Home from the Vinyl Cafe

by Stuart McLean

  He thought, Maybe it’s like taking a Band-Aid off a kid. Maybe you have to be sure about it. Sure and fast.

  So he counted. “One. Two.”

  Just as he was about to say, “Three,” Dave heard his mother’s voice again. She said, Have you thought that you could pull your entire tongue out of your mouth and leave it on the antenna? Have you thought of that?

  Dave stopped counting.

  That’s impossible, he thought.

  But it occurred to him that if he didn’t actually lose his entire tongue, maybe he could lose a layer of it—the layer with his taste buds. He would never taste anything ever again. For the rest of his life, he might as well eat tofu, and it wouldn’t make any difference. That scared him so much that he didn’t move a muscle for a long time. He stood on the roof, sucking on his antenna, without moving.

  He could see his neighbors walking up and down the street. He saw the Schellenbergers stop and look up at him. When they stopped, he began to flap his arms up and down, being careful not to move his face. The Schellenbergers watched him for a few moments, and then they said something to each other, turned, and walked inside their house.

  Dave knew they weren’t going to come to his rescue. They had been admiring him. They thought he was part of the display, hanging from the antenna in the middle of all the lights.

  This is what happens when you do things you aren’t asked to do, thought Dave.

  He was filled with self-loathing. His life seemed to be a parade of similar incidents.

  When his daughter was very small, Dave had taken her in the car on his way to a job interview. Morley was sick, and he was going to drop Stephanie at Morley’s mother’s house while he went to the interview.

  The interview was for a job that Dave thought he wanted at the time—a buyer for a record-store chain. He had borrowed a briefcase from Carl Lowbeer as a prop.

  It was not an easy drive. Stephanie cried all the way across town. Dave was desperate to calm her down. He needed to be calm for the interview. He decided that a stick of licorice might do the trick.

  He pulled up in front of a corner store. As he jumped out of the car, he noticed four young thugs, wearing more than their fair share of black leather, bumping up the street. He didn’t want them messing with his daughter. Better lock the door, thought Dave.

  He patted his pockets looking for his keys. Silly, he thought, they’re still in the ignition. Dave had left the engine running so that when he came out of the store, he could be on his way as quickly as possible. He wasn’t exactly running late for his interview, but he didn’t have a lot of time to spare.

  No worries. He could lock the car door without the key. Dave reached inside the car and depressed the lock button. Then he slammed the door, carefully holding the door handle so the door would stay locked.

  As he stood beside his locked car and smiled at the four thugs, Dave was vaguely troubled by a feeling that something wasn’t right. But he was too uptight and in too much of a hurry to worry about it. He dashed into the store and moments later dashed out again, waving the candy. When he saw his car, he stopped dead in his tracks. The doors were locked. The motor was running. His keys were in the ignition.

  When Dave saw Stephanie locked in the back of the car, something inside him snapped. He was irrevocably and undeniably certain that his daughter was in danger.

  He knew that people who wanted to end their lives often sat in running cars. He understood that they usually did this in garages, but he reasoned that even though his car was in the open air, fumes could still seep through the floorboards, and if they didn’t kill his daughter, they could surely damage her brain.

  Dave looked around for something to break a window with in case Stephanie started to nod off. He spotted a brick at a construction site and placed it on the sidewalk beside the passenger door. He sprinted to a phone booth.

  Morley, who had a fever of 102, got dressed and took a taxi across town with their extra set of keys.

  By the time she arrived, so had the police.

  Morley still says she should have denied knowing Dave. When she tells this story, she says she should have pressed charges. “Look at the brick,” she could have said, “I think he was planning to steal my daughter.”

  Dave was late for the interview. He didn’t get the job.

  This was the life that was flashing by Dave’s eyes as he hunched over his chimney. He could hear his family moving around the living room. He could hear their voices floating up the chimney. He heard Morley say, “Wouldn’t a fire be nice?”

  “No,” said Dave. “No, it wouldn’t.”

