Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe - Literary Structures - Dave’s Inferno & Labour Pains

Episode Date: March 1, 2024

“By the end of the first trimester, Dave had put on 12lbs.” A surprising theme links our two stories this week. In the first, Dave has a hellish trip to the grocery store—and Jess has a backstory about what shopping with Stuart was really like. Our second story takes us back to the early days of Dave and Morley’s relationship, when Morley is pregnant with their first child. 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. We have two stories for you today on the podcast. Two stories that at first glance have nothing in common, but they do. You'll see. The first story is one we call Dave's Inferno. It has a great backstory about Stuart, and I'll tell you more about that after the story. But there's another backstory. It's not about the story itself. It's about the structure. It's about the way the story is assembled. And it's the reason why we call the story Dave's Inferno. As you'll hear in a minute, Stuart employs an unusual literary structure in this story. He loosely parallels the structure of Dante's Inferno. Inferno is the first part of Italian writer Dante Alighieri's 14th century epic poem,

The Divine Comedy. This is a literary device employed expertly by Stuart. I love the playfulness of this literary flex. It is fun, and it adds texture and dimension to the story. But mostly I love it because I know Stuart loved it. He was having fun. This is where he was at later in his career. He was playful. He played around with his writing. He took risks. He didn't always do that. He didn't always have the time to do that. Because the thing about taking risks is they might not work. You might write and write and write for days and days and then find out it doesn't work and you have to start over. And Stuart didn't always have that kind of time. He started his career as a journalist, and like most journalists, he loved a deadline. He needed a deadline.

He was a deadline hound. He kind of liked backing himself into a bit of a corner and then writing his way out of it. He was great at that. The problem is, it meant he didn't always have time to try something new, The problem is, it meant he didn't always have time to try something new, to mess around with the way he told his stories, with the structure of the story, with the spine. But occasionally he did.

His editor, Meg Masters, was really great about challenging him to take risks and asking him to approach a story differently. And I was always on him to start earlier so he could take those risks. So he felt like he had time to do that, to try something new, to branch out, to go out on a limb. It's not that he didn't want to. He did. He always expressed that desire. It's just he never had enough time. And so over the years, we tried more and more to carve out more time for Stuart to work on the stories. This is one of the last stories that Stuart wrote. It's from our final season. And when I listen to it, I hear the space that he was given.

I can hear the time that he put into it. I can hear that he had the time and the space to play and to take risks. And that makes me happy. This is a simple story about something most of us have done hundreds of times in our lives. Grocery shopping. A simple story taken to a different level because of Stuart's skill and because he took the time to just play. This is Dave's Inferno. Story time now. When I began writing this story, I had in mind one of the greatest literary works ever created, Dante's Divine Comedy. I wanted to pay tribute to Dante.

So the earliest drafts of this piece began with an allegory and was organized into canticles and cantos, and as often happens, things changed as I went along. First the allegory was dropped, and then in later iterations the canticles were dropped too, and then in the penultimate draft were dropped too. And then in the penultimate draft, on the advice of my editor, who thought we should make the whole thing more accessible, in other words, bring it down to the lowest common denominator, dumb

it down if you will, the cantos became chapters. And I must be honest, I chafed at that a bit, but I went along with it. But because we are in this great literary town today, I thought I would reintroduce the sophistication of those early versions. I thought if anyone was up to it, Chicago was. And so in an act of editorial rebellion and with the greatest respect to Dante Alighieri, I present the checkout, Canto I, Cosmology. Now one could say that entering a supermarket is akin to entering this life. A birth of sorts, a small and symbolic one to be sure, but a birth nevertheless.

For what is a supermarket if not a world of allegory? The aisles at the beginning representing the days of our youth, the aisles at the beginning representing the days of our youth teeming as they do with life affirming things the apples and pears of our childhood beguiling and beckoning us to come along come along deeper and deeper to where danger dwells into the depths of the place into the middle aisles the middle age of our life, where temptation lurks to lead the weak among us astray. What is wandering through a grocery store if not an allegorical wandering through this world,

a voyage which begins in the garden of youth, navigates through the thrill of snack foods, trudges through the disappointment of boxed cereal, and ends in the chilly realm of the freezers. And we get there when we're done, our shopping finished, our allegorical life over. Where do we go? We turn our baskets toward the aptly named checkout counter. But first we head for the chasm that separates the shopping from the paying, the hallway that bisects the store the way the Acheron River separates life on this earth from the underworld. We stand beside our grocery cart like it was Karen's boat. We survey what lies ahead.

