Vinyl Cafe Unplugged

by Stuart McLean

  By the beginning of the second week of December, life at the school had built to a fever pitch—all pretence of academics had vanished. Everything was focused on Thursday night’s performance. When the kids weren’t rehearsing, they were waiting to rehearse—or making decorations.

  Patty Berg’s decoration committee had transformed the school into a riot of red and green. There were streamers and balloons in the halls and large murals on scrolls of brown paper. Frank Quarrington of Quarrington’s Pizza Palace had donated Santa Claus pictures for the grade twos to color: Santas with their jackets off and their sleeves rolled up—rolling dough and flinging it in the air.

  There were five Santa images in all—each one in the pizza motif. The grade twos fell on them with gusto—everyone except Norah Burton, who brought hers to the front in tears.

  “I can’t color this,” she said, holding out her paper. It was a picture of Santa Claus standing over a kitchen table, doling out pizza slices to a group of ravenous elves. “Those are anchovies,” said Norah, pointing at the pizza. “I hate anchovies.” And she broke into tears.

  “Those aren’t anchovies, sweetie,” said Mrs. Moffat, putting her arm around the little girl. “Those are green peppers.”

  “What are these little hairy parts?” asked Norah sobbing.

  “They look like anchovy legs. Green peppers don’t have legs.”

  “That’s just mold,” said Mrs. Moffat sweetly. “The green peppers have gone off.”

  “Oh,” said Norah.

  On Wednesday the kids were sent home early with instructions to return at six o’clock with their costumes and props. They were to assemble in the science lab, where they would be supervised by a group of parent volunteers. The parents would use walkie-talkies to maintain contact with the auditorium. They would send the kids to the stage as they were needed.

  The kids were told they could bring quiet games to play while they waited for their cues: cards, books, stickers—no Walk mans, no video games.

  At five-thirty Morley phoned Dave in a panic. Floyd, the janitor, couldn’t get the P.A. working.

  “No one will hear the narrators,” said Morley. “Help!”

  As a young man Dave had spent fifteen years on the road with so many rock-and-roll tours he had forgotten half the places he had been to. If anyone could rustle up a working sound system in a hurry, it was Dave.

  “No problem,” he said. “I’ll look after it.”

  “I love you,” said Morley. And hung up.

  The doors to the auditorium were scheduled to open at seven. By six-thirty the room was already half full and beginning to heat up. Half an hour later families were still streaming in.

  There is something about sitting on a plastic chair several sizes too small for you that puts you in touch with feelings you never knew you had, especially if you have come to this chair on a cold December night, in a bulky winter coat, and there is no place for you to put the coat, except in your lap. Especially if the room is hot, and getting hotter, and there are little children everywhere, children in constant motion, like fields of seaweed waving on the ocean floor—small sticky children wiggling by you with cupcakes and glasses of lemonade.

  You sit in your tiny seat with your coat in your lap, and you have thoughts that you will never share with anyone. Not even your therapist. Because the things you are thinking are so depraved you couldn’t share them with anyone. Especially your therapist.

  On Thursday night, at a quarter to seven, Pete Eckersall was sitting on one of the chairs at the back of the hall thinking awful thoughts. Pete hadn’t eaten all day—and he was beginning to feel dizzy. Sitting in his tiny seat, his knees up near his shoulders, his parka open, his tie undone, his fedora pushed back on his head, he stared dolefully at the Rice Krispie square he had bought for dinner. It was Pete Eckersall’s sixteenth straight Christmas pageant. He has a daughter in university, a son in grade five and most depressingly a third child, another daughter, who is three. Pete was sitting in his chair doing the addition in his mind. There would be twelve more nights like this one in his life, he thought glumly as he watched the excited young fathers at the front of the room with their video cameras and their babies on their shoulders.

  With twenty minutes to go Pete looked up and saw one of his three ex-wives walking down the far aisle—a long green fuzzy decoration that had snagged onto her sweater dragging behind her. He looked away.

