Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe - Eugene Double Bill - Rendi & Eugene's Teeth

Episode Date: May 22, 2026

“It has been many long years since he sunk his teeth into anything.”On this week’s episode, two stories about everyone’s favourite Vinyl Cafe neighbour: Eugene! And Jess notices some similarities from closer to home.  Ad-free listening is here! Listen to the pod ad-free and early, PLUS a whole bunch of other goodies – like virtual parties, Q&As, listener shout-outs & more. Subscribe here: apostrophe.supercast.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From the apostrophe podcast network. Hello, I'm Jess Milton, and this is backstage at the Vinyl Cafe. Welcome. If we held a vote on Canada's favorite neighbor, not in real life, I mean, in the Vinyl Cafe universe, I'm pretty sure Mary Turlington would take the crown. But coming in hot at number two, Eugene. For sure, no question. I mean, what's not to love?

Maker of wine, rider of water slides, lover of speedos. Today, today is a Eugene double bill. We've got two Eugene stories for you, one about Eugene's dying wish, and one about his teeth, or technically his lack of teeth. Let's start here. This is one of the very first vinyl cafe stories I ever worked on. This is Rondy. Dave's neighbor Eugene, 86 years old this year, and Eugene's wife, Maria 88, moved into the basement of their house several winters ago. It was Eugene's idea.

He thought they would be happier if they could be closer to the furnace during the long gray winter afternoons. And turned out even better than he had imagined. Before long, Maria was preparing their dinner. in the old basement kitchen. Next thing, they were sleeping down there. In June, they discovered the basement was not only warmer in winter, it was cooler in the summer,

and they'd been living down there ever since. They brought down all their family pictures to complete their basement home, some old sepia prints of Eugene's village in Calabria, the fearful portraits of Maria's parents, and countless photos of their son, Thomas. Thomas in a crib, Thomas sitting in the fig tree, Thomas on skates, Thomas with his wife, Thomas with his own son.

Best of all, Eugene would tell you, there are no stairs when you live in a basement. I don't understand, says Eugene, why everyone doesn't live downstairs. Eugene, who's a gardener, spends the languorous days of summer in his yard, tilting back precariously on an old vinyl-covered kitchen chair, smoking his little Italian cigars and watching over his sweet peppers and his string beans, tilting back under his beloved fig tree while he crushes grapes on his thighs to distract the wasps. Eugene, who comes to life in the summer, spends the winter on a brown leather chair in the center of the big basement room where he and Maria cook and eat and doze.

The television's always on down there, and the radio, too, Eugene listening and watching and more often than not, snoring all at the same time. Eugene was in his chair the Monday before Christmas, watching this hour has 22 minutes. And listening to the BBC World News, when he heard that the Italian opera singer Renata Tabaldi had died, the announcer said, Tobaldi had one of the most beautiful voices of the last century. and then someone said she had a voice that sounded like pouring cream when she sang she sounded just like pouring cream said eugene to sam an hour later sam 12 years old comes over to eugene's house every sunday night after supper he

brings his laptop computer with him and he sits at the big table in the center of the basement room and maria puts out a plate of canoli or zbaglione sam comes over to collect the weekly email from eugene and Maria's son Thomas. Thomas lives in London, England, and he sends an email every week and most week's pictures too. Sam reads the emails out loud, using his outside voice, so Maria and Eugene can hear him, and he shows them the pictures, and then Eugene and Maria yack at each other in Italian, and they tell Sam what they want her right back to Thomas. On the Sunday before Christmas, Eugene said, tell him Renata Tabalda died, right, that when she sang, she sounded like poor cream. Then Eugene's head drooped and he began to snore softly. And Sam pulled out his game

boy, which he brought with him precisely for these moments. And he got in some Pokemon until Eugene stirred and said, right that I want him to go back to the old country. Tell him it is my dying wish that he goes back to the village where I was born. On the other side of the room, Maria snorted. This wasn't Eugene's first dying wish. Eugene submitted his first dying wish to his son the year he turned 70. It's my dying wish that you return to Canada and spend Christmas with your mother, he wrote. Thomas, who had never heard his father talk like that, bought a plane ticket home that very day. The next year, Eugene asked Thomas to find a wife.

And then he asked Thomas that he and his wife have a baby, and then more babies. gradually the wishes became as far as dying wishes go more and more peculiar please buy me some of those french chocolates when you're in Paris next I wouldn't mind another Maria Callas record send three of the cotton undershirts they have it marks and spensers it's my dying wish so on the Sunday after Christmas when Eugene asked Thomas to go back to the family village and say it was his dying wish Thomas in England didn't pay it much heed.

