Christmas at the Vinyl Cafe

by Stuart McLean

  At the Maple Leaf Café, Dot would haul out her collection of little elves December the first, on the button.

  “That’s why they call me Dot,” she’d say.

  She’d rearrange them every morning, before opening, moving them around from the front window to the pie shelf. Or from beside the cash register to on top of the phone booth. Though she always kept one elf stuffed into one of the aluminum milkshake containers—looking for all its life like it was about to get whipped to death. Everyone loved that one.

  Of course, if you were ten years old, the highlight of Christmas was Rutledge’s Hardware Store. Rutledge’s was where everyone did their Christmas shopping back then.

  You could find everything under the sun at Rutledge’s. They had shirts and sofas—in matching plaid. There was the housewares section in the back and the hunting section in the basement. Why, they had everything you needed to get a deer from the woods to the dining-room table.

  And the decorations? The Christmas Dave was ten, Mr. Rutledge put up a string of coloured Christmas lights that looped all the way around the storefront window.

  Every night, as Dave walked past the glow of the lights, he would think, You could go all the way to Glace Bay and not see anything half as wonderful.

  Dave made his first Christmas visit to Rutledge’s the Saturday they put the tree up. The family tree, I mean.

  Dave and his little sister, Annie, had gone with their dad, Charlie, and cut the tree the week before on Macaulay’s mountain. They had struggled it down the old mountain road, and it had sat in the summer kitchen for a week, thawing. And now their mom, Margaret, was struggling with it.

  Or rather, with the tinsel.

  Margaret collected and reused their tinsel every year. But each year a little more of the thin aluminum strips got sucked up in the vacuum cleaner or remained on the tree when it went to the dump. That year, when she looked at the meagre remnants, all crinkly and dull, she decided it was time to splurge on a new box.

  So the whole family went to Rutledge’s.

  “Just a minute,” called Dave as everyone else headed for the car.

  “Wait,” he called as he bounded upstairs and into his bedroom.

  When he got there, he slammed his bedroom door behind him and pushed his desk chair over to his closet. And then, standing on his toes, he reached into the secret hole in his cupboard wall, the hole where he kept his important stuff. His hockey cards, and his yo-yo, and two unexploded one-inch firecrackers, and the penknife his mother didn’t know he had, and, most importantly, the little metal box where he kept his money. He sat on the bed with the box on his lap.

  He was ten years old, and he was rich. He had twenty-seven dollars and eighty-six cents.

  —

  WHEN THEY FINALLY got to Rutledge’s, Dave wandered around by himself, his right hand jammed in his pocket clutching his money.

  In Housewares, he found the oven mitts his mother had hinted about—the ones with the birds on them. In Hardware, a retractable tape measure for his father. Fourteen feet long. Dave pulled it all the way out and checked.

  In Bath Supplies, he found a pink plastic mirror and brush for his sister.

  A little later, his father spotted him in Furniture, sitting on a couch. Dave was lost in thought. He was trying to add the cost of it all in his mind. He kept getting different totals, but he was pretty sure he was going to have money left over.

  He was growing up. The responsibility of it all made him feel…taller. He decided he would walk around and see if there was anything else they needed for the house. He rounded the aisle where Mr. Rutledge kept the snow shovels and toboggans. And that’s when he bumped into the display table.

  Although the first thing Dave saw wasn’t the table. It was the hand-lettered sign that Mr. Rutledge had hung from the ceiling tiles. Big block letters with a thick red marker: BRING THE FASTEST GAME ON EARTH INTO YOUR HOME.

  And on the table below? A deluxe, club model, tabletop hockey game, manufactured by the Eagle Toy Company of Montreal, Quebec.

  A miniature hockey rink!

  Dave, ten years old, was overcome by its beauty. He literally stopped breathing.

  The sheet of grey plywood ice, shining under the fluorescent lights, was decorated with replica blue lines and red circles, and most wondrously, it was home to ten miniature tin hockey players, each one identically frozen, in fluid motion, each one lunging forward, with one miniature skate hovering in the air while the other dug into the ice.

