Home from the Vinyl Cafe
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
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.
S
IMON
& S
CHUSTER
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.
1. 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.
Polly Anderson’s Christmas Party
We may not be big
but we’re small
.
Framed motto hanging by the cash register
at the Vinyl Cafe
W
hen 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.