Home from the Vinyl Cafe

by Stuart McLean

  He glanced down at the pages on the table in front of him. He began to read it again. From the beginning.

  July 7,

  Dear Becky,

  Becky is Stephanie’s best friend.

  Dave stared at the greeting as the awful truth slowly came into focus.

  His daughter had put the letter she had written to her friend Becky into the envelope she had addressed to her parents. It was seven pages long.

  I don’t need to read this, thought Dave. This letter was not meant for me. Please, Lord, give me the strength not to read this letter. Lead me not into temptation. Stop me from reading any further. Deliver me from evil.

  His eyes flicked down at the page in front of him. He thought he saw the word “tongue.”

  He looked away quickly. Lord, why are you testing me like this? Why are you doing this to me?

  It has been Dave’s experience, through many confusing years, that Oscar Wilde had it right—the best way to get rid of a temptation is to give in to it. He fingered the letter without looking at it and thought of his little girl, as sweet as summer. Don’t give in, darling, he thought. Please don’t let bad things happen. Then, not sure at all that he was doing the right thing, he put the letter back in the envelope and carried it to the garbage can. He held it away from his body the way he might have carried a dead mouse. And he never mentioned it—not to his wife and not to his daughter. Sure of only one thing: If he was doing the right thing, he was doing it for the wrong reason, acting out of cowardice, not courage.

  He drifted around the house aimlessly. Picking things up. When he got to the bathroom, he leaned on the sink and stared at himself in the mirror. Then, without thinking about where he was going or why, he wandered into Stephanie’s room and sat on her bed. It was not a big room. Years ago he and Morley had framed a collection of family photos and hung them on the wall at the foot of her bed. Dave’s father and mother; Roy and Helen; Stephanie in a stroller, on skates, at Halloween with her friend Becky. There were about ten pictures. They were the only things in the room that Stephanie hadn’t redone. The other walls were covered with pictures she had cut out of magazines. The collage, which had begun with rock stars and lately grown to include a collection of models who didn’t eat enough, had begun over her desk and moved up the wall, across the ceiling, and down to where he was sitting. Three walls and half the ceiling were completely covered, but still, the wall with the photos was untouched. As if she didn’t want to hurt their feelings.

  Dave bent over, picked up a sneaker, and looked around for its mate.

  Instead, he found a paper bag with the two bottles of sunscreen he had bought for her to take to camp. He picked it up and looked around for somewhere to put the bottles. He tried to clear a space on the table by her bed, but all he managed was to push a bottle of lotion on the floor. He picked up the lotion and put it back where she had left it. She would soon be seventeen. This was her room, not his.

  That night, as Morley and Dave were watching the news on television, Dave said, “You know, I’m still worried about Margot.”

  Morley said, “Margot is fine,” and would have continued, but Dave stopped her and said, “No. Listen. We don’t know anything about that camp. Maybe she’s miserable. She is only ten. That’s young. And Annie is in Paris. And God knows where Ralph’s gone—or whatever his name is. Why did she marry that guy, anyway?”

  Later, Morley said, “If you’re so worried about Margot, why don’t you phone the camp and ask them how she’s doing?” Then she rolled over, set her book on her night table, and put her head under the pillow.

  Dave phoned the camp from work the next day.

  A woman answered.

  Dave said, “I’m phoning about my niece. I was wondering how she’s doing. She’s in Igor’s tent.”

  The lady at the other end of the phone said, “What?”

  Dave hung up.

  On Wednesday, Dave couldn’t stand it any longer. “I’m going to drive up to see her,” he said.

  Morley said, “They aren’t allowed visitors for two weeks. It’s against the rules. It makes them homesick.”

  “I’ve thought it out,” said Dave. “She doesn’t have to see me. I’m going to take a paddle. I’m going to say she forgot her paddle. I’ll say I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d drop it off. I’ll see her. But she doesn’t have to see me.”

  Morley said, “If it makes you feel better. But I’m not coming with you.”

  Dave said, “That’s okay. I can go myself.” He didn’t think she would let him go.

