Vinyl Cafe Unplugged (19 page)

But Bert didn’t open the cupboard.

He turned on the stove.

It took about a minute for the cupboard to start heating up.

Mary is slightly claustrophobic at the best of times. She gets anxious when the subway stops inexplicably between stations; when elevators seem to have arrived at the floor but the doors don’t open; when the power goes off and everything is so black you can’t see your hand.

She couldn’t see her hand now and she was starting to get anxious. She felt as if something was sitting on her chest. She could feel her heart beating rapidly, feel the moths beginning to flutter around her stomach. She could also feel her leg going to sleep.

In the kitchen Bert was not only making an omelette, he was mixing juice and fixing a salad. She heard the fridge door swing open and a little exclamation of joy puncture the kitchen.

“Whoa! Look at this,” he said. “You want an olive?”

Mary opened the cupboard door a crack so she could see too. Bert was holding out the plate of antipasto she had prepared for supper.

“We shouldn’t eat much of this,” said Bert. “Spread it around a bit so the boss won’t notice.”

The idiots were trying to rearrange her salad plate to cover their footprints. Mary almost crawled out then and there. She imagined herself appearing in front of them as naked as truth itself,
“Won’t notice? Won’t notice? . . . I notice everything.”

But then what? Walk upstairs? Crawl back into the cupboard?

Her leg was beginning to cramp. Now it was starting to twitch. She thought of what happened to their dog’s back leg when you scratched its belly. It felt as if her leg was going to start banging away like the dog’s at any moment.

Damn. If she started to thump away like that—as if she was out of control—and Bert opened the door and found her.

Ohmigod,
she thought.

A half-hour passed. Forty-five minutes. The omelette was eaten and forgotten. She had been in there an hour and fifteen minutes. She felt as if she had been canned. It was like a steam bath. She was afraid she might be running out of air.

Dave and Bert were still sitting at the table—picking at a cheesecake that was supposed to be for dessert.

Bert said, “I was supposed to get beer. Do you want to come? Or you can stay. The Canadian Tire catalogue just came. You can stay and check it out if you want.”

Mary didn’t hear what Dave decided.

She heard the patio door open and close. Then she heard nothing. A deep and dead silence. She opened the door a few inches and light and cool air flooded in. She couldn’t see anyone or anything. She decided to wait for a few moments.

Even if she had checked, even if she had opened the door completely, she wouldn’t have seen Dave slouched on the couch in the family room staring morosely at the Canadian Tire catalogue. The island counter blocked him from her view. He turned a few pages absentmindedly. He looked at his wrist and up at the phone on the wall. Twenty-five minutes had passed since he had last called home.

He stood up and walked across the family room to the small white desk beside the phone. There were cubbyholes on the wall above the desk, each one carefully labeled: Bills to Pay, Filing, School Notices, Pay Stubs.
Just like Mary Turlington,
he thought,
every piece of paper obsessively organized
.

Dave’s eyes widened. There was an envelope in the slot marked Pay Stubs. Reddick and Rowe. The accounting firm where Mary worked. He reached out and slid the envelope up an inch and a half. It had been slit open. He could see through the little window that there was still a check, or at least a check stub, inside.

He dropped the envelope back in place. He would have left it there if it had been Bert’s check. But it was Mary’s check. And Mary had made him feel like a child for too long. She might not have said it straight out, but Mary had made it all too clear that his involvement with rock and roll precluded him from the world of adults. Yet he knew that if he was an executive with some major record label she wouldn’t find him childish. He suspected that Mary would be tickled to have Bruce Springsteen as a neighbor, would be delighted to have Sting over for supper. So it wasn’t about music. It was about
money
. Well, how much did
she
think was enough? How much was
she
being paid to live her grown-up life?

The answer was in his hand.

He turned the envelope over and pulled the pay stub out. Upside down.

Something startled him. There was a noise, a breath, something he didn’t quite hear, something he sensed more than he heard, more of a presence than a sound. Something that told him he wasn’t alone. He felt as if he was being watched. He whirled around and for the briefest moment locked eyes with Mary.

Ohmigod,
he thought.
Ohmigod. Ohmigod. Ohmigod
.

She was standing on the far side of the kitchen counter.

He looked down at the envelope he was holding and then back across the counter.

She has seen me,
he was thinking, the sickening sense of being caught descending upon him like a fog. He was only dimly aware that there was something peculiar about the way she looked.

But she wasn’t there anymore. She had vanished—a pink blur, gone so fast that Dave couldn’t be sure about what he had seen. He dropped the pay stub back in the slot and sat down on the couch. There was a brief sense of reprieve, then there was humiliation, embarrassment, confusion.

He went home, not sure whether he could ever come back.

Mary didn’t reappear until Bert returned with the beer. Soon after Bert came home, she wandered downstairs in her Alfred Sung separates, wearing a string of pearls and looking her normally sophisticated self. The zipper on the back of the skirt, however, was not zipped completely shut. And Bert had to tuck in the label of her top, which was sticking out in a most un-Mary-like way.

There was an odd air to the dinner that night. A vague undercurrent of something that Morley tried to quantify as she and Dave walked home.

She started with Mary’s hair.

“What did you think of it?” she asked Dave.

“What?” said Dave.

“It was pretty high fashion,” said Morley. “All stiff and swept over to one side. Like it was glued or something.”

“I didn’t notice,” said Dave.

Mary had drunk more than usual.

“Did you see the look Bert gave her when she opened the last bottle of wine?”

Dave shook his head. Grunted noncommittally.

