Home from the Vinyl Cafe

by Stuart McLean

  At first he thought the estimate was a joke. Or maybe a mistake. Then he realized it was neither, and he felt trapped. If he signed the estimate and handed the pig over to the vet, he could imagine what they would have to say about him at closing time. What kind of person, he could hear the receptionist ask, would spend five hundred dollars on a guinea pig? A four-year-old sick guinea pig. A guinea pig that was going bald and could soon look like a worm with legs. A pig that was clearly playing on the back nine of pigdom. On the other hand, if he were to walk out, wouldn’t that confirm everything that the receptionist had thought about him?

  He asked if he could phone his wife. She wasn’t home. “I have to speak to my wife,” he said as he left with the pig. “I’ll phone you tomorrow.”

  Everyone he has asked says he did the right thing. Brian, who opens the Vinyl Cafe on Saturday mornings, said so. Morley said so, too. “Are you crazy?” she asked. At supper she made hair-replacement jokes. She said if the pig lost all its hair, she would knit her a little sweater.

  Dave’s friend Al suggested he take the pig for a walk in the rain. “That’ll fix her,” Al said.

  Dave didn’t try to explain what he was feeling. He knew it was crazy to spend $563.30 on a balding guinea pig that had cost $30. But when you are standing in a vet’s office holding a life in your hands, it is easy to imagine yourself spending the money. It was, after all, a life. And it was, after all, in his hands.

  The next evening, after everyone else was in bed, Dave poured himself a beer and sat down at the kitchen table. He began writing a list of animals whose deaths he had already caused.

  One hamster. Not really his fault. She had died from chewing the wood in her cage. Dave’s grandfather had built the cage. And it was his grandfather who had painted it yellow. It was the lead in the paint that had killed the hamster. Dave remembers the night the hamster died. He remembers his mother feeding his hamster brandy from an eyedropper. What he can’t remember is whether the hamster had a name.

  Frogs. Too many to count. He had never actually killed a frog himself. But he had been present when frogs were killed. He must have been twelve when his friends had found the swamp. They went there and killed frogs in all sorts of fiendish ways. They tied rocks to the frogs’ legs and threw them into the water so they drowned. Dave remembers watching one frog, weighted down, its front legs pawing at the water, trying desperately to swim to the surface. He couldn’t remember whether he had said anything. Whether he had stood up for the frog or not.

  Years later, he went to Honolulu and toured the wreckage left from the attack on Pearl Harbor. The guide explained that the destroyer the glass-bottomed boat was gliding over had flipped during the Japanese raid, trapping hundreds of men in air pockets when it sank. The guide said that for one week, rescuers could hear the trapped men tapping on the hull of the sunken boat. The guide said there was nothing anyone could do for them. Dave squinted into the Hawaiian sun and remembered the way the frog’s front paws had worked the water.

  Starlings. When he was duck hunting. He went duck hunting only the one time. All morning there were no ducks. Nothing in the water. Nothing in the sky. Just heavy gray clouds, a smudge of sun at the end of the lake. Just before dawn, a flurry of starlings flew overhead. Dave can’t remember who was the first to shoot into the flock. He remembers lifting his borrowed rifle. Remembers the wonder he felt as the starlings tumbled out of the sky. They hit the water like stones.

  One groundhog. It was summer. He was a university student. He was working on a dairy farm in the Ottawa valley. He loved the job. He was driving tractors and cows. Every night after supper, he took a .22-caliber rifle and walked through the fields. He watched the sun go down and smoked an Old Port cigarillo. He had the gun because he was supposed to shoot groundhogs. They dug tunnels in the fields, and the tractor might tip into the tunnels. It made Dave feel important. The evening he saw his first groundhog, she must have been a hundred yards away. She was sitting up in her hole like a prairie dog. The sun was behind him. He dropped to his knees and brought the rifle up to his shoulder. He squeezed the trigger. He was mortified when the groundhog dropped out of sight. She was lying on the ground when he walked up to her. There was a small red puncture in her side as if someone had driven a nail into her. Every time she breathed, an awful sucking sound came out of the hole. Dave fumbled with the rifle. The bolt jammed. He couldn’t get another bullet into the chamber. And the groundhog wouldn’t die. Dave started to cry. “Die, dammit,” he yelled as he turned the rifle upside down and hit the groundhog with the butt. It was the last time he had ever shot a rifle.

