Vinyl Cafe Turns the Page

by Stuart McLean

  When Dave did open the envelope, what he found was a piece of torn paper with a photographic negative stapled to it. There was nothing written on the paper. But if you held the negative up to the light, there was a message.

  It was an invitation, though not to a wedding. To a gallery. An invitation to an opening.

  Tommy, Stephanie’s boyfriend, was having his first big show.

  “It’s very impressive,” said Morley.

  “Crushed?” said Dave. That’s what it was called. The exhibition, I mean. Crushed.

  “I don’t know,” said Dave. “It sounds weird to me.”

  The opening was scheduled for a Monday evening. It was a bit of a haul to the gallery. Maybe two and a half hours door to door. But they were going to go, of course.

  “Do we have to?” said Dave.

  Dave’s resistance was neither whimsical nor frivolous. It was, rather, quite the opposite—the upshot of a long ago but unforgotten trauma lingering from the night when he was burned badly by the heat of avant-garde art.

  We all experience trauma, of one sort or another, at one point or another in our lives. If we’re fortunate, these upsets leave us stronger than they found us. When we’re lucky, we’re forged, as they say, by fire.

  But fire can consume as easily as sustain. And sometimes, when we’re burned, all we want to do is get out of the kitchen.

  It was a rainy night in New York City, a long time ago.

  Dave was on tour, managing the postmodern Czechoslovakian music group Pulnoc—a spinoff from the history-changing Plastic People of the Universe.

  And one of the group, or one of the people travelling with the group—it’s hard to remember, and anyway he’d rather forget—was seeing a girl named Tish. There was a lot of talk about Tish. The closer they got to New York City, which is where Tish lived, the more it became “Tish this” and “Tish that.”

  Tish was a “mixed media” artist—whatever that meant. Dave felt it would be rude to ask. Anyway, he’d see soon enough, because they had all been invited to Tish’s opening.

  On the night in question, Dave set off with everyone else to a Soho gallery.

  The art show was in a second-floor loft, a large open space with exposed iron beams and rough brick walls. When they got there the room was packed.

  And hanging from the beams at the centre of the room were ten Plexiglas cubes. Each was the size of a guitar amp. The first one looked as if it was filled with burnt Kleenex. Dave bent down to read the card on the easel beside it. It said BURNT KLEENEX 2.

  The fact that he’d recognized the subject did not give Dave any measure of confidence. It confused him. And the more he looked, the more confused he got.

  Inside box number two were a few twist ties and a pile of elastic bands. The card on the easel beside it read DIDO AND AENEAS.

  Cube three was hanging from a thick iron chain. Yet inside it was a solitary lima bean. And a card read ecstasy.

  And that’s when Dave looked up and saw Tish and Tish’s boyfriend walking his way—surrounded by a group of people. One of the people was Yoko Ono.

  “So important,” one of them was saying.

  “Seminal,” said another.

  And then everyone looked at Yoko, who had raised her hand to draw attention.

  “There’s no doubt that this work is mordantly percipient,” she said with great gravity, “but the question is whether the work transcends or simply negates the ethos of modernity.”

  And then she looked at Dave.

  “What do you think?” she said.

  The world stopped.

  Beads of sweat sprang from Dave’s forehead.

  “Yes,” he blurted. Then, with his voice rising in panic, he said, “I mean, no.” Then, almost yelling now, he said, “What was the question?”

  Yoko Ono frowned.

  The others turned away.

  And Tish’s boyfriend muttered under his breath, “If you don’t like Tish’s show, you could at least keep it to yourself.”

  It’s not that Dave is afraid of art. Portraits, landscapes, and still lifes are all fine, but when the approach veers to the abstract, his heart starts to race.

  What’s the saying? Once beaten, twice shy? Set Dave down in a room full of esoteric pieces, and he begins to twitch.