  At a quarter past eight, fifteen minutes after the concert should have begun, Dave still hadn’t arrived with the sound system. Morley decided to start without him. As long as he got there before the narrators climbed onto the scaffolding at the beginning of act two everything would be fine.

  On Morley’s command the auditorium lights dimmed and the curtain rose. There was a pine tree standing alone at the center of the empty stage. A murmur, which began in the front row, swept through the room when the pine tree took two steps forward and, row by row, people recognized the tree as none other than the school’s principal, Nancy Cassidy. She was smiling gamely from the hole cut halfway up the costume—a costume Morley had spent two weeks convincing Nancy to wear. The murmur changed to applause and the applause grew—parents were whistling and stomping their feet. Nancy bowed awkwardly.

  “Welcome,” she said, “to our annual pageant.”

  Then she gasped as a papier-mâché moon dropped abruptly from the sky and swung across the stage in front of her face like a scythe.

  “Sorry,” said a tiny voice from the wings as the moon was pulled jerkily out of sight.

  The grade ones opened the show. Parents craned their necks as the kids marched earnestly down the aisles, swinging their arms and singing. When they arrived on the stage, everything ground to a halt momentarily when Eli Rasminsky, who had the opening lines, stood on the stage staring at his shoes, frozen, until the gym teacher swooped out of the wings, held him up and spoke his lines for him.

  All things considered, the rest of the act went smoothly. There were the awkward, but not unexpected, missed cues: the children who waved incessantly at the audience; the parents who sneaked out as soon as their child had performed; the parents holding crying babies who wouldn’t leave; a Christmas tree that fell; but from her vantage point backstage, Morley was feeling, if not victorious, at least grateful when they arrived at the end of act one without a major disaster.

  As the intermission began someone passed her a message from Dave. He was on his way with the sound system. As she faced the beginning of act two, Morley was feeling pretty good about things.

  The kindergartners, who everyone thought were too young to include in the play, were set up to open the second half with a single song. They weaved onto the stage like a line of shift workers, peering out at the audience, waving and ponderously arranging themselves by height on the two benches set up on stage left. Bill Moss and Alan Schmeid changed places three times, finally standing back to back while Shirley Gallop measured them.

  They were all carrying lit candles in little tin candle holders. They were going to sing “This Little Light of Mine.”

  As soon as they finally organized themselves into rows, you could see that Gretchen Schuyler was going to cry. Gretchen’s candle had gone out. Her head was hanging down. And sure enough, as soon as the piano began and everyone started to sing, Gretchen’s shoulders started to shake.

  When no one came to her rescue, Gretchen really let loose: her hands covered her eyes, her shoulders shuddered, her sobs audible even over the singing. One by one everyone who knew them turned and stared at Gretchen’s parents, who were pinned in the middle of the auditorium with smiles frozen on their faces—nodding at everyone as if nothing was wrong—unable to get to their daughter.

  It was while everyone’s eyes were on Gretchen that the stage door opened and a blast of cold air blew across the stage. As the cold air hit them, the kindergarten kids stopped singing and turned to stare at the apparition outlined in the door. It was a huge man with a ponytail, wearing motorcycle bo
ots and a black T-shirt with the sleeves cut out. He was six feet four if he was a foot. He had a studded belt and ham-hock arms, a tattoo of a large bird on his shoulder and a scruffy beard. He looked like a biker.

  Gretchen Schuyler was the last to spot him. Because he was the first adult within reach since her candle had gone out, Gretchen did the only thing she could think of doing. She ran across the stage and wrapped her arms around his legs.

  Miss Perriton, the kindergarten teacher, climbed onto the stage. The biker grinned at Miss Perriton, and the kids could see he was missing teeth. Then he limped across the stage with Gretchen clinging to his leg like a brace and said, “Where do you want the speakers?”

  Two other guys appeared through the door behind him, one unrolling a thick black coaxial cable, the other lugging a speaker the size of a Volkswagen. Dave was the last through the door. He was carrying a large control board.

