The Boat

by NAM LE

"Well," he says, "that explains why you've got nothing to give me."

  We both grin. We're a regular riot together.

  "Listen," I say. Then I stop – I realize I've got no idea what to tell him. "Actually. I've been meaning to talk – "

  He motions me toward the back office. "Hey," he says, "forget it, buddy. That's not why I asked you here." He rests his hand on my tux shoulder. "Take all the time," he says.

  But I know what he's thinking. I glance at the walls as I dodder behind him: splashes of chalky-colored oilsticks on linen and vinyl, photogravures and woodcut prints – all pulled off with the impatient skill and insolence of youth. They're good. Clamoring at his door. He always had a good eye, Apelman. He's thinking of my last exhibition – when was it?-more than a year ago now: those obsessive portraits of Olivia, black-layered and liquid, how I'd worried the same lines – trying to keep in the light – before it was shut off for good. The tube running out of her mouth, two plastic offshoots from her nose and the bright green wires that led to the bright blue box pumping breath in and out of her. Disney colors.

  "How are your eyes?" Apelman asks.

  I blink, looking for a place to throw my cigarette butt. A few months ago, my eyes joined in on my body's general strike. Some condition that made them more sensitive to light. An ironic incapacity. Everywhere I looked, everything looked brighter – then dimmer in a bright way through my sunglasses – like the color was drained out, like I was seeing everything at twilight. Anyway, my ophthalmologist, Andrew Werner, ran some tests and found nothing physically wrong.

  "It comes and goes," I say.

  "We're getting old." He peers quickly through the glass partition into the gallery. A young couple is walking in. "So, have you talked to Elise?"

  "Not since last week."

  "Where are you taking her?"

  "Picholine. Her fiancé too."

  "The manager?" "Yeah." I snort." The Leech."

  The young couple drag their feet as they move, heads swaying and slanting, through the gallery. Grad students, probably. As they get close to the back office, I see them glance in, eyeballing my outfit. The girl starts whispering to the boy behind a magazine. I stare back and they scurry out. The boy tries to affect a relaxed amble but he's irrelevant; there's something about that girl – I watch as she darts across the street – how, past all the glass-fronted galleries, the low brick chop shops and warehouses, she walks without moving her hips, how the cute little beret holds down her hair against the Hudson wind ...

  "Still got it," Apelman chuckles. Then, "Hey, buddy – hey, you okay?"

  I shrug. He reaches into his coat pocket, leans across the office desk and hands me a white, ironed handkerchief. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to blow my nose into it. For a moment I want to tell him about the diagnosis. I can't. It's clogged there somewhere, blocked by a little mushroom in my throat, maybe more than one, maybe deeper.

  "It's a big deal," he says gently. "You're meeting your daughter for the first time in-for the first time, really."

  I nod.

  "She's an adult now," he goes on. "She's making her own decisions. A new life. And she's decided she wants you to be part of it."

  It's pathetic how okay this guy can make me feel. With his smooth talking and chic Chelsea gallery I don't get how he's managed to stay unhitched.

  "Henry, I'm going to tell you something." He sets his mouth in a tight line in the middle of his beard. I know this look. I'm about to be advised. And what's more – I want it. I crave it. "I know you've been having a hard time of it," he says. "I know you miss Olivia. I miss her too. You're angry." Only Apelman could pull this off, this primped wording, this deadpan goodness. He goes on in this vein – nothing I haven't heard before – his eyes so earnest he looks like a cross between a TV evangelist and a cow. He only wants what's best for me, he says, and in that precise moment I realize it's true. He's the only one. At last he stops, breathes, waits for me to catch up to him, then says, "Just don't let your anger get away from you. You know how you are. And another thing: Elise is not her mother. Remember that."

  Her mother. I realize I'm wincing. It's the one thing I could hold against him and he knows it. All those years he stayed in touch with my ex-wife – the witch – after she kidnapped Elise, exiled her to Russia – all that time I was cut off from my own daughter until it was too late, then much too late. The poisoning complete. He didn't deny it. He'd as much as admitted that my letters wouldn't get through. Nothing in, nothing out. In seventeen years I'd heard from them precisely three times. The first time, four years in, when her mother hit me up for $520,000.

