Home from the Vinyl Cafe Read online

  Also by Stuart McLean

  FICTION

  Stories from the Vinyl Cafe

  Vinyl Cafe Unplugged

  Vinyl Cafe Diaries

  NONFICTION

  Welcome Home: Travels in

  Smalltown Canada

  The Morningside World

  of Stuart McLean

  EDITED

  When We Were Young: A Collection

  of Canadian Stories

  HOME

  from the

  Vinyl

  CAFE

  A YEAR OF STORIES

  STUART McLEAN

  SIMON & SCHUSTER

  NEW YORK LONDON TORONTO SYDNEY

  SIMON & SCHUSTER

  Rockefeller Center

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and

  incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are

  used fictitiously. Anyresemblance to actual events or locales or

  persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2005 by Stuart McLean

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction

  in whole or in part in any form.

  The stories in this collection were previously published

  by Penguin Canada in either Stories from the Vinyl Cafe,

  copyright © 1995 by Stuart McLean or Home from the Vinyl Cafe,

  copyright © 1998 by Stuart McLean.

  SIMON & SCHUSTER and colophon

  are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  For information about special discounts for bulk purchases,

  please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales

  at 1-800-456-6798 or [email protected]

  author’s website: CBC.CA/VINYLCAFE

  Designed by Jeanette Olender

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  McLean, Stuart, 1948-

  Home from the Vinyl Cafe : a year of stories / Stuart McLean.

  p. cm.

  “The stories in this collection were previously published … in either Stories

  from the Vinyl Cafe … or Home from the Vinyl Cafe”—T.p. verso.

  Contents: Dave cooks the turkey—Holland—Valentine’s Day—Sourdough—Music

  lessons—“Be-Bop-A-Lula”—Burd—Emil—The birthday party—Driving lessons—

  Summer camp—Road trip—Pig—Labor days—School days—A day off—On the

  roof—Polly Anderson’s Christmas party—The jockstrap.

  Canada—Social life and customs—Fiction.

  I. Title.

  PR9199.3.M42445H66 2005 813′.54—dc22 2004065327

  ISBN 0-7432-7000-2

  ISBN: 978-0-7432-7000-7

  eISBN: 978-1-451-60403-0

  For Don Jones

  With thanks, for everything.

  Contents

  WINTER

  Dave Cooks the Turkey

  Holland

  Valentine’s Day

  Sourdough

  Music Lessons

  SPRING

  “Be-Bop-A-Lula”

  Burd

  Emil

  The Birthday Party

  SUMMER

  Driving Lessons

  Summer Camp

  Road Trip

  AUTUMN

  The Pig

  Labor Days

  School Days

  A Day Off

  WINTER AGAIN

  On the Roof

  Polly Anderson’s Christmas Party

  The Jockstrap

  We may not be big

  but we’re small.

  Framed motto hanging by the cash register

  at the Vinyl Cafe

  Winter

  Dave Cooks the Turkey

  When Carl Lowbeer bought his wife, Gerta, The Complete Christmas Planner, he did not understand what he was doing. If Carl had known how much Gerta was going to enjoy the book, he would not have given it to her. He bought it on the afternoon of December 23. A glorious day. Carl left work at lunch and spent the afternoon drifting around downtown—window-shopping and listening to carolers and falling into conversation with complete strangers. When he stopped for coffee, he was shocked to see it was five-thirty. Shocked because the only things he had bought were a book by Len Deighton and some shaving cream in a tube—both things he planned to wrap and give himself. That was when the Joy of Christmas, who had sat down with him and bought him a double-chocolate croissant, said, I think I’ll stay here and have another coffee while you finish your shopping. The next thing Carl knew, he was ripping through the mall like a prison escapee.

  On Christmas Eve, Carl found himself staring at a bagful of stuff he couldn’t remember buying. He wondered if he might have picked up someone else’s bag by mistake, but then he found a receipt with his signature on it. Why would he have paid twenty-three dollars for a slab of metal to defrost meat when they already owned a microwave oven that would do it in half the time? What could he possibly have been thinking when he bought the Ab Master?

