Vinyl Cafe Turns the Page

by Stuart McLean

  And a noticeable absence of Kenny.

  Dave gave Wong’s Scottish Meat Pies a wide berth for a day or two.

  But after a few days, he knew he had to face the music. He screwed up his courage and headed for Kenny’s café. He went early and found Kenny alone, behind the counter, unloading the dishwasher.

  Dave sat on his regular stool.

  The last one in the row.

  “I guess you’ve been wondering where I’ve been,” he began.

  Kenny shrugged.

  Dave said, “Well, I’m here to apologize.”

  Kenny was unexpectedly gracious.

  He turned and picked up the coffee pot from the warmer on the counter behind him. He poured a mug of coffee and put it down in front of Dave.

  “Nothing to worry about,” said Kenny. “All’s well that ends well.”

  Then he looked up and down the countertop.

  “Hey,” he said. “Could you grab me a basket of creamers?”

  Dave got up from his stool and headed for the big walk-in fridge.

  He couldn’t believe this was going so well.

  Dave opened the big fridge door and gazed around the shelves—at the red-netted bags of carrots and potatoes, the bucket of broccoli. The boxes and boxes of eggplants.

  “You have enough eggplant in here to sink a ship,” he called.

  The creamers were at the back.

  He stepped over a crate of lettuce and around a flat of tomatoes. He reached for the little cardboard box.

  And that’s when he heard the big cooler door click shut behind him.

  He hopped back and reached for the handle with a sinking heart.

  Just as he expected, it was locked.

  What he didn’t expect was to find an envelope with his name on it taped to the inside of the cooler door.

  It was a sympathy card.

  “Thinking of you in your time of trouble,” it read.

  Inside, Kenny had written, “Don’t worry, I won’t forget you.”

  Dave had just enough time to read that before the fridge light snapped off.

  He sat down on the crate of lettuce.

  At least he wouldn’t starve.

  He sighed.

  He’d known this was coming.

  They had always made it clear that you should forgive your enemies.

  But no one ever said anything about friends.

  HOME ALONE

  It’s the end of an autumn day. Morley is walking home from work, which is not something Morley often does. There’s usually too much to be done at both ends of the journey, and seldom enough time for pedestrian luxuries. But she’s walking tonight, and she’s chosen a roundabout route—a route that takes her through the park and, consequently, past the local arena, where—don’t kid yourself—Morley is going to stop and buy a bag of kettle corn.

  Morley fell under the spell of the sweet, salty treat six months ago. And it has become a monstrous addiction. She would gladly forgo any meal of the day for a bag of kettle corn, and, truth be told, has on more occasions than she would care to admit.

  There’s something about the ping of the salt mixed with the kindness of the sugar. She glances at her phone. She really doesn’t have the time, but she can’t stop herself now. Besides, the little detour isn’t only about the sweet temptation of corn. It’s also about taking her sweet time. Morley knows what’s waiting for her at home.

  To wit, her son, Sam, and her husband, Dave, and a conversation about the weekend ahead—and what should and shouldn’t happen.

  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

  Morley is trying to tarry, and we should allow her that indulgence. Let’s tarry with her. Let’s watch as she wanders along the shady neighbourhood streets, her bag slung over her shoulder, preoccupied with the mortal sin of sugar and salt.

  That woman is rich, wrote Thoreau, whose pleasures are the cheapest.

  Well, of course, he didn’t write that exactly. He wrote that man is rich—but I don’t think he would object to the rewrite.

  That woman is rich. But also oblivious, so lost in her simple pleasure, so dedicated to her compulsion, that she doesn’t notice, until it’s too late, her neighbour Bert Turlington standing on the sidewalk just ahead of her, his little dog, Tissue, straining at the end of a long retractable leash, pulling desperately in the opposite direction, away from the park, which is where Bert and Tissue had been heading, and more importantly, away from Morley.

  Tissue is a teacup Pomeranian: small, white, a little bit yappy but mostly pleasant enough, except—Morley hides the bag of popcorn in her purse.

  “Tissue,” she calls, holding up her empty hands. “All gone.”

  Too late.

  Tissue saw the popcorn.

  Morley looks at Bert ruefully and crosses to the other side of the street.

  “Sorry,” she calls.

  “Dang,” says Morley, doing the only thing she can do: walking on.

  What just happened wasn’t really Morley’s fault. Tissue’s response was an echo from a night, long ago, when Bert, never one to be accused of patience, peeked into a pot of popcorn and an un-popped kernel blew across the kitchen. Tissue, a mere pup at the time, bounced after it like a tennis ball, hoovered up the unexpectedly hot kernel, and stood there holding it in her mouth, tail wagging proudly.

  Until the kernel exploded.

  Tissue has had a fear of popcorn verging on the psychotic ever since.

  Morley knows that. And if she hadn’t been so preoccupied, she would have tucked the bag of kettle corn out of sight. It was careless. It was the sort of mistake addicts make.

  But Morley is going to get over it pretty quickly. She has just arrived home. She is reaching for the front doorknob.

  Upstairs in his bedroom, Sam is pacing anxiously.

