Christmas at the Vinyl Cafe

by Stuart McLean

  Christmas cookies.

  “I baked for everybody in the neighbourhood,” she said defensively.

  There was a small muscle twitching under her left eye.

  —

  ON THE WEEKEND Morley dug through her emergency stash of presents looking for something to give Mary Turlington.

  “I wouldn’t want Mary to find out I gave something to Gerta and not to her,” she told Dave.

  She found a pair of hand-dipped candles. They were warped. Perhaps, she thought, if she warmed them up, she could straighten them. She took them downstairs and put them in the microwave.

  After she had scraped out the microwave, Morley dashed to a neighbourhood store. She arrived just before closing and bought a gift basket of herbal teas for Mary.

  On her way home she bumped into Dianne Goldberg. Dianne was pulling a wagon up the street toward her house. The wagon was full of presents.

  Morley couldn’t believe it. Everyone knew the Goldbergs didn’t celebrate Christmas.

  Morley said, “What a coincidence. I just put something under the tree for you.”

  When they got home Morley ducked into the living room ahead of Dianne and slipped the tea under the tree.

  “Hey,” said Sam, when Dianne had left. “Eugene was here while you were out. He brought a present. It’s in the kitchen. Can we open it?”

  Morley rubbed her arm. The eczema on her elbow was the size of a tennis ball.

  —

  BY THE FRIDAY before Christmas, Morley had received ten gifts from neighbourhood families, including two baskets of herbal tea identical to the one she had given Dianne Goldberg. One of them looked as though it might have been the same basket.

  Her rash had extended down to her wrist.

  And then, with only three shopping days left, Morley came home from work and found a small bottle of strawberry-flavoured virgin olive oil from a family down the street she had never met before.

  She stood in the kitchen staring at the oil and scratching her arm.

  “Damn it,” she said.

  —

  UNFORTUNATELY, THAT WAS also the afternoon Dave closed the Vinyl Cafe and came home early to ice his Christmas cakes. His plan was to fit them together like a jigsaw puzzle and seal them with a sugar-paste. The man in the bakery said the paste would harden up like marzipan.

  “Tougher than marzipan,” said the man.

  When the paste had boiled into a sticky syrup, Dave took it off the stove and began to pour it on his cake. But instead of hardening up, the icing flowed around like lava, pooling in the low spots. The cake soon looked like something Sam might have made for a geography project—like a papier-mâché model of the Rocky Mountains.

  It hadn’t occurred to Dave that the cake surface had to be flat.

  He went downstairs and got his belt sander.

  —

  IT TOOK HIM longer than he’d thought, but Dave finished icing the cakes before anyone got home. When he finished, he realized his cake was now far too big to fit into the fridge, which is where the baker told him it belonged. The only place Dave could think of that was both large enough and cold enough for his icing to set was the garage.

  Ever so carefully he picked the cake up and struggled out, backwards, using his elbow to push open the door. On the way into the garage he stumbled against the door frame and knocked one end of the cake. A piece fell off. Dave headed back into the kitchen. He set the cake on the table. He went outside to fetch the broken bit, but the piece was not where it had fallen. Dave looked around the yard.

  And there, heading toward the pear tree, backwards, was a squirrel—dragging the broken bit of cake in its mouth.

  Dave squeaked and leapt in the air. The squirrel dropped the cake and disappeared up the tree.

  Dave retrieved the piece of cake. He brought it inside and cut off the bit that he thought had been in the squirrel’s mouth. He tried to set what was left of it back in place. The more he fiddled with it, the more the piece refused to fit. It was rapidly losing its shape.

  Eventually, using a mixture of honey and icing sugar, he made a sort of cement and glued the hunk of cake back on. He used the last of the sugar-paste to cover the join. It was like masonry.

  Dave carried the cake carefully out to the garage, the squirrel nattering at him as he walked under the tree. He set the cake on the roof of the car. And he made sure the garage door was tightly closed on his way back inside.

  —

  IT WAS AN hour later that Morley came home and found the strawberry-flavoured olive oil.

  “Every night,” she said with exasperation. “Every night I come home and someone else has left a present. What is wrong with these people?”

