Christmas at the Vinyl Cafe

by Stuart McLean

  If you ever tracked him down, you’d probably find out the man who found the perfect present was just another poor sod alone in his bedroom on Christmas Eve, with a roll of wrapping paper, some Scotch tape, and a waffle iron.

  But just like Arthur’s knights, men head out every year. And just like last year, and the year before, Dave picked up his sword and shield this December and headed out to join them.

  —

  DAVE, ARTHUR, AND Bert were on another evening walk. It was Dave who was troubled this time. He looked at Bert Turlington and said, “I promised Morley I would make it snow.”

  Bert said, “Who are you? Al Gore?”

  Dave shrugged. “She said that’s all she wanted.”

  Bert said, “Does she have a waffle iron? You could get her a waffle iron.”

  —

  AND NOW IT was the week before Christmas. Lunchtime at Wong’s Scottish Meat Pies. Dave was sitting at the counter, an empty soup bowl in front of him. Kenny came out of the kitchen and set down a plate of barbecue pork and rice.

  Dave said, “I didn’t order that.”

  Kenny shrugged.

  There was a TV in the corner. The weather channel.

  Dave stared at the barbecue pork and then up at the TV.

  Dave said, “I promised Morley snow for Christmas.”

  Dave said, “When she was little, her dad used to make her an ice rink. How can I compete with that? She says snow is the only thing she wants.”

  Kenny was picking up the soup bowl. Kenny was wiping the counter.

  Kenny said, “Maybe she’d settle for a waffle iron.”

  The weather channel was pretty clear. It was going to get cold. But no one was calling for snow.

  On his way out, Dave said, “Maybe we’ll have one of those freak storms. Aren’t we supposed to be getting more freak storms?”

  —

  DAVE DIDN’T GO right back to work. He walked around for a while looking in windows. He wasn’t really paying attention. He was thinking about all the Christmases he had messed up. The year he brought home the Christmas tree with the wasp’s nest in the boughs. The year he burned Mary Turlington’s candle collection and set her hair on fire. The year he cooked the turkey. He headed back to his store determined he was going to do better this year. Determined he was going to keep his promise.

  —

  YOU CAN FIND just about anything on the internet.

  Google “wild game,” as Bert did the week before Christmas, and before you know it, you will be staring at an overwhelming number of businesses that would be delighted to ship you a box of dressed squirrel in time for Christmas dinner.

  But Elizabethan delicacies aren’t the only dubious ideas you’ll find. Google “Why won’t it snow?,” and if you are as diligent as a knight, you will, eventually, find yourself at a site that claims to house the most extensive information about home snowmaking on the web.

  Bert ordered a side of duck bacon, two young grouse, three Irish brown hare, four boar hind shanks, five Scottish wood pigeons, six venison chops, and two pounds of ground kangaroo.

  Dave downloaded plans for a snowmaking machine.

  It turns out that if you want to make snow, all you need is a garden hose, an air compressor, and less than a hundred dollars’ worth of plumbing fittings. Dave assembled his machine at his record store in an afternoon. Whistling while he worked. “Good King Wenceslas.”

  Dave was on the road to gift-giving perfection.

  —

  BEFORE YOU KNEW it, it was the day of Christmas Eve.

  Just as predicted, the temperature dropped. And just as predicted, there was no sign of snow anywhere.

  Mary Turlington showed up at Dave and Morley’s early that afternoon. She looked exhausted.

  “I’ve been up since 4 A.M.,” said Mary.

  She was holding a platter covered in wax paper.

  “Homemade wax paper,” said Mary. “Beeswax.”

  On the platter were a dozen shimmering nuggets of gold. Each one was about the size of a golf ball, each as smooth as a pearl.

  “Hazelnut truffle pralines,” said Mary. Then she said, “That’s edible gold leaf.”

  Mary had made the dessert from scratch. She had roasted the chocolate herself.