  The cardboard box it came in was under the table.

  THIS IS A RINK FOR ALL SEASONS, said the copy on the lid.

  Dave bent over so he could read the small print.

  The game featured peg scoreboards to use every time you scored a goal, allowed full play behind the nets, came with a toy microphone to do play by play, and included a plastic replica Stanley Cup.

  The players could each pivot a complete 360 degrees. And shoot lifters.

  Dave couldn’t do either of those things himself.

  They say the road of desperation can be found through the doorway of desire.

  He was only ten. Desperation was still a few weeks away. But that was the moment that the door of desire flew open.

  Dave stared at the table knowing one thing and no more: he wanted nothing else in his life as much as he wanted that game.

  He looked up and down the aisle. No one was looking. He reached out and touched one of the rubber-tipped handles. He touched it in the reverential way you might touch a painting in a museum if you found yourself in a museum with no one watching you. He touched it, and when nothing happened, he gave it a tentative twirl. A defenceman in a red Montreal Canadiens sweater spun around.

  Dave’s mouth fell open.

  This was desire brushed by awe. He jumped when Mr. Rutledge rested his hand on his shoulder.

  “Quite something, isn’t it, Davey,” said Mr. Rutledge. Mr. Rutledge had appeared out of nowhere.

  Dave’s heart was pounding. He was afraid of the sound that might come out of his mouth if he tried to talk.

  A nod was all he could manage.

  —

  DAVE, ANNIE, MARGARET, and Charlie were halfway home before Dave was able to speak.

  As their car crossed the old railway tracks, he finally said, “Did you see the hockey game?”

  There was a chasm of silence in the car.

  Finally his father said, “Lots of money for that game.”

  “It was twenty-four dollars,” said Dave.

  “Twenty-four dollars and ninety-nine cents,” said his father.

  “It looked like fun.”

  Dave didn’t say a word after that. Not a word.

  That night, however, he lay in bed for hours before he gave in to sleep.

  He imagined finding the game under the tree on Christmas morning; setting it up in the living room; his father and him playing—the two of them face to face. He could actually hear the flipping sounds of the players fighting for the puck, the puck flying around “too fast for the eye to follow,” as the box had promised.

  He imagined practising by himself after school.

  He imagined writing his favourite players’ names on paper and taping them to the miniature men.

  —

  DAVE STOPPED AT Rutledge’s on his way home every day that week.

  On his third visit, the following Wednesday, the pile of games had shrunk from five to four.

  He counted twice to be certain.

  That night he waited until he was sure he was the only one still awake. When he was sure, he slipped out of his bed. He picked up his flashlight and crept downstairs. In the kitchen, he opened the door to the basement. He went down the basement stairs and into the furnace room. He slipped behind the furnace and into the old coal room where he knew his parents hid Christmas presents.

  And there, just as he expected, on the far side of the room, he saw a large cardboard box. His heart was beating crazily. Thumping. Pounding. He played the flas
hlight across box.

  It was the Royal Doulton china tea set his sister, Annie, wanted.

  There was no hockey game in sight.

  —

  IT WAS COLD the next week, the ice on the quarry black and fast. The colder it got, the warmer the lights in the stores on River Street looked on Dave’s way home. Warm and welcoming. It was a quarter past five on Monday night when Dave walked into Rutledge’s.

  Mr. Rutledge was standing by the counter. He said, “Come to do some Christmas shopping, Davey?”

  “Uh, not today,” said Dave, uncomfortably.

  They had sold another game over the weekend. They were down to three.

  That night Dave made another trip to the furnace room.

  Nothing.

  But he still had hope that the game would be under the tree for him. He had decided if it was, on Christmas morning he would take paint from his model plane kits and repaint the miniature Toronto Maple Leafs team from blue and white to the red and black of the Glace Bay Miners.

