Vinyl Cafe Unplugged

by Stuart McLean

  Mary flew naked by the patio door without even considering that someone could see her from outside. She was alone after all. Bert was getting beer. The twins were at a movie. God knows where Adam was. Then she began pulling all the pots and pans out of the pot cupboard, moving so fast she didn’t even notice what it felt like to be nude in the kitchen.

  It hardly took her a minute to get all the pots and pans arranged upside down on the counter in front of her. She was squinting at the instructions on the spray when someone knocked on the patio door.

  This can’t be happening, she thought.

  Actually she didn’t really think anything. She gasped and leapt back a good three feet, launching the can of cleaner across the kitchen. She came down in a crouch, alarmingly aware that she wasn’t wearing any clothes!

  One summer night soon after they were married, Bert had taken Mary to his family’s cottage for a week. He had talked her into going skinny-dipping. It had felt surprisingly exotic, the water cool and flawless on her skin, her body strong and liberated.

  This didn’t feel anything like that. This felt like a chilly breeze moving along her backside, this felt like the hairs on her arms sticking up, like an unpleasant prickling that seemed to be cen terd around her waist and was spreading up her spine. Her skin felt tight. And cold.

  Whoever it was knocked again.

  Mary looked desperately around for something to cover herself. The only thing she could see was a tea towel hanging on the handle of the stove. She reached out, snatched it and held it in front of her . . . her what? It seemed no bigger than a handkerchief. First up and then down. The tea towel clearly wasn’t up to the job. Her heart was racing. Don’t panic, she thought as she backed into a corner of the kitchen, panicking, waving the towel in front of her like a bullfighter. Like something pathetic from the Playboy Channel. Don’t panic. Whoever was knocking couldn’t see her from the door. If she didn’t do anything, surely they would go away.

  There was a silent moment that seemed to stretch forever. Mary barely breathed. Maybe they had given up. Maybe they had gone away.

  And then, whoever was knocking slid the screen open and knocked on the glass. Mary hid behind the only thing available. Her knees.

  Then the glass door slid open.

  And Mary draped the tea towel over her head.

  “Hello,” said a voice. “Is anyone home?”

  It was Dave.

  Who else?

  If she didn’t move, surely he would go away.

  “Hello,” said Dave louder, stepping into the family room.

  “Yo, Dave.” It was Bert, coming up the basement stairs. Back from the beer store already?

  Mary was not at this moment acting rationally. She knew only two things: she was nude, and soon she would be surrounded by men. When the glass door slid open, she had moved beyond rational thought into a world of primal instincts.

  Her instinct told her there was one thing to do and that was to get out of sight! Sadly there was no way out of the kitchen without passing Dave. That left one place to go. And so, with lizard-like agility, that’s where Mary went—headfirst into the cupboard she had just emptied of pots.

  The cupboard was directly under the countertop stove. It was not much larger than a dishwasher. It had two doors separated by a four-inch wooden post. Mary snaked around the post and folded herself up like a croissant. There was one shelf—it had always annoyed her because it wasn’t nailed down, and it rattled whenever she removed a pot. If it hadn’t been loose she would not have fitted. She wouldn’t have fitted under normal circumstances. She was carried into the cupboard on the wave of her anxiety. She lay there, in the fetal position, with her back pressed against one wall and her feet pressing against the other. Her knees pushing into her chest. Her face smushed against the cupboard door.

  Dave was standing only a few feet away.

  “No one is home at my place,” he was saying. “I’ve locked myself out. I’m not sure if you guys still have a key.”

  “It’s in the dining-room cupboard,” said Mary desperately under her breath.

  “I don’t think so,” said Bert. “But I’ll ask Mary. She’ll know.”

  “The dining-room cupboard, you idiot,” hissed Mary.

  She tried to will her husband to the dining room.

  Bert disappeared. He returned almost immediately. “I thought she was upstairs,” he said. “She must have gone to pick stuff up for dinner. I was just going to fix some lunch. Are you hungry? I can make you an omelette.”

  Then he said, “I wonder why she has all the pots out like this?”

  He is going to open the cupboard, thought Mary. He is going to open the cupboard to check if there are any pots left.

  What, she thought, is going to happen when he reaches into the cupboard looking for a pan and comes up with a handful of his wife? What would he think had been going on? Walking into his house and finding his neighbor standing in his kitchen and his naked wife stuffed into the cupboard.

  If he opened the door she was going to have to act fast.

  She decided she would jump out, yell Surprise! and let the chips fall where they may. It was the best she could think of.

  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 boss? The boss????

  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 co
uch 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.