  “What are you doing?” said Morley when she pushed her way through the kindergartners and up to her husband.

  “The best I can,” said Dave.

  They were not doing much better in the science lab (or “the holding tank ” as Morley had begun to call it). There were too many kids crammed into too small a place for even the best of circumstances. And this was not the best of circumstances. The kids were so revved up that the walls seemed to be vibrating—the energy fueled by a deadly combination of butterflies and boredom, nervousness and nerve. The parent volunteers who had been placed in charge had no experience with this many children in one place at one time. They didn’t understand that if they didn’t nip the first eruption in the bud, the room could go completely berserk.

  And they were, unfortunately, too busy trying to figure out how to work their walkie-talkies to recognize just how dangerously close to that first eruption they were moving. The walkie-talkies hadn’t been functioning well all night. They could hear Morley talking to them, but they couldn’t make out what she was trying to say.

  “It sounded,” said Alice Putnam, frowning at her handset, “like she wanted us to send her a Hawaiian pizza.”

  The kids sensed their distraction. In one corner a group of grade sixes were circled around the infamous Mark Portnoy, watching with academic interest as he tried to feed his Ritalin to a boy in grade four. On the other side of the room three younger boys were trying to stuff Simone Newbridge into a supply cupboard.

  Alice Putnam put down her walkie-talkie and looked around the science lab. The level of noise in the room was accelerating. She suspected that there were things happening she would be better off not knowing. Through the din, she thought she heard a muffled cry for help. It sounded as if it was coming from inside a cupboard. There was a fight on the far side of the room.

  Alice couldn’t decide if she should go for the fight or the cupboard. The room needed an iron hand and she didn’t have one.

  Which is when the door opened and Morley hit them with a blast of sound that shut everyone up.

  “Street scene,” said Morley. “We need the grade threes. We’re starting.”

  Five minutes later everyone was on stage. Morley was standing at the back of the auditorium holding Dave’s hand. They were waiting for the narrators to scramble up the scaffolding. Someone had lifted Gretchen Schuyler up with them. She was sitting on the edge of the platform, her feet swinging back and forth, clutching the candle that someone had finally lit.

  Morley smiled at Dave as Mike Carroll stepped up to the microphone. Dave winked and reached down and flicked on the sound system. A small red light glowed on the board in front of him. He turned and smiled at Morley, who was holding her hands together, almost in prayer, leaning toward the stage. Mike—who was about to say his opening lines—paused and looked around. There was a hum in the room, an electronic hum that had begun when Dave turned the speakers on. A hum that had begun like the hum of a distant train but was growing louder and louder. People were looking around now, and no one could tell where it was coming from because it sounded as though it was coming from everywhere. Like the hum of creation, like the hum at the end of the world, like the hum of God himself.

  The kids in the audience stopped moving, and babies in the front rows stopped crying, because it was a hum you felt now as much as you heard, and it felt as if the hum was going to swallow the room. Not knowing what to do, Mike Carroll leaned into the microphone and spoke his first line into the hum. He said, “Winter loomed.”

  Except he didn’t sound at all like Mike Carroll in grade six saying “Winter loomed.” Instead it sounded like the voice of God himself, and the words “Winter loomed” sounded more like “YOU ARE DOOMED.”

  Mike jumped back from the microphone, surprised at the sound of himself. Then there was a smell of smoke. Then a loud bang and then another one from each of the large speakers on either side of the stage. And then sparks. Not roman candles, more like cone-shaped eruptions of sparks. There were shrieks from the kindergarten kids, who had moved into the front row and were sitting on the floor in front of the speakers, and wild applause from the boys in grade six, and then the auditorium was plunged into darkness, and there was a moment of pure dark silence.

  No one said anything. No one moved. Because no one dared move. It was so dark you couldn’t see your hand if you held it in front of your eyes. There was darkness and a profound silence, until a small voice that sounded as if it might be coming from the stage called out one word: “MOMMY?”

  And every mother in the hall answered as one. “YES!” they cried.

