Christmas at the Vinyl Cafe

by Stuart McLean

  Dave did not know this. In fact he had not completely unpacked from their summer vacation. Without thinking he said, “What are you talking about?”

  And Morley said, “If we wanted to get all our shopping done by the week before Christmas we only have”—she shut her eyes—“sixty-two days left.”

  Dave and Morley usually start their shopping the week before Christmas.

  And there they were, with only sixty-seven shopping days left, standing in their bedroom staring at each other, incomprehension hanging between them.

  It hung there for a good ten seconds.

  Then Dave said something he had been careful not to say for weeks. He said, “I thought this thing wasn’t about Christmas.”

  He immediately regretted his words as Morley left the room. And then came back. Like a locomotive.

  She said, “Don’t make fun of me, Dave.”

  “Uh-oh,” thought Dave.

  “What?” said Morley.

  “I didn’t say that,” said Dave.

  “You said ‘uh-oh,’” said Morley.

  “I thought ‘uh-oh,’” said Dave. “I didn’t say ‘uh-oh.’ Thinking ‘uh-oh’ isn’t like saying ‘uh-oh.’ They don’t send you to jail for thinking you want to strangle someone.”

  “What?” said Morley.

  Morley slept downstairs that night. She didn’t say a word when Dave came down and tried to talk her out of it. Didn’t say a word the next morning until Sam and Stephanie had left for school. Then she said, “Do you know what my life is like, Dave?”

  Dave suspected—correctly—she wasn’t looking for an answer.

  “My life is a train,” she said. “I am a train. Dragging everyone from one place to another. To school and to dance class and to now-it’s-time-to-get-up and now-it’s-time-to-go-to-bed. I’m a train full of people who complain when you try to get them into a bed and fight when you try to get them out of one. That’s my job. And I’m not only the train, I’m the porter and the conductor and the cook and the engineer and the maintenance man. And I print the tickets and stack the luggage and clean the dishes. And if they still had cabooses, I’d be in the caboose.”

  Dave didn’t want to ask where the train was heading. He had the sinking feeling that somewhere up ahead someone had pulled up a section of the track.

  “And you know where the train is going, Dave?” said Morley.

  Yup, he thought. Off the tracks. Any moment now.

  “What?” said Morley.

  “No,” said Dave. “I don’t know where the train’s going.”

  Morley leaned over the table.

  “The train chugs through the year, Dave. Through Valentine’s Day and Easter and then summer holidays. Through a town called First Day of School and past the village of Halloween and the township of Class Project, and down the spur line called Your Sister Is Visiting. And you know what’s at the end of the track? You know where my train is heading?”

  Dave looked around nervously. He didn’t want to get this wrong. He would have been happy to say where the train was going if he knew he could get it right. Was his wife going to leave him? Maybe the train was going to D-I-V-O-R-C-E.

  “Not at Christmas,” he mumbled.

  “Exactly,” said Morley. “To the last stop on the line—Christmas dinner. And this is supposed to be something I look forward to, Dave. Christmas is supposed to be a heartwarming family occasion.”

  “Christmas dinner,” said Dave tentatively. It seemed a reasonably safe thing to say.

  Morley nodded.

  Feeling encouraged Dave added, “With a turkey and stuffing and everything.”

  But Morley wasn’t listening.

  “And when we finally get through that week between Christmas and New Year’s, you know what they do with the train?”

  Dave shook his head.

  “They back it up during the night when I am asleep so they can run it through all the stations again.”

  Dave nodded earnestly.

  “And you know who you are, Dave?”

  Dave shook his head again. No. No, he didn’t know who he was. He was hoping maybe he was the engineer. Maybe he was up in the locomotive. Busy with men’s work.

  Morley squinted at her husband.

  “You are the guy in the bar car, Dave, pushing the button to ask for another drink.”

  By the way Morley said that, Dave could tell that she still loved him. She could have told him, for instance, that he had to get out of the bar car. Or, for that matter, off the train. She hadn’t. Dave realized it had been close, and if he was going to stay aboard, he was going to have to join the crew.