A lineup, that's what lies ahead. It is time for us to pay the piper, time to atone for the sins of our life, time for the purgatory of the cash register so we can ascend to the paradise of the home-cooked meal. Though this is where the metaphor gets a little muddled. Because really, as anyone who has been on this little journey can tell you, the checkout line may represent purgatory. But so often, it feels more like hell. End of the first canto. Beginning of canto two, life.

So Dave was at the grocery store for the second day in a row. He and Morley were having guests for dinner, and when he went to the store on Thursday, he forgot to get the one thing that he actually went to the store to get. He forgot the cream cheese for Morley's much-loved crab dip. He came home and unloaded the stuff he had bought, and he said, you're right, I'm sorry, I'll go back tomorrow. And then he made a promise.

He would have the cream cheese in her hands so she had more than enough time, his words, not mine, more than enough time to make the dip before the first guest arrived. He would leave work early. He'd be home by five. I promise, he said.

So why then on his second trip in 24 hours, the one that we are about to join, why had he found it necessary to get a cart and wander up and down every aisle? Because he's an idiot. His words, not mine. And they may well be part of the truth, but they are not the whole truth. Truth is, he got the cart because he is human.

And the moment he entered the store, he was confronted with temptation. The temptation to shop. And we all know the best way to get rid with temptation. The temptation to shop. And we all know the best way to get rid of temptation. The best way to get rid of temptation is to give in to it. The problem was he had on this afternoon actually arrived with time to spare. He thought time was on his side. So he got a cart and he pushed it through the cornucopia of fruits and vegetables, around the corner of bakery, past the ice of fish, the brown paper of meat,

up canned goods, down cereals, through drinks and past frozen foods, and look at all the stuff he found they needed. Now he knew there were people who could do what he hadn't done. Efficient people. People who could stay on task. Morally, for instance. These people would have had it right for the cheese and then the checkout, but that was just foolishness as far as Dave was concerned. He glanced at his watch. Yowzers! He was going to be late. End of canto two. Canto three, crossing into hell.

Canto 3, Crossing into Hell. How late was the question? How late is what is hanging in the balance as we join him? Dave glanced at his watch again. Okay, really late. He had lost complete track of time. And so he sped up. He would have to skip the pleasures of yogurts and domestic cheese. Wait, the cream cheese. He left his cart, ran back, scooped up the little silver

package of cream cheese the way he should have almost an hour ago. He threw it in his basket and he made for the front of the store. That, my friends, was a close call. He nearly forgot it for the second day in a row. And so he rolled his half-full, oh, all right, virtually full basket into the open. He surveyed the area. There was a line at every cache. Deep breath, take stock. The line to his left had four carts. The one to his right had three. The choice seemed obvious until you looked a little harder. Each of the three carts seemed fuller than each of the four. But he examined the carts more carefully. A cart can be full, but if it's full of toilet paper and laundry soap, it'll move faster than a cart of small cans and fresh vegetables. And then there were the cashiers. The line with the four carts was

being handled by a plump older woman wearing a tunic. The other line, the one with the three fuller cards, was being handled by a long-haired young man. The efficiency of experience or the energy of youth. The fewer baskets or the emptier ones. Of course, there was also self-checkout. Self-checkout is like an arcade game where you get to be the cashier. But would it be faster? Self-checkout was a head fake, a setup, a sucker punch. It always went wrong. You always had to call a cashier over for a reset or a redo or a re-up. Dave knew he was an amateur. He needed professional help.

A man in a blue windbreaker appeared out of nowhere and without hesitating rolled right by him into the line with three carts. The guy had just stolen his place. Okay, he hadn't made up his mind. He hadn't committed, but it could have been his place. He glared at him. He'd keep his eye on Mr. Windbreaker and see how they compared. This was a sporting event now.

