen other men on the force when he joined. When he retired, there were three hundred, and he was an inspector.

  When they got back from Florida, Morley took Roy to see Dr. Freeberg, who said, “I want you to go and see a blood specialist.” The blood specialist asked Roy to walk across the room, and he diagnosed the problem before Roy got to the other side. It was his thyroid. The specialist wrote out a prescription and said, “Take these and you’ll feel better in three days.” Roy took his first pill at the drugstore and started feeling better on the way home.

  But Roy was never the same. He was like a balloon with the air slowly seeping out of it. Sometimes when he and Helen came for dinner, he would sit in the living room as if he were the only one there. Other times he was bright and chatty, telling them what was in the paper, what he had seen on the news. He still did the crossword every day.

  He kept driving, but he was nervous about it. He got a speeding ticketforty-five in a thirty-five zone. He was incensed. It was his first violation. Ever.

  One day he and Helen were in the garage, on their way to the supermarket, and he was revving the engine. Helen said, “What are you doing?” He said, “I’m backing out. Why?” She said, “Why don’t you put it in reverse first?” It was just a lapse. He was thinking about something else
. But it worried him. “I want to keep driving,” he told Dave. “I couldn’t stand it if I couldn’t drive.”

  Another time he was pulling into the parking lot at the back of the apartment, and he hit one of the huge plastic garbage cans lined up in the alley.

  Dave said, “I could have done that, Roy. Don’t worry about it.”

  But he worried.

  Then one day he phoned Dave at work and said, “I’m at the liquor store. You better come and get me.”

  Roy had gone to the store to pick up a case of pop and a dozen eggs and some orange juice. When he was pulling out of his parking spot, he put the Buick into reverse instead of forward.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I just did it.”

  When he pressed the accelerator, the car lurched backward instead of going the way he expected it to go. Roy said it felt like the car had been possessed by a demon, and the only thing he could think of was to press harder on the accelerator. He didn’t figure out what had happened until he hit the car behind him. It was a little red Honda.

  Instead of getting out of his car and checking the damage, Roy took off.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I guess I was thinking they might take away my license or something. All I could think about was that I had to get out of there. If I had stopped …”

  “I know,” said Dave.

  When he pulled up to the stop sign at the parking-lot exit, Roy checked his rearview mirror and, to his horror, saw that the Honda was right behind him. And the guy in the Honda was shaking his fist.

  “He wasn’t thinking straight,” said Dave to Morley. “He was scared of losing his license. He was scared of being old.”

  “I know,” said Morley.

  As soon as there was a break in the traffic, Roy had roared onto Dupont Avenue.

  “I never drove that fast in the city in my life,” he said.

  “Even when you were a cop?” said Dave.

  “I don’t know,” said Roy.

  When he checked his mirror and saw that the guy in the Honda was still behind him—and not just following him but right up against him—Roy thought, The bugger thinks he can tailgate me. I’ll show him. He took the corner at Howland Avenue almost on two wheels. The Honda came screaming around the corner right on his bumper. Roy thought, This is crazy. He sped up.

  He kept checking the mirror as he went down Howland, and that was when he noticed the guy in the Honda was still waving at him. In fact, he wasn’t only waving, he was pounding on his windshield. With both hands. Roy thought, How’s he doing that? Driving so fast and so close to me without using his hands. Which was when he realized the guy in the Honda wasn’t driving. Roy was doing the driving. The Honda was hooked onto his bumper. Roy was dragging the Honda through the city like a fish on a line.

  Instead of stopping, Roy decided to try and shake him loose.

  “I turned around and waved at him,” Roy told Dave. “Then I gave him the thumbs-up and started weaving from side to side. Jerking the wheel, like. Slowing down and speeding up.”

  “You waved at him?” said Dave.

  “And smiled, like,” said Roy.

  “He must have thought you were crazy. He must have thought he was going to die.”

  “I think that’s when he started honking the horn,” said Roy.

  The two cars finally separated when Roy took the corner at Barton. He saw the Honda fly off across the sidewalk and stop against a tree.

  “He didn’t hit too hard,” said Roy.

  “Was he hurt?” asked Dave.

  “I don’t think so,” Roy said.

  He hadn’t stopped to check.

  Instead of hanging around, Roy drove to the liquor store and bought himself a pint of Jack Daniel’s and phoned Dave and said, “You better come and get me.” When Dave arrived, Roy was sitting in the passenger seat. Dave watched him for a moment—saw him take a swig of the Jack Daniel’s—watched him fingering the dashboard as if he were saying goodbye.

  When he saw Dave, Roy handed over his keys and said, “You drive it home.”

  Morley said, “You know what I thought today? I thought I should get a tape recorder and leave it by the phone so I could record all her messages before I erase them. Then I wouldn’t have to worry.”

  Dave said, “About what? What messages?”

  Morley said, “My Mother’s messages. I could record them all on a tape. Then I wouldn’t feel bad erasing them. I could keep them all on a tape. It would be like a diary.”

  Roy died in 1987. And still, all the time, Helen caught herself thinking, I have to tell Roy that. She would see something, or read something, and think, Roy would like that. And then she would remember, Roy is dead. It was such a black, empty feeling.