  The camp was two hours north of the city. He parked his car in the visitors’ parking lot at the camp gate. There were no other cars. He got his prop—the paddle that he had bought just that morning—out of the trunk and started off down the dirt road. There was a lake beside the road on his left. There was a forest on his right. It was a beautiful summer afternoon. The sky was blue. The clouds white and cottony. And there was wind. A soft breeze off the lake. Dave felt like he was taking a wind bath. The city was so hot, so sticky. He could hear children playing ahead of him.

  There was a bend in the road. As he came to the bend, Dave saw a beach and a group of girls swimming. The road he was walking on dipped down a hill and wound to the beach. From the top of the hill, Dave could see the length of the lake, the shadows of the clouds on the water. It was beautiful. More beautiful than he had imagined. Dave stood there and drank it all in. He was about to walk down to the beach when he recognized one of the bathing suits. It was Margot. Margot standing at the end of the diving board. Margot laughing and pointing at a teenager in the water. That must be Igor. Margot running along the diving board and hurling herself into space, grabbing her feet and tucking herself into a cannonball, exploding into the lake a few feet from the older girl. Dave stepped off the road so no one could see him. He stood behind a tree and watched his niece play for fifteen minutes. Watched her get out of the lake all legs and arms and tighten herself into a towel and pick her barefoot way along the road Dave was standing beside.

  Dave was overwhelmed by the urge to leave his tree and tell his niece he was there. He wanted to walk up to her and pick her up and say, “Here I am. I just drove two hours to see you. I drove all the way from the city because of you. Because I was worried about you.” He wanted to say, “I love you, Margot, and if you are unhappy here, you can come home. And if you are ever unhappy anywhere else, all you have to do is call and I’ll come.”

  He knew she wouldn’t come with him. He knew she would want to stay. He felt stupid for being here. He understood that something important had happened. His family was growing up. His little sister’s kid was doing fine at camp.

  He jumped when he heard the man’s voice.

  “This is private property. What are you doing here?”

  Dave stepped out from behind his tree.

  The man was older than he was. Maybe fifty-five. Wiry. Tough-looking. Like a farmer.

  God, thought Dave, what am I doing here? “Hello,” he said, trying to be pleasant, trying to be nonthreatening.

  “What are you doing here?” said the man again. Threateningly.

  “I was watching the kids,” said Dave.

  “This is private property,” said the man. Moving in front of Dave so he couldn’t get past.

  Dave said, “Uh. It’s not what it looks like. I’m a parent. My kid is down there.” Dave thought trying to explain it was his niece would be too complicated. “I was bringing her this paddle.” Dave held up the paddle. “I didn’t want her to see me. They’re not supposed to have visitors.” He held out his hand. “My name is Dave,” he said.

  The farmer didn’t move. He didn’t want to shake hands.

  “You work at the camp?” said Dave.

  “I’m the caretaker,” said the man. “Maybe you better come to the office.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Dave. “I really don’t want to go to the office.” Dave did not want a scene. He did not want his niece to know he was
there. Did not want them to phone Morley. “Have you got kids?” said Dave. “A week ago I got a letter from my kid. She’s the one in the bright blue Speedo. In the letter, she said she was unhappy. She said she hated it here. I needed to see if she was all right. The paddle was just an excuse.” Dave held out the paddle. “Take it,” he said. “The camp could probably use it somewhere. I really don’t want to go to the office.”

  The caretaker sized Dave up and took the paddle. “Visitors’ day is on Sunday,” he said.

  “Yeah,” said Dave. “I know. Listen, I’m sorry. Thank you.”

  The caretaker stood back and let Dave pass. Watched him walk down the road. Dave turned around once and waved awkwardly and then didn’t turn again, walking with the strange self-conscious roll that comes when you know someone is watching you.

  He picked up Margot a few weeks later. He met her at the same parking lot where he had dropped her off. Sam was already home—minus most of the clothes he had left with, but not the comics. Stephanie was coming that evening. As they were walking into the house, Margot turned.