And his goal was to defeat Mr. Windbreaker. And look, there's a line at the far end with no one in it. Dave backed his car and swiveled. So long, sucker. He was about to bury Mr. Windbreaker. He spotted the sign when he got there. One to twelve items. He looked at his cart. It was essentially full. The woman at the cash was watching him. He flashed her his most winsome grin. She grinned back and then shook her head slowly. Not in a million years.

He had to go back to the beginning. In the brief moment he had been away, the two lines had both lengthened. The three was now five. If he joined it, he'd be two spots behind Mr. Windbreaker. The four was a five too. But wait, it appeared they were opening a new line, and there was an older gentleman heading toward it already. The old guy's basket was stuffed. He had to get there ahead of him. But to appear ethical, to appear decent, he had to create the impression that he hadn't seen him. They collided at the entrance of the cache. End of canto three. Canto four. Hell.

There was nothing left but to line up meekly behind the old guy. And now there was nothing left to do but to watch in despair. The old guy had brought out a grocery flyer. And he had fallen into deep discussion with the cashier,

pointing at the flyer and then at an item on the conveyor. The cashier was shaking her head. The old guy was holding the item up now. The cashier was still shaking her head. And Dave was growing frantic. The old guy ever so slowly folded the flyer and returned it to his pocket. In its place, he pulled out a roll of bills. He began peeling bills off the roll, one by one.

Dave sighed and looked skyward. At least he would be done soon. But he wasn't. He put the bills away and was patting his pocket looking for something else. He was looking for his change pouch. He was going to pay an exact change. Okay, an exact change. Dave felt his heart accelerating. The old guy was squinting at the computer screen. He was opening the change pouch, and he was picking out coins one after another, examining each coin before he handed it over.

In the name of God, cried Dave. Will somebody please help him? I beg your pardon, said the lady behind him. I'm going to shoot myself, said Dave. Canto 5. Hell hath many rings. The cashier had taken the change pouch from the old man and was counting his coins for him. The old man was watching carefully. To distract himself from flinging his credit card down on the counter and shouting, Let me pay! Dave turned to the woman behind him, thinking, as he did, that at least he was no longer the last in line.

I'm just going to run over and get some flowers, said Dave. Do you mind? He was going to need all the help he could muster when he got home. The woman shook her head. She didn't mind at all. He jogged over to the flower display. He grabbed a bouquet of yellow tulips and he ran back. He got halfway there and stopped abruptly. His cart was floating like a lonely little island all by itself. The woman had moved in front of him. She was unloading her groceries onto the belt. I thought you weren't coming back, she said. And now she was separating her groceries into three separate orders, carefully placing bars between each one. carefully placing bars between each one.

Dave could do nothing but stand and watch. She was paying for each order a different way. A debit card for the first. Oh no, she was writing a check for the second. It was as if the line had magically produced two extra people. Finally, they started on her last order. She had 12 cans of tuna. The cashier was ringing them through, one can after another.

Dave looked at his watch. Everything inside of him told him to keep his mouth shut, but he couldn't keep his mouth shut. He leaned forward and said, may I make a suggestion? Both the cashier and the lady turned and glared at him. They're all the same, said Dave. if you punch it in once and then times 12 it'll go much faster I need to do it this way for inventory back to the order, but at half the speed she was moving before his helpful suggestion, he waited. As he waited, he watched Mr. Windbreaker wheel his checked-out cart out of the store. Canto 6. Despair. It was his turn.

And now the cashier was holding his tulips. Do you know how much these are, she said. They're $4.99, said Dave. There's no barcode, said the cashier. They're $4.99, said Dave. Adele! She called to the cashier one roll over. How much are the tulips?

They're $7.99, said Adele. Dave said, do you want me to run back and get a different bunch? The cashier smiled at him and shook her head. She reached under the counter and pulled out a phone. No, said Dave, don't do that. But she did. She uttered the dreaded words, price check. And then she reached over and put a closed sign on her cash. She smiled at Dave. Virgil will only be a minute, she said. Just charge me the $7.99, said Dave. This isn't a bazaar, said the cashier. You aren't allowed to bargain here.

Dave glanced at his watch. Four minutes. Four and a half. Five. Virgil came back. The tulips are $4.99, said Virgil. Aren't you glad I didn't charge you the $7.99, said the cashier. Dave didn't hear her.

