Vinyl Cafe Unplugged

by Stuart McLean

  Two years before the Great Flood, as he came to call it, two years before that, when Art was nine years old, Princess Elizabeth was born, also in London. And somehow Art got her muddled up with Elizabeth MacDonnell, the grocer’s daughter, who was born the same week. Art was thirteen before he worked out that Elizabeth MacDonnell, the grocer’s daughter from Big Narrows, with her brown eyes, her shoulder-length chestnut hair and her winsome smile, wasn’t going to be Queen one day.

  Art.

  Art Gillespie—dead now, a year and a half. No, two years. Two years since he had died.

  Whenever Dave thought about that baseball game in 1966 when Kevin Campbell was called out sliding into third base, he would start thinking about Art, about the Great Flood and Elizabeth MacDonnell and about how the kids from The Narrows used to meet the kids from Linquist on Saturday nights and dance on the bridge. Art met Betty at one of those bridge dances. “Walking My Baby Back Home” was playing on a wind-up gramophone.

  Art Gillespie gone. Who could believe it?

  Dave couldn’t. In the days after Art’s death Dave would think about these things and be swallowed by a rush of panic. He would never see Art again. It felt like claustrophobia.

  He worried because he couldn’t remember what color Art’s eyes were. Now wasn’t that a stupid thing to get upset about? But there was nothing he could do to stop himself. It upset him.

  Art. Goddamn it. Art.

  As the months passed Dave’s anxiety slowly faded—slowly Art joined that woolly corner of Dave’s brain where sorrow and regret hung out. It was a corner Dave tried to avoid, a place he was pushed into from time to time, sometimes by something someone did or said, but just as often by a smell, the wind, the color of the sky.

  The sky was blue and brilliant the autumn afternoon the letter arrived to nudge him back to Art. The letter was from Art’s wife, Art’s widow, Betty. Oddly Dave had been thinking about Art not an hour before he found the letter in the mailbox and sat on his front steps to read it. On his way home he had walked past a park where a group of children were playing soccer baseball—a game he hadn’t thought about for years. His memories of soccer baseball got him thinking of the hours he had spent as a boy bouncing a tennis ball against the brick wall of the Big Narrows’ schoolhouse. And once he got to baseball and school there was Art—guaranteed—waiting for him.

  So Art was in his mind, or had been anyway, when he arrived home and found the letter and sat on the front steps to read it.

  Dear David,

  I am writing to thank you for your kind letter which you sent when Art passed on. I feel awful that I haven’t replied until now, but at first I didn’t feel up to writing and then I kept putting it off. I never seemed to have the time. Or the right time, I guess. But I have as much time as anyone else, so that is no excuse. Please accept my apologies. I hope you understand.

  Art always had a fond spot for you, David. I wonder if you know Milly wasn’t our only child. Did you know we also had a son? Jack. Jack died in 1955. He had polio. He was nine years old.

  You must have been four or five years younger than Jack but I think when Art looked at you he thought of our son. You had the same coloring. I think watching you grow gave him a special pleasure. He always spoke warmly of you.

  The day Art learned he had cancer, they told him he would only live three months. He came back from Halifax after the first treatments, and he told me they were wrong. He told me he had three years in him. And he was right. He lived three years and two weeks after we learned he was sick. And I think we did all right. We did the best we could, anyhow.

  Remember how we used to go to Florida? We used to have such a grand time. Art was too sick that last April to go. He wasn’t getting around much anymore. He couldn’t even play his guitar. Time was coming when we normally went and he was depressed and one night he said, “I can’t go.” And I said, “Yes you can.” And we did. I paid for four seats so he could lie down across three of them. The first night we stayed in a hotel in Orlando. I drove us to Clear-water the next morning. That was the first time I had ever driven in Florida. Your mother thought I was crazy. She asked me what I was going to do if he died in Florida. I told her I would buy a backpack and have him cremated and bring him home on my back. What was I supposed to do? I wasn’t going to sit around The Narrows and wait.

  We had a wonderful time. We rented a room on the beach and I put one of those lounge chairs out on our deck so he could see the water and hear the wind in the palms. He was too sick to do anything else, but at least he was warm. At least he was in Florida. And I didn’t have to buy the backpack, thank God.

  I guess it was while we were in Florida that I really understood he was going to die. I guess that’s when I figured there were no emergencies anymore. We had moved beyond emergencies. So we might as well keep moving.

  We had always talked about when we retired how we would spend some money and go to one of those fancy resorts. The Celtic Lodge or Digby Pines. Some place like that. Two weeks before Art died, he said, “I guess we’re never going to do that.” And I said, “Yes, we are. We are going to spend that money right now. We are going to go somewhere where we can hear loons at night.” He said, “I can’t even get downstairs. How are we going to do that?” His liver was so swollen he was having trouble sitting up.

  I told him in all the years I had been a nurse I had never heard of anyone living longer by sitting in one place and holding their breath. So I bought a blow-up mattress and a line of yellow plastic rope and away we went. We had our forty-eighth anniversary on the lake. They gave us a cottage right next to the dining room. I pulled him to all the meals on that air mattress. I guess we had arrived at a place where we both realized we had to choose between our dignity and doing something we were going to enjoy. So we gave up our dignity. It wasn’t hard.

  I dragged him down to the water in the morning and we would visit with a nice couple from Saskatchewan and watch their kids swim. I’d pull him back down in the afternoon and we would watch the fishermen come in and see what everyone had caught. Mostly I read to him on the balcony. I would lie beside him and keep him company. When he went to sleep I would work on the mattress. By the end of the week it was pretty much all covered in duct tape. As I said, he died two weeks later. And I am glad we went.