  Then he heard Sam. “Can we put on two logs?”

  Dave and Morley burn synthetic wax logs. The moment the waxy smoke hit Dave, he needed to pee. He thought, The fumes are probably poisonous. I am being asphyxiated. My body is trying to clear the toxins.

  It was like being trapped in the backyard in a snowsuit when he was a kid.

  His mind began to race.

  What if spring never came? What if there was never a thaw? What if he died there?

  He couldn’t remember the last time the chimney had been cleaned. What would happen to him if the chimney caught fire? The fumes were stinging his eyes. He needed to pee badly now.

  What if he peed on the antenna?

  Would that warm it up enough?

  Enough to set him free?

  And what, God help him, would happen if his penis touched the metal?

  And then it came to him.

  Why didn’t he take one of the Christmas lights and hold it against his lip so the warmth from the light would melt his mouth free?

  It took under five minutes.

  In five minutes he was down the ladder, in the house, and peering into the bathroom mirror at his tongue. It was red but not too sore.

  Sam and Stephanie were snuggled on the couch watching television, and Morley, his sweet wife, Morley, was sticking cloves into an orange as she watched TV with them. Dave thought, They didn’t even know I was in trouble.

  There was a commercial, and Sam said, “What were you doing up there? The picture was really fuzzy for a while. Then all of a sudden it got better.”

  Dave said, “I put up the Christmas lights. Come and see.”

  They all trooped outside.

  Sam looked up and down the block. “We’re the first. We beat everyone.”

  Morley was smiling. “I was thinking about the lights yesterday,” she said.

  The kids ran back inside.

  Morley was still looking at the lights. “They always make me feel good,” she said. Then she turned and put her arms around her husband. “I ordered the Christmas turkey today,” she said. “I was thinking you did such a nice job with it last year, do you think you could do it again?”

  Polly Anderson’s

  Christmas Party

  Dave received his new driver’s license in the mail at the beginning of October. It was accompanied by a letter that began:

  Dear Sir:

  We were pleased to note that you no are no longer required to wear corrective lenses.

  Dave had never worn glasses in his life. Somewhere in the pit of his stomach, he felt a queasy twinkle … like the birth of a star in a distant galaxy.

  Before we can change the category code on your driver’s license, we must receive notification from an ophthalmologist of the change in your vision.

  Dave’s vision hadn’t changed in twenty years. The star in his stomach was burning brightly now. Ahh, thought Dave, I know the name of the galaxy. It’s the galaxy of bureaucratic misfortune—an abyss of swamps and labyrinths, a horror house of tunnels and mazes. Dealing with the letter would be like playing a real-life game of snakes and ladders. With a sinking heart, Dave finished reading the note.

  We have reissued your permit subject to the following conditions.

  At the bottom of the letter, it said:

  Driver must wear corrective lenses.

  Dave knew this wasn’t goin
g to be easy.

  “Do you have any idea,” he said to Morley, “how long you have to wait to get an appointment with an eye doctor?”

  The next morning, when Morley woke up, Dave was lying on his back, his hands cupped behind his head. He was staring at the ceiling. “This is the sort of thing that sends people into clock towers with high-powered rifles,” he said.

  October, and then November, came and went. By early December, Dave still hadn’t made even a halfhearted attempt to schedule a doctor’s appointment.

  “I’m too busy,” he said when Morley asked.

  December is the busiest time of the year if you work in retail, and things had been busy enough at Dave’s record store, but they both knew this was a lie. By the middle of the month, Morley was ready to force the issue. Then she thought, He’s an adult. Why should I be the bad guy? Instead, as he left for work on Saturday morning, she reminded Dave that they were expected at Ted and Polly Anderson’s annual Christmas party that night. As he stood at the front door, his parka open, his hat askew, Dave gave Morley a look that said, Please say I can stay home and watch the hockey game?

  Morley was sitting on the stairs, frowning into her open briefcase. “Don’t look at me like that,” she said. “We have to go.”

