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MANAGE YOUR SUBSCRIPTIONThe Poplars
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Ontario, 1983
On the first night of our band’s “Collingwood Tour,” somebody broke into our ltd station wagon in the parking lot of the Snowdrop Motel. The next morning we gathered around the jimmied door while my mother told the investigating officer over and over how relieved she was that the thieves had known so little about musical equipment. Otherwise they would have stolen her boyfriend Ken’s Mesa Boogie amp instead of his beat-up mxr effects pedals, his vintage Les Paul guitar instead of his Takamine acoustic, our Shure microphones instead of our ancient mixer. Kids were responsible, she speculated: lowlife druggies, hurried and stupid, who’d grabbed what they could carry. Mom kept talking even after the officer had gone and her only audience was Ken, my older sister Caroline, and I.
“They did us a favor,” Mom explained, stroking Ken’s back. “We would have had to replace that mixer soon anyway. And those pedals were ugly. We can always upgrade.”
Ken leaned on the ltd’s fender, smoked, and showed no outward concern over what we’d lost.
An hour earlier, when I’d first looked over Ken’s shoulder into our pillaged vehicle, I’d felt a brief, furtive hope that the thieves had also taken the white Fender Precision bass Mom and Ken had given me ten months earlier for my thirteenth birthday. Or maybe my Peavey amp, bought a month after the bass. But my instrument, in its gig bag, and my amp sat untouched where I’d put them after the previous night’s show. Caroline stared at her untouched drums, and our eyes met long enough for me to suspect she was feeling the same.
“Didn’t that boy you gave lessons to move up here from Toronto?” Mom asked Ken. “Sean? The one with the jazz trio? He had that nice little acoustic, and he might own a mixer too.”
“I’m not borrowing from a former student,” Ken said with mild indignation. He wasn’t a man capable of major emotions, like rage, joy, or despair. He had minor-key emotions, diminished-chord emotions, nuanced and muted.
It took Mom an hour on the phone in our motel room to track down a friend of a friend named Paul, and another hour for Ken and me to drive out to Paul’s in Orillia to pick up his acoustic guitar and mixer. I half dozed in the passenger seat for most of the trip, imagining huge scythes razing the farmhouses and warehouses we passed. I’d volunteered to go along not because I enjoyed Ken’s silent company, but because I needed some time away from Mom and her pep talks and sunny optimism. By now she would be convincing us that the thefts were all part of some providential plan to help us improve and succeed.
It was Mom who had dubbed this our “Collingwood Tour,” though, like all our other so-called tours, it was nothing more than a set of weekend gigs in a backwater town, at whatever venues she’d badgered into booking us. We’d driven up here Friday in a patchy drizzle after school, the station wagon’s cargo area full of gear and our suitcases in a nylon rooftop carrier that lurched forward at each stop. We’d played our brief Friday-night show under a tent at the Blue Mountain Folks and Fun Fest, where we’d been drowned out by the taped music of the teen baton-twirling team on the next stage. Afterward we’d driven back to the motel, dejected, while Mom had enthused about the two shows to come, the final Sunday-afternoon flea-market gig most of all.
Ken and I stopped at Burger King on our way back from Orillia and ate wordlessly in the car. Ken finished before I did and started the engine.
“Shouldn’t we get something for Mom and Caroline?” I asked.
Ken turned and stared at me through his tinted prescription glasses. He’d been dating my mother for more than a year by then, and I’d become used to his dry, abstracted gaze, his gaunt face with its heavy jaw, his scant ponytail that he habitually tugged. I knew it was nothing personal when he stared through me, like he did now as he unfolded his wallet and handed me a five. He waited outside while I went in for the food. Ken was a man who always waited outside, smoking and pacing and staring down roads. He slept in snatches, getting up in the night to play guitar, watch horror movies, or smoke on our apartment’s balcony. Mom explained that he had a restless nature and couldn’t stay indoors for long without feeling “cooped up.” She excused his odd behaviors in a way she’d never done with my father. Then again, my father was not a musician, not an “artist.” Mom always made that clear.
When Ken and I returned, Mom and Caroline were sitting in the diner beside the motel. I offered them the stained bag of burgers, but they had half-eaten grilled cheese sandwiches in front of them. Caroline made a face and shoved the bag away. I sulked. Mom broke the silence: “Well, we’ve learned one thing: we know better than to park the car out of sight again.”
If this was a reproach to Ken, it was a mild one. Mom even smiled after she said it, as if to soften the criticism.
The night before, after our disastrous craft-festival gig, Ken had parked around the corner in the side lot, instead of directly outside our motel room as Mom had urged. When she had insisted he bring the gear inside, he’d ignored her and gone to sleep. Now Mom stared at Ken with a beseeching look, probably waiting for some acknowledgment that she’d been right. None was forthcoming. She smiled grimly. “All that matters is we’re back in action. It will take more than this to stop us. I hope those thieving kids get a hernia carrying that old mixer.” She laughed wickedly. “I hope it blows up in their faces.”
“They didn’t steal it to use it.” Ken’s voice was quiet and authoritative. “They probably traded it for a few cases of beer.”
Caroline gave a snort before her usual indifferent expression returned. Though she despised Ken, she allied with him whenever he opposed my mother. My father had always called Caroline a “shit disturber.” He’d enjoyed this quality in her, this willful need to cause strife. Sometimes I enjoyed it too, for its entertainment value and for how she punctured people’s hypocrisies and pretensions. I wasn’t enjoying it right now, though.
My mother stiffened, and color appeared on her cheekbones.
“It’ll be all right,” I said, though my words sounded so dispirited that Mom gave me a look. I was annoyed that the burden of backing her up had fallen, as usual, on me.