  I am sorry you couldn’t have been here for the service. The church was full. But the house was some empty that night when I came home. I don’t think I will ever get used to that. It doesn’t worry me anymore, though I still do funny things sometimes. A couple of months after he died I got up one morning and set his place for breakfast. Imagine that! Sometimes I’ll be on my way home and I’ll see something and I’ll think to myself that I have to tell Arthur about that. And then I’ll remember, don’t be silly.

  We used to read to each other at night before we went to sleep. When he died, we were about a third of our way through a book of Alistair MacLeod’s stories. The night we buried him I couldn’t settle because the book wasn’t finished. So I went up to Art’s grave with a lawn chair and a flashlight and I took the book and I read to him. After I was there awhile I heard a rustling, so I turned off the flashlight. It was deer—three deer moving from grave to grave eating the flowers. They would stop by a stone and eat all the cedar and the greenery and then move on to the next one. It was the most calming thing I ever saw. Watching nature come out and seeing how life goes on. Those three deer picnicking on all those flowers. I went up there with my chair and my flashlight and our book every night for a week and a half.

  About the third night I found a baggy on his grave with a letter in it and a picture. It was from Dunn Lantier. The captain. I picked it up, but I didn’t read it. I guessed Dunn had something he wanted to say to Art and I figured it was none of my business. Art was a good friend to so many people. They would call him and talk things over with him. I guess other people saw that letter during the day because before the week was over the letters started to multiply. Eventually the groundskee
per put out a box for them. There were well over fifty. I never read one of them. Though I did put your letter there. You had so many nice things to say. I hope you don’t mind.

  It is funny the things that you miss. Art and I used to have a little ritual if one of us was frosted about something and we couldn’t sleep. I can’t even remember how it began. I think it was something left over from his childhood. When someone was peeved up, or things were rough, the other one would fix a snack. It was always the same snack: a Cadbury Fruit & Nut bar and two glasses of milk. And we always ate it in bed. We usually kept a chocolate bar handy in case of an emergency. Once or twice when we didn’t have one on hand, Art went out and got one at MacDonnell’s and brought it home and we would have our little picnic.

  About three months after he died, I was cleaning behind the bed and I found a chocolate bar hidden on his side of the headboard. We have a bed with a dresser and mirrors built in on either side. There are cubbyholes over the dresser, and I found the chocolate bar tucked at the back of one of the cubbyholes. It really tied my buns in a knot. I wanted to have a picnic right then and there but I didn’t have my picnic partner. I must have cried over that stupid chocolate bar for three months.

  One night I finally decided I either had to eat it before the worms got to it or I had to throw it out. So I decided to have a picnic on my own. I went downstairs and got the tray out and a glass of milk and fixed everything just right and came upstairs. I got into bed and opened up the chocolate bar but there was no chocolate in it. Art had eaten the chocolate and folded up Kleenex and wrapped it all up again with a note. “Sorry. But I was hungry. It was truly delicious. Love you, Art.” I had bawled over that chocolate bar for weeks—and I was bawling again and all I had was a handful of Kleenex to wipe my nose with.

  I knew I had to do something with it. I got up and wrapped it just the way Art had, and I put on my jacket over my nightie and I went out to the garage and got a garden stake, and I nailed the wrapper to the stake, and then I drove up to the cemetery and I hammered the sucker in right beside his tombstone. I laughed and laughed while I did it.

  On the way home I stopped at MacDonnell’s and I bought myself a Cadbury Hazelnut bar. I never really liked the Fruit & Nut bar all that much. I didn’t favor the raisins, but Art did and I never said anything. So I bought the hazelnut bar and had a hazelnut picnic. I sat in bed eating that bar and laughing so hard there were tears coming down my face.

  I put up a tree this Christmas. I couldn’t do that last year. When I pulled out the decorations I found a Christmas stocking he had packed for me. He must have packed it the spring before he died. I guess he knew he wasn’t going to make it to Christmas. There was a bag of marsh-mallows that were as hard as rocks, and a necklace, and a Cadbury Fruit & Nut bar and fifty American dollars. He always gave me American money at Christmas. I used to use it in Florida to take him out to dinner. I still have that fifty-dollar bill.

  You have been more than patient to read this old woman’s ramblings. I just wanted to thank you for writing. I would love to see you the next time you come home.

  His eyes were blue.

  Yours sincerely,

  Betty Gillespie

  Dave sat on the steps for a good half an hour after he had finished reading the letter. He didn’t exactly cry but he must have looked messed up. Three different neighbors walked by during the half-hour he was sitting there—they all waved but none of them came up the walk to talk. Not even Jim Scoffield, who hesitated and then kept walking. “I’ll see you later,” he said.

  Dave didn’t show the letter to Morley right away. He handed it to her that night when they were in bed, reading. Morley said, “What’s this?”

  When she finished it and handed it back to him, she had tears in her eyes. Dave was ready for that. He smiled, and took the letter and put it in the drawer of his bedside table. Then he pulled something out of the drawer.

  “Here,” he said. “I thought you might be hungry.”

  He was holding a chocolate bar. Cadbury Fruit & Nut.

  Master storyteller and humorist STUART McLEAN writes and hosts the popular CBC Radio show The Vinyl Cafe, heard on Public Radio in the United States and on Sirius Satellite across North America. He is the author of the bestselling books Vinyl Cafe Diaries, which won the short fiction award from the Canadian Authors Association; Home from the Vinyl Cafe, which won the Stephen Leacock Award for Humor; and Welcome Home: Travels in Smalltown Canada, which was awarded the CAA’s prize for nonfiction.