Afloat

by Jennifer McCartney

  Rummy laughs and I can see the gums above his top teeth, but I wonder if he’s thinking of Blue. He hasn’t mentioned her since she left, but Rummy doesn’t