Dave was standing at the end of the counter wildly throwing things into bags. He threw his debit card into the terminal and punched in his pen. He got it right on the fourth try. He grabbed his bags and ran, racing for the exit. The bags swinging in one hand, the car keys out and ready in the other. He had no hope, of course. He was so late it didn't matter. But he couldn't help himself.

He was late. All he could do was hurry. Sadly, as they say, speed kills. Canto 7. Divine comedy. Back at the cash register, Virgil had stayed to help bag groceries for the next customer in line. That guy, he says. He's talking about Dave.

What, says the cashier. He forgot a bag. He's not coming back, says the cashier. I don't think so, says Virgil. I'll reshell the stuff. What is there, said the cashier. I'll mark it down in case he comes back. Oh, nothing important, said Virgil.

Three apples, some farmer's sausage, and a pack of cream cheese. Canto the last. Death comes in many forms. We can die young and we can die old. We can drop dead of fear or we can topple over in embarrassment. We can die with our boots on or off. Some people stand on stage and are said to die. Some sit in an audience and say they're dying too.

When Dave got home, he swore he had the cream cheese in the bags. I swear, he said, not that it mattered. The low beers were already there. It was way too late for crab dip. Honest to God, said David, was there. I had it. It was just a small death. And coward or hero, we all have our share. Some would say the small deaths add up, that they take their toll. say the small deaths add up, that they take their toll. But there are more important things than crab dip and better ways of dying. We can laugh ourselves to death. We can also laugh ourselves silly. Sometimes all we can do is laugh. That was Dave's Inferno.

We recorded that story in 2015 at the North Shore Center for Performing Arts in Skokie, Illinois. See what I mean? It's fun, right? So let me tell you the backstory. I hated grocery shopping with Stuart. Like Dave, Stuart went up and down every aisle in the grocery store, and it drove me absolutely crazy. We did a lot of grocery shopping together because we'd go grocery shopping when we were out on the road. We had a tour bus with a little kitchen in it, so sometimes we'd grocery shop for the bus. On our longer concert tours, like the Christmas tour, for example, it'd mostly be our road manager who would do the shopping, Tina Lovecho or Ted Decker. tour, for example, it'd mostly be our road manager who would do the shopping, Tina Lovecho or Ted Decker. On those long tours, we'd usually be touring for three, four, or even five weeks. We'd do a concert pretty much every night of the week and two on Sundays. So we'd do, you know,

30 shows in 29 days. We might end up recording one of those concerts for the radio, but not always. We'd be traveling to a different town every day or every couple of days, and we spent a lot of time on the bus. But we weren't usually eating meals on the bus, at least not dinner. We always had dinner at the theater before the show, all of us together backstage. But we'd have breakfast on the bus and maybe lunch and lots of snacks. I loved doing post-show snacks and drinks on the bus. Road manager Ted Decker and I kind of held court together. We'd pour wine and pass plates of cheese and crackers and whatever special treats we'd found at the grocery store in whatever town we

were in. We got to know our favorites. Thrifty Foods in Courtney Comox, La Bottega in Ottawa, Vincenzo's in Waterloo, Pete's Frutique in Halifax. But when we were recording a concert, the pace of touring was very different. We recorded about 10 concerts a year. If you listened to the Vinyl Cafe on the radio back in the day, then you know the ones I'm talking about. These are the shows that would start with an essay about the town that we were in, and there'd be a story exchange, and there'd be a brand new Dave and Morley story, and they usually featured live music by local musicians. Most of those shows were what we called one-offs, meaning we weren't on tour. We didn't have a full crew with us. We just went to that town to record that one show. Usually it was just me, Stuart, and our sound engineer,

Bill Herald. Sometimes, if we were lucky, our lighting guy, Lucas Simonetto, would be there too. When we were recording a show, Stuart and I would arrive in town early. We'd drive in or come by train or fly. We'd arrive a week before the show to try to get a sense of the town, to research it, to get the vibe so we could write about it, so we could paint a picture for people at home about what the place was like, to try and paint our own postcard. In those situations, I'd usually rent us a little cabin or, you know, an Airbnb or something like that. And we'd set up shop there, the two of us, for a week or so. And that is when I got to go grocery shopping with Stuart. I say that like it was a privilege. It was not a privilege. not a privilege. Like the story you just heard? It was more like hell.