  Dave’s shoulders sagged. “Okay,” he said. “But let’s go early and leave early.”

  And that was how Dave came to be standing in his driveway, yelling impatiently at Sam, on Saturday evening at five-thirty.

  “Just come without your jacket,” he said. “You don’t need your jacket. The car is warmed up. Just come.”

  Sam bounded down the front steps, his shoelaces undone, his shirt untucked, and jumped into the car beside his father.

  “Backseat,” said Dave as Sam reached for the radio.

  Morley was next. Slipping into the car and examining her lipstick in the mirror on the back of the sun visor.

  Dave had to send Sam to fetch Stephanie.

  “What’s the hurry?” she said, slumping into the backseat. “No one will be there yet. This is stupid. There’s never anyone my age. Do I have to come?”

  They were, as it turned out, the first to arrive.

  “Come in,” said Polly Anderson, who hadn’t finished setting things out. “It’s good to see you.” Looking as though it wasn’t.

  “I told you it was too early,” said Stephanie.

  “It’s okay,” said Dave. “We’ll help out.”

  Five minutes later, Dave was holding an open bottle of rum in front of two bowls of eggnog. He was helping out.

  “The Lalique crystal is for the adults,” called Polly Anderson from the kitchen. “The glass bowl is for the kids.”

  Dave took a step back and peered at the two bowls. “Which is the Lalique?” he called.

  The doorbell rang.

  Polly said, “The Lalique is on the left. Can you get the door?”

  Dave said, “Just a minute.”

  The doorbell rang again.

  Dave frowned and thought, Glass left and crystal right … or crystal left and glass right?

  From the dining room, Morley said, “Dave, get the door.”

  Dave said, “Eeny meeny miny mo,” poured the rum, and ran for the door. As he left, he saw Ted Anderson pick up one of the bowls and head down to the rec room, where Sam had joined the Anderson kids.

  Morley had always left Polly Anderson’s Christmas party feeling inadequate. There was the spiral staircase, the Lalique bowls, and Polly’s bonsai collection in the hall—which this year she had decorated with miniature origami birds, each one no bigger than an aspirin. Morley felt defeated by these things, and by the moment at the end of each year’s party—a moment that was not unpleasant but just so perfect—when everyone gathered around the Andersons’ Christmas tree (it always seemed taller and straighter than the tree Dave and Morley had found), and Ted turned off the lights and lit the real candles, and they all sang carols. Defeated by these things that the Andersons seemed to do so effortlessly. And if that wasn’t enough, there were the Anderson kids—so polite and well dressed and, most galling, so clean. It all made Morley feel small.

  But the thing that really ground her down was the mountain of food that Polly produced. This year it was Christmas sushi—pieces of salmon twisted into the shape of fir trees, little tuna wreaths, yellowtail angels with white-radish wings, and in the middle of the table, a seaweed manger with a baby Jesus made from flying-fish roe and three wise men with pickled-ginger robes and wasabi faces.

  Then there were the crackers. Polly Anderson’s crackers were better dressed than half the people at the party. It was as if Polly Anderson had Martha Stewart working for her in the kitchen, and any moment Martha was going to march out carrying something on a silver platter: a stenciled roast beef, Cajun fillets of peacock tongue, a roasted unicorn, or maybe quail, a flaming wreath of baby quail with cranberry and mango salsa.

  The last time she had entertained the Andersons, Morley was so determined to measure up that she went to the library and checked out a pile of gourmet magazines. She had come home and rolled cylinders of salmon in a soft cream-cheese dip and stuck toothpicks at the end of each roll. It didn’t occur to her, until Sam pointed it out, that her creation looked like a plate of miniature toilet-paper rolls. She saw Polly Anderson looking at the plate quizzically, then watched in horror as Polly picked up one of the hors d’oeuvres and it slid off the toothpicks and landed in her drink. Morley hid in the kitchen until Dave forced her to join them in the living room.