  That would be his team. And they would defeat the mighty Montreal Canadiens again and again.

  That was the night Dave made himself miniature for the first time. Lying in bed with his eyes closed thinking of the game, he felt himself getting small—really, really small. He felt the ceiling pulling away, the bed expanding around him, felt himself shrinking, as if he were so small he could be mounted on a peg and could be spun and twirled by the twist of a steel rod.

  —

  ON THE WEDNESDAY before Christmas, there was only one game left.

  “Is it really the last one?” he asked Mr. Rutledge.

  “It’s the last one, Davey.”

  It was four o’clock. And the sky already greying. There was hardly anyone in Rutledge’s. The afternoon lull before the closing rush.

  Dave wandered into Hardware. The tape measure was still there. He reached out and touched it.

  So were the oven mitts. He picked one up and slipped it on.

  What would it feel like on Christmas morning if he bought things for everyone else but didn’t get the one thing he wanted?

  His stomach was whirling. His head was spinning.

  He found Mr. Rutledge at the back of the store.

  “Mr. Rutledge, I would like to buy the very last deluxe, tabletop hockey game, manufactured by the Eagle Toy Company of Montreal, Quebec.”

  Desire, as it always will, had finally led him to desperation.

  Mr. Rutledge frowned.

  He began rubbing his hands up and down on his canvas apron.

  He said, “Are you sure, Davey? There are four days until Christmas. Isn’t the game on your list?”

  “It’s not for me, Mr. Rutledge.”

  He said it, but he couldn’t look Mr. Rutledge in the eye as he said it.

  —

  HIS MOTHER WAS cooking supper when he snuck into the house.

  He tiptoed upstairs and hid the game in the crawl space in the attic.

  He had a plan.

  On Christmas Eve, when everyone was asleep, he would wrap the game, write a tag, and put it under the tree.

  The tag would say: FOR DAVE, MERRY CHRISTMAS, LOVE FROM SANTA.

  He had three days to figure out how he was going to get presents for everyone in his family with the two dollars and eighty-seven cents he had left to his name.

  —

  IT WAS PAST midnight on Christmas Eve, already technically Christmas morning, when he snuck downstairs to put the hockey game under the tree.

  The living room looked like a magic forest—presents spilling out from under the tree, all red and green in the soft glow of the coloured lights.

  He stood there lost in the wonder of it, the big box with his hockey game resting on the chair beside him.

  He got down on his hands and knees and began to read the tags on the presents. To his dismay, there seemed to be more stuff for his sister than there was for him.

  He did see he was getting a book from his grandmother. And a long-playing record from his mother.

  The biggest thing there was the Royal Doulton tea set for his sister. And beside it…His jaw dropped. He couldn’t believe his eyes. There, beside the tea set, almost hidden by the sofa, was a box exactly the same dimensions as the one he had carried downstairs.

  He didn’t have to check the tag.

  He was certain as soon as he saw it.

  TO OUR DAVEY, it read. FROM MOM AND DAD. MERRY CHRISTMAS. WE LOVE YOU.

  They had bought him the game.

  He sat on the floor and stared at it in the glow of the tree lights. Maybe he sat there for an hour. Or maybe it was five minutes. However long it was, it seemed like forever. He sat there until he heard someone stir upstairs and then he crept to bed. He took the game he had bought upstairs with him. He put it back in the attic.

  —

  IT WAS SNOWING on Christmas morning, the sky low, the snow falling thin and cold.

  His sister woke him up.

  “Wake up, Davey,” she said. “It’s morning.”

  It was the first Christmas he needed help waking up. The first one he wanted to sleep through.

  They went to the kitchen and made coffee and hot chocolate. They settled around the tree.

  Annie opened her tea set. When she had done that, Charlie stood up. He was about to get the big box for Dave.

  Before he did, Dave said, “Let me give you something first.”

  Dave was dreading the big box.

  Charlie seemed reluctant, but he nodded. He took Dave’s present back to his chair. A round disc the size of a hockey puck.