  Despite Dave’s reluctance, Morley reserved a room at the little inn where they’d stayed the weekend they dropped Steph off at the beginning of her first year away. How many years ago was that?

  They arrived in the afternoon and had lunch at a table by the water. The pond was so close you could almost touch it. The waterfall just out of sight.

  “Same table,” said Dave.

  “I’m not sure,” said Morley.

  “Absolutely,” said Dave, reaching for the ketchup.

  And then he said, “So. What’s been crushing him. What, do you think? The modern world? The media? The Maple Leafs?”

  A few hours later they were standing in front of a blown-up, larger than life-sized photograph of a flattened snake, in a gallery full of close-up, poster-sized portraits of animals that had been run over by cars. Snakes crushed by cars. Frogs crushed by cars. A turtle crushed by a car.

  “Crushed?” Dave is saying. “Crushed!”

  He has said it several times.

  With a question mark.

  An exclamation mark.

  With bewilderment.

  And now, with some distress.

  “You’re repeating yourself,” said Morley.

  “I actually thought, maybe, you know. Crushed on her. I was hoping not, but I was prepared for that. And everything that could mean.

  “Doesn’t this worry you? This is the man our daughter could be marrying.”

  Morley said, “No one has mentioned anything about marriage. Marriage is not on the table as far as I know.”

  Dave said, “They might as well be living together.”

  Morley said, “Actually. They are.”

  “Exactly,” said Dave. “Our daughter is living with a man who takes pictures of roadkill. First off, that’s not normal. Second off, I have no idea what they mean, or what I’m supposed to think of them. And third off, what do you mean they’re living together? I thought he had his own place.”

  Before she could answer, Dave held up his hand.

  “Don’t look now,” he said. “Wait a moment and then turn around slowly. Not yet. Wait. Okay—now. The woman in the corner, the one in the black beret. Is that Yoko Ono?”

  “Dave,” said Morley, “Yoko Ono is Japanese.”

  Before Dave knew it, he ended up exactly where he didn’t want to end up—trapped in the corner—with Tommy’s father and the mysterious woman in the beret.

  He was desperate to have something to say if he was asked about the pictures—and he desperately wanted whatever it was to be both clever and congratulatory. But all he could think of, for some reason, was the moon landing. And in his imagination the lunar capsule had just splattered into the Sea of Tranquility. And the astronauts—Dear God, why was he thinking of lunar disasters?

  The lady in the beret pointed at the large picture of the dead owl they were standing in front of and said, “The last act is always bloody. However pleasant the rest of the play.”

  Tommy’s father said something Dave didn’t catch, and then the moment he had been dreading arrived.

  Tommy’s father and the woman in the beret turned and looked at him, and Tommy’s father waved his hand around the room and said, “So. What do you think of my son’s photographs?”

  From somewhere, somewhere just this side of panic, Dave said, “I admire his … passion.”

  “Ah,” said the woman in the beret, “one always admires what one doesn’t understand.”

  Dave, overcome by desperation and the desperate need to escape, began to back away. “Can I get anyone more wine?” he asked, trying to sound calm, wondering, as he left, if he’d just been insulted or insulting.

  He got more wine and then wandered aroun
d the room pretending he was a bumper car. His job was to avoid all the other cars and the conversations he didn’t want to have about the show.

  He kept his eye on his daughter and her boyfriend as he circled.

  When the gallery owner stood on a chair by the front and tapped his glass, Dave joined the circle that formed around him and nodded along during his speech. The gallery owner talked about “existential ambiguity” and “adjacent polarity” and “didactic surrealism” and “referential reductionism.”

  Someone else, a professor from the university perhaps, stood up and proposed a toast. Dave raised his glass. When there was applause, he applauded. He tried his best to follow along, although nothing made much sense to him. He could see the woman in the beret out of the corner of his eye. She seemed to be staring at him.

  When the speeches were over, Morley appeared at Dave’s side.

  “Come here,” she said. “Have you seen this one?”