  “Uncle Dave,” she said, “do you know what it is we breathe in?”

  “Oxygen?” said Dave.

  She nodded and took a step and stopped again. “And what about what we breathe out?”

  “Carbon dioxide?” said Dave.

  “Huh,” said Margot.

  “Why?” said Dave.

  “I didn’t think you were that smart.”

  Dave winced for only a second before he laughed.

  Road Trip

  By the end of August, summer had settled so lazily upon the city that it was hard to imagine a different season. It confirmed itself every night, in the clutter spilling from the sidewalk cafes, in the chatter of neighborhood baseball games, in the nighttime hiss of a thousand water sprinklers.

  Across from the Vinyl Cafe, two young men, both wearing beards and assorted earrings, had erected a scaffold and were painting a mural down the empty brick wall of an old theater.

  In Jim Scoffield’s backyard, the last of the raspberries were barely hanging on to the raspberry bush. Jim brought Morely a bowl of berries, and they had them for breakfast the next morning. Sam spent one morning following the water truck around the neighborhood on his bike. He rode in the rainbow at the back of the truck—in the driver’s blind spot—enjoying the sweet iron smell of cold water on hot pavement, the spray licking at his pedals. There were worse places to be, in the dog days of summer, than back in the city.

  Dave was not unhappy to be at home, pleased that the summer had been declared a success. It was a far cry from last summer, when he had taken his family on a road trip—something he might not have tried if he had read the survey that said forty percent of children claim they would rather clean their room and eat vegetables every day than go on a family holiday.

  The survey hadn’t been published when Dave and Morley were planning last summer’s vacation. Dave had always wanted to drive west with his children, and Stephanie was almost sixteen. She would soon be too old for family trips. They were running out of summers when they could travel together.

  “We could go around the Great Lakes,” said Dave. “Maybe into Saskatchewan.” Dave wanted to show his children the beauty of the prairies. Imagined his family in a campground in the valley of the Saskatchewan River. What could be better?

  Morley said, “We are not going to put the cat in the car again, Dave. If the cat’s in the car, I’m not coming.”

  Dave said, “We’ll find someone to look after the cat.”

  The cat had once belonged to Dave’s sister, Annie.

  Dave and Morley took it the spring Annie moved back to Nova Scotia from Boston. She was planning to leave it behind.

  “I don’t know,” she said when Dave offered to take the cat.

  “What do you mean?” said Dave.

  “I feel stupid,” said his sister. “I don’t like to say it out loud.”

  “Say what?” said Dave.

  “Whenever the cat is around, things seem to go wrong.”

  Dave said, “Don’t be silly. We can look after a cat.”

  Annie brought the cat in a cage. As soon as they were in the house, Dave knelt down and wiggled a finger through the bars. “Puss puss,” he said.

  “Galway,” said Annie. “After the poet Galway Kinnell.”

  The cat was beige with black spots, lean and rangy.

  A female.

  “Galway Kinnell is a man,” said Dave.

  “I know,” said Annie. “But we were big fans.”

  Dave started to fiddle with the latch on the cage door.

  “Wait,” said Annie, holding out an envelope. But she was too late. Dave had already flipped the latch open.

  “Here, puss,” he said.

  The cat shot out of the cage as if she had been spring-loaded.

  “Oh,” said Annie.

  “Oh,” said Dave.

  They were both off balance, staring at each other and then at Galway, who had sailed over Dave’s shoulder and landed in the middle of the hall with the sureness of a dancer.

  “It’s okay,” said Dave. Thinking maybe it was not okay at all.

  “You should have read this first.” Annie was gesturing with the envelope. “Before you let her out.”

  As Dave took the envelope, Arthur, the family dog, ambled through the dining room door. When Galway saw Arthur, she hissed. Arthur jerked to a stop.

  “Arthur,” said Dave, “this is Galway. Galway is a cat.”

