Home from the Vinyl Cafe (32 page)

Neither of them imagined Rebecca Morton, five years old, kindergarten, on the sidewalk in front of the school clutching her mother’s leg, screaming loudly enough that she was heard a full block away.

“Take me home,” she was crying.

Certainly, neither of them—Dave nor Morley—imagined Duncan Sheppel, grade seven, would have a Swiss Army knife in his pocket. Or that Mrs. Jenkins, on yard duty that morning, would react with what Dave later described as hysteria when confronted with a frog head.

“If she hadn’t fainted,” he said glumly to Morley that night, “things wouldn’t have gotten out of hand.” Even Dave had to admit things had gotten out of hand.

Children were running wildly over the yard, girls chasing boys, boys chasing girls, everyone chasing frogs. Rebecca Morton provided the unfortunate sound track for the whole sorry scene.

“What sort of idiot,” Dave overheard Rebecca’s mother saying, “would have done this?”

“Out of hand?” said an icy Nancy Cassidy, the school principal, as Dave sat across from her desk the next morning. “It was like a prison riot.” Nancy Cassidy had always struck Dave as a gentle soul. Now she was reprimanding him as if he were a child.

“What on earth did you think you were doing?” she demanded. “Perhaps you would consider some form of counseling?”

Dave had already spent an hour on his knees in the school yard with Floyd, the janitor, scraping frogs up with a putty knife. Surely, he thought, this was enough. Clearly, it was not. And that was why, on the following Monday morning, the entire school gathered in the lunchroom so Dave could explain what he was thinking when he had brought the frogs. Why frogs were such a joyful memory—memories he had hoped they would capture as they went about capturing the frogs. And why it was wrong to remove a frog’s head. It was his idea to make this speech. It was one of the worst moments in his life.

The next morning, when Duncan Sheppel saw Sam walking across the school yard, he fell in beside him and said, “Your dad’s pretty cool.”

Sam didn’t know what to say. It felt odd to have this older boy walking beside him. He wasn’t sure if the boy was teasing him or not. He looked around to see if anyone was watching. “He’s all right,” he said.

Then Duncan pulled out his Swiss Army knife. “I’m not supposed to have this,” he said. “I’m afraid they might take it away. Could you hold it until three o’clock?”

Sam nodded dumbly and took the knife and stuffed it into his pocket. He had never had a knife in his pocket before. All day he could feel it, hard and full of potential. He returned it to Duncan after school, by the climber, carefully.

Mostly, when they pass each other in the school yard now, Duncan ignores Sam, but from time to time he nods and says, “Hi.”

This
is what Sam will remember of everything. Not the thrill of finding treasures or the joys of catching frogs. Rather, that his father came to school one day and talked about memories and that Duncan Sheppel, who was in grade seven, lent him his knife once, and sometimes said hi to him.

               
T
he Seagull
was extended for two weeks, and might have been held over for two more, had Anna Lindquist not had to be back in London by mid October.

The week before she left, Anna appeared in Morley’s office and said she wanted to throw a cast party on closing night. She wanted a room at the Palazzo. And champagne. Could Morley help with the details?

Organizing the party gradually took over Morley’s life. There were constant interruptions from Anna, and Morley ended up having to come in even earlier to keep up with her own work.

When closing night finally arrived, Morley was so fed up with Anna Lindquist, and so utterly exhausted, that she said she wasn’t going to the party.

“It’s her last night,” said Dave. “You’ll never have to see her again. Just go.”

So Morley went. She spent most of the evening on the balcony, smoking Ralph’s cigarettes and drinking too much of Anna Lindquist’s white wine.

“At least she’s paying,” she said.

“I didn’t know you smoked,” said Ralph.

“I don’t,” said Morley, reaching for another cigarette.

At midnight Anna Lindquist stood in the apartment doorway,
a cigarette holder dangling from her right hand, her left running through Martin’s hair. Martin, who had played her young lover in
The Seagull
, was not yet thirty. Anna Lindquist was fifty-five if she was a day.

“How long has
that
been going on?” asked Morley.

“I don’t even want to think about it,” said Ralph. “Let me get you another drink.”

It was the last time Morley saw Anna—but not the last she heard of her.

The next morning when Dave and Morley woke up, it was snowing. The snow turned to rain before breakfast. It was just a whiff of winter, but the warning shot propelled Morley to make the annual trip down into the basement. She headed into the darkness like a migrating goose, carrying a dim memory of Sam’s snow boots, which might have been blue and maybe still fit. She waved her arm in front of her in the darkness, as if trying to brush away a spider web. She groped for the string that turned on the storeroom light, then she reached up among the pipes, praying as she did that there was a lightbulb in the socket so she wouldn’t stick her finger in an empty socket and die.