  She was scratching her arm vigorously as she left the room.

  Dave, who was sitting at the kitchen table making little marzipan snowmen for his Christmas cake, didn’t risk an answer.

  Morley came back into the kitchen with her coat on. She looked at Dave and said, “I’m going to Lawlor’s. Anyone else who shows up here is getting chocolate.”

  As she stormed out the door she said, “Those look more like mice than snowmen. You can’t put marzipan mice on a Christmas cake.”

  Dave waited until she left, then he flattened the ball of marzipan in his hand and threw it across the room for Arthur, the dog.

  “Arthur,” he said, “I am having a hard time with these mice. I keep squishing their little paws.”

  Then he said, “Uh-oh.”

  And he jumped up and ran out the door.

  He got to the driveway just in time to hear a squeal of tires, just in time to see the red lights of his car disappearing down the street. With his Christmas cake on the roof.

  He began to run down the street waving his hands wildly, calling to Morley.

  He was running and waving when she hit the speed bump and the cake flew off.

  He was still running and waving when Morley glanced in the rear-view mirror and spotted him.

  “Now what?” she muttered.

  She jammed on the brakes. The car skidded to a halt. She threw it into reverse.

  Dave stopped moving. He watched in horror as the car engine roared and the wheels changed direction and the station wagon reversed over his cake.

  He started running again.

  But he wasn’t alone anymore.

  Pounding along the pavement beside him like a racehorse stretching for the finish line, matching him step for step in a rush for the cake, was the squirrel.

  “Get out of here,” bellowed Dave.

  Morley thought he was talking to her.

  She threw up her hands and then gunned the car—and drove over the cake for a second time.

  —

  DAVE CARRIED THE cake home the way he would have carried a dog that had been hit by a milk truck.

  He set it down on the kitchen table.

  He picked a piece of gravel out of the squished part. He got a screwdriver from the basement and a flashlight. He held the flashlight in his mouth and leaned over the cake like a surgeon. It took him twenty minutes to flick out all the gravel he could see.

  Then he tried to pat the cake back into shape with his hands. But the icing was too hard and the squished part was too squished.

  He felt totally defeated.

  What would Polly Anderson say? What would he tell the arena committee? Who would believe that his Christmas cake had been flattened in a hit and run?

  He went to the basement and poured himself a glass of the soaking mixture.

  He came back half an hour later with a solution.

  He would cut the cake into individual servings and wrap each serving in Cellophane—like at a wedding. No one would have to know a thing.

  He got out the cake knife.

  It bounced off the sugar-paste icing.

  He tried again. The knife began to bend but it didn’t break the surface.

  He got out his carving knife.

  He leaned over it and, using his body weight, man
aged to get the knife into the cake. But try as he might, he couldn’t get it out.

  He headed into the basement to find his old electric carving knife. He hadn’t used it for years.

  When he came upstairs, there was Arthur the dog with his back legs on one of the kitchen chairs and his front legs on the kitchen table. There was Arthur slowly and methodically licking the entire surface of the sugar-paste icing.

  When he spotted Dave, Arthur leaned forward and put his paws protectively around the cake.

  As Dave stepped toward him, Arthur started to growl.

  —

  DAVE USED A damp dishcloth to smooth out the traces of the dog’s tongue on his icing.

  He plugged in the carving knife. The first cut was picture perfect. On the second, however, a piece of walnut came flying out of the cake and ricocheted off Dave’s forehead.

  On the third cut, the carving knife started to shudder. Then it began to smoke, and then it seized up completely.

  When Morley came home Dave had just finished the job. He had used Bert Turlington’s jig saw.

  He pushed his safety glasses onto his forehead.

  “Hi,” he said.

  Morley was carrying a large cardboard carton. At first, Dave thought she had gone grocery shopping. She hadn’t. She had bought every box of chocolate miniatures left in the drugstore. And a bottle of cortisone cream.

  —

  THE SKATING PARTY was the next night. Dave took his cake up to the arena an hour early and set it out on the refreshment table by the skate-sharpening machine.

  He wanted to hang around and serve it to people.

