Vinyl Cafe Unplugged (9 page)

By the beginning of November Sam was good enough to sit in front of the television and knit while he watched TV. Whenever Stephanie appeared, he would thrust the needles into Morley’s hands or stuff them under the couch. Morley hauled an old black-and-white portable out of the basement and set it up on his bureau. He sat in his room all weekend, the needles clicking away like a train.

“My fingers hurt,” he said on Sunday night.

The next Saturday he was invited to Jeremy’s house for a sleep-over and he wanted to know what he could take his knitting in. Morley was afraid he would get teased, but she packed it up nevertheless, and he headed off with his toothbrush and his sleeping bag and his bag of wool. At nine o’clock Jeremy’s mother phoned and said, “You aren’t going to believe this. You know what they’re doing? They’re downstairs watching
Lethal Weapon Three
. . . and knitting.”

Suddenly knitting was the thing to do. Suddenly
everyone
wanted to knit.

The next weekend there was a hockey tournament in Whitby. Dave drove Sam, Jeremy and two other boys.

“They all sat in the back,” he said. “And they were talking about hockey and the game and how they were going to cream the team from Whitby—the kind of stuff you’d expect to hear from a backseat of little boys. And then one of them said, ‘Damn. I dropped a stitch.’

“They’d talk about hockey some more. Then all you’d hear was the clicking of their needles, and then someone would say something like ‘Look how long Jeff ’s is. Jeff, you’re going so fast. You must have done this before.’

“It got quite giddy. One of them said they should knit on the bench between shifts. It was rather wonderful.”

Morley didn’t think it was wonderful at all.

As far as she could tell, her Christmas project was headed off the rails. She was
worried
about Sam. She thought he was getting compulsive about the knitting. He would disappear into his room and sit on the edge of his bed and knit for hours. And he kept unravelling everything he did. It was never perfect enough.

“It’s fun to destroy it,” he said. “I like the feeling of the knots coming undone.”

It didn’t seem healthy.

But that wasn’t the worst of it.

On Saturday afternoon while Dave was in Whitby, Becky Laurence had shown up at the front door.

“Is Stephanie home?” she asked. She was holding a package wrapped in brown paper.

“No,” said Morley. “Stephanie is out. Shopping.”

Becky had turned to go, but then she had stopped and held the parcel up and said, “Tell her the present is ready. Tell her she owes me fifteen bucks.”

She had shown up twice more that afternoon.

“Tell her I need the money,” she said.

Morley was fairly certain that Stephanie had pulled Dave’s name out of the pot on that night in October. And that placed Morley in a terrible position. She wanted to talk to Dave about what was going on.
Stephanie had paid her best friend to make a present!
—something so completely contrary to the spirit of the family that Morley had no idea what to do about it. But the present was supposed to be for Dave. And Morley didn’t want to hurt him.

Anyway, as far as Morley could tell,
Dave
hadn’t begun anything himself.

There was barely a week to go before Christmas, and her entire project was turning into a fiasco.
Her
chair was a mess.
Stephanie
was cheating. And Dave thought
Sam’s
knitting compulsion was cute.

“Jacques Plante used to knit,” he said.

“What?” said Morley.

“Jacques Plante was a goalie for the Montreal Canadiens,” said Dave.

“I know who Jacques Plante was,” said Morley.

“He was the oldest of eleven children,” said Dave. “And they were poor. And his mother needed his help to make clothes for his brothers and sisters. When he was in the NHL he knitted his own underwear.”

“What’s your point?” said Morley.

“He said knitting calmed him down.”

“You think Sam
needs
to knit?”

“I have a friend,” said Dave, “who thinks the reason Jacques Plante was such a good goalie was because of all the knitting. He believes the knitting improved his hand-eye coordination.”

That night, on her way to bed, Morley found Sam under the covers, knitting by flashlight. She went in and sat down.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“My wrists are sore,” he said.

The next night as she was preparing supper she could hear the knitting needles clicking against something.

When Sam came down for dinner he was wearing his skate-board wrist guards.

After dinner Sam called her into his bedroom. He was crying.

“I’ll never finish the coat,” he said.

He was pointing at the sum total of his knitting: a rectangle of blue wool about six inches wide and a foot and a half long. One side of the rectangle was completely asymmetrical. He didn’t seem to be able to maintain constant tension as he worked. Each row was coming out a different length.

“It’s . . . lovely,” said Morley.

“No. It’s not,” said Sam. “I hate it.”

He began to unravel it in front of her.

Morley brought Sam’s chair home on the Monday before Christmas. The next night Dave found
her
in the basement crying. She had a bolt of beige corduroy at her feet. She was trying to tack a huge piece of foam to one of the arms.

Dave watched her for a moment without saying anything. Then he reached out and touched the top of the chair. The legs were uneven. It wobbled unsteadily.

“It’s pathetic,” said Morley, dropping her hammer on the floor.

“It looks . . . like it was made with a lot of love,” said Dave.

“It looks like it was made by a two-year-old,” said Morley.

“Well, it hasn’t been covered yet,” said Dave. “Any chair without upholstery is going to look . . . awkward.”

“Pathetic,” said Morley. “Not awkward.” She picked up the hammer, swung it around her waist and laced the back of the chair.

“This is not working,” she said. “Leave me alone.”

Half an hour later she appeared upstairs, looking angry and defeated.

Dave looked at her. “I have a suggestion,” he said. “Can I make a suggestion?”

Morley didn’t say anything. But she didn’t walk away.

Dave said, “You could spend the next few days down there wrestling with that material and you’ll cover the chair, and we both know you’ll end up with a bad chair.”

Morley nodded.

Dave said, “Forget about the foam padding. Forget about the upholstery. Don’t put fabric on it. Put wheels on it. What you have down there isn’t a chair without covering. What you have down there is a go-cart without wheels. Put wheels on that thing and you will have one very happy little boy on Christmas morning.

And then he said, “I’m going to walk Arthur.”

The next night after supper Sam called Morley into his room. He was frantic.

“The needles won’t go through anymore,” he said.

He waved at a pile of wool lying on his bed—another six-inch square of knitting—each line of the square getting progressively tighter, giving the work the appearance of a triangle resting on its point.

“You have to relax,” said Morley.

“I only have two days left,” said Sam.

“Two days is not a lot of time,” said Morley.

Sam nodded his head in vigorous agreement.

“But it should be enough time for a pro like you to knit a scarf,” she said.

“I’m knitting a coat, not a scarf,” said Sam.

“Oh,” said Morley, “I thought you were knitting a scarf. Let me start it for you.” Once again she began a row of stitches and once again handed it to her son. Then she stood up. “I have to do the dishes,” she said.

On Christmas Eve, after Sam and Stephanie were in bed and the last present was wrapped and under the tree, Morley called Dave down to the basement. “Can you help me carry this upstairs?” she said.

She had taken the wheels off Sam’s old wagon and attached them to the bottom of her chair. Dave climbed into it and smiled. She had left the wagon handle in place. It rested between his legs like a joystick.

“He’ll love it,” he said.

And then he screamed.

She was pushing him toward the washing machine.

First gently. Then faster and faster.

“Where’s the brake?” is the last thing he howled, before he crashed into a wicker basket full of dirty clothes.