We'd hit the grocery store and I would have a list. I always have a list. For everything. I knew exactly what we both liked to eat and I did most of the cooking. So I'd throw together a quick meal plan and make a list and I could be in and out of that store in 10 minutes flat. In, out, onto the next thing. The thing we were there to do. The writing and the show. Stuart was the opposite. It would take him more than an hour to grab like three things. He loved to wander up and down every aisle and let things wash over him. He'd like to wait for inspiration to hit. He'd say, what if there's something in there that we need and we don't know it yet? And I'd say, Stuart, that is a risk that I am willing to take. These are stakes that I can handle. He'd always pick up something that I thought we definitely did not need.

I cannot tell you how many times I flew cans of sardines back to Ottawa. So many sardines that we never ate. It was a constant argument between the two of us. He swore his way was better. It frustrated him to no end that I, as he liked to say, prayed at the altar of efficiency. Like all good jokes, it had a lot of truth in it. I do pray at the altar of efficiency, and sometimes that means sacrificing something else. And sometimes that means sacrificing something else. Fun, for one thing.

That's what he said. He swore his way was better. But then he wrote that story about grocery shopping. And when I read it for the first time, and I saw Dave's demise, his falter at the altar of efficiency, when I read that, I figured that was Stewart's little way of saying maybe his way, Dave's way, wasn't the best way after all. Or not always the best way.

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. We're talking about story structure today on the podcast. Stuart often turned to nature to provide structure to his stories. He would use nature and especially the changing of the seasons as a way to root the

story and also a way to propel it forward. There are lots of examples of this. The defibrillator does that beautifully. If you want to hear that story again, you can listen to the first episode in season two. It's called There's Something About Mary. And he uses that structure in Dave's truck, too. The story starts in the autumn and moves through the seasons to show the passage of time and how far the characters have come and how much further they have to go. In the story In the Weeds, the one where Stephanie takes a job at a restaurant, Stuart uses time and seasons and holidays to root it. It starts in April and then rewinds all the way back to Halloween, and we see Steph learn as the months pass. And then there's this story, a story that uses time

as its structure to illustrate the ultimate deadline. In this story, Stewart uses the passing weeks to create dramatic tension. We, the audience, feel the pressure the same way the characters do. He draws our attention to the weeks adding up so that we feel the same tension that Dave and Morley do. We're right there next to them, racing, racing forward until there's nowhere else to go, to that place where there is nothing else to do, nothing to worry about, nothing to do except breathe. This is labor pains. There was a Saturday this summer, you probably remember it, so smudged and feverish that you might have, like Dave, thought the city was about to ignite. That the temperature was about to soar through a critical flashpoint and all the front lawns in sight would begin to smolder.

It was the Saturday Dave staggered into his basement in search of his children's inflatable swimming pool. Not for the children. For him. swimming pool. Not for the children, for him. And when he found the pool, Dave lugged it onto the front lawn, inflated it, filled it with water, flopped down beside it, and sat there in his shorts and his t-shirt with his bare feet in the pool, holding for dear life onto the shards of his sanity. He was sitting there looking as if he had been hit on the head with a rubber mallet when Jill Lane and her husband Jim walked by. Jim wearing their weak old infant on his chest in a corduroy snugly. It was the first time Dave had seen Jill and Jim since the birth of their baby. Congratulations, he croaked, barely summoning the strength to wave, fully expecting them to

continue down the street, forgetting that Jim Lane is a first-time father. Ten minutes later, Jim and Jill were sitting beside him with their feet in the pool. Dave was holding their daughter, and Jim Lane was well into the story of her birth. It was an amazing day, Jim was saying. Two days, said his wife, Archly. 36 hours, actually, said Jim, smiling at Dave, of actual labor. But the pain wasn't that bad. 36 and a half hours, actually, said Jill. And we didn't take any medication, Jim said proudly. We did the breathing thing. I was the coach. If he hadn't been so hot, Dave might have let that go by.