Thomas had already been to Italy five times, twice to the Grand Prix in Milano, twice to a friend's villa in Tuscany, and once skiing in the Alps. I've been to the old country, he wrote. Why don't I send you some smoke kippers from Loc Finn instead? It's my dying wish, Eugene shot back. How can you deny an old man his dying wish?

Now this went on for several weeks, until Thomas finally relented. Eugene alerted family and Rondi that his son was coming. And a month later, on a damp Friday morning at the end of January, Thomas left Waterloo Station on the four-hour train trip to Paris North. He had seven hours before his train left Paris Bersie for Rome. So he took a taxi to Saint-Germain and went to the Dubov and Galle Chocolatier, and he bought a box of pistoles, a chocolate disc with nuts. The clerk told him that the pistoles, all were Marie Antoinette's favorites. Juse, I know, said Thomas. He ate a crepe at La Cameritan, and he bought a pair of mauve socks, and then he sat in the Bersay station making calls on his cell phone and sending emails. He took an overnight train to Rome, and at Rome he changed to a train for Napoli,

and in Napoli he boarded a local to Cazza. Eugene's instructions were exhaustive. At the station in Cazenza, Thomas was to find a country taxi, not one of the city ones, one of the cars owned by the men who hung around the back of the station, men who wouldn't charge a ransom to drive you to the mountain villages. I want to go to Rondi, said Thomas, to the men hanging around the line of old Fiat's. Now, Thomas knew his Italian was far from perfect, but he'd always found it passable in the north. The men, however, didn't seem to understand a word.

The men squinted at him. Rondy, said Thomas, I want to go to Rondy. the men looked confused and then there was much yammering back and forth and Thomas retreated to the one word that he was sure of. Rondy he repeated saying the name of his father's village

louder and louder until he was shouting it. Most of the men were pointing into the mountains to the north of the station but two of them kept shaking their heads and pointing west. Thomas took a pen out and a pack of cigarettes from one of the men and he wrote the village name on the cigarette package.

The men passed the package around and there was more fast talk and much shaking of heads until a man into the red plaid shirt stepped forward and slapped his chest and said, Rondie, and pointed at one of the rusting fiats. They drove for an hour, twisting up the sides of mountains and through ancient vineyards and plunging down into the dusty valleys. They skidded around a herd of goats and bounced by old stone ruins.

It was as if they were racing from time. Thomas, sitting in the back seat, was oblivious. to the sublime glory of the sunburned hills. Instead, he spent the ride wondering what the stock market was doing and whether his whole life was going to be taken up by his father's wishes. Rondy turned out to be a walled village, a cluster of red-tiled roofs on a rolling hillside, surrounded by vineyards.

The blue Fiat rocked to a stop at the Porta Nueva, and Thomas paid the driver and walked into town. His black leather satchel slung over his shoulder. The first people he saw were two old ladies dressed in black arguing at the edge of the piazza at the village center. I'm looking for Mikalina Conte, said Thomas in Italian. Two women stared at him blankly. Mikalina Conte said one of the women to the other. Yes, said Thomas.

Mikalina Kante. Thomas set his satchel down on the cobblestone road. His father had told him everyone in town would know his uncle's widow. me chamo thomaso Conte, vengo da Toronto, filio de Eugene and Maria. Before long, a crowd of people had gathered around him.

Apparently, the old family connections were not as strong as Eugene had wanted to think. Thomas felt sorry for his father. No one had seemingly even heard of Michelina Conte. Michelina Conte, said Thomas, as each arrived, Michelinacante until finally someone said, ah, Michelina Conte. And there was a lot of fast talk, just like at the taxi stand.

It was far too fast for Thomas to follow. And then someone ran off and came back with a priest, his black robe swaying back and forth as he swept down the street. Mikalina Conte, said the priest, as he threw his arms around Thomas. And so Thomas's weekend began. All the villagers pushing forward and clapping them on the back, their bewilderment dissolving. Two young men carried up a long wooden table right to the center of the piazza, and slyly, like a picture developing in a darkroom tray, the wooden table began to fill with food,

bottles of red wine that had no labels, a big block of hard, crumbling cheese, and more, as more people appeared, carrying loaves of crusty bread, a big dish of sweet peppers swimming in oil and garlic, a pot of bubbling tomato sauce, plates of fresh pasta. Thomas dug out his camera and took pictures of everyone at the table. And then he gave his camera to a young boy who took pictures of him with everyone.

He wanted evidence to send back home. When Thomas left Rondy the next morning, there were 20 people standing at the massive town gate, waving goodbye. On the way home, he wrote his father. and this is part of what he wrote. I never understood before, he wrote, why you left Italy, and now I do.

