Vinyl Cafe Unplugged (20 page)

Ten minutes later Morley and Susan were in the kitchen.

“Are you still married to the dentist?” asked Morley. She was fixing coffee.

“Orthodontist,” said Susan.

“Bruce,” said Morley.

“Brian,” said Susan.

That’s right. Brian
.

Susan had begun dating Brian at the end of their graduating year. It was coming back. He was an athlete. Football? Or swim team? Almost went to the Olympics. Or something. Morley couldn’t remember his face. She tried, but all that came back was the vague smell of chlorine.

“The swimmer,” ventured Morley. “Right?”

“Diver,” said Susan. “He almost went to the Olympics.”

“Right,” said Morley.

Susan was fiddling with her wedding ring. Taking it off, putting it on. Twisting it around and around. Morley took a sip of her coffee and remembered the rainy Saturday afternoon the two of them had sat on the floor in Susan’s bedroom with Susan’s monumental collection of bridal magazines piled around them. They had spent the afternoon designing their ultimate wedding. Morley thought they were goofing around, until she realized that Susan was serious—Susan was making plans.

Upstairs, Sam was sitting on his bed, watching Matthew unpack. He stared with fascination as Matthew lined his toiletries in order, by height, along the window ledge: a bottle of vitamins, a bottle of Tommy Hilfiger cologne, plastic bottles of shampoo and conditioner, a hairbrush, a toothbrush. When Matthew was satisfied with the way they looked, he turned his attention to his clothes, which he arranged in the corner on the floor as carefully as if he were arranging a window display for a fancy men’s store—an island of calm amid the storm of Sam’s bedroom.

When he was finished, he stood up and smiled at Sam. “That feels better,” he said. Then he reached into his briefcase and pulled out a thick blue binder with the Junior Achiever crest stamped on the cover.

“Do you want to see my business plan?” he asked.

Next door, Jennifer was sitting on Stephanie’s bed, watching Stephanie root through a pile of clothes, a pile on the floor of her bedroom that began at the door and was almost level with the mattress by the time it reached her bed. Stephanie was looking for lip gloss.

“I know it’s here somewhere,” she said.

“Don’t you have to make your bed in the morning?” asked Jennifer, looking around the room with what was clearly admiration.

“
What
?” said Stephanie. She was peering with satisfaction at a CD that had dropped out of a handful of dirty laundry.

“I’ve been looking for this for weeks,” she said.

Downstairs, Dave was sitting at the kitchen table reading the paper when something distracted him. He looked up, not sure what was tugging at his attention. Then he frowned. It was perfume. He turned and there was Matthew, standing not three feet away, staring at the back of his head. Or was it the paper? He was staring at the paper.

“Would you like some of the paper?” asked Dave.

“Could I please look at the business section?” asked Matthew.

This must be what small towns are like,
thought Morley later, as the kids arrived in pairs for dinner—everyone struggling to fit around the too-small kitchen table, Dave helping her carry dishes back and forth from the stove. She was happy. There is something lovely about seeing your children paired up with the children of your old friends. The chaos reminded her of dinners at the Bird House.

Halfway through the first course, Matthew put down his knife and fork, looked around and said, “These are delicious mashed potatoes.”

Morley caught Sam rolling his eyes at Stephanie.

She threw him daggers. Then she smiled at Matthew.

“Thank you, Matthew,” she said.

Morley had, during the three brief hours since they arrived, become painfully aware that there was a chasm separating her children and Susan’s children. Susan’s children, it would seem, had manners, as if they had been raised by humans. Sam and Stephanie, on the other hand, seemed to have been raised by wolves.
Look at them,
thought Morley,
slouched in front of their plates, smacking and snorting, wiping their greasy paws on their fur
.

Later that night when they are alone in their bedroom Dave will shake his head and say, “That is one weird kid.”

He’ll be talking about Matthew.

“I don’t think he even
liked
those mashed potatoes,” Dave will say. “He didn’t even finish his mashed potatoes.”

“Those were manners, Dave,” Morley will say. “In case you didn’t notice.”

“‘These are delicious mashed potatoes.’ Jeez! Come on, Morley. It’s the sort of thing you’d do if you were eating dinner at your boss’s house. He’s twelve. He’s twelve years old.” He will almost tell Morley about Matthew’s business card, but before he does, he will notice the way she is looking at him, and he won’t say any more.

But that is later . . .

Now they are still at the table . . . eating.

And in that moment after Matthew had said, “These are delicious mashed potatoes,” and Morley had frowned at Sam because he was rolling his eyes at Stephanie, a silence settled on the dinner table. All you could hear was the rattle of cutlery, as if
everyone
was enjoying the potatoes.

But the silence lasted a beat too long and abruptly deepened and became a tomb-like silence, so no one was listening to the cutlery anymore but to the silence itself—a silence that was spiralling deeper by the second. Morley was desperately trying to think of something to say, something to get them out of the silence before it was too late, imploring Dave with her eyes for help.
Say something!

Everyone was thinking the same thing now—the whole table bound together in silent agony, everyone struggling against the surface viscosity of the silence, like a table full of water bugs squirting around a dark pond, like a table of slow-motion scuba divers floating away on a deadly current of silence.

It was finally Sam who put down his cutlery with a flourish. And everyone thought,
Thank God,
turning and looking at him with relief and expectation and great hope.

Sam smiled at them all and said, “You know what really
pisses me off?
”

Morley saw Susan clutch her knife and fork, and watched her check her children’s reactions: Matthew, his brow furrowed—puzzled; Jennifer staring at Sam with a mixture of awe, respect, disbelief . . . and
ohmigod
. . . approval!

Not twenty minutes later, just when she thought things couldn’t get worse, Morley caught Susan frowning at the floor by the stove. Morley followed her eyes to the crack between the stove and the kitchen counter and saw what had caught Susan’s attention, a forgotten Roach Motel, lying there like a pile of dirty laundry.

An hour later Morley came into the kitchen to fill her coffee cup and Susan was wiping the counter with a sponge. Susan looked up and smiled self-consciously.

“I was just wiping the counter,” she said unnecessarily.

They both stared at the sponge awkwardly and then back at each other. Both remembering that twenty-five years ago, when they lived together, everyone always knew Susan was upset when she began to clean compulsively.

The next night Stephanie came bouncing down the stairs when she was called to dinner, but there was no Jennifer.

“Where’s Jennifer?” asked Morley.

“I lent her one of my tops,” said Stephanie. “She’s getting changed.”

When Jennifer came downstairs she was wearing Stephanie’s yellow lip gloss and a matching yellow halter top. She dropped into her seat and arched her back coyly, which made the tank top inch up her midriff, exposing her navel.

No one said anything.

Jennifer picked up her fork, looked around the silent table and said, “You know what really pisses
me
off ?”

Susan picked up a napkin and started to polish her spoon.

After dinner Morley walked into the kitchen, and Susan was standing by the sink with her hands behind her back. Morley pretended not to see the can of cleanser Susan was hiding. She had been washing the table.