  She steered Dave to a picture of a cedar waxwing—the photo enlarged so that it was almost as big as a child. The bird had been shot against a blue out-of-focus background, its eyes closed, its head bowed. It looked more like a monk issuing a call to prayer than a bird that had flown into a car.

  Morley said, “It’s beautiful.”

  Dave said, “But what does it mean?”

  Then he said, “It makes me feel sad.”

  Then he said, “My father would have hated these.”

  Charlie.

  Dave’s father, Charlie, would pull his truck to the side of the road whenever he came across something that had been run over. Then he’d carry whatever it was into the bushes.

  Charlie told Dave that they shouldn’t let dead animals lie there in the road where they’d get run over again and again.

  “There’s no dignity in that,” said Charlie.

  Back then, it was embarrassing. Now, it seemed to make sense. Of course, it was easier to stop to administer to roadkill if you lived in the Narrows back in the day. Not so easy now. Not the way people drive these days.

  When the show ended, they all went back to the inn to have dinner—Tommy and Stephanie, Tommy’s parents, and Dave and Morley.

  More fine things were said.

  Tommy’s mother said how proud she was.

  Morley said how the pictures reminded her of her childhood.

  “When I was a kid,” said Morley, “we used to pick up dead things all the time.”

  Stephanie said her favourite was the waxwing that Morley had shown Dave.

  No one said anything profound. It wasn’t like the speeches at the gallery. Until Tommy’s father stood up and proposed a toast, stealing liberally from the gallery owner’s speech as he did it.

  Which made Dave, who hadn’t said anything, feel a bit better. Tommy’s father, a university professor, clearly didn’t have any more of a clue about his son’s work than Dave did.

  When dinner was over, everyone said their goodbyes. Tommy’s parents were going back to the city. Dave and Morley were going upstairs.

  But a half hour later, to his astonishment, Dave found himself in Tommy’s car rather than in his hotel room. Alone with Tommy.

  It had been Stephanie’s idea.

  “Just drive along the ridge,” she’d said. “Just go out and back. Who knows, maybe you’ll find something.”

  It was about a mile to the top of the ridge. The stars pinpricking the dark black sky. The road in front of them starless and blacker.

  “Mostly, at night,” said Tommy, “you find owls. They fly low. They get hit.”

  It was awkward. First, they’d never been alone in a car before. Second, there they were, alone in a car. Third, and worst of all, they were driving under the intimate cover of darkness. Under the intimidating influence of art.

  Tommy had the radio on—but softly, country and western. You really couldn’t hear it.

  When they got to the top they came to a T junction, and Tommy turned left. Now the valley was below them, on their left, and the forest to their right.

  They’d been going maybe twenty minutes along the ridge road, the forest gradually giving way to fields and woodlots, when Tommy braked.

  There were no other cars around.

  “What?” said Dave.

  Tommy flicked on the high beams and backed up. Then he jockeyed around a bit, until the headlights caught the shadow.

  “A raccoon?” said Dave, leaning forward. “Or is it a dog?”

  “It’s a fox,” said Tommy.

  “You’re right,” said Dave, who was reaching for the door.

  Tommy said, “Wait.”

  Tommy said, “Before you get out you want to be sure there’s nothing around. Coyotes or something.”

  Dave felt as if he were in a horror film—stopping the car in the middle of nowhere to check out a body.

  As they walked toward the fox, he could feel his heart pounding.

  In a weird way, it was exhilarating.

  There was a light and a light stand in the trunk of the car.

  Tommy went and got them. He set up the light and then crouched beside the fox. Dave leaned on the hood and watched him at work. Each time Tommy took a shot, the light flashed with a soft woof. Each time the light went off, the night seemed blacker.

  When Tommy finished, they both stood by the car.

  “I always wonder,” said Tommy, looking around, “if there’s a mate somewhere watching me. Or babies. I always wonder how it all went down.”