  Sam just watched his mother come up the walk. His best friend, Murphy, had made it clear: he should give her a moment to transition before he goes downstairs.

  They’re going to have a talk. Sam has been gearing up for it all week.

  Sam had handed himself over to Murphy for coaching. Murphy is well versed in the psychological strengths and, more importantly, weaknesses of parents.

  Their preparations are about to be put to the test.

  Dave and Morley are going out of town this weekend. There is a wedding. Sam is about to put the case to them that he’s old enough to stay home—alone.

  Dave is actually okay with the idea. Dave long ago decided that being a parent means losing most of the major battles. Parenthood, he believes, is an endless war of rearguard actions, retreats, and regroupings.

  “Until what?” said Morley.

  “Until there is nothing more to lose,” said Dave. As if losing were an achievement.

  “But it is,” he said. “As long as you’re losing, you’re still in the game. That’s what’s important. Being in the game.”

  Morley doesn’t see it that way.

  More to the point, Morley doesn’t think Sam is ready to stay home alone.

  She is clear on this, and she’s expecting Dave’s support.

  She scrunches up her bag of corn and tucks it away. She walks inside.

  It’s a tricky thing to negotiate, the war of independence. Both sides approach the battlefield full of righteous conviction—but righteousness always conceals uncertainty, and conviction is never far from doubt.

  Are you ready?

  Here comes Sam, bounding down the stairs, determined to spread his wings. And there is Morley, waiting in the kitchen, just as determined to clip them.

  You have to understand: Sam is still her baby. He may be at that awkward age where he’s no longer young enough for a babysitter. But he’s still young enough that—Well, let’s listen, shall we?

  They’re sitting at the kitchen table now.

  The battle has begun without us.

  “A babysitter?” says Sam.

  Morley has just suggested someone—not exactly a babysitter, more a house-sitter and cook
—who might spend the weekend not with him, exactly, but in the house, at the same time.

  “Oh,” clarified Sam. “Someone like a babysitter.”

  He said this exactly the way Murphy had drilled him.

  It was hard to be sure whether he was being sarcastic or just emphatic.

  “Why didn’t I think of that,” he said.

  Sarcastic.

  Morley felt her anxiety rising.

  This was not going as smoothly as she’d hoped.

  “How about Caitlin?” said Sam.

  “Caitlin?” asked Morley.

  Caitlin is a girl in his class.

  “Caitlin,” said Sam, “does lots of babysitting.”

  Okay, point made. Score one for the teenager. He was too old for a babysitter.

  Sam had been worried his parents would make him come with them—to stay in the hotel room while they were at the reception.

  “They won’t,” predicted Murphy. “They don’t want you there. They want time away from you. Have you no appreciation of how obnoxious you are?”

  Murphy was right. They didn’t even bring the option up. In fact, the entire discussion was playing out exactly the way Murphy had predicted.

  Sam began to tick through a speech he and Murphy had been practising all week.

  “Mozart was composing piano solos when he was eight,” said Sam.

  “Tatum O’Neal won an Oscar when she was nine.”

  He had someone for each year, from eight to sixteen. He’d just done twelve when Dave jumped in and threw him off stride.

  “Tanya Tucker recorded Delta Dawn when she was thirteen,” said Dave.

  Morley glared at him.

  “It’s true,” he said.

  Then he remembered which team he was supposed to be on and muttered a barely audible “Sorry.”

  It was too late. Battles turn on a dime. That was the ten-cent moment. They all felt it, although they all pretended not to. Sam nodded at his dad and kept going, ticked off fourteen and then moved in for the kill.

  “When she was fifteen,” said Sam, pausing dramatically, “which is my age, incidentally”—that was a Murphy flourish—“Anne Frank had written the final entry in her diary.”

  “And on a lighter note,” said Dave, forgetting himself again, “when he was fifteen, Eubie Blake was playing piano in Baltimore brothels.”

  Both Sam and Morley turned and stared at him this time.

  “Oops,” said Dave. “May I retract that?”

  It was all over, of course. But the conversation continued for ten more awkward minutes.

  Of all things, the argument that finally won the day was little dog Tissue. Morley had promised that they’d look after Tissue that very weekend, forgetting, when she did, that it was the weekend of the wedding. Sam, of course, had used the oversight to his advantage.

  “Someone has to look after Tissue,” he said.

  And so, as Murphy had predicted, Sam prevailed. Dave and Morley would go to the wedding and, for the first time in his life, Sam would stay home alone. No alcohol. No friends. Except, of course, and this was part of the plan, for Murphy. Murphy could come over. They could order pizza and watch movies.

  And everything would have worked wonderfully, no doubt about it, except Murphy got sick and couldn’t come.

  And that is how Sam found himself, somewhat unexpectedly, home alone for the first time in his life. Hoisted, as they say, on his own petard.

  He’d been alone before, obviously. But he’d never been alone overnight, which means he’d never really been home alone.

  The afternoon had been unremarkable. He biked to the library and hung out for a while. But everyone had gone home. And then he had to, too.

  As he pushed his bike into the garage and headed for the side door, he looked at the dark, quiet house and felt a twinge of anxiety, and for the first time, alone.