It's quaint and not without beauty, but it's so backward. I left Canada for the same reason, and I can't imagine living there anymore. Imagine what might have become of me if you had stayed in Rondy after the war. I know it wasn't always easy for you. I'm grateful for what you did.

As Sam read the letter out loud, Eugene began to scowl. No one said anything when he got to the end. The silence was, in fact, so deep and so profound that Sam glanced at Eugene to check if you had fallen asleep. When he saw, he was, in fact, very awake, Sam sat and waited for the old man to speak. He waited so long, Sam finally said quietly, there are pictures. Eugene grumbled as he hauled himself out of his chair. He snorted when he squinted at the pictures. That's not Rondie, he said.

Well, it was, but it wasn't. There are, it turns out, three Rondes. Ronde del Marre, Rondie del Castello, and Ronde de Santa Maria. Thomas had gone to the wrong one. The indignity of it provoked a dramatic and unexpected response from Eugene. With his jaw clenched and his eyes set, Eugene shuffled unwaveringly across the room and picked up the telephone. Eugene, who's never once in his life, incurred long-distance charges on his own telephone, not once, not ever. Eugene, who won't even talk to his son when Thomas phones home, because he can hear the money being spent with every word.

That, Eugene, picked up the phone and dialed Thomas direct in London as if this was something he did every day, except it was night. in Canada, two in the morning in London. Maria watched with her hand on her breast. Madrasante, said Maria, with genuine shock. Not, however, as much shock as Thomas, who was sound asleep when he picked up the phone and heard his father bellowing at him. When he sorted out what was happening,

Thomas tried to convince his father that his memory was playing tricks on him. If I was in the wrong village, said Thomas, Why did they make such a fuss? They fed me. They took me into their homes. Eugene was apoplectic. Don't you know anything about Italians?

He barked. They felt sorry for a man who gets himself so lost. Italians are very kind to idiots. Then he slammed the phone down and he turned to Sam. What are you looking at? He said, it's okay, it's okay. Type, type. Tell him, go back.

What else, said Sam. Nothing else, said Eugene. Thomas's reply came in an email the following Sunday. Don't ask me to go back, wrote Thomas. I got the point. Eugene was shaking his head as he stared at Sam. Right, what point? Right, how many years in school and you talk nonsense?

Right, this is my dying wish. And with that, Eugene started to snore. Thomas went back to Italy a month later. And if I told you the progression of his second trip, it would sound to you that in all the details it was exactly the same as the first one. He took the train from Waterloo to Paris and from Paris to Rome and from Rome to Napoli. In Cazenza, he carried his black leather satchel to the back of the station and found a cab to take him to Ronde, the right one this time. Ronde del Castella. Once again, the cab bounced over the hills and valleys of the sun burned and rocky wilderness,

the Italians call El Mezzo Giorno. And once again when he got to the village Thomas tried in his fractured Italian to introduce himself to no avail.

Just like on the previous visit, a small group of the curious gathered around Thomas. All of them talking so fast, Thomas had no idea what anyone was saying until suddenly a man clenching a pipe in his mouth

pushed his way to the center of the circle of people. He was wearing an overcoat and a fedora and he smiled at Thomas and he said in heavily accented English, what seems to be the problem here? Like I said, the events of the visit were almost identical to those of the first trip.

But that's not how it felt to Thomas. On his first afternoon in the new Rondie, Thomas was walking through one of the narrow streets when he came across a man carrying a huge wooden toolbox. He had to step into a doorway to let the man by. And as the man passed, they made eye contact and they nodded at each other. Thomas walked ten more steps in the opposite direction

when something made him turn around and look over his shoulder. And when he did that, he saw the man with a toolbox had done the same thing. They stared at each other for what might have been an uncomfortable moment, but wasn't uncomfortable at all. And then Thomas smiled and the man nodded again and the moment was over. The man reminded Thomas to someone,

but it was only after he was out of sight that Thomas realized who that someone was. The man reminded him of himself. He was thicker and rougher to be sure a craftsman rather than a businessman, but it could have been his own self if he had grown up there. The feeling of recognition intensified as the day wore on. As the hours passed, Thomas found his head snapping around to look at one person after another. By nightfall, a feeling had settled on. him that he tried to describe in an email to his father when he got home.