  One baby raccoon. Maybe two. It was night. He was driving his family back from a week’s vacation by the ocean. They had just crossed the Appalachian Mountains. They were in a valley, on a two-lane highway. He was driving too fast. He saw the eyes glint in the darkness well ahead of him.

  “Watch out,” his wife said in the seat beside him.

  “I see it,” he snapped, impatiently.

  Saw with plenty of time to slow down. Instead, he veered to the right. He still remembers the surprise, the shock, when he heard the thump on his right bumper.

  He had seen the flash of the mother’s eyes in his headlights; what he hadn’t seen were the babies following her across the highway. He plowed right into them. He wanted to stop, but his wife told him to keep going. The kids were in the backseat.

  That was as far as Dave got on his list. It was after midnight. Everyone was asleep except for the pig, who, not accustomed to having the lights on at this time of night, began to whistle from her cage on the counter. Dave got up and took a carrot out of the fridge and dropped it through the door on the top of the cage. The pig sniffed the carrot and settled down to it.

  “Pig,” said Dave out loud with great affection.

  “Pig,” he said again quietly to himself on his way upstairs to bed.

  Labor Days

  On the first Tuesday in September, Morley flew through the back door and said to whoever was in the kitchen, “Sorry I’m late.” Whoever turned out to be Arthur, the dog, sitting expectantly by his dish, his tail wagging to see her. It was six-fifteen. Morley had meant to be home before five-thirty. She had thought everyone would be waiting, everyone’s tail wagging, everyone expecting supper.

  “Dave?” she called as she kicked her shoes off on the back steps and headed for the kitchen. She hesitated in front of the refrigerator for the briefest instant, like she might hesitate at the side of a lake or a swimming pool, pushing the hair off her face and then taking a deep breath before plunging in. She was on her knees rummaging around for something fast and easy to make for supper when Dave walked in.

  Before he could say hello, she said, “Potatoes or rice?” Before he could answer, she did. “Rice,” she said. Kicking the fridge closed, she headed for the cupboard. “Anna Lindquist asked me to go with her to L.A. for the weekend.”

  Dave opened the fridge and pulled out a beer and said, “Why not? It couldn’t cost more than a few thousand dollars.”

  “It’s Emma Thompson’s birthday,” said Morley. “Anna invited me to go with her to Emma Thompson’s birthday dinner. In L.A.”

  “We could put off fixing the car,” said Dave helpfully.

  “She says she doesn’t want to travel alone. Emma Thompson, Dave. The movie star.”

  Dave said, “When she invited you … did she mean you … you? Or you … and me?”

  Morley was standing by the sink, rinsing the rice. She screwed up her face in concentration and said, “This is ridiculous. I can’t afford to go to L.A. for the weekend. She knows that. That’s why she asked me.”

  Morley and Dave had talked about Morely going back to work once the kids were grown. She never thought she would stay away from the stage so long. It was hard to believe it was almost twenty years. She was busy, and she was happy with what she was doing. But when the Century of Wind theater company asked her if she would work for them as general manager, she realized it
was the right time.

  She was feeling defeated by the Sisyphean nature of her life—washing the same dishes, doing the same laundry, over and over again. She was jealous of Dave’s engagement with the world. Even around the house, he always took on the big industrious projects—rewiring the basement might be hard work, but she suspected it was a lot more interesting than organizing the winter clothes again.

  When they offered her the job, however, no one mentioned that the British actor Anna Lindquist had been signed to a six-week contract—due to arrive in town on August 22 to begin rehearsals for the role of Madame Arkadina in Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull. In her darker moments, Morley suspected maybe someone had thought better of mentioning it. Anna Lindquist is what is known, in the theater business, as “high-maintenance.”

  As it turned out, Anna Lindquist arrived in Toronto two days early. It was Morley’s first week at work.