  "It's a Guadagnini," Apelman had explained. "Made in 1752, by an Italian master."

  "Half a million bucks? For a cello?"

  "Nothing like this has come on the market for years. Helen's right. It's a good deal."

  "She's five years old, for God's sake!"

  "And already accepted, personally, by Elena Dernova – "

  No one even told me," I broke in, "that she was learning the cello."

  Apelman waited for me to calm down. Then he told me I was right: she was too young yet, her body too small. But I could afford it, he said. He kept his tone careful, urgent. It was in my hands, he said, to have it ready for her – for when she was ready. He'd given me the same look then as he's giving me now. Almost under his breath, he added, "You should hear her play."

  So it came to pass that Apelman, consummate networker, faithful go-betweener, brokered the international deal to buy my little girl a cello half again as tall as her and fifty times as old. Nine years of nothing later, I received a handwritten invitation to attend her debut in Russia. She was playing the Rococo Variations with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic. A big deal (only fourteen years old!). The invitation came in the post-not through Apelman. No return address. At the top of the page, in her neat teenage cursive, she'd written "Father." Both Apelman and Olivia urged me to go – I booked my tickets – then at the last minute Apelman, gray-faced, handed me another letter. From the witch: "Under no circumstances ..." etc., etc. She would cancel the concert if it came to it. She'd somehow spooked out the whole scheme. I canceled my tickets.

  "That means laying off the Leech," Apelman says, permitting himself a smile. He leans forward and punches me on the shoulder. It's like I'm one of those enormous bell carillons and the single clapper of his fist sets off a whole chorus of emotional peals and chimes within me. He might be everyone's friend, Apelman, but he's my only friend. He looks me in the eye. Then he says what I've been thinking ever since I picked up the phone and heard her voice a week ago – no – honestly – ever since I saw her last, blanket-wrapped and pillow-sized and hot with fever on my apartment stoop – "Family is family. You might only have one shot at it."

  ***

  A MESS. I'M A MESS. Things are a little off upstairs, I know that. That was always a lark to Olivia-now she is the lark. Banging around in my belfry. My ass is back to its old pyrotechnic tricks. On top of that, I'm sore all over. It's all the reflection. Seeing Apelman hasn't helped. The past's a cold body of water for me and nowadays my bones ache after even a quick dip.

  He's right, though. I'm sitting in the private wine room at Picholine trying to pull myself together. My daughter hasn't arrived. Our table's the only one there – I called in a favor. The sound of the restaurant wafts through the hallway – low voices, laughs, the tinkling of glasses – the place, recently renovated, seems a lot cheerier than I remember. An odious young man is attending me. He's got so much gel in his slicked hair it pulls his face back tight. Traversing the harried catwalk of the front room I noticed him eyeballing my outfit; I'm at one of the most overpriced joints in town and still this kid-waiter makes me feel overdressed.

  For starters, I order the crab salad with the grapefruit gelée, the spiced squab pastrami and the sea-urchin panna cotta. Then I remember Apelman's advice. The Leech might take offense if I don't wait – Brits being sensitive about things like that. How sensitive are th
ey, though, to punctuality? I bark at the waiter and cancel the order. He smiles as though I've just made his day. For a second I'm worried his face might crack.

  Half an hour later, I tell him to check the restaurant, both rooms.

  "Under what name?"

  "Kozlov," I tell him. Her mother's maiden name. When he comes back I tell him, "Or Sharps. Jason Sharps."

  I hear a rowdy burst of laughter from the main room. When Gel-head trots in again, I tell him I've changed my mind. I'll order a bottle of red wine. I'm in a wine room, for God's sake! As I drink the room shrinks around me. It feels damp now, and smells – it smells like the inside of a janitor's closet. It smells of sickness, of dripping fluids, of saturated tissues. Forty minutes late. Fifty.

  My body feels alien to me. I don't know it at all, I want nothing to do with it, I disown it. There's something inside me and it's dying – not me. So this is how it feels. Betrayed by your own body. I'd thought she lived most of her life on the surface of her skin but she'd found a way to get beneath, my Olivia. She'd discovered the flesh was hollow. I flew into a jealous rage. She left me. I begged her to come back. Who picks up a smack habit in their thirties? I thought. After fifteen, sixteen years together- wanting for nothing. Well, wanting for something, obviously. She blamed her body and so did I. She quit time and time again and then, at last, the time came when she didn't need to quit anymore.