  “Ocumare beans from Venezuela,” she said proudly. She had toasted the hazelnuts. “Organic hazelnuts from Turkey.”

  She had been up since dawn—before dawn—dipping the nuts into the silky chocolate. She had used tweezers and a magnifying glass to cover each truffle with the edible gold leaf.

  “It’s not,” she said, pushing a strand of hair off her forehead, “as easy as it looks.”

  It didn’t look easy.

  “Fit for a queen,” said Morley.

  “No queens work this hard,” said Mary.

  Then she said, “I am running out of space. Could you keep them until dinner tomorrow?”

  It occurred to Morley that Mary did have the space. That she just wanted to show them off. You could hardly blame her. Morley touched one of the gold-encrusted chocolates carefully. They were stunning. She went to say something, but Bert pulled into the driveway, and Mary was off—waving a piece of paper in her hand.

  Mary met Bert in the driveway and handed him a shopping list. It included:

  a bunch of skirret

  a cup of verjuice

  some pennyroyal

  some whole nutmeg

  the blood of a hog

  a strainer

  Bert stared glumly at the list and muttered something under his breath that sounded like turkey.

  —

  DAVE DIDN’T BEGIN making snow until the middle of the night. A promise may be a promise. But a surprise is a surprise. He waited until everyone was asleep. Then he waited a little longer to be sure. When he was certain, he slipped out of bed and snuck out of the room. Arthur, asleep on top of the heat vent, cocked his head. When he saw Dave heading downstairs, Arthur stood up, shook, and followed.

  The lights on the Christmas tree were still on. Dave got dressed in their glow. He loved this. The secret quiet of Christmas Eve. All the little coloured lights. All the boxes and bags spilling across the living room.

  It wasn’t the presents that were important; it was the impulse behind them. The spirit they represented. The spirit of giving.

  Christmas gives you permission to say things out loud that you might otherwise not say. As he pulled on his socks, Dave felt a surge of emotion. It was like love, except…bigger. And it extended beyond his little house and family and included everyone. Dave shook his head. He was feeling love for people he had never met. People he would probably hate if he got to know them.

  He went outside.

  Arthur stood by the back door and whined. When Dave didn’t come back, Arthur went upstairs and climbed quietly onto the forbidden bed. He settled into Dave’s place, his head on Dave’s pillow.

  —

  IT WAS COLD outside and dark. Dave didn’t have time to waste. He pulled his toque low and got to it.

  He wrestled his new air compressor out of the trunk of the car and pushed it down the driveway. He fetched the black garden hose from the basement. He got his snow gun from its hiding place in the garage.

  The gun had a wand, and a chamber where the water from the hose would mix with the compressed air. According to the instructions, making snow was surprisingly easy. The air pressure would convert the water into misty droplets. As the mist sprayed across his property it would freeze in the chilly night, and, if all worked as it was supposed to—that is, if the air was just the right temperature and the droplets were just the right size—the mist would freeze and fall onto the ground as snow.

  It took Dave an hour to get everything set. He had a moment of panic when he discovered that the handle for his garden faucet was missing. He stood by his back porch, his breath coming in smoky puffs. He got a wrench, put it to the fixture, and finally cracked it. When the faucet opened, he ran back to the compressor and flicked it
on.

  It was louder than he had imagined. It sounded like a train.

  Upstairs, Arthur lifted his head. Morley stirred restlessly. Arthur sighed and cuddled beside her. Morley sighed and drifted back to sleep.

  Upstairs at the Turlingtons’, Mary stirred too.

  Mary had been sleeping fitfully all night. She was anxious about the day ahead. She had to get up at the crack of dawn for the second day running. A boar’s leg needs to roast slowly—for a full eight hours. And that was the least of it. Mary had a list a mile long: broil the wood pigeons, stew the hare, steam the suet pudding; and now she had to find a goose. She had just read that Elizabeth I ordered her entire country to serve goose at their Christmas feasts. It was, apparently, the first meal Elizabeth had eaten following Britain’s victory over the Spanish Armada. Where was she going to find a goose at this late date?