  “Darling,” Anna said when she phoned from the airport, “surely you don’t expect me to take”—her voice dropping an octave—“a taxi?”

  “She did this last time,” said Robert, the stage manager. “She does it to put everyone off balance. I can’t stand it.” And he started to cry.

  As Morley rushed out to the airport, she wondered if she would be able to recognize Anna Lindquist from her publicity photos. As it turned out, she needn’t have worried.

  Anna was sitting in the arrivals level with a little white dog in her lap. She was holding a lit cigarette in a long tortoiseshell holder—under a NO SMOKING sign. She was by far the most colorful thing in sight. Her heels were high, her skirt was short, her nails were long, and her hair, under the glare of the bright neon lights, was a shade of red Morley had never seen before.

  Morley introduced herself and asked about luggage.

  “I don’t know, darling,” said Anna, frowning. “I haven’t the foggiest.”

  There was, she said, a matched set of three suitcases, and a hatbox. “In canary yellow, darling. I bought them in Mustique.”

  While Anna stayed in the lobby, Morley found a cart and wheeled the suitcases across the airport. “If you’ll wait here,” she said, “I’ll get the car.”

  Morley had been too panicked on the way to clean out the candy wrappers, coffee cups, and the stack of vinyl Dave had left in the front seat.

  She rolled the baggage into the elevator and wheeled around the ramp to the parking lot. She threw the suitcases and the records into the trunk and cleaned up the car as best she could.

  Ten minutes later, she led Anna out the airport door to where she had parked illegally by the curb. She ran around to the driver’s side, jumped in, and noticed Anna standing on the sidewalk looking vague. At first Morley thought Anna was looking for the limousine. Then she realized she was waiting for Morley to open the door for her.

  When Anna finally settled into the front seat, she said, “I was actually expecting a car and driver.”

  Morley drove directly to the apartment the theater had rented for Anna Lindquist. It was on a lovely tree-lined street. The uniformed doorman, who had a nose for these things, immediately opened Anna Lindquist’s door and led her into the foyer, leaving Morley to struggle with the luggage.

  The apartment had the deep tranquility of serious money—thick carpeting in the halls, heavy oak doors, the burnish of old brass, and a lobby mirror that really was antique.

  Anna Lindquist peered in the open third-floor apartment door, her feet firmly planted in the hallway. “I can’t possibly stay here, darling,” she said. “The walls are green. They remind me of vomit. I’ll stay at a hotel until you can find something suitable. No need to drive me, darling … I’ll call a taxi.”

  After supper, a week after Anna Lindquist arrived, Morley said, “The roughs for the posters came in today. Anna was upset because her name was below the title.”

  Dave was reading a music magazine at the kitchen table. “Gerta phoned,” he said. “She’s going to some new discount mall on Saturday.”

  Morley was spreading newspaper on the table. She was going to waterproof a pair of boots. “Chekhov is the only name above the title. I told her, ‘You can’t be above Chekhov.’”

  Dave said, “Gerta wants to know if you want to go with her—to the mall.”

  Morley said, “You know what happened then? She said, ‘Chekhov’s been dead for ninety-three years, darling. What could he possibly care about where he is on your silly poster?’

  “Then she started talking about the size of the type. She wants her name in bigger print than Martin’s.”

  Morley glared at her husband. “It’s like working with a five-year-old. I went back to work because all I was doing was picking up after children, and I end up picking up after a fiftyfive year-old.”

  Dave said, “You should go. It’ll be fun.”

  “This is my life?” said Morley. “Shopping for bulk food is fun?”

  Morley eventually decided she would go to the mall with Gerta Lowbeer, more to get out of the house on Saturday than anything else. Going to a bunch of discount stores in the suburbs, she decided, was the closest thing to foreign travel on the horizon.

  “I’ll just look,” she said. “It will be a cultural experience.”

  She looked at the aisles of cartons, the miles of produce, and as she looked, strange and unfamiliar urges descended upon her. She came home with a camp-sized case of cereal that had to be wheeled to her car, a carton of frozen lasagna with fifty individual meals, and a case of organic all-natural fruit snacks—four bright new flavors: pear, boysenberry-mango, apricot, and very berry—for the kids’ lunches.