  A chorus of mothers began to move tentatively toward the front of the hall. And then, the small voice called again out of the darkness, more urgently this time, “MOMMY.” Mothers began to call their children’s names out loud: “Gretchen,” “Rodney,” “Stacey,” “Mark,” “Billy,” “I’m right here, darling,” “I’m coming,” “Stay where you are.”

  Mothers and fathers were moving instinctively toward the stage in the darkness—no one running, but moving as fast as they could—brushing the darkness in front of them with their arms, bumping chairs, knocking over glasses of lemonade, crushing Rice Krispie squares. Moving toward the voice in the darkness as their children began moving toward them. Then there was a soft whoosh and thump, and then another and another, as kids reached the edge of the stage and stepped off into the darkness. Children falling from the stage like lemmings in a Walt Disney nature movie. Mothers, carried forward on a wave of maternal anxiety, continued to push toward them. “Excuse me.” “Excuse me,” until suddenly the lights flared on again.

  There was a moment of stock-taking, as they all tried to get their bearings.

  There were no children left on stage. All the children had moved out into the auditorium and were standing and staring at the stage where they had been moments ago, staring at the seven mothers and one father who had actually climbed up there in the darkness. The parents squinting in the sudden light.

  Morley hadn’t moved. She was still standing beside Dave. Still leaning forward. Her hands still clasped as if in prayer. Dave was standing beside her. His hands still on his control panel . . . a look of horror on his face.

  Dave was staring at Gretchen Schuyler, who was at the top of the scaffold, holding her lit candle over her head, as if it were an Olympic torch. The flame was only inches from the brass nozzle of the school’s sprinkler system.

  Out of the corner of his eye Dave caught Floyd, the janitor, moving toward Gretchen. Floyd seemed to be moving in slow motion, his arms stretched out. His mouth was opening and closing but no sound came out. He almost made it. But before he reached the scaffold, the heat from Gretchen’s candle melted the safety nozzle and the water pressure in the sprinkler system blew. The fire alarm began to ring, and in the wink of an eye everyone was drenched, hair plastered down by the force of the water, as nozzle after nozzle popped open. They were ducking down, their hands over their heads as they fought their way out of the auditorium doors. It was like a British soccer riot.

  Nancy Cassidy, who had c
hanged back into her pine-tree costume for the closing number, was knocked over in the rush for the doors. When the school emptied, she was left in a stairwell spinning on her back like a beetle, unable to get herself up. When the firemen found her, Arthur was standing over her in his sheep costume licking her face. The firemen helped her up and out of her costume. Her carefully curled hair was hanging limply over her forehead; mascara streaked her cheeks.

  “That dog was trying to kill me” was all she would say.

  There were only two people left in the auditorium: Dave and Pete Eckersall—the survivor of sixteen Christmas pageants. Pete, who was still sitting in his chair when the firemen turned the sprinklers off, stood up and looked around, nodded at Dave and said, “Nice concert. I think I’ll be heading home now.” He walked out into the winter night, his soaked hair freezing in place as soon as he stepped outside.

  When Dave got home, Morley was nowhere to be seen.

  “She went for a walk,” said Stephanie.

  School was closed on Thursday and then unexpectedly on Friday, too.

  Morley was too mortified to go anywhere near anyone for the rest of the week.

  On Friday night, however, she went to the mall with Sam, and they ran into the troublesome Mark Portnoy. He was kneeling in front of a pop machine by the supermarket doors—his arm stuffed into the machine all the way up to his elbow.

  Morley watched him pull out a can of Dr Pepper before he spotted her.

  “Hello, miss,” he said earnestly, slipping the pop smoothly out of sight. “That was an awesome concert. I’ll never forget it.”

  He seemed to mean it.

  Morley smiled and turned to go, but Mark wasn’t finished with her. He followed her a few steps.

  “Are you going to do it again next year, miss?”

  Morley smiled. “I don’t know,” she said.

  “I was wondering,” he said, “if you do, I was wondering if I could run the sprinklers.”