  While Sam was nervously walking into the house, Dave and Morley were pulling into the parking lot of the country club where the wedding was about to begin. As they came to a stop, Morley flipped down the sun visor to check her lipstick.

  Then she checked her phone.

  “Did he call?” asked Dave.

  Morley shook her head and handed him her cell and the little silver tube of lipstick.

  “Do you mind carrying these?” she said.

  “I’m sure he’s fine,” said Dave as he slipped the phone into his pocket.

  Sam started making dinner as soon as he got inside: a meat and two vegetables.

  For the meat he would grill some beef—in the convenient hot dog format. For the first vegetable he chose potatoes—in their handy chip form.

  Two wieners and a bag of chips.

  For his second vegetable he would make corn—popcorn.

  Dinner done, the echo of anxiety returned.

  He walked around the house to be sure he was alone.

  Then he went down to the basement and settled in front of his Xbox.

  While Sam battled battalions of attacking zombies, Morley and Dave made their way to the reception.

  “Maybe we should phone him,” said Morley.

  Dave patted the cell phone in his pocket.

  “Let’s let him have his freedom,” said Dave.

  Two hours later, Sam went upstairs to find every light in the house off. He had never seen the house so dark. There was always someone upstairs. There were always lights on. It scared him a little. He phoned Murphy. Just to see how he was.

  Murphy said, “You have nothing to worry about. The highest percentage of break-ins happen in the summer.”

  Sam said, “But it is summer.”

  Murphy said, “Technically, perhaps. But as far as I’m concerned, summer is pretty much over once Mercury rises into Virgo.”

  The wedding ceremony was a tad precious. The bride and groom wrote their own vows. The bride’s mother gave her daughter away—her father relegated to marching glumly up the aisle carrying a bouquet.

  “If he was going to be the flower girl, he should have had a dress,” said Dave.

  As Morley and Dave waited for their turn in the receiving line, Morley reached into Dave’s pocket and pulled out her phone.

  “I’m going to call him,” she said. “Just to say hi.”

  Dave took the phone back and returned it to his pocket.

  Morley said, “I just was going to say hi.”

  Sam headed up to bed at ten—an hour earlier than usual. As he lay there on his back, covers pulled to his chin and little dog Tissue lying beside him, his room felt unfamiliar, dark and creepy. The house was creaking and groaning like a wooden ship in a storm. Why had he never noticed the way the house creaked before?

  Sam stared at his phone on the table beside his bed. Maybe he should call his parents and check on them—make sure they were okay.

  Morley poked at her dinner and only half-listened to the speeches. She was thinking that if something went wrong at home, she’d never forgive herself. But when the toasts began and a waiter glided by with a tray of champagne, Dave plucked two glasses off the tray and handed one to his wife.

  “To Dave and Morley,” he said quietly.

  Then he added, “And weddings in far-flung places.”

  Morley sighed and brought the glass to her lips.

  And then the band began, and people started dancing, and her concerns began to fade. Before Morley knew it, she and Dave were dancing. And somewhere there on the dance floor, she let go. Her children were independent and capable. And that meant she could be independent, too.

  Sam picked up the phone from the bedside table and punched in his mother’s cell number. But he didn’t push Send. He didn’t want his parents to get the wrong idea. He didn’t want them to think he couldn’t make it alone.

  Instead he lay there, staring at the numbers on the screen. Fifteen minutes ticked by, then another thirty. It was almost midnight. He’d been in bed for over an hour and a half. He was still staring at the phone screen.

  He had jus
t remembered a conversation he’d overheard between his mother and father. They’d been away—the entire family—and had come home to find a window on the main floor wide open. His mother was chastising his father for not locking it, and his dad had replied—defensively no doubt, the way any of us might have replied under the circumstances—Leaving the window open is no big deal. If someone really wanted to get into this house, there are a million ways they could do it.

  This is what Sam remembered as he lay in his bed in his creaking house. There was another noise downstairs. A moan, or a groan, or a something.

  Something that sounded like—zombies!

  Sam sat bolt upright and pressed Dial.

  He counted the rings: one, two, three.

  When he heard the line click over to the answering machine, he hung up.

  Why hadn’t his parents picked up?

  The only answer that made sense was that his parents were lying dead on the side of the road.

  Now he was more worried about his parents than the burglar downstairs.

  Okay. It was possible that they were still at the reception and couldn’t hear the phone ringing over the band. He’d wait half an hour and phone them again.

  He lasted eight minutes. Still no answer. That made it official.

  He was an orphan.

  He phoned his sister.

  She didn’t pick up either.

  He left a message.

  “Call me when you get this. Mom and Dad are dead.”

  He didn’t know what else to add, so he hung up.

  He felt bad for being so abrupt.

  He called back.

  He said, “It’s me again. They were in a car accident.”

  It made him feel better to share it.

  He lay there another half an hour.

  He remembered his mother telling him that if he couldn’t sleep he should read for a while. He had never tried it. Her advice was easier to accept now that she was dead.

  He sat up and turned on his reading light. That’s when Tissue, who was still on the bed with him, started to growl.