  Dave looked into the darkness surrounding them.

  Tommy threw the light and the stand back into the trunk and closed it.

  Tommy said, “I know some of the pictures are … beautiful in some weird way. And I like that. I have an appreciation of that. But mostly, I just feel sad when I see them. Mostly they don’t feel beautiful to me.”

  Dave said, “That’s how they made me feel.”

  Then Tommy said, “My grandfather died a few years ago.”

  “I remember,” said Dave.

  “That’s when I started doing this,” said Tommy.

  Like poetry, you can find beauty in the most unexpected places: in a snowy wood and on the wings of a butterfly, yes, of course. But in sorrow as well as in happiness. In death as well as in life.

  You buy a book in a second-hand bookstore and somewhere, halfway between the beginning and the end, waiting for you to turn the page, there’s a flower pressed between the words. Sometimes poetry is hidden.

  And sometimes it’s lying on the side of the road in full view.

  “I don’t think it’s poetic,” said Tommy. “I don’t think that at all.”

  Dave said, “All those people tonight thought so. All those people who bought prints and said all those things. That’s got to mean something.”

  They were back in the car. They were on their way home.

  Tommy said, “All that stuff tonight. All those things they said at the gallery. I didn’t understand half that stuff.”

  Dave almost clapped his hands. He almost whooped. He almost said, “I didn’t either.”

  But Tommy was staring intensely into the night. Tommy hadn’t finished. So Dave didn’t say anything.

  “I’ll tell you what I think,” said Tommy. “I think it means that beauty trumps morality. That’s the way it is, and that’s the way it has always been. I don’t think it should be like that. But that’s the way it is. That’s the way of the world.”

  Then he said, “Maybe it would be better if everyone came to my show and didn’t like it and left.”

  Someone once said that you’ll never find a better place in the world for a difficult conversation than in a dark car. You don’t have to look at the other person. And you both know that when the trip ends, the conversation can too.

  Dave closed his eyes and said, “You would have to be a special kind of person to see your show and not get it.”

  It wasn’t a complete lie.

  Dave said, “Here’s what I think. I think there’s a collision happ
ening between civilization and the natural world. And I think you’re the witness.”

  Tommy said, “I don’t like it that animals are getting killed by cars.”

  And then he said, “Sometimes I’ll find a little bird, like the waxwing. Did you see that one? He looked like he was praying, his head bowed and his eyes shut and that slash of red blood on his head. In some messed-up way that’s one of the most beautiful pictures I’ve ever taken. But I don’t have a clue why.

  “That’s the thing. I feel these big feelings and I don’t understand why.”

  They were almost back at the inn.

  As they turned between the stone gates, Dave felt that a weight had lifted off his shoulders.

  There was no great big mystery—except for the great big mystery.

  We live and then we die.

  Someone once said that we all have exactly two and a half minutes to live. One for smiling, and one for sighing, and a half of one for love. For it’s in the middle of that minute, the loving one, that we die.

  “And what we want more than anything,” said Dave, “between the living and the dying, is for someone to take notice.

  “For someone to say it matters that we’re here.”

  Tommy said, “You think that’s what I’m doing? Saying it matters?”

  “Maybe,” said Dave.

  “Mostly,” said Tommy, “what I think I’m saying is that I wish people would drive slower. And also that my grandfather was still here. I miss him.”

  They were in the parking lot now. Dave hesitated for a moment before he opened his door.

  “Thanks for taking me out,” he said. “I loved seeing you at work. And I love your work.”

  It was true. He did.

  When Dave came into their room Morley was still awake, sitting on the bed with a magazine in her hands. When he came in, she put it down, drew up her knees, and put her arms around them.

  She said, “How’d it go?”

  He said, “We found a fox. Tommy took pictures. And you know what he did when he was finished? He carried the fox to the side and covered it with some brush. Just like my father would have done. Do you believe that?”