But he couldn't find the words. It was an unsettling feeling, a feeling of the world shifting, a feeling of the world becoming both larger and smaller at the same time, a sense of claustrophobia and expansion, all in one. He phoned his wife and tried to tell his wife about it, but he couldn't explain it to her either. He was staying at his uncle's widow's house, sleeping in a second floor bedroom with a stone floor and a wooden shuttered window that overlooked a valley of olive trees. There were some old stone arches from Roman times down in the valley. On his second morning at breakfast, Thomas' uncle's widow pointed at one of the arches and told him when his uncle was a young man, he had a dream about the biggest arch. He dreamed there was buried treasure under the far arch,

she said. And when he woke up, he took an axe and a pick and a shovel, and he went down there, and he started to dig. He dug, and he dug, and he dug, until he had a hole as deep as his waist, and then he hit something hard, and it was a chest, and he hauled the chest out of the hole, and he saw the lock on the chest was already broken. And when he opened it up, the chest was empty. Thomas said Someone else must have had the same dream as him Someone else must have found the chest first And got all the gold

And Thomas laughed and laughed thinking to himself that was pretty funny His uncle's widow didn't laugh His uncle's widow didn't even crack a smile She said That's what your uncle said What happened to the chest? Asked Thomas

His uncle's widow shook her head He put a hundred lira in size and buried it for the next person who had the dream. The sun was shining and the wind was blowing softly up the valley, and they sat there in the kitchen with their coffee and sweet rolls, and Thomas was reminded of the quiet breakfasts he shared with his mother as a boy that sit and eat and watch his father the early riser working in the garden as they ate their toast. When Eugene finally dies, and that will not happen for many years yet,

But when he does die, he will do so at home. And there'll be a small funeral at a local church. And everyone who attends will leave with a bottle of his homemade wine. It'll be, after all, his dying wish. And after the funeral, people will go to the house and sit in the basement room and the backyard garden and they'll talk. Sam will be there. It'll be his first funeral.

Dave will be there too, of course. And in the late afternoon, Dave and Thomas will find themselves alone by Eugene's Garden Shed. And Dave, who will never get to know Thomas very well, will ask him why he decided to move back to Canada from London. It was your father's greatest wish, you know, but he would never tell that to you. I guess because he was an immigrant himself, because he had left Italy and never moved back, he felt he couldn't ask you to come home. He was a generous man. Thomas will smile and reach up. up and tug at a branch of Eugene's beloved fig tree, and he'll say, oh, I think he told me in his

own way a number of years ago when he sent me back to Rondy. Thomas was thinking of the morning when he was sitting at the table with his uncle's widow, and the priest had come and knocked on the door, and they had walked to the village graveyard. The priest in his black casso, it's not a long walk, but it took a long time because they She walked slowly, not wanting to rush the old lady. And when they got to the graveyard, they stopped before all the stones that she wanted to show them. This is my husband, she said. This is his father.

This is my sister. This is her child. Thomas watched how she crossed herself, and he did it himself as he peered at the photographs set in each stone, each picture fading softly behind its piece of cloudy glass. After a while, he stood, and with his aunt leaning on his arm, they headed back along the sun-soaked road, back to the village. Thank you very much. That was the story we call Rondy. We recorded that story in Port Hope, Ontario back in 2005.

Part of what the dying wish cracks me up. I don't remember where that came from, but it came from someone. Someone Stuart New used to say that. They'd say, it's my dying wish. And it made him laugh because they did. didn't have one single dying wish. They had like dozens of them. We all know someone like that. Someone who has a long list of things that they swear are the most important thing. Someone who has one single dying wish, which is actually more like 100 last dying wishes.

My dad's like that. But for him, it's not about dying wishes. It's about music. It's about lists, like top tens. He's an enthusiast, and he likes to mark moments. He's also a big music guy. So over the years, whenever a certain song would come on, he'd say, oh, wow, this is one of my all-time top-10 favorite songs. And I started to notice something. He said that a lot. Like, a lot. Eventually, I realized his top 10 songs had about 95 songs on it. So I started teasing him.

I'd say, what's this one, dad? Number 82 in your top 10? It became a running joke in our family. And then one Christmas, my dad leaned into it. He gave me and my brother a book, handmade, called Top 100 Songs of All Time. He listed every single song, all 100 of them, and he explained why each one was on the list. Sometimes it was about the music, but mostly it was about the memories. This is the song that was playing when I met your mom.

This is the song we listened to, the day you learned to skate. This is the song that I used to sing to you in the car. on the way to the cottage. It was kind of hard to tease him after he gave me that book, which maybe was part of his plan all along. I just hope he's not listening to this episode, because if he is, he'll probably give me a top ten list of his dying wishes. And just like Eugene, he'll have at least 100.

We're going to take a short break now, but we'll be back in a couple of minutes with another story. So stick around. Welcome back. Time for our second story now. This is Stuart McLean with teeth. The relationship between a gardener and his or her garden can be every bit as complicated as the relationship between two lovers. Consider Eugene, for instance.