  Fortunately, he had to go back to work and close his store.

  When he returned an hour later there was a man standing by the arena door. He didn’t look happy. He was holding his jaw.

  “Are you okay?” asked Dave.

  The man shook his head. “Some idiot baked a fruitcake and left the pits in the dates. I broke a filling,” he said.

  “You’re kidding,” said Dave.

  When he got to the table beside the skate-sharpening machine, his cake had hardly been touched.

  Someone had altered the sign that he had carefully lettered before leaving home.

  MAY CONTAIN NUTS, it read.

  Except someone had scratched out the word “nuts” and written a new word in its place. His sign now read, MAY CONTAIN GRAVEL.

  He was going to go home.

  But he spotted Sam waving at him from the ice and he thought, Who cares? He waved back and held his skates up and headed toward the changing room.

  —

  CHRISTMAS DAY IS going to be a little strained in Dave’s neighbourhood this year. On Christmas morning, Dave will get seventeen boxes of chocolates.

  “Oh look,” he will say, when he opens the twelfth box. “Miniature chocolates. My favourite.”

  There will be little surprises like that all over the neighbourhood. Gerta Lowbeer raided her freezer of all her Christmas baking to make the cookie plates she gave to everyone. Gerta’s relatives will be stunned when they arrive for their traditional Christmas Day visit to see plates of crumbly Peek Freans in place of Gerta’s delectable shortbread.

  On Boxing Day, old Eugene from next door will realize he has given away the last of the year’s homemade wine. To his horror he will find himself between vintages and will head off to the liquor store for the first time in fifteen years. Dave will bump into him staring morosely at the labels in the Yugoslavia section.

  Mary Turlington, who prides herself on her detailed Christmas recordkeeping, will get so flustered with the neighbourhood gift-giving that she will completely forget to buy a present for her husband, Bert.

  “I can’t believe it,” Mary will say, scrolling through her computer on Christmas morning. “I must have deleted you.”

  The only house where Christmas will go without a hitch will be Jim Scoffield’s. When Jim’s mother arrives as usual a few days before Christmas, she will be amazed at all the festive flourishes. The hand-dipped candles, the home baking, the Christmas CD.

  “It’s all from people in the neighbourhood,” Jim will tell her. “I’ve never seen a Christmas like it. People kept coming to the door with wagonloads of presents.”

  On Christmas Day, Jim and his mother will go out for a walk and run into the Chudarys in the park. They will stop and talk for ten minutes, and Jim’s mother will make a fuss over Fatima. As they say goodbye, Jim will look at Rashida.

  “What are you planning for New Year’s?” he’ll ask.

  “New Year’s?” Amir will say as soon as they are alone. “New Year’s! Rashida, don’t these people ever stop?”

  “It will be all right, Amir,” Rashida will say.

  “Inshallah,” her husband will reply. “Inshallah.”

  If it is God’s wish.

  IT WAS THE middle of December. And it still hadn’t snowed.

  That wasn’t the half of it. It hadn’t threatened snow. It hadn’t even rained.

  It was the middle of December, and all the clouds on the horizon were…well, that was the problem. There were no clouds on the horizon.

  “Is this great…or what?” said Dave.

  “It’s kind of weird,” said Morley.

  When Morley was a little girl, winter had always announced itself by the end of November—that dark month of ravens, rain, and rings around the moon. You could feel the coming season in your bones.

  One afternoon you’d be out burning leaves, wearing wool mittens and a toque, and the clouds would gather. The temperature would drop, and pretty soon the whole sky would be grey. Not rain grey. Lighter than that. And lower.

  “Feels like snow,” your dad would say.

  Morley’s dad used to start their skating rink in December. Standing in the backyard after supper, his mittens frozen to the hose. Morley used to watch through the kitchen window, wiping the steam off the glass with her sleeve.

  There were no rinks this December.

  Here it was, mid-December, and Christmas coming. It hadn’t snowed, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.

  “I hope we get snow for Christmas,” said Morley. She was in her PJs, standing by the bedroom window, looking out at the night street.

  Dave was in bed.