  Mary rolled over on her side and propped herself on one elbow. She was frowning. Something had woken her.

  Outside, Dave was holding his snow wand in front of him and, wonder of wonders, the mist that was hissing from the nozzle was arcing into the sky and floating onto his driveway. His driveway was turning white. Dave was making snow.

  Upstairs at the Turlingtons’, Mary was trying to wake her husband.

  “Bert,” said Mary, poking him. “It sounds like there’s a gas leak.”

  Mary turned on her bedside lamp.

  Bert rolled over and sighed. It did sound like a gas leak. He got up and walked toward the bedroom window. He was reaching for the curtain.

  “Bert!” said Mary. “Don’t make any sparks.”

  Bert jerked his hands back and rubbed them against his pyjamas; then, he pulled the curtain back.

  A shaft of light spilled across the driveway. Dave looked up and saw Bert’s silhouette.

  He smiled and blasted the window with his snow wand.

  “Whoa,” said Bert, jumping back with surprise. “It’s really snowing.”

  “What?” said Mary.

  “It’s a blizzard,” said Bert, peering out the window. “One of those freak storms. If this keeps up the city will be buried by morning.”

  Then he padded back to bed.

  “Bert,” said Mary, “what is the sound?”

  “It’s the wind,” said Bert. “It’s wicked out there. I couldn’t even see the driveway.”

  Mary said, “It sounds like a train, Bert.”

  Bert was already falling back to sleep.

  Bert said, “That’s what they always say about hurricanes.”

  Mary lay awake for another ten minutes.

  Bert started to snore.

  She punched him. Twice. To no effect. So she put her head under her pillow and pretty soon Dave was the only person awake for blocks.

  —

  HE WAS ALSO the happiest. After he blasted Bert, Dave danced down the driveway holding his snow wand over his head. He looked like Gene Kelly in Singin’ in the Rain. He was turning the world white. He had kept his promise.

  Three hours later, Dave had stopped dancing. Three hours later, he was standing in his driveway as cold as a February gravestone. His feet were numb, his fingers wet. He was chattering and dithery. He took a glove off and blew on his fingers.

  He still had a ways to go, but he had to warm up or he was going to freeze to death out there. He brought a step-ladder from the garage and tied his snow wand to the top rung. The higher it was, the farther the spray had to travel before it hit the ground. The farther it travelled, the more time it had to freeze.

  He leaned the ladder against the Turlingtons’ porch. He pointed the nozzle toward his property. Then he went inside.

  It was still six hours before Morley would wake up. When she did, he was going to send her to the window to see if it had snowed. It was going to be great.

  —

  MORLEY WOKE UP at 8 A.M. She reached out to Dave and said, “Merry Christmas.”

  Dave opened one weary eye. He was surprised to find himself in bed.

  “Merry Christmas,” he said, unsure, trying to assemble what had happened through the fog of his sleep. Then he remembered it all, and he sat up.

  He had finally got the perfect present. He had finally hit the ball clear out of the park. For once, Christmas was about to go off without a hitch.

  He said, “Why don’t you go and check. Go see if it snowed.”

  Morley was walking toward the window, the same window where it had all begun. She was pulling the curtain open.

  —

  IT WAS ONE of those bright clear winter mornings. One of those days when the sun is shining and the sky is blue. Morley looked out the window. The entire neighbourhood was green. Except for her yard. Morley’s yard was a winter wonderland. There was snow everywhere.

  “Dave,” she said.

  And Dave, who was still sitting in bed, said it again. “Merry Christmas.” And then, “I love you.”

  They woke the kids, and they all ran outside.

  His snow machine had toppled over on its back. But it was still running. And the snow was perfect. There was so much snow, there was even a big drift between their house and the Turlingtons’.