Eugene who lives next door to Dave and Morley. Consider the back corner of Eugene's garden, back by the shed. The corner where this May, as he has every May for the past 52 years, Eugene, now 92 years old, kneeled down in the damp spring earth and worked his fingers into the warm soil, grubbing out ten little holes, each no deeper than two inches, no wider than a pencil stub, into which one by one Eugene carefully dropped his pocketful a leathery, shrunken seeds. Each seed holding within it the secret promise of October. On his knees in May, Eugene by the shed, dreaming of October.

Cobra planted his seeds prayerfully. In his ninth decade still bewitched by the wonder of God's earth, still enchanted by the seduction of sweet corn. This year like last, Eugene planted autumn sun glow, a sweet, tender variety of the famous silver queen. As he covered each seed with a handful of dirt, then patted the soil down firmly, Eugene imagined like any lover might imagine. imagine the full ripeness of his beloved. Sweet ears a corn husked right in the backyard where they grew right where he was kneeling even now. Corn picked and plunged immediately into a bucket of ice-cold water and then carried gently into the kitchen and dropped softly into water that was already set to boil. So the cobs could be cooked before any of the sugars even knew what was happening to them, before they could even think of converting to starch. sweet cobs of corn swimming in butter seasoned with salt

a seduction so perfect that just the thought of it would carry Eugene through the torpor of June the fullness of July, the growing darkness of September. But Eugene is not a young man and although he has harvested corn every year for 52 years and although he got down on his knees and planted it again this spring, his 53rd summer in this garden. It's been 17 long autumn since Eugene has sunk his teeth into a cob of sweet corn.

In fact, it's been 17 long years since he's sunk his teeth into anything. The autumn he was 75 years old. Eugene and his wife Maria returned to Italy for two months, returned to the province of Calabria. They went to the village of Rondi to the 30-acre farm where Eugene grew up, run now by his nephew, his late brother Tomaso son, God rest his soul. I have to see it. I have to see it one last time, said Eugene all that summer.

Eugene never told his wife the real reason he wanted to go home. Never told her that he couldn't stand another winter in Canada with his teeth aching on every inhalation of cold winter air with every cup of hot coffee. He tried to get them fixed for years, and when nothing had worked, he'd gone to his dentist and said, Pull him. His dentist, who every autumn imports a case of the small, dark-leafed Tuscano-style cigars,

Eugene smokes, imports them, and then trades them for a trunk full of Eugene's homemade wine. His dentist wouldn't hear of it. Don't be crazy, he said. I won't do it, never. He talked about crowns and implants and a special toothpaste. Too much fuss. thought Eugene. So Eugene and Maria went to Calabria and on their last afternoon there, Eugene went to see old Paulo, the dentist, half blind, all hairy. And when it was his turn in the chair,

Eugene said, out, all of them. And he sat there, his arms folded across his chest, his mouth open. He came home to Canada to get his false teeth. He thought it would be like getting new shoes. He thought they would make him new with the world again. He's a gardener. He believes in fresh darts. No one warned Eugene that removing your teeth was like removing a limb. Oh, you can if you work at it, manage without an arm or a leg, but you have to work at it. You have to learn a whole new set of skills to get by. 17 years ago, when he was 75 years old, when he got his new teeth, Eugene wasn't interested in learning new skills. He put the teeth in his mouth and he walked out of the dentist's office.

He felt like he was chewing on a hockey puck. It was October the 19th, a week before his 76th birthday, Maria had invited half the neighborhood for dinner, including Bert and Mary Turlington and Carl and Gertilobier and Father Del Vecchio, and men from the Trivoli Club where Eugene plays Scopa, and of course, Dave and Morley. Maria had spent the week getting ready. She had deep-fried squid and grilled potatoes and peppers and olive oil,

and there was fresh cheese and homemade wine and country bread from Bedaldos with a crisp hard crust, and of course, a pot of sweet corn. They had to put three tables together to hold everyone, three tables, making a table so long it stretched out of the kitchen and into the front hall. and there was Eugene sitting at the head of this long table in front of all these people, some of whom Maria barely knew.

He picked up the first cob, slathered it in butter, rolled it in salt, and brought it up to his mouth, everyone watching, waiting for him to begin. It was, after all, his birthday. Everyone smiling as Eugene picked up his corn and bit into it and then pulled the ear back from his mouth. Exactly. the ear of corn wedged between Eugene's upper and lower teeth like a long yellow rat caught in a trap.