  On Friday when she came for supper, she said, “I saw a program about the invasion. On TV. When you hear that the invasion was fifty years ago, you just don’t believe it. It feels so strange.”

  Stephanie said, “What invasion?”

  Sam said, “Can I be excused?”

  After supper Helen wanted to help with the dishes, and Morley let her, even though Morley knew they’d fight about it. Knew she would hand something back and say it was still dirty and her mother would get huffy. Morley promised herself not to do it, but when Helen handed her a plate that was so greasy Morley couldn’t bear the idea of wiping it with the towel, she said, “Mother, could you rinse that a little more, please?” She tried to be offhand about it, but Helen said, “I know how to wash dishes. You don’t have to tell me how to wash dishes.”

  When she was young, Morley could be as mean to her mother as she wanted. It was part of her job description. Now Helen was more fragile. Delicate. The repercussions of anger were much greater than they used to be.

  “I washed more dishes in my life than you’ll ever wash,” said Helen, rubbing the plate harder than necessary.

  She’s scared, thought Morley. She feels like she’s losing control. That’s why she gets so angry. She doesn’t even know how she’s behaving. If I get mad back, it will feel to her like my anger has come out of nowhere.

  Their roles were changing, and both of them resented it.

  The first time she noticed it, two or three years ago, Morley had gone to Helen’s apartment to pick her up. They were going to meet Dave for dinner and then to a show. Standing in the hallway holding her mother’s coat, Morley saw a stain on Helen’s green dress. Helen couldn’t see it, but she would have been horrified to know it was there. Morley didn’t say anything.

  She is my mother, thought Morley. I am not supposed to look after her. She is supposed to look after me. Except Morley didn’t want a mother anymore. Bristled every time Helen told her how to do something or kissed her good night. And found it maddening when Helen wouldn’t accept her help.

  “She wants to be independent,” said Dave. “She doesn’t understand dependency.”

  That was what the car was all about. If Helen stopped driving, her world would become smaller. And it would never become larger again. Morley wanted her mother’s world to become more restricted. But she understood why it terrified Helen.

  When Roy had given up driving, Morley had tried to persuade Helen to quit, too.

  Helen had said, “How would we get around? I don’t walk well anymore. My back bothers me. I can’t walk and carry stuff at the same time.”

  Dave said, “What about the subway?”

  Helen said, “I can’t take the subway. All those stairs.”

  Morley said, “Sell the car. With the money you save on insurance and gas and repairs, you could afford to take taxis anywhere.”

  “How would we get to the supermarket?” said Helen. As if it couldn’t be done.

  “Taxi,” said Dave.

  “But how,” said Roy triumphantly, “would we get home?” To a man who used to run a mile every day to save a five-cent streetcar fare, the idea of taking two taxis in one day was unthinkable.

  Helen stayed over at Morley and Dave’s on Friday night. Aft
er she helped with the dishes, she watched television.

  “I saw a special on the invasion the other night,” she said again. “It’s so hard to believe it was only fifty years ago. Roy would have liked the show.”

  It was two months later that Helen found the old clipping. She was in a sorting mode, going through some old papers, when she came across an announcement that someone had clipped from the police newsletter. At first it confused her. It said that her father had won the Policeman of the Month Award. But it wasn’t her father who had won that—it was Roy. She couldn’t make sense of the clipping. Had she gotten her father and her husband mixed up in her mind? She started to get scared. Then she saw the date on the clipping. April 1912. She suddenly understood that both her father and Roy must have won the same award, at different times. She remembered when Roy had won. They had gone out to dinner at a restaurant, and a man had taken their picture at their table. She wondered what had happened to the photo. God, she wished Roy were here. She wanted him to know this. She wished they could tell her father. She looked at the clipping again and felt her heart sink. There was no one left to tell. No one who would appreciate it. Anyone who knew her father would know what a thrill it would have given him to know this. He was so proud when Roy had joined the force. She thought, I hope he knows. She thought, I hope he and Roy both know. She started to cry. She thought, I wish I had someone to tell.

  * * *

  She phoned Morley and said, “Can I come over? I have something I want to show you.”

  She didn’t say what it was.

  It was four o’clock.

  The early-spring sun was low in the sky. As she turned west onto Roxborough, she squinted and reached for the visor. When she came to the crosswalk, the sun was still in her eyes, and she didn’t see the man step off the sidewalk, his arm extended. Only heard the sickening thump when she hit him. Only saw him lying in a heap on the road in the rearview mirror. She stopped the car and struggled with the seat belt and ran back to help him, but some young men had appeared from somewhere and pushed her away and said, “We don’t need you here.” She felt sick. She felt faint. She went back to her car and started to cry, and a nice woman came and sat beside her. She said, “Could I call someone for you?” Helen said, “No, it’s okay.” The woman stayed with her until the police came. Helen told her the story of the clipping. Told her how both her husband and her father had won the same police award and that neither of them knew it. All the time she kept twisting in her seat, trying to see the man. Wishing he would sit up. She started to shake when she saw them take him away in an ambulance. A policeman came over, and she said, “My husband was a policeman. Is the man all right?” The policeman didn’t know. He said he wasn’t going to take her license. He said she might have to take the test again.