  * * *

  Morley prepared the lasagna for the first time the next Monday night. This is easy, she thought, coming home from work. Frozen lasagna and a salad. No sweat.

  She was feeling smug until Sam asked what was for dinner and then said, “I hate frozen lasagna. Can I have spaghetti?”

  Just as the water for the spaghetti was beginning to boil, Dave phoned and said, “I’m going to be late.”

  Instead of waiting, they started without him. When Stephanie took her first mouthful of lasagna, she said, “This tastes doughy—it’s not like the kind you make.”

  Morley didn’t answer. She was watching Sam suck a piece of spaghetti up his nose. “Do that again,” she said, “and I’ll cut your nose off.”

  Sam said, “Robbie taught me.”

  Stephanie said, “I hate this lasagna.”

  Dave came through the door and said, “Hi, everybody. Sorry I’m late.”

  The three of them stopped what they were doing and turned toward the door in unison—Stephanie raising her head glumly from her plate, Sam with the piece of spaghetti dangling from his nose, Morley frowning. All of them staring at this inappropriately cheerful man standing in the kitchen doorway.

  At some mysterious level of Dave’s brain, a tiny voice was saying, Don’t say anything, Dave. Just sit down and eat the lasagna. But Dave didn’t hear the voice in time. So instead of sitting down, he stood in the doorway. “Kenny Wong is doing renovations. He got his belt sander, and I got mine, and we were drag-racing them around the restaurant. I lost track of time.”

  No one said anything except the little voice. I told you not to say anything, it said.

  So Dave sat down and took a bite of supper and said, “The lasagna is kind of doughy.”

  Morley stood up abruptly.

  And the little voice said, Uh-oh.

  But Dave continued, “What’s wrong? Where are you going?”

  Morley snarled, “I have to go out. Sam wants to show you something Robbie taught him.”

  Dave twisted around in his chair. He was talking to Morley’s retreating back. “It’s just frozen lasagna, right? It’s not like you made it. That was a compliment. You don’t have to buy any more of these frozen lasagnas.”

  The next morning Morley got up and went into the bathroom, and her toothbrush was already wet.

  She said, “My toothbrush is wet. Why is my too
thbrush wet?”

  The family gathered solemnly around her.

  “See?” she said, flicking the bristles. “It’s wet. And I haven’t brushed my teeth yet.”

  Sam and Dave stared glumly at the toothbrush, full of concern. It was as if she were telling them the dog had been hit by a car.

  “That’s my toothbrush,” said Stephanie quietly. “The red one is my toothbrush.”

  Morley felt her heart turn cold. “The red one,” she said, “is mine. I use it every day. You are green.”

  “I am?” said Stephanie. “I thought I was red.”

  “Me, too,” said Sam. “I thought I was red.”

  Morley screamed and disappeared downstairs.

  “What’s the matter with her?” said Stephanie.

  * * *

  The kitty litter was Maggie’s idea. Maggie’s fault.

  Maggie, who has three boys. It was Maggie who told Morley that she’d had it with washing around the toilet.

  “I told them if they planned to keep using our toilets, they were going to have to sit down when they went from now on,” said Maggie.

  Maggie’s husband, Russ, said if he had to sit down every time he went to the bathroom, he would leave home. Russ said it was a humiliating thing to ask of a man.

  Maggie said okay. And then she dumped an entire bag of kitty litter around the base of the toilet.

  Morley said, “You’re kidding.”

  She didn’t stop to think that the difference between her house and Maggie’s house was that Maggie didn’t own a cat.

  When Galway saw the kitty litter around the upstairs toilet, she assumed it had been put there for her.

  It took Morley a day too long to figure out what was happening. Removing all the litter took nearly an hour.

  Convincing Galway to give up on her new second-floor litter box took even longer. It was not until the middle of November that Morley was able to stop reminding everyone, guests and family alike, to barricade the bathroom against the cat. Even now, whenever she sees the cat slinking down the hallway toward the bathroom, Morley shouts and rushes madly after her.