Home from the Vinyl Cafe (34 page)

The weather suited Dave’s mood. When he finished the dishes, he said, “I’m going to take Arthur out.”

He put on an old blue sweater and a canvas jacket, stuffed a toque and a pair of gloves in his pocket, and headed outside
with the dog. He thought of loading Arthur into the car and driving to a park, or maybe taking him down to the lake. He stood on the front walk—Arthur looking up at him expectantly—then, instead of getting in the car, he headed north through the neighborhood.

There was hardly anyone else out. There were some kids walking through the park, but no one on the playground. The abandoned swings hung on their yellow metal frame like a row of mourners.

Up ahead was a woman walking toward Dave on the same side of the street.

“Hello,” said Dave as they passed. The woman walked by with her jaw firmly clenched, her eyes straight ahead. As if he and Arthur didn’t exist.

There are lots of things that can give you the blues. The weather can give you the blues. Sometimes it is so gray out, it makes you feel blue inside. Your friends can give you the blues. In fact, your best friends are often better at making you feel blue than your worst enemies. Sometimes, however, it’s just an overheard conversation, a stranger on the street, empty swings.

Dave had not intended to be gone long. But he kept walking. After forty-five minutes, he was on a street he had never been on before, gazing into the window of a store he had never seen: Thrift Villa—“where smart shoppers save.”

He went in only to warm up, but he ended up buying two drinking glasses—sixty-nine cents each. One was a Dave Keon hockey glass with a picture of Keon on one side and a referee on the other demonstrating the signal for a holding penalty. HOLDING, it said in black letters under the referee. The lady at the cash register told him it was a peanut-butter jar from the sixties. She couldn’t remember the brand name.

“I’m pretty sure it was a rodent,” she said as she rolled the glasses in newspaper. “Like a beaver. Or a squirrel.”

When Dave was halfway home, it started to snow. He pulled his toque out of his pocket and put it on, tugging it down over his ears. It was four-thirty and getting dark. He had been gone two hours. The weather was whispering warnings: Just wanted to remind you, said the snow, that you’ll be walking home from work in the dark from now on. Just wanted to let you know, said the wind, that it will probably be raining.

He was cheered by the texture of the light from the houses he passed. It reminded him of winter nights when he was a boy, of afternoon-long games of hockey. Maybe, he thought, I should take everyone to Cape Breton for Christmas. He hadn’t been home at Christmas for too many years.

He thought of the disaster that befell him when he tried to cook the turkey the year before. They could do worse than spend the holidays with his mother. She would be happy to see them. The kids could cut a tree on the McCauleys’ farm.

That was what started him thinking about Christmas decorations. He had been late with them last year, so late that he’d ended up more or less throwing their lights over the front hedge. He had promised himself he would do better this year.

Well, it was this year now. He would get the lights up before anyone had to ask. He would beat Morley to the punch. He would be labor
and
management. He was feeling better when he got home.

On Tuesday, Dave came home early, determined to climb onto his roof and hang the Christmas lights. He wanted to be done before dark. But first, he had to go to Jim Scoffield’s house to borrow a ladder, and they had to have a beer. Then
they had to find the ladder. Dave had to replace all the burned-out bulbs. Suddenly, it was dusk.

It was dark by the time Dave stepped gingerly onto the roof and half-walked, half-crawled across the shingles to the chimney.

It was colder than he’d expected. He grabbed hold of the television antenna and carefully straightened up. He could see all over the neighborhood. He wondered why he got up there only at the worst times of the year. I should come up here more often, he thought. He sat down with his back to the chimney and began to untangle the lights that he had already untangled before he climbed the ladder.

It took him about half an hour to attach the lights to the antenna. When he was finished, he plugged them in, and his roof was bathed in light—yellows, reds, greens, and blues. They didn’t look half bad, and miracle of miracles, no bulbs had burned out since he had checked them half an hour ago. Dave shuffled back to the ladder to get a better look.

The antenna reminded him of the clothesline in his yard when he was a child. They had the kind made from one center pole, the kind that looks like an umbrella with the fabric removed. Dave remembered the winter mornings when his mother would push him into a snowsuit and out the back door like a blimp, remembered the swishing of all that nylon material between his legs. How he inevitably needed to pee once he was stuck outside.

He looked out over the rooftops, and suddenly, as sure as if she were standing beside him, Dave could hear his sweet mother’s voice fill his head. She was warning him about something. She was saying, Dave, don’t lick the clothesline.