Jesus and Mary, said Father Del Vecchio. It was the last bite of corn Eugene ever took. But he kept growing it. For 17 long years, Eugene had grown his corn and given it away to his neighbors. But this year, he wasn't going to live without it any longer. He had lived without it long enough. Getting old, as Morley's mom Helen likes to say, is not a pastime for sissies. The frailties of old age or something Eugene has been ducking and denying for years.

And Eugene has been ducking and denying old age with astounding success, especially for a 92-year-old who smoked those parody, those little Italian cigars seemingly all day long, all his life. But even Eugene knew his lucky streak was going to run out one day, and probably sooner rather than later. The thought of it made him grumpy. He wasn't going another fall without an ear of his own corn.

Last Wednesday, as she does every Wednesday, Maria was up at 5.30. She made her coffee, and by six she was sitting in the kitchen, her hair and curlers, getting ready for lunch club, reading the large print edition of the Reader's Digest. And last Wednesday,

the sweet corn that it's been growing all summer long in the back corner of Eugene's garden, out of sight by the shed, was begging to be picked. By the time Eugene joined her at seven, Maria had moved on from the Reader's Digest and was struggling with a television guide, re-reading for the fourth time a synopsis of last seasons, the West Wing. The president's daughter had been kidnapped, a fact that terrified Maria. Maria who went to bed before the television news and didn't read newspapers and had never seen the West Wing had confused the account of President Bartlett's life with reality. If the president's daughter could be kidnapped, no one was safe. Fear of kidnapping had been

preying on her mind all week. When Eugene shuffled into the kitchen, she looked up at her husband and she said, they still haven't found the president's daughter. It's been all summer. Then she said, Make sure you lock the door when I leave. Eugene sat down heavily. Maria brought him his coffee in a bowl of fresh figs and melon. Eugene stared at the bowl of fruit and reached into his dressing gown pocket and pulled out his teeth. These days he mostly wears his teeth in his pocket, removing them only when people come around or when it's time to eat. Eugene had never liked the set of teeth his dentist had made him.

In his darker moments, he suspected the dentist who had disapproved. of him having his teeth out, had made the teeth so they would torture him. But he never did anything about it. Eugene was worried if he said anything, he and the dentist might begin to feud, and he could lose his annual supply of free cigars. So instead of dealing with it up front, he had ordered sets of false teeth off the backs of health magazines, stuffing his mouth with the plasticine moles they sent him and returning them by mail. He had a set that made him whistle.

like a guinea pig. And another that clattered as if his mouth was full of marbles. These were sets that Maria had outlawed. But on this Wednesday afternoon, Maria was not going to be home. Eugene was free to use any set of teeth he felt like. At noon, Eugene shuffled out to the end of the garden

and picked up two fat, ripe ears of corn. He stuffed them into his pockets so his hands could be free as he made his way to the kitchen. The water was already boiling. there was a plate on the kitchen table and salt and butter, and lying beside them the sturdiest pair of teeth Eugene owned, a pair of teeth that Eugene had bought at a flea market and long forgotten, a set that employed a stiff spring to keep them in place.

The spring was armed to keep the teeth constantly open, and thus pushed against his lower and upper gums. They were sitting on the table. wide open looking like a leghole trap you might use on one of those vicious fur-bearing animals, like a wolverine. Eugene lowered the two ears of corn into the boiling water. He waited precisely three minutes and took them out. He carried them across the kitchen to the table and dropped them on his plate.

He sat down heavily, sighing as he went. He picked up the teeth and brought them to his mouth, opening as wide as he could as he tried to work them. in. They didn't fit. In the open position, their default position, the teeth were too large to slide between his lips. They used to work. And then Eugene remembered, you had to force the spring closed and then slip the teeth into your mouth in the closed position. And when they were in place, you could release the pressure and the force of the spring would hold them in position. Eugene picked up the teeth and holding them in both hands like he was holding a hamburger.

Eugene slipped them between his lips. Using his tongue to guide him, Eugene worked the teeth carefully back and forth trying to get them to set down on his gums. And when they did, Eugene had a moment, a second maybe, or maybe two, two seconds of pure pleasure. As he sat at the kitchen table looking down at his two ears of steaming corn, thinking to himself in that moment that life was grand, that even at 92 years, this old earth could feel fresh and new

and pregnant with the promise of pleasure. Eugene, with a pure joy of childhood, reached out and picked up the first ear of corn, and he held it in front of him for a second. It had been 17 long years. He breathed in the rich smell of the melted butter, and he sighed, and he opened. his mouth, and when he opened his mouth, there was a far-away click, like a car door unlocking, or a mouse trap going off in the night, or a spring beginning to unravel. There was a click

and another click and Eugene put the corn back on the plate. The clicks, which seemed to be coming from inside him, had begun to click so fast, they were more of a whirring than a clicking now, and as Eugene sat there trying not to move his mouth began to open. He was not trying to open his mouth. His mouth was opening on its own, wider and wider, wider than Eugene believed possible. So wide, it felt like he was going to swallow his old head. And then the teeth reached their maximum open position, and Eugene was standing in the middle of his own kitchen, his mouth wide open, looking like a desperate birdling waiting for a worm. The phone rang.

Eugene picked it up. He said. Eugene, said Maria. Thank God it was his wife. Eugene began to explain about the teeth. Eugene, what's wrong? said Maria. Fear swelling in her voice. Said Eugene.

And then amazingly Maria understood. After 65 years of marriage, sometimes words are unnecessary. Kidnappers. The same ones who had the president's daughter. Eugene hadn't locked the door like she told him. The kidnappers had tied and gagged her husband. Eugene said Maria desperately, I'm coming home. So there's Eugene standing in the kitchen staring at the phone,

staring at the corn. Eugene standing in the kitchen wondering after all these years, after all those close calls, all a near misses, is this how he was going to die? Ripped apart by a set of false teeth. He was about to be handed the ultimate punishment because he had given in to the siren call of illicit love, because he had succumbed to passion, an emotion that belonged properly with the young, not an old fool like him. He picked up his cane and shuffled out the back door. He was heading for the place he always headed when something needed to be fixed. He was heading for his shed. Knowing one thing, he had to get the teeth out before Maria got home.

He felt like a fool, and darned if he was going to let Maria find him like this. By the time he had stomped past his fig tree, Eugene had worked himself into a fury. His face, ruddy at the best of times, was glowing. He followed his mouth past his tomatoes. around the zucchini's right through the melon patch. Mowing along with his wide open jaws, he looked like a snowblower. He threw the shed door open and peered into the gloom.

There had to be something in the shed he could use to lever the teeth closed. It took Eugene 15 minutes to wrestle the wine press out of the shed and into the garden. By the time Sam and his friend Murphy yopped down the alley like a pair of crows, Eugene had his head in the wine press, and he had the press screwed down as tight as he could get it. So mad, so worked up, so furious at what he had done to himself that his face was the color of wine pulp. Sam and Murphy almost walked right by him, but they heard a

sound, a click. And Sam and Murphy stopped in their tracks. The sight of the old man with his head in the wine press was so beyond anything the boys had ever seen. that they both had difficulty making sense of what they were looking at. Sam didn't even recognize Eugene, his next-door neighbor. He just saw component parts. It was like he was looking at a painting by Picasso. There was a warm blue suit jacket with gray stripes. There was a red face.

There was a brown shoe jerking up and down. There was a head of gray hair in disarray. It was different for Murphy. For Murphy, it was like looking through a tunnel. for Murphy everything faded away except for that red face in the wine press. The face redder than any face Murphy had ever seen before. The face redder than any face he had ever seen was being held in some sort of murderous medieval torture device just like he had read about and Ripley's, believe it or not.

The sight of it made Murphy queasy. Said Eugene waving his arms, trying to tell the boys to keep going, trying to tell him that everything was okay. That's when the sneeze began. It began as a tickle at the front of Eugene's nose, right at the tip, and then it spread back into him like electricity, building inside of him, building in that secret spot where his nasal cavity and his throat and his lungs all join like some seldom visited railway yard.

Eugene deciding at the last moment, as the air rushed down his nose that it would be better with a boy standing there the way they were, to divert the sneeze, to divert the sneeze from his nose to his mouth. He did this in an instant like a railroad controller flicking a switch and sending a runaway train off the main line and onto a side rail. The sneeze, building forth so it rushed through his mouth like a tropical storm, like a hurricane blowing over a shingled roof, propelling his teeth out of his mouth,

and sending them flying across the backyard. When Murphy was in grade one, some kid in the schoolyard had told him that a sneeze could build up in a person with such force that could blow their head apart. Murphy had worried about this ever since. Had been seized with a cold grip of death every time he felt a sneeze coming on,

squeezing his eyes shut, not wanting to see his own brain exploding in front of his face. So when this man was, with a monstrously red face had the sneeze squeezed out of him, Murphy covered his eyes with his hands. Sam's eyes, however, opened wider. Eugene sneezed and suddenly the picture came out of focus for Sam. Sam saw everything with a clarity that athletes sometimes describe

when they speak of heightened moments of awareness. Eugene sneezed, and Sam saw his old friend Eugene with his head inexplicably wedged in the wine press. His face squeezed tight in a sneeze, and his teeth, his teeth flying out of his mouth, heading towards Sam like some vicious cartoon grin. Acting on instinct alone, Sam reached out and plucked the teeth out of the air. The catch of his life. Dead silence.

Murphy knew he couldn't look at the wine press. So instead he turned his head and peered through his fingers at his friend. and what he saw was Sam holding the old man's teeth. The old man had blown his head apart. It was just like they'd told him in the schoolyard. Murphy vomited. Two months will pass before Sam and Eugene have their next dental rendezvous. In two months, Sam will learn he has to have braces on his teeth.

And the very same afternoon that Sam gets this bad news, Eugene will see him over the fence and will notice Sam has been crying. Eugene will wave him over and Sam, who thought he was alone with his misery, will wipe his nose on his sleeve and he will go over to Eugene's backyard and he will sit down on one of the old kitchen chairs Eugene keeps there. The chairs Eugene sits on to watch things grow. When Sam tells Eugene that the braces are going to ruin his life, Eugene will nod sympathetically.

You're right, he'll say. say. They could do that. And he'll reach into his pocket and pull out his little red and white package of miniature cigars, and he'll offer one to Sam. I don't smoke, Sam will say. And Eugene will shrug, I forgot, he'll say. And then he'll hold the package out again and say, it's never too soon to start. And then he'll work his teeth loose with his tongue, and he'll slip them in and out of his mouth. And Sam will say, maybe I should get my teeth pulled, then I wouldn't need braces. And Eugene will reach among the orange clay flower pots on the shelf, and he'll pull out a bottle of his homemade wine. I guess you still don't drink either,

he'll say. And Sam will shake his head. Too bad, Eugene will say. And they will sit there for half an hour, the old man and the boy. And by the time Sam has to go, they will have talked about many things. And one afternoon, next September, the two of them will sit down again together, this time in Eugene's kitchen. And even though Sam will be wearing braces, and even though corn like gum and toffee, will be on his list of forbidden foods, Sam and Eugene will eat fresh corn together, Sam with his shiny new braces and a juice glass full of toothpicks beside him, you know, you.

Eugene using his penknife to cut the kernels off the cob. Sam will sit there with butter dribbling down his chin and smile. I love corn, Sam will say. At that, Eugene will put his fork down and pick up his glass of wine, and he will look out his window at his garden, and he will hold his glass up to the corn, and the pepper plants and his fig tree, and the beans still on the vine,

and he will turn to the boy, lean forward, and smile. There'll be a tear in his eye. You should never, never, never, give up on something you love, he will say. Never. Thank you very much. That was the story we called Teeth. We recorded that story at the Charles W. Stocky Center in Perry Sound, Ontario. All right, that's it for today, but we'll be back here next week with two more Dave and Morley stories.

Everyone staring at him and he was crying plain as day, no doubt about it. And Sam thought, I am too old to be crying about a sick dog. So he began to add it. He stared at Mrs. Esther Brooks, his bottom lip quivering, no words coming out as he tried words out in his mind. My dog is dying, he tried. No. My dog died. still saying nothing, still just sitting, sitting and staring at Mrs. Esther Brooks,

and Mrs. Esther Brooks staring back at him. Sam, she said, he was biting his bottom lip. He was standing up. That was the beginning. When Sam stood up and everyone in the class was staring at him and he looked down at his shoes and he said, my dad is dying. Words spread like wildfire. By the middle of the afternoon, everybody had heard.

The wind hit Morley almost as soon as she got home. Morley wasn't home five minutes and the doorbell was ringing Mary Turlington standing on the stoop. Morley surprised to see her. They stared at each other but only for the briefest moment because after the briefest moment Mary burst into tears. Morley said, Mary, what is it? And she led her into the kitchen and they sat down and Mary wiped her eyes thinking, damn, damn.

Mary thinking, get a grip, this isn't the time to come apart. Mary pulled herself together and she looked at Morley and she said, oh, Morley, I just heard, and she lost it again. And Morley, who had just got off the phone with a vet, who had just heard herself, looked across the table at her friend, Mary, she said, it's not for sure yet. They did some tests, but they don't have the results yet. And even if he isn't, even if he doesn't, you know, Mary, he's getting old anyway. That's next week on the podcast. I hope you'll join us. Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe is part of the apostrophe podcast network.

The recording engineer is someone who always knows where he's left his teeth, Greg DeCloot. Theme music is by Danny Michelle. And the show is produced by Louise Curtis, Greg DeCloot, and me. Jess Milton. Let's meet again next week. Until then, so long for now.