Morley kept going as she unlocked the front door.

“There was
something
going on. I don’t know. Do you think they’re having a hard time?”

Dave shrugged. “I dunno,” he said.

He had barely looked at Mary all night, his eyes skittering away from her whenever he talked. When Bert brought up provincial politics, Dave began an anti-government tirade but petered out almost immediately. When they started talking about his record store Dave braced himself for the requisite quip from Mary, but nothing came.

“You and Mary usually squabble about something,” said Morley. “Maybe you two are mellowing out or something.”

“Maybe,” said Dave. He was heading up the stairs.

“Do you think you could bear to see more of them?”

Dave stopped halfway up the stairs. “I think we’ve seen enough of each other for now,” he said.

Susan Is Serious

In January, Morley received a letter from Calgary, from a university friend she hadn’t spoken to in over ten years. It was a breezy note full of family news, about her daughter and her dog, about hair dye and hot flashes, as if they had never stopped talking. As if they were still sitting up all night. Four pages. Handwritten.

We are coming to town in February,
it ended.
Matthew is getting an award from Junior Achievement—Enterprise in Action. We should get together. It would be so good to see you. Love, Susan.

Morley wrote back that night.
Why don’t you stay with us?

It never occurred to her that Susan would accept.

Though she wasn’t unhappy when she did.

Morley was
delighted
about the prospect of seeing Susan again.

And
her kids.

Especially her kids.

Morley had never met Susan’s children. Imagine—the two of them with kids. Husbands. Pets. Home and School. Moms.
Sheesh
. Morley was
excited
about the visit.

Morley and Susan shared a house in their last two years of university—the Bird House. Six bedrooms—seven girls. Colleen slept in what should have been the living room. She swore she could hear rats moving around the basement at night.

There were enough memories in those years to last a lifetime. Morley would have welcomed any of those women into her house without a second thought.

Even that old guinea hen Harriet Swerdkoff.

But here comes Susan—the organized one.

Morley had lingered over Susan’s letter when she finished reading it. Her handwriting hadn’t changed. The letters still big and round. The
i
’s still dotted with circles.

When you missed a class it was Susan’s notes you borrowed.

Susan the duck. Susan who tried a little harder than anyone else. Susan whose room was a little neater. Susan who was a little more responsible, a little more . . . uptight?

Well, maybe.

But at a time when everyone else was confused about the future, Susan always knew exactly what she wanted.

Susan who had a subscription to both
Bride’s Own
and
The Economist
.

Susan. And Susan’s kids. A fifteen-year-old daughter. And Matthew, the twelve-year-old Junior Achiever.

They arrived on a Tuesday afternoon. Took a taxi from the airport. A limo, actually.

“Is she a rock star?” whispered Sam, when he saw the sleek car idling at the curb.

The only other time anyone had arrived at their house in a limousine it was Mark Knopfler, on his way to a concert in Buffalo, diverted to Toronto during a snowstorm. He spent the night with them—driftwood from Dave’s past life.

“No,” said Morley. “A friend. She’s an old friend.”

Susan emerged from the limo in designer jeans and a brown suede jacket. She looked back over her shoulder, waiting for her daughter, before she strode up Morley’s front walk. Her green leather purse matched her green leather shoes. Her deep red lipstick matched her deep red nails. She was wearing a stylish gold chain.

Morley was waiting at the door, running her hand through her hair, seeing herself through Susan’s eyes. It was not a pretty sight—Birkenstocks, jeans (worn through at the knee), one of Dave’s old shirts.

“Come in. Come in!” Morley shouted. But that’s not what she was thinking. She was thinking,
Damn it. Damn it
.

“Susan,” she said, her arms wide. Then she said, “You must be Matthew.”

The boy took off a pair of sunglasses—tortoiseshell—and slipped them into a glasses case.

“Pleased to meet you,” he said, holding out his hand, smiling, making eye contact. A firm shake. A Junior Achiever shake.

“Sam,” said Morley. She had to turn around to find him. Sam had begun to back away from the door. “Sam!” said Morley, pushing him forward, “this is Matthew.”

Out snapped Matthew’s hand. Sam looked down at it in confusion, then back at his mother. Matthew’s hand continued to hover in the air between them. Sam had never shaken hands with someone his age. He knew what he was expected to do. But it felt
wrong
. He started to back away again. He caught Morley’s frown, stopped, said, “HI?” and waved his arm vaguely in the direction of this boy.

“Pleased to meet you,
Sam!
” said Matthew.

Sam looked back at his mother.

“Why don’t you two go downstairs,” she said.

Matthew took off his shoes and set them neatly by the door.

Morley turned to the girl. Jennifer. Fifteen. Jennifer was wearing blue jeans. Rolled at the ankle so you could see her socks.

White.

The jeans had been ironed—there was a crease running down the front. Jennifer’s hair was short, in the fashion of the 1920s. And neat. Maybe even sprayed neat. She was wearing three hair clips. One in the front and two on either side—each one carefully positioned to restrain rogue hairs that might make a break.

“And you must be . . . Jennifer,” said Morley.

All this was happening very quickly.

The daughter, Jennifer, stepped forward and stuck out
her
hand. Like her brother, she looked Morley straight in the eye. It was a confidence belied by the way she shifted her weight uncomfortably from one foot to the other. They shook hands. A moment later Jennifer was in the living room, her backpack open at her feet. She was examining her hair in a handheld mirror, as if the act of shaking hands might have knocked something out of place—patting the top of her head the way a mechanic would pat the hood of a troublesome, but favorite, car.