  The next weekend he said, “Why don’t I do some of the Christmas shopping? Why don’t you give me a list, and I will get things for everyone in Cape Breton?”

  Dave had never gone Christmas shopping in October. He was unloading bags onto the kitchen table when he said, “That wasn’t so bad.”

  Morley walked across the kitchen and picked up a book that had fallen on the floor. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just that I like Christmas so much. I used to like Christmas so much. I was thinking that if I got everything done early maybe I could enjoy it again. I’m trying to get control of it, Dave. I’m trying to make it fun again. That’s what this is all about.”

  Dave said, “What else can I do?”

  Morley reached out and touched his elbow and said, “On Christmas Day, after we have opened the presents, I want to take the kids to work at the food bank. I want you to look after the turkey.”

  “I can do that,” said Dave.

  —

  DAVE DIDN’T UNDERSTAND the full meaning of what he had agreed to do until Christmas Eve, when the presents were finally wrapped and under the tree and he was snuggled, warm and safe, in bed. It was one of his favourite moments of the year. He nudged his wife’s feet. She gasped.

  “Did you take the turkey out of the freezer?” she said.

  “Yes, of course,” said Dave.

  Of course he hadn’t. But he wasn’t about to admit that. He wasn’t about to tell Morley he couldn’t hold up his end of a bargain. So Dave lay in bed, his eyes closed, his body rigid, the minutes of the night dragging by as he monitored his wife’s breathing.

  Forty minutes went by before he dared open an eye. “Morley?” he said softly.

  There was no answer.

  Dave gingerly lifted her hand off his shoulder and when she didn’t stir, rolled himself off the bed in slow motion, dropping like a shifty cartoon character onto the carpet beside Arthur the dog. A moment later he periscoped up to check if Morley was still sleeping and saw her hand patting the bed, searching for him. He picked it up, looked around desperately, and then shoved the confused dog onto the forbidden bed. He placed Morley’s hand on Arthur’s head, holding his breath as they both settled. Then he crawled out of the bedroom.

  There was no turkey in the basement freezer. Dave peered into it in confusion. He lifted an open package of hot dogs. Then he dove his upper body into the chest freezer, his feet lifting off the ground as he rattled around inside, emerging a moment later empty-handed and panicked. He ran upstairs and jerked open the freezer in the fridge. Bags of frozen vegetables tumbled out as he searched it frantically.

  There was no turkey in the upstairs freezer either. Dave stood in front of the fridge as if he had been struck by a mallet—so stunned that he was able to watch but not react to the can of frozen orange-juice concentrate as it slowly rolled out of the open freezer and began a slow-motion free fall toward his foot. He watched it with the dispassionate curiosity of a scientist.

  The metal edge of the orange-juice container landed on his big toe. Before he felt the pain shoot up his leg and settle exquisitely between his eyes, there was a moment of no pain, a moment when he was able to formulate a thought. The thought was, This is going to hurt. Then he was stuffing his fist into his mouth to stop himself from crying out.

  That was the moment, the moment when he was hopping around the kit
chen chewing on his fist, that Dave realized that looking after the turkey, something he had promised to do, meant buying it as well as putting it in the oven.

  Dave unloaded both freezers to be sure. Then he paced around the kitchen trying to decide what to do. When he finally went upstairs, Morley was still asleep. He considered waking her. Instead, he lay down and imagined, in painful detail, the chronology of the Christmas Day waiting for him. Imagined everything from the first squeal of morning to that moment when his family came home from the food bank expecting a turkey dinner. He could see the dark look that would cloud his wife’s face when he carried a bowl of pasta across the kitchen and placed it on the table she would have set with the homemade crackers and the gilded oak leaves.

  He was still awake at 2 A.M., but at least he had a plan. He would wait until they left for the food bank. Then he would take off to some deserted Newfoundland outport and live under an assumed name. At Sam’s graduation one of his friends would ask, “Why isn’t your father here?” and Sam would explain that “one Christmas he forgot to buy the turkey and he had to leave.”