Sometimes you do things just because someone tells you not to. Sometimes you do things because you have never done them before and you want to see what will happen if
you do. Sometimes it’s hard to figure out why you do some things at all.

Dave had never put his tongue against a television antenna on a cold night in November, although he had a pretty fair idea what would happen if he did. But the moment his mother’s voice came into his head, he could feel himself drawn to the antenna.

As he slowly crab-walked back across the roof toward the chimney to which the antenna was attached, Dave was thinking to himself, This won’t happen. I won’t do this. Why would I do this? I’m not stupid. I’m just trying to scare myself. Yet he felt as if he were outside of his body. It didn’t seem to be him moving across the roof. It seemed to be someone else. And there didn’t seem to be much he could do to stop himself.

Part of Dave was saying, I don’t want to put my tongue on that television antenna, but another part of him, the part that seemed to be in control—the part his tongue seemed to be listening to—was saying, Just do it, Dave. You don’t have to listen to your mother anymore. You’re an adult. You can do whatever you want.

He was surprised by how unequivocally his tongue grabbed on to the metal. It was not at all uncertain about what it was expected to do. Dave himself was uncertain that he had even touched the metal. He thought there was still some space between him and the pole, and then all at once he was bonded to it. At first he was intrigued by the way his tongue stuck. Almost proud of it. It hurt a bit, but it was not an excruciating pain—more the pain of melted candle wax than molten lead.

Then it hurt a bit more, and Dave thought, Okay, that’s enough, and he tried to pull his tongue off the antenna. It didn’t come. He leaned forward because it hurt when he tried
to pull, and then more of his tongue was stuck to the antenna, and he felt a wave of panic rush through him.

His mother’s voice filled his head again. She said, I told you not to do that.

And Dave said, “Why didn’t you stop me?”

Except it sounded different … more like “MMMMUUU-UGGGHHHH.” When he said it, his top lip brushed against the antenna, and then his top lip was stuck as well as his tongue, and he knew he was in serious trouble.

Dave stopped moving. He was very still. Then he tried to lean back a little, but it hurt, and his tongue didn’t want to let go.

He thought, Maybe it’s like taking a Band-Aid off a kid. Maybe you have to be sure about it. Sure and fast.

So he counted. “One. Two.”

Just as he was about to say, “Three,” Dave heard his mother’s voice again. She said, Have you thought that you could pull your entire tongue out of your mouth and leave it on the antenna? Have you thought of that?

Dave stopped counting.

That’s impossible, he thought.

But it occurred to him that if he didn’t actually lose his entire tongue, maybe he could lose a layer of it—the layer with his taste buds. He would never taste anything ever again. For the rest of his life, he might as well eat tofu, and it wouldn’t make any difference. That scared him so much that he didn’t move a muscle for a long time. He stood on the roof, sucking on his antenna, without moving.

He could see his neighbors walking up and down the street. He saw the Schellenbergers stop and look up at him. When they stopped, he began to flap his arms up and down, being careful not to move his face. The Schellenbergers
watched him for a few moments, and then they said something to each other, turned, and walked inside their house.

Dave knew they weren’t going to come to his rescue. They had been admiring him. They thought he was part of the display, hanging from the antenna in the middle of all the lights.

This is what happens when you do things you aren’t asked to do, thought Dave.

He was filled with self-loathing. His life seemed to be a parade of similar incidents.

When his daughter was very small, Dave had taken her in the car on his way to a job interview. Morley was sick, and he was going to drop Stephanie at Morley’s mother’s house while he went to the interview.

The interview was for a job that Dave thought he wanted at the time—a buyer for a record-store chain. He had borrowed a briefcase from Carl Lowbeer as a prop.

It was not an easy drive. Stephanie cried all the way across town. Dave was desperate to calm her down. He needed to be calm for the interview. He decided that a stick of licorice might do the trick.

He pulled up in front of a corner store. As he jumped out of the car, he noticed four young thugs, wearing more than their fair share of black leather, bumping up the street. He didn’t want them messing with his daughter. Better lock the door, thought Dave.

He patted his pockets looking for his keys. Silly, he thought, they’re still in the ignition. Dave had left the engine running so that when he came out of the store, he could be on his way as quickly as possible. He wasn’t exactly running late for his interview, but he didn’t have a lot of time to spare.