Morley knew she was on a fool’s mission. She knew in her heart that the boots weren’t down there. And if they were, she wasn’t going to find them. Not in October. She would find them in June. When she was down there looking for bathing suits. Sam’s boots had probably spent the spring at the bottom of a lost-and-found box at a school he never attended. And now? They weren’t in the basement. They were on the back of a shelf in a Goodwill store, miles from home.

Morley trudged upstairs. “We’ll have to get Sam new winter boots on the weekend,” she said.

Dave nodded.

On Wednesday two unexpected letters arrived at the theater. The first, addressed to the accounting department, was from the Palazzo. It was a bill for Anna Lindquist’s party—$4,700.

Morley threw the bill on Ralph’s desk. “I don’t believe it,” she said. “It was clear from the beginning. She was paying for the party, all of it.”

Jennifer, who opened the mail, wasn’t sure what to do with the second letter. It was handwritten on pale blue vellum—a heartfelt thank-you from Anna Lindquist.

Dear Morty
, it began.

Jennifer took it to Ralph.

“We don’t have aMorty,” she said. “Who could she mean?”

When Dave woke up the next morning, Morley was sitting in bed drinking coffee and reading the newspaper. This wasn’t part of the normal routine. Dave peered at the clock radio and then at his wife.

“I’m sick,” she said.

Dave propped himself up. She didn’t look sick to him.

“I am,” she said.

She put the paper down and stretched languidly. “So are you,” she said. “I think you should get someone to open the store.” Morley leaned forward and put her face close to Dave’s. “I don’t think you should go to work. Not the way you’re feeling.”

Dave reached up and touched his forehead. It was a reflex.

Morley nodded. “I think it has a fever.” She jumped out of bed, wandered to the window, and stretched again. “We’re staying home. We’re taking a mental-health day.”

Dave said, “I can’t do that.”

Morley said, “Yes, you can. Phone Brian. He’s always looking for extra hours.”

Dave said, “I’ve never done anything like that in my life. Ever.”

Morley said, “Dave, you
own
the business. If you want to stay home, you’re allowed. If you really were sick, everything would work out.”

Dave said, “Yeah, but …”

It was not that the record store was too busy. Nor was it that Dave was the kind of man who couldn’t goof off. Dave had whiled away entire mornings at the Vinyl Cafe with a Rubik’s Cube, ignoring dusty shelves, piles of filing, and overdue accounts. Dave could goof off. It was his sense of himself that was affronted—his place in the world. Every morning, after he woke and showered and dressed and ate breakfast, Dave headed off to open his record store. If he didn’t have to do this today, then he didn’t have to do it tomorrow. Or, for that matter, ever. And if he didn’t have to do this, what
did
he have to do? By asking him to stay home, Morley was calling into question his place in the universe.

She said, “We’ve been married fifteen years, Dave. It’s time for some spontaneity. We are going to spend one unplanned perfect day together. I am going to that gourmet-food store near Thea’s and buy supplies. I’m going to get some videos. We are going to eat and watch movies. And other things.”

It was the “other things” that got Dave.

He shoved a wad of Kleenex in his mouth and phoned Brian and said, “I’m sick. Can you open up?”

Brian said, “Yeah. Sure. What are you eating, anyway? It sounds like your mouth is full of Kleenex.”

Morley said, “I’m going to get the food and the videos. I’ll be back in an hour.”

----

Dave was hardly ever home alone.

He made a pot of coffee and settled down with the paper. He wondered if Morley would get some of the chocolate-covered strawberries he loved. He wondered if she would get some crusty bread and smoked cold cuts. He felt deliciously guilty. He felt free.

This
was
a good idea, he thought.

He wondered if they had any wine. Maybe for lunch he would open the bottle of Bordeaux they had bought at the duty-free shop two years ago.

The telephone rang.

Dave stared at the phone, but he didn’t make a move to answer it.

He knew people who could do this. He had friends who could let their phone ring. He couldn’t.

He sat at the table and stared at the phone as if hypnotized. It rang two, three, four times.

When it stopped, the house felt immensely quiet.

Dave felt wonderful.

He didn’t check the answering machine.

He didn’t care who had called.

No one was going to bother him today.

He got up and walked across the kitchen, moving slowly and deliberately. He poured himself another cup of coffee. He read a movie review.