If he hadn't felt so sticky and utterly exhausted, Dave probably wouldn't have said a thing. But he was hot beyond belief and feeling cranky. And instead of letting it go, Dave said, I understand the breathing thing can be very helpful. I hear a lot of women recommend it to their husbands for root canal work. It has almost been 20 years since Morley was first pregnant with Stephanie. Wasn't the easiest of pregnancies. On Dave, that is. It was hard on Dave right from the start.

When Morley learned she was pregnant, she phoned Dave at work at the record store. She called from a phone booth outside her doctor's office. She said, it's me, I have something to tell you. She was feeling so tender and sentimental, so full of hope and fear and great love, so full of so much emotion that she burst into tears and she cried for five minutes. When she finally blurted it out, when she finally said, I'm going to have a baby, Dave was completely overwhelmed. He couldn't believe this was happening to him.

It was too momentous, too God-like to be part of the creation of life. Something bigger than him must have done it. She said, I'm going to have a baby, and he blurted out, I didn't do it. She hung up on him. He closed the store, and he went right home, and they both cried. For a week, he was buffeted by waves of anxiety. How could he, of all people, be a father? And then something clicked.

He went to bed one night worried, and woke up the next morning feeling oddly pleased with himself. He also woke up with a new and dramatic aversion to chicken. Suddenly he couldn't stand the smell, the texture, or the taste of chicken. He couldn't stand the sight of chicken. He couldn't even stand the idea of chicken. He'd break into a cold sweat driving past the Swiss Chalet. So they cut chicken from their diet, which was not an easy feat. And by the end of the first trimester, Dave had put on 12 pounds.

That's because the same morning the chicken thing happened, Dave developed a king-size yearning for dill pickled potato chips. By the end of the 13th week of Morley's pregnancy, Dave was eating a family-sized package of dill pickled potato chips every day. He carried them around with him like a blankie. Morley was okay. Morley only gained eight pounds. But it didn't really show. Not like Dave. At the beginning of the fourth month, Dave forgot to pay the rent at the record store.

I'm worn out, he said to Morley. I'm all fuzzy. I'm finding it hard to concentrate. When they were six months, Dave and Morley went with their pregnancy class on a tour of the hospital birthing rooms. Dave was, let's face it, still is, like most men, pretty ignorant about his wife's reproductive system. He thought he understood in the broadest of terms what was going on, but you know what? He didn't have a clue what was going on. It was like someone had registered him in a book-of-the-month club without explaining the rules. It was like someone had registered him in a book of the month club without explaining the rules.

Dave was aware that there was a monthly mailing, but he wasn't at all clear what was sent or where it was sent from, or for that matter, where it went. It had all been explained to him once, but whenever he tried to remember the details, all he could summon up were disconnected words, mostly nouns, mostly place names, places that sounded like stops on the Paris metro, the oviduct, the fallopian tubes.

Taking everything into consideration was probably better. He didn't know all the details of this book club. The only trouble was he liked reading so much. He especially liked reading to his wife at night. And so it was while Dave was navigating this foggy sea of uncertainty that he sailed into the hospital for his tour of the birthing center. It was all blue water until he nosed into the sterile field and he fetched up in front of the stainless steel table, face to face with a moment of truth. He made a weak signal and tried to paddle backwards, feeling dehumanized, feeling embarrassed, feeling seasick, but mostly feeling faint.

He went white and he ghosted against the delivery room wall. Morley spotted him just before he pitched over. She leaned into him and pinned him to the pale green concrete wall until three of the other fathers came to her rescue. They picked Dave up and lay him on the birthing table. rescue. They pick Dave up and lay him on the birthing table. Before he came around, Ron, the joker, the class clown, tenderly placed Dave's feet in the stirrups. And then they scooted out, leaving him with Morley, shipwrecked. When he came to, he made her promise she wouldn't tell anyone what had happened, especially the other fathers.