  “It’s your yo-yo,” said Charlie.

  He sounded puzzled.

  “I thought you liked it,” said Dave.

  He sounded…guilty.

  It wasn’t just any yo-yo. It was his prized black-and-green Cheerio Big Chief yo-yo.

  The night before he had taken it out of the hole in the closet. He had slipped the soft twisted string around his index finger and had thrown it toward the floor. One last time, he was thinking. It jerked to a stop just above his bedroom carpet, spinning on its axle until he flicked his wrist and it flew back and smacked into his hand. It was a beautiful thing. It had taken him all summer to save for it. He thought he would have it all his life. He had been wrong.

  “That’s very thoughtful,” said Charlie. Although he still looked more puzzled than grateful.

  Puzzlement tipped ever so slightly to discomfort when Margaret opened her present. A ballpoint pen. A pen that she was pretty sure had come from the marmalade jar by the telephone.

  “I thought you could use it when you write letters,” said Dave.

  “Oh,” said Margaret. “Thank you.”

  “It’s a good pen,” said Dave quietly.

  He had struggled over his sister’s present. He thought of giving Annie his hockey card collection. But he knew she wouldn’t appreciate it. The same for his microscope. Then he had spotted his baseball mitt. He had spent all last spring rubbing it with neatsfoot oil and tying it around a softball. Making the perfect pocket. One afternoon last summer he had shown Annie how to use it. How you put your index finger on the outside of the glove. How the glove folded around a ball when you caught it like that. She loved it. He knew that sometimes she came into his room and put it on when he was not home.

  It was a sacrifice, but he had decided it would be worth it. He loved it too, but he didn’t love it more than the deluxe, club model, tabletop hockey game, manufactured by the Eagle Toy Company of Montreal, Quebec.

  —

  IT WAS ONLY while he was watching Annie unwrap the glove that he realized what he had done.

  “You gave me your glove,” she said. That’s when the enormity of what had happened hit him. He had spent all his money on a hockey game he would never play. And he had lost his beloved yo-yo and ball glove. He wasn’t fussed about the pen.

  —

  AT NOON HE was lying on the living-room floor setting up the hockey game with his father
. He didn’t feel the way he thought he was going to feel. He felt hollow.

  Annie was on the phone. She was talking to her friend Lizzie.

  She was telling Lizzie about her ball glove.

  “My brother gave it to me,” she said.

  She didn’t even mention her china tea set.

  “We are going to play catch every day,” she said. “I am going to play on the school team.”

  His mother walked over to him where he was lying beside the game. She squatted down and gave one of the rubber-tipped handles a twirl.

  She said, “You gave your sister a wonderful gift. We are very proud of you.”

  Dave looked over to the phone. Annie was holding the receiver awkwardly in her gloved hand. She hadn’t taken the glove off all day.

  Dave knew his mother was right. He knew the glove was way better than a plastic brush and mirror. But he didn’t know if he was allowed to take credit. It was, after all, almost an accident.

  It was a hard way to learn that giving can be better than receiving.

  Annie was still wearing the glove that afternoon when she walked by his bedroom door.

  “You like it,” he said. “You know it was my favourite glove.”

  He could have said his only glove.

  “It’s my favourite present,” she said.

  He wanted to tell her the truth. He wanted to tell her about the game in the attic.

  “I want to tell you why I gave it to you,” he said.

  Annie was seven years old that Christmas. She stood in the doorway to his room and stared at him.

  “I already know why you gave it to me,” she said. “Everyone does.”

  He stared at his sister. Standing there, so determined, in her jeans and plaid shirt.

  “You gave it to me,” she said, “because you love me. And you knew I loved it more than you did.”

  She was right. He did know that. And he did love her. It might not have been the whole truth. But it was a greater one.

  “That’s right,” he said. “That’s right.”

  They went downstairs together, and they played his new hockey game for an hour straight. And who would have guessed? She beat him every game.