  More than an hour late. I signal for a second bottle. I know Gel-head's smirking behind his mask. I want to smash it in. I've been getting like this lately: irate at people I don't know.

  "Would you like to reorder any appetizers, sir?"

  No, he's a good kid. Just doing his job. I shake my head, lean over to squeeze his arm – give him some man-to-man contact – but he skips back, bumping against the wire mesh screen of a bookcase-like cabinet. The dust-rimmed clinking of a hundred bottles fills the room. He freezes, gapes at me – untrained to deal with the moment – then scuttles out.

  Don't get me wrong, I like kids – Olivia was thirty years younger than me. I even wanted to have some with her. The problem is there are just too many of them. You can't throw a brick on this island without concussing one. I wish I had more restraint. But I can't help but hate how they look at me, how they don't look at me, I hate their interchangeable bodies, their mass-rehearsed attitudes, their cars that look like boxes, like baseball caps, like artificial enlargements, their loud advertising, their beeps and clicks and trings, I hate how they speak words as though they're chewing them, how they assume the business of the world revolves around them – how they're right-and how everywhere this cult of youth, this pedamorphic dumbing-down, has whored beauty-duped, drugged, damaged, pixelated it and everywhere turned it to plastic.

  I'm almost done with my second bottle. All this alcohol will do wonders for my piles. Ninety minutes. Gel-head comes back in and delightedly hands me a cordless phone.

  "Henry?"

  As with her call last week, I feel as though I've stumbled upon the middle of something. Her voice is slow, sleepy, warm with music. Nothing like her mother's. I'm surprised, anew, by its power over me.

  "We're really sorry. We've been trying you at home all afternoon." I'm untrained to deal with this; I say nothing. After a long pause she says:

  "We're sorry. We can't make it to lunch. We hope you haven't been waiting." "I've been waiting ninety minutes."

  The line goes muffled and the sotto voce whispering starts. In the background I can hear the vague strains of a string instrument warming up.

  "I'm really sorry. It's just, with the concert – "

  More hushed coaching. I look around, as though to ground myself outside her voice. Candles have been cleverly hidden in secret niches and the room glows and twinkles the colors of wine: ruby, amethyst, burgundy, bronze . ..

  "We thought maybe it's best to leave this to another time."

  "You don't want me to come?"

  "Henry."

  She can't hang up. I can't let her. I look around. How did I end up in this flinking dungeon?

  "I don't mind paying. If it's money – "

  "The show's sold out," she says quickly.

  "Just a drink, then. I'm close by."

  "Henry, I'm not sure I'm ready." I recognize the tone instantly. It belongs to the witch. I know I should stop but I can't.

  "Tomorrow. There's a place in the EastVillage. No, the WestVillage. We'll have breakfast."

  I hear activity on the far end of the phone line, then a muted thud, then an English-accented voice:

  "Elise doesn't want to talk to you right now."

  "Fuck you," I say playfully.

  "Well, that's that," he says.

  "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm a bit emotional."

  "There's no need for that language."

  He's right, I think. The Leech is right. I try to remember what Apelman told me.

  "Family is family."

  This shuts him up. So I say it again. It doesn't come out quite right the second time.

  "You're drunk," he says.

  "Hey, genius. Genius – can you put my daughter back on?"

  "You're in no state to talk with her." There's a scuffing sound, which I recognize as the universal prelude to hanging up.

  "Hey!" Clear air. I frantically search for something to say. "I've got cancer. Tell her that. Press release for you, Mr. Manager: C-A-N-C-E-R. Of the ass. Got that?" "I've had about enough – "

  "Hey! Wait!" I'm screwing this up but I know there's something I can say, something perfect, something that will smooth over the past, pucker open the future. What would Apelman say? It's always been like this. It's always been me who's had to ask forgiveness.

  "I'm hanging up."

  "And a lot of money," I blurt out. "You know that, right, Leechy? Half a million bucks for a cello, right? There's plenty more where that came from. I bet you'd like to manage that, wouldn't you, once I'm gone? Leechy boy? Hey?"