  Sam started to make a snowman. Dave hurled a snowball at him, and they had a snowball fight. Then the four of them trooped back in and had a leisurely breakfast. They opened their presents. Then they went outside again—all of them—and they played in Morley’s snow. It was Sam who eventually climbed to the top of the snowdrift and called out.

  “Hey,” called Sam. “Look!”

  He was pointing at the Turlingtons’ house. It had been hidden by the drift.

  Sam was pointing at the same thing that had stopped Carl Lowbeer in his tracks hours earlier. Carl had been up early that morning walking the dog when he had come across the arresting sight—so stunning that he had pulled out his cell phone and woken Gerta.

  “You’ve got to see this,” he said.

  Some people create spectacles of Christmas fancy with lights and decorations every year. They transform their houses to delight and amaze others. And sometimes when someone does something especially wonderful, word will spread and people will drive from across the city to take a look. Did you hear about that house on Elm with all the lights? But this, this was something else. This was magnificent. This was truly original. The Turlingtons, those inveterate Christmas fanatics, had transformed the entire outside of their house into a giant ice sculpture. The Turlingtons’ house looked like one of those Swedish ice hotels. Carl couldn’t believe it. Was there anything Mary Turlington wouldn’t do for Christmas?

  And now Sam was marvelling at the same thing.

  “Look,” said Sam, pointing at the ice that was continuing to form as the snowmaking machine belched water mist onto the side of the Turlingtons’ house.

  Dave climbed up the drift. What Dave saw was the Turlingtons’ power lines lying on the ground.

  He also saw that there wasn’t a window or door that hadn’t been frozen shut.

  “Uh-oh,” said Dave.

  The Turlingtons had been trapped in their house since dawn. And as far as they knew, so had the rest of the city.

  Now Bert, or more accurately, a shadowy figure that appeared to be Bert, was pressed against the living-room window. His arm was moving up and down against the glass.

  Dave squinted at the window and then looked at Sam.

  Dave said, “Can you make out what he is doing?”

  Sam said, “I think he is writing.”

  “Writing?” said Dave.

  Sam was staring at the distorted figure of Bert through the icy window.

  “Yeah,” said Sam. “He’s scratching something into the frost. He’s writing, ‘SOS.’”

  Behind Bert, and out of view, Mary Turlington, in her floor-length Elizabethan gown and large white powdered wig, was kneeling in front of the living-room fireplace. Determined Mary, never-say-die Mary, was holding a stick over the flames—trying to roast a frozen pigeon like a marshmallow.

&nb
sp; —

  IT TOOK DAVE and Morley nearly an hour to chip their way through the ice that had sealed up the Turlingtons’ front door, the entire Turlington family standing on the other side, cheering them on the whole time.

  The Turlingtons thought it was the Red Cross, coming to rescue them.

  When the door opened, and Bert and the kids saw Dave and Morley standing on their stoop, and they took in their green front lawn, and the green neighbourhood, there was a moment of stunned silence.

  Mary was back at the fire. Mary had just removed a scorched and ash-covered carcass from the flames. When she saw Morley, Mary wiped her greasy hands on her wig, struggled up, and muttered, “Those Elizabethans were nuts.”

  —

  IT WAS MORLEY who invited the Turlingtons for supper.

  “Well,” sighed Mary, who had just experienced a more authentic Elizabethan Christmas than she had counted on, “you do have our dessert.”

  —

  AND SO THE Turlingtons, in all their greasy soot-stained splendour, came for Christmas dinner.

  And as tends to happen when neighbours drop in, and there are a few too many people for the family table, dinner took on an unexpected festive turn.

  Bert sat on a piano bench at one end of the table revelling in his plate of turkey and potatoes. “Gravy?” said Bert joyfully when Morley offered. “I love gravy.”

  Even poor Mary, whose big white wig seemed oddly appropriate at the table where everyone else was wearing paper crowns, seemed to be enjoying herself.

  When they cleared the turkey from the table, Mary said, “Where are the chocolates? I’ll get them.”

  And Dave said, “No, no. You sit. Let me do it.”