  Carl did remember buying The Complete Christmas Planner. The picture on the cover had drawn him to the book—a woman striding across a front lawn with a wreath of chili peppers tucked under her arm. She looked like she was in a hurry, and that made him think of Gerta, so he bought the book—never imagining that it was something his wife had been waiting for all her life. Carl had been as surprised as anyone last May when Gerta began the neighborhood Christmas group. Although not, perhaps, as surprised as Dave was when his wife, Morley, joined it.

  “It’s not about Christmas, Dave,” said Morley. “It’s about getting together.”

  The members of Gerta’s group, all women, met every second Tuesday night at a different house. They drank tea or beer, and the host baked something, and they worked on stuff. Usually until about eleven.

  “But that’s not the point,” said Morley. “The point is getting together. It’s about neighborhood—not about what we’re actually doing.”

  But there was no denying that they were doing stuff.

  Christmas stuff.

  “It’s wrapping paper,” said Morley.

  “You’re making paper?” said Dave.

  “Decorating paper,” said Morley. “This is hand-printed paper. Do you know how much this would cost?”

  That was in July.

  In August they dipped oak leaves in gold paint and hung them in bunches from their kitchen ceilings to dry.

  Then there was the stenciling weekend. The weekend Dave thought if he didn’t keep moving, Morley would stencil him.

  In September, Dave couldn’t find an eraser anywhere in the house. Morley said, “That’s because I took them all with me. We’re making rubber stamps.”

  “You are making rubber stamps?” said Dave.

  “Out of erasers,” said Morley.

  “People don’t even buy rubber stamps anymore,” said Dave.

  “This one is going to be an angel,” said Morley, reaching into her bag. “I need a metallic ink-stamp pad. Do you think you could buy me a metallic ink-stamp pad and some more gold paint? And we need some of those snap things that go into Christmas crackers.”

  “The what things?” said Dave.

  “The exploding things you pull,” said Morley. “We’re going to make Christmas crackers. Where do you think we could get the exploding things?”

  There were oranges drying in the basement on the clothes rack and blocks of wax for candles stacked on the Ping-Pong table.

 
One day in October, Morley said, “Do you know there are only sixty-seven shopping days until Christmas?”

  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?”

  Morley said, “If we want 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 started 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.”

  Which he immediately regretted, because Morley said, “Don’t make fun of me, Dave.” And left the room. And then came back. Like a locomotive.

  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. 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—that 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 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 forward over the table. “The train starts at a town called First Day at School, Dave, and it goes to a village called Halloween, and then through 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. This 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’m 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 thinking maybe he was the engineer. Maybe he was up in the locomotive. Busy with men’s work.

  Morley squinted at her husband. “You’re the guy in the bar car, Dave, pushing the button to ask for another drink.”

  From 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 would 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’ll 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’ve 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 wrapped and under the tree and he was snuggled, warm and safe, in bed. It was one of his favorite moments of the year. He nudged his wife’s feet. She gasped.

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

  Dave groaned. He pulled himself out of bed and went downstairs. He couldn’t find a turkey in the freezer—in either freezer—and he was about to call for help when the truth landed on him like an anvil. 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 went upstairs, Morley was 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 two 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 Bolivia 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 three 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 four A.M., with the help of a taxi driver named Mohammed, Dave found an open store. He bought the last turkey there: twelve pounds, frozen as hard as a cannonball, grade B—whatever that meant. He was home by four-thirty and by six-thirty 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 like it had made a break from the slaughterhouse and dragged itself a block or two before it was captur
ed 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 had died in a knife fight.

  Dave would have been happy if disfiguration had been 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,” 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 one-thirty,” 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 to him about the automatic timer, and Dave had never had cause to ask about it. The oven had been set the day before to go on at five-thirty. Morley had been baking a squash casserole for Christmas dinner—she always did the vegetables the day before—and until the oven timer was unset, nothing anybody did was going to turn it on.

  At two P.M. Dave retrieved the bottle of Scotch from the basement and poured himself a drink. 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 to 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 two-thirty 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.”