  As Morley stood in the Andersons’ living room, staring at Polly Anderson’s Christmas crackers, she thought about the week following her own party. For days she kept coming across remnants of her toilet-paper hors d’oeuvres all over the house: under the couch, in the drawer where she kept her checkbook, in the bathroom garbage can, on a windowsill. All of them had one bite missing.

  Morley was so lost in these memories that when Ted Anderson came up behind her and offered her a drink, she jumped.

  “Are you all right?” he said.

  Ted, gliding from guest to guest in a gray suit and ivory collarless shirt buttoned to the neck.

  Morley looked across the room at Dave. He was wearing the blue sweater his mother had knit last Christmas. It had a map of Cape Breton on the front with a large red dot marking the site of his hometown. One side of his shirt was hanging out from under the sweater.

  Morley had already had three cups of eggnog, but she just couldn’t seem to relax.

  “Sure,” she said, taking a drink off Ted’s tray.

  Morley thought the party seemed stiffer than usual, though the kids seemed to be having a whale of a time.

  Sam wound by her with a plate piled with bread and salmon mousse.

  You’d never eat that at home, thought Morley.

  “This is the moose,” said Sam exuberantly, pointing to the orange spread. “And this,” he said pointing to the gelatin, “is the moose fat.”

  He snorted and wheeled back toward the basement where the kids were. When he opened the basement door, the sound of boisterous children singing Christmas carols came wafting up the stairs.

  Dave headed back to the punch bowl and poured himself another glass of eggnog—his fifth. He couldn’t seem to loosen up.

  Half an hour later, Bernie Schellenberger lurched by Dave on his way upstairs. Bernie looked like he was being chased by wolves. He was holding his five-month-old daughter in his arms. The baby was howling.

  “Every night,” said Bernie.

  “When you try to put her down,” said Dave.

  “She screams for two hours,” said Bernie.

  “You ever try the car?” asked Dave.

  “What?” said Bernie.

  Dave, who was looking for any excuse to leave the Andersons’, said, “Get your coat.”

  Sam had come out of the womb screaming, and every night at bedtime, for the first year of his life, he would lie in his crib and scream.

  Morley and Dave w
ould sit in the kitchen, rigid as lumber, and listen to him. They would say things to each other like “We are not going in there. Not tonight. He has to learn.”

  Other parents in the neighborhood would find excuses to drop in on Dave and Morley around bedtime, because listening to Sam scream made them feel better about their own children. If mothers were becoming short-tempered with their children, fathers would say, “Could you nip over to Morley’s and see how things are coming with …” and they’d make something up. And their wives would go, because they knew it would do them good.

  People who didn’t have children were horrified with the way Dave and Morley could offer them coffee and carry on a conversation while Sam raged against sleep. They would keep glancing toward the stairs. When they left, they would say things like “That was unbelievable. Our children will never do that.”

  On the rare nights when Sam stopped crying within an hour, Dave and Morley would glance at each other nervously, and one of them would say, “Maybe I should check him.”

  As soon as they opened the bedroom door, he would start crying again.

  Once, Dave crawled into Sam’s room on his belly and pulled himself up the side of the crib like a snake, only to come face-to-face with his son. They stared at each other for an awful minute. Then Dave slid back down. Sam smiled and waved. Dave had crawled halfway out of the room before Sam started to cry.

  They lived like this for a long time before Dave discovered the car. He took Sam with him to the grocery store one night, and Sam drifted off to sleep in his car seat. And was so soundly asleep he didn’t wake when Dave got him home and carried him to bed.

  The next night Dave drove around the neighborhood for an hour before Sam conked out, but it beat sitting at the kitchen table. So every night Dave loaded Sam into the car and drove around until Sam fell asleep. He had to drive less and less each night. Soon Sam was falling asleep within a block of the house. One night he nodded off before Dave got out of the driveway. Eventually, Dave could put Sam in the backseat, start the car, and idle it in the driveway. It was something about the sound of the engine.

  One night, instead of putting him in the car, Dave put Sam in his crib and said to Morley, “Watch this.”