  “Once,” said Morley, “when I was a kid, it was like this. It hadn’t snowed. And we went to church on Christmas Eve. And the church was all little candles and lights. So cozy. All the hymns. And when it was over, we went outside, and it was snowing. Big fat flakes, like in a movie. It snowed all night. And when we woke up Christmas morning, the world was so white and…What are the words from that carol?”

  Dave, sitting in bed, was thinking how beautiful Morley looked standing by the window.

  Morley said, “That carol. About the snow?”

  Dave said, “‘Good King Wenceslas.’”

  “Right,” said Morley. “Where’s Good King Wenceslas when we need him?”

  —

  THEY WERE LYING in bed, a few days later, reading. Morley put her book on her lap and said, “I really want it to snow.”

  Dave didn’t look up. “It will,” he said.

  “Promise?” said Morley. “How about Christmas Eve? Could you arrange that?”

  “Done deal,” said Dave. And then he looked at her earnestly.

  He said, “It will snow. And it will be deep and crisp and even.”

  —

  AND SO THE days closed in on Christmas. The decorations went up, the cards came in the mail, and the old carols played on the radio. But no snow came.

  Dave and Sam got a tree and put it in the backyard to keep cool and fresh. And still no snow.

  They were going through the motions. But no one was in the spirit of it.

  Except for Mary Turlington, of course. It didn’t seem to bother Mary Turlington one little bit. Christmas was coming and Mary, God bless her oblivious little heart, had been full steam ahead since June.

  “Victorian Christmases are so passé,�
�� Mary had said one afternoon in September. “I am working on an Elizabethan theme this year.”

  She kept calling Morley over to show her things she had picked up: a lute and a mandolin for the twins, an exquisite midnight-blue, crushed-velvet floor-length dress with faux pearls for herself, and for Bert—she got Bert what every man wants to wear on Christmas morning—a leather jerkin.

  —

  ONE SATURDAY NIGHT in early November, Dave had run into Bert near the park.

  “Do you mind?” said Bert.

  Dave and Bert don’t have a lot in common, but they both walk around the neighbourhood at night. Dave and his dog. Bert and his caseload.

  “Be my guest,” said Dave.

  They enjoy these collisions. Bert is a defence attorney. Dave his surrogate judge and jury.

  But Bert wasn’t thinking of legal arguments this night.

  “She doesn’t think I am committed to Christmas,” said Bert.

  Bert didn’t look happy. Not one bit.

  “All I said was I wanted turkey and gravy. For Christmas dinner. And suddenly I’m on the couch. She says I am welcome back when I find the Christmas spirit.”

  Dave looked down at Arthur. Arthur was sniffing a tree.

  “Uh-huh,” said Dave. Dave knew he didn’t have to say much here. Dave’s role in these conversations was to play the part of a Baptist congregation.

  “It’s not like we have turkey and gravy every week,” said Bert.

  “That’s right,” said Dave.

  “Apparently if I was Elizabethan,” said Bert, “I wouldn’t want turkey and gravy.”

  “No, you wouldn’t!” said Dave.

  There was a long pause.

  Dave ventured a question. “What would you want?”

  “What I’d want,” said Bert, “is wild game.”

  “That’s what you’d want,” said Dave.

  Then Bert shook his head morosely.

  Bert said, “She found a page of Elizabethan menus online.”

  Bert said, “She wants to roast a heron.”

  “Amen,” said Dave.

  —

  A HUSBAND LOOKING for the perfect present is like a knight of the Round Table on a quest for the Holy Grail. He can saddle up his trusty steed and head off gamely into the Christmas chaos—with courage as his trusty companion. But as soon as he leaves the comforts of his castle, he will find that his old pal, doubt, has saddled up the mule of confusion and is clip-clopping along at his side. And before he even gets to the malls, that old traitor, conviction, will have turned and fled. Deep in his anxious heart, our knight will begin to wonder if the thing he is looking for really exists. Oh, he has heard rumours. There was a man once, who said he heard of a fellow, who told a story about a guy, who found the perfect present. But no doubt that is just a legend. One of those stories people tell to promote hope among the recklessly faithful.