  Arthur took a cautious step forward, wagging his tail tentatively. Galway sank to the floor and began to lower her ears—they folded back on her head like bat wings—until they were flat and she looked like she was wearing a helmet. Arthur bared his teeth, and a sound that was more a rumble than a growl began to emanate from deep inside of him. The cat and the dog stared at each other for a moment, and then Galway flicked her tail. Arthur abruptly stopped growling, looked pathetically at Dave as if to say, “Why are you letting this happen?,” and slunk into the kitchen.

  Annie looked defensive.

  Dave said, “I’ll read this later.” He stuffed the instructions in his back pocket.

  He forgot about the letter until that night. When he pulled it out, he wondered how his sister could have written three pages about a cat. Typical of Annie to fuss like that. He took the letter and went into the den. Arthur, who was curled up on the couch, lifted his head, furrowed his brow, slid onto the floor, and mooched out of the room, throwing a doleful glance over his shoulder. Dave shut the door. He had come into the den because he didn’t want to read Annie’s letter in front of Galway, so he was startled, when he turned around, to find she was sitting on top of the bookshelf.

  “She was threatening me,” he said to Morley the next day.

  Instead of reading Annie’s letter, he took it downstairs and put in his briefcase. Then he went to bed.

  He was pretty sure he had put it in his briefcase.

  “Maybe you threw it out,” said Morley. “It was garbage day.”

  “I didn’t throw it out,” said Dave. “The cat took it out of my briefcase.”

  “Probably,” said Morley.

  “She did,” said Dave. “Look at her. She’s smirking.” At that moment Galway turned and walked away, her tail in the air.

  “See?” said Dave. “She didn’t want us to read the letter. It said something about the cage. About keeping her in the cage.”

  “Probably,” said Morley. “That’s probably it. The hair dryer is missing, too. Do you suppose she has the hair dryer as well?”

  It took Arthur and Galway about a week to work out an uneasy truce. For the first week, the cat barely set foot on the floor. She moved around the house from chair back to tabletop, often settling somewhere above Arthur, gazing down at him threateningly. Dave came home one night in the second week, and the cat had descended. Morley said, “See? They’re fine now.”

  Dave wasn’t as sure. “Watch,” he said. “Whe
never Galway comes into the room, Arthur gets up and leaves.”

  One day Dave came home at lunch to check the mail. It was garbage day, so instead of going through the front door, he picked up the empty garbage can and lugged it down the driveway. As he passed the dining room window, he saw movement in his peripheral vision. He turned just in time to see Arthur hurtling through the dining room with Galway clinging on his back as if she were riding a bucking bronco.

  A moment later, they came back, Galway barely clinging to Arthur. Dave watched her slide off as Arthur spun wildly into the kitchen. He watched Galway jump onto the dining room buffet and perch there, her eyes glued to the kitchen door.

  No wonder Arthur had seemed so tired.

  That summer Dave had made the mistake of trying to take Galway with them on a weekend trip to the Muskokas. This was what Morley was remembering when she said she would not travel with the cat again.

  The car was all packed. Sam, who was two at the time, was already strapped into his car seat, and already crying, when Dave tried to put Galway back into the cage. Getting the cat into the cage was like trying to fold a large spring into a tin can. Galway kept popping free, then hiding—behind the fridge, under a bed. Dave chased her around the house, humiliated, thinking that when he was young, fathers knew how to do things like change the oil in their cars, solder things together, clean fish. Surely he could put a cat into a cage. He needed to show his family he could do this thing. It was driving him wild.

  Out in the car, Stephanie was throwing a tantrum. Morley, who was feeling irritable herself, said, “Stay here. I’m going to get your father.”

  When she found Dave pulling Galway through a radiator by her tail, Morley said, “What are you doing? Why do we have to use the cage? Why don’t we let her free in the car?”

  “That’s why,” said Dave five minutes later, as the family stood in the driveway beside their packed car, watching Galway disappear over the backyard fence like a burglar. There was a set of red scratches that looked like skid marks running up Dave’s face and over his forehead.

  “You better have those looked at,” said their neighbor Jim Scoffield, who had been watching. “They can infect.”