  At 3 A.M., after rolling around for an hour, Dave got out of bed, dressed, and slipped quietly out the back door. He was looking for a twenty-four-hour grocery store. It was either that or wait for the food bank to open, and though he couldn’t think of anyone in the city more in need of a turkey, the idea that his family might spot him in line made the food bank unthinkable.

  At 4 A.M., with the help of a taxi driver, Dave found an open store. There was one turkey left: twelve pounds, frozen tight, Grade B—whatever that meant. It looked like a flesh-coloured bowling ball. When he took it to the counter, the clerk stared at it in confusion.

  “What is that?” said the clerk suspiciously.

  “It’s a turkey,” said Dave.

  The clerk shook his head. “Whatever you say, buddy.”

  As Dave left the store, the clerk called after him, “You aren’t going to eat that, are you?”

  —

  HE WAS HOME by 4:30 and by 6:30 he had the turkey more or less thawed. He used an electric blanket and a hair dryer on the turkey, and a bottle of Scotch on himself.

  As the turkey defrosted, it became clear what Grade B meant. The skin on its right drumstick was ripped. Dave’s turkey looked as if it had made a break from the slaughterhouse and dragged itself a block or two before it was captured and beaten to death. Dave poured another Scotch and began to refer to his bird as Butch. He turned Butch over and found another slash in the carcass. Perhaps, he thought, Butch died in a knife fight.

  As sunrise hit Dave through the kitchen window, he ran his hand over his stubble. He squinted in the morning light, his eyes dark and puffy. He would have been happy if disfiguration was the worst thing about his turkey. Would have considered himself blessed. Would have been able to look back on this Christmas with equanimity. Might eventually have been able to laugh about it. The worst thing came later. After lunch. After Morley and the kids left for the food bank.

  Before they left, Morley dropped pine oil on some of the living-room lamps.

  “When the bulbs heat the oil up,” she said, “the house will smell like a forest.” Then she said, “Mother’s coming. I’m trusting you with this. You have to have the turkey in the oven—”

  Dave finished her sentence for her. “By 1:30,” he said. “Don’t worry. I know what I’m doing.”

  The worst thing began when Dave tried to turn on the oven. Morley had never had cause to explain the automatic timer to him, and Dave had never had cause to ask about it. The oven had been set the day before to go on at 5:30 P.M. Morley had been baking a squash casserole for Christmas dinner—she always did the vegetables the day before—and now, until the oven timer was unset, nothing anybody did was going to turn it on.

  At 2 P.M. Dave retrieved the bottle of Scotch from the basement and poured himself a drink. His hands had begun to shake. There was a ringing in his ears. He knew he was in trouble.

  He had to find an oven that could cook the bird quickly. But every oven he could think of already had a turkey in it. For ten years Dave had been technical director of some of the craziest acts on the rock-and-roll circuit. He wasn’t going to fall to pieces over a raw turkey.

  Inventors are often unable to explain where their best ideas come from. Dave is not sure where he got his. Maybe he had spent too many years in too many hotel rooms. At 2:30 P.M. he topped up his Scotch and phoned the Plaza Hotel. He was given the front desk.

  “Do you cook…special menus for people with special dietary needs?” he asked.

  “We’re a first-class hotel in a world-class city, sir. We can look after any dietary needs.”

  “If someone brings their own food—because of a special diet—would you cook it for them?”

  “Of course, sir.”

  Dave looked at the turkey. It was propped on a kitchen chair like a naked baby. “Come on, Butch,” he said, stuffing it into a plastic bag. “We’re going out.”

  Morley had the car. Dave called a taxi. “The Plaza,” he said. “It’s an emergency.”

  He took a slug from the bottle in the back of the cab. When Dave arrived in the hotel lobby, the man at the front desk asked if he needed help with his suitcases.

  “No suitcases,” said Dave, patting the turkey, which he had dropped on the counter and which was now dripping juice onto the hotel floor. Dave turned woozily to the man behind him in line and, slurring slightly, said, “Just checking in for the afternoon with my chick.”

  The clerk winced. Dave wobbled. He spun around and grinned at the clerk and then around again and squinted at the man in line behind him. He was looking for approval. He found, instead, his neighbour Jim Scoffield. Jim was standing beside an elderly woman whom Dave assumed must be Jim’s visiting mother.

  Jim didn’t say anything, tried in fact to look away. But he was too late. Their eyes had met.

  Dave straightened and said, “Turkey and the kids are at the food bank. I brought Morley here so they could cook her for me.”

  “Oh,” said Jim.

  “I mean the turkey,” said Dave.

  “Uh-huh,” said Jim.

  “I bring it here every year. I’m alone.”

  Dave held his arms out as if he were inviting Jim to frisk him.

  The man at the desk said, “Excuse me, sir,” and handed Dave his key. Dave smiled. At the man behind the counter. At Jim. At Jim’s mom. He walked toward the elevators one careful foot in front of the other.

  When he got to the polished brass elevator doors, he heard Jim calling him.

  “You forgot your…chick,” said Jim, pointing to the turkey Dave had left behind on the counter.

  —

  THE MAN ON the phone from room service said, “We have turkey on the menu, sir.”

  Dave said, “This is…uh…a special turkey. I was hoping you could cook my turkey.”

  The man from room service told Dave the manager would call. Dave looked at his watch.

  When the phone rang, Dave knew this was his last chance. His only chance. The manager would either agree to cook the turkey or he might as well book the ticket to Newfoundland.

  “Excuse me, sir?” said the manager.

  “I said I need to eat this particular turkey,” said Dave.

  “That particular turkey, sir.” The manager was noncommittal.

  “Do you know,” said Dave, “what they feed turkeys today?”

  “No, sir?” said the manager. He said it like a question.

  “They feed them…”

  Dave wasn’t at all sure himself. Wasn’t so sure where he was going with this. He just knew that he had to keep talking.

  “They feed them chemicals,” he said, “and antibiotics and steroids and…lard to make them juicier…and starch to make them crispy. I’m allergic to…steroids. If I eat that stuff I’ll have a heart attack or at least a seizure. In the lobby of your hotel. Do you want that to happen?”

  The man on the phone didn’t
say anything. Dave kept going.

  “I have my own turkey here. I raised this turkey myself. I butchered it myself. This morning. The only thing it has eaten is…” Dave looked frantically around the room. What did he feed the turkey?

  “Tofu,” he said triumphantly.

  “Tofu, sir?” said the manager.

  “And yogurt,” said Dave.

  It was all or nothing.

  The bellboy took the turkey, and the twenty-dollar bill Dave handed him, without blinking an eye.

  Dave said, “You have those big convection ovens. I have to have it back before 5:30 P.M.”

  “You must be very hungry, sir” was all he said.

  Dave collapsed onto the bed. He didn’t move until the phone rang half an hour later. It was the hotel manager.

  He said the turkey was in the oven. Then he said, “You raised the bird yourself?” It was a question.

  Dave said, “Yes.”

  There was a pause. The manager said, “The chef says the turkey looks like it was abused.”

  Dave said, “Ask the chef if he has ever killed a turkey. Tell him the bird was a fighter. Tell him to stitch it up.”

  —

  THE BELLBOY WHEELED the turkey into Dave’s room at quarter to six. They had it on a room service trolley covered with a silver dome. Dave removed the dome and gasped.

  It didn’t look like any bird he could have cooked. There were frilly paper armbands on both drumsticks, a glazed partridge made of red peppers on the breast, and a small silver gravy boat with steam wafting from it.

  Dave looked at his watch and ripped the paper armbands off and scooped the red pepper partridge into his mouth. He realized the bellboy was watching him and then saw the security guard standing in the corridor. The security guard was holding a carving knife. They obviously weren’t about to trust Dave with a weapon.

  “Would you like us to carve it, sir?”

  “Just get me a taxi,” said Dave.

  “What?” said the guard.

  “I can’t eat this here,” said Dave. “I have to eat it…” Dave couldn’t imagine where he had to eat it. “Outside,” he said. “I have to eat it outside.”