  He hangs up.

  ***

  I WISH I HAD MORE RESTRAINT. I wish they'd taught it at school, or even before that, when I was still learning things. I shouldn't have quaffed those two 1989 Bordeaux. Let myself attempt full sentences on the phone afterward. At the least, I should've restrained myself from waiting so patiently, so long, for the two of them. Mostly, I wish I had the restraint to stop myself from doing what I'm about to do.

  I throw a wad of cash on the table – Gel-head's lucky day – then go back and count it, peel back a few notes. No sense in losing one's head. Hobble through the twisty, curiously grungy hallway, through the mauve-colored, chandeliered restaurant, dodging cheese carts and briefcases, then outside. The sky's overcast. I opt for walking, give myself time to sober up. Cool down. I limp through the southern chunk of Central Park, a tuxedoed booze-breathed cripple among the mass of tourists, families and couples. Children look at me strangely. Everyone else looks away. It's crowded as hell. Then I remember – Columbus Day weekend.

  I'm not sure I'm ready. What did she mean? Ready for what? To see me? Or for the concert? I shouldn't have pestered her hours before her big performance. But did that mean she'd be ready after the concert, though? Maybe she meant she wasn't ready for marriage to the Leech. A coded message. I shamble under the elms, past the hackberries and maples, lindens and ashes, deep in thought. When we came here Olivia had always insisted on teaching me the names of things. By the pond a group of amateur photographers click away at the asters. I decide to go the long way, double back later. I shuffle painfully through the crowd. Then, at the line of horse-drawn carriages, I stop, my body burning, let myself think it. She wasn't ready to see me at all. Maybe she 'd never be ready.

  I don't realize until I'm a little ways down Fifth. It's the height of fall. I turn around. Central Park is in bloom, spastic with color – red, orange, green, yellow, purple, brown, gold. The asters have broken out into their annual parade of white, lavender, red, and pink. My head knows this but my eyes missed it – my poor eyes didn't see it.

&nbs
p; I hang my head, trudge west along Fifty-seventh. Finally I get to Carnegie Hall. Focus, I tell myself. I convince the man at the box office that I'm Elise Kozlov's father. This makes me feel grubby and proud at once. Of course it's important, I tell him. He tells me where they're rehearsing, doing sound checks or something. I follow the sound to the parquet entrance of the main auditorium, push the door open and see her immediately, the black-gray smudge of four smudges on the distant stage, the one with the instrument between her legs. The one made small by her instrument. I move closer. She's just a girl in a dress that barely covers her knees. She looks like the girl in the website photo. Her face under the heavy lighting so young, yet so stern. Even the way she holds the cello is stern. I see it all clearly now.

  And she's beautiful without me. I hate the young for that too. That they're assured in their beauty, in the way that only animals are assured – unmussed by the thought of death.

  At the end of the piece she looks up and sees me. I'm in the half dark nearly a hundred yards away but she looks straight at me. No startlement, no gasp, no hand-to-mouth dramatics. It's me who's too stunned to do anything. Looking directly at me, she says something – her lips move – and I try desperately to decipher her words, to puzzle out a fitting response. By that point a young man in jeans and a black T-shirt glides out of the wings and down the aisle. Without touching me once, he escorts me outside the auditorium.

  "Are you Sharps?"

  He shakes his head. Then he looks up at me curiously. "Hey, sir, are you all right?" "Tell her I want to see her. Just for a second."

  "Sorry?"

  "Elise. Tell Elise – her father's here to see her." Her lips in my head, the lines of them, merging into one another. Her eyes.

  "Tell her ... he says he's sorry."

  "Wait here." As soon as he leaves, I slip back into the auditorium. Stand in the shadows. Then I see them onstage. The Leech attaching himself. He's a gangly, womanly-shouldered redhead. She's kissing him, her face upturned. I resent the grace of it, and the want. She's on tiptoes and both her arms are lifted up to his ears. He doesn't stoop at all to meet her lips. I feel my stomach in my throat, breath hot and thick through my nostrils. Apelman's voice in my head like an advertising jingle. I creak the heavy door open and slink back outside.