She never told him how he had ended up on the table. The male and female mourning dove are both involved in the nest building. The male collects grass, weeds, twigs, and pine needles and brings them to the female at the nest building. The male collects grass, weeds, twigs, and pine needles and brings them to the female at the nest site. They may both arrange the materials until the nest is completed, sometimes in one, sometimes in six days. Dave began to nest during Morley's eighth month. The nesting began at 5 a.m. one Saturday morning. It began when Dave sat up in the darkness and said, I can't sleep, I'm going out to the garage to organize stuff. Morley, who had spent the hours between midnight and 4, thrashing around, muttered,

Good idea. At 3.30, she had become convinced that the child that she was carrying had a firm grip of her left kidney and was trying to carry it like a football over to the other side of her body so it would be more comfortable. So sure that this was happening that she had stumbled out of bed and checked the index of the book that was guiding her along this strange journey, a journey that she had begun to call the Watermelon Highway. Morley, who had finally fallen into a restless sleep at 4 a.m., muttered, good idea, but she had no memory of the moment when Dave appeared before lunch and told her proudly that he had sorted every last nut, nail, and screw into little glass jars by exact size. I'm glad we got that done before the baby, he said.

Me too, said Morley without conviction. That was the weekend they bought the crib, a task they sailed forth to accomplish in high spirits, only to flounder in the showroom, only to come aground on the rocky shore of choice. Wrestling with the profusion of choice there in the showroom, which was really no choice at all, turned out to be nothing compared to the mountain of misery Dave had to wrestle when they got home. When they got home, Dave headed upstairs to assemble the crib. It shouldn't take long, he said. He laid the pieces out on the floor and he stared at them in mounting horror. After an hour and a half, he had all but given up hope.

There was, as far as he could see, no visible way of attaching the bottom to the sides. Three hours later, he went downstairs and got Morley, I'm finished, he said. And then as they stood in the bedroom doorway, their arms around each other, as they stood there admiring what they had done, the cat purred past them and glided to the middle of the room and stopped there and flicked her tail. And when the air current that she had disturbed hit the far side of the room, the crib shuddered, and the sides folded in,

and it collapsed into a heap. It was another two hours before Dave called Morley upstairs for the second time. He was standing beside the crib, his arm resting on the bedhead. See, he said, shaking it, solid. Solid, certainly. But the side went up instead of down. So if you wanted to take a baby in and out of the crib,

you'd have to slide it in and out the way you'd slide a turkey in and out of an oven. Dave didn't finally get it right until the next day, not until he had phoned the crib helpline. I bet you get a lot of calls like this, he said. Not really, said the earnest young woman. Later that week, Worley walked by the baby's bedroom and caught Dave bending over the crib. At first she thought he was admiring his handiwork. She stopped and she watched him from the hall. As she watched, he bent over and fumbled

with the latch and slid the crib side down. It was only then that she saw that he was cradling the cat in his other arm like a baby. It was only then that she realized what he was doing. He was practicing. She sneaked away without saying anything. She sneaked away filled with love. It wasn't until the next morning she she found the diapers in the garbage covered in cat hair. She bought a breast pump and left it on the baby's changing table. Dave found it and thought it was some developmental toy. I put the mobile up, he said at supper.

They talked endlessly about how they were going to handle things. Dave didn't want the baby sharing their bed with him. He was adamant about this. What about the middle of the night, asked Morley. What about if baby is sick or crying? What about if I fall asleep feeding her? Her, said Dave. He wouldn't budge. He finally told her what he was afraid of.

He was terrified he might roll over and smother his own child. But there's an instinct to stop you from doing that, said Morley. How can we be sure I have it, he asked. They might have missed me. He filled a white plastic bag with five pounds of margarine. And he sealed it tightly. And he drew a stick picture of a baby on it using a black marker. And he set it down between them one night. I didn't say you had a margarine instinct, said Morley. I said a baby instinct. We'll see, he said. Morley woke up at three in the morning

and Dave was sitting beside her holding his hands out like Lady Macbeth. He was covered in margarine. I killed her, he said. It was only the second time in four years found Morley sitting up in bed, staring out the window. He reached up and he patted her head and he said, it's pretty, the moon. Morley said, have you ever wondered what those milk bone dog biscuits taste like? ever wondered what those milk bone dog biscuits taste like? As Dave tried to imagine what the right answer for this could possibly be, Morley sighed, lay back down, and fell immediately to sleep. She began her labor the next morning, a week earlier than anyone expected. She waited until after lunch, and then she phoned Dave

at work and she said, we have to go to the hospital. Dave felt a surge of panic. He said, not today, I'm not ready, give me one more day. By the time they arrived at the hospital, her contractions were five minutes apart. Everything was a rush and a panic. There was a nurse taking Morley's blood pressure and temperature and someone else was listening to her tummy and Dave was standing apart from the flurry hoping this was a normal kind of flurry and then they were alone and everything ground to a halt. It was five hours later when they were well into it that Morley gripped Dave's arm with a ferocious strength, a strength he never suspected her of possessing. And then Morley wasn't talking to

him anymore. She was talking to the doctor and she was telling him in what might be described as an assertive tone that it would be a good idea if he gave her something for the pain. And Dave thought to himself, this is my moment. This is the moment I'm supposed to step up to the plate because he and Morley had agreed that Dave, the coach, was at this moment to dissuade her from painkillers, to encourage her to keep up the breathing, to focus, to visualize away the discomfort. Dave looked at the doctor and said,

we aren't going to take anything for the pain. And just then Morley was hit with a contraction so powerful that she cried out and Dave looked at her and then he looked at the doctor and then in a small faraway voice he said, on the other hand, maybe I could have something for the pain. The book had said there might be moments like this. Moments when he would feel uncomfortable and queasy and he thought he had understood that but nothing he had read had prepared him for this. There were sounds coming out of his wife that were making him afraid. Sounds so frightening that he didn't want to hear them. She was bathed in sweat and she was making extraordinary sounds and he was sitting in the corner of the room now

and that's when he realized what the breathing was for. The breathing they had learned in class and had practiced together wasn't for Morley. What she was doing now was beyond breath. The breathing was for him. He closed his eyes and he concentrated on his breath. He didn't feel uncomfortable and queasy. He felt terrified. He was involved with something much too big for him and suddenly there was a cry and the doctor was holding a baby in his arms. Suddenly the two of them were three, and Dave felt a rush of wonder, and he joined morally beyond breath. The doctor was holding their baby, their daughter, their Stephanie, and he took

her in his arms, and the very first thing that came into his mind was, one day this little girl is going to break my heart. And he began to cry. That was Labor Paints. All right, that's it for today, but we'll be back here next week with two more stories, including an adventure from Dave's childhood in Big Narrows, Cape Breton. The dog was sitting on a piece of ice no bigger than a freezer, looking more like a painting of a dog than a dog itself, sitting stiff and upright and staring straight ahead. The fall, said Dave. We have to get him. As he sat at the piece of ice the dog was sitting on, slipped into the current and seemed to bob up and down, seemed to pick up speed.

Come on, said Dave. He started running. They all peeled off behind him, all five of them, running for the bridge, Dave in the lead, Annie falling behind. They knew if they didn't stop that dog before he went into the river, he was going all the way to the falls, and there was no way he or anyone was surviving that. They got there just in time to see him bob by, standing on his ice boat, barking, snapping at the white waves jumping over his bow. They stood on the bridge, leaning on the rail and watched him pass under. Then they ran over to the other side and watched him emerge and bob along until he disappeared around the corner near the big willow. We have to get him, said Dave, before the falls or he's a goner.

They had one chance. They had a chance. There was one more bridge where the Macaulay's Road crossed the river. If they could get to the Macaulay's Bridge before the dog did, how are we going to do that, said Sean? A ride, said Dave. We need a ride. Come on. And so they were running again, back to town, back past Kerrigan's grocery store and the hardware store

and past McDonnell's post office and general store to the Maple Leaf Cafe where Dave knew his dad would be having his morning coffee, his truck parked out back. Annie huffed around the corner as they were climbing into the truck. Where's dad, said Annie. We're not telling dad, said Dave. We can't risk it. Are you out of your mind? said Annie. Probably, said Dave. Me too, said Annie, and she crawled into the truck. That's next week on the podcast. I hope you'll join us. And don't forget, send us your Arthur Award nominations.

If you're not familiar with the Arthurs, these are the awards designed to honor the things that too often go unnoticed. Those little things that are often the most meaningful things of all. Do you know someone you think deserves an award? We want to hear about it. Tell us who you think deserves an award? We want to hear about it. Tell us who you think deserves an Arthur Award and why. You can send us an email to vinylcafe at vinylcafe.com or just head over to our website and write us there, vinylcafe.com.

Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe is part of the Apostrophe Podcast Network. The recording engineer is class clown the Apostrophe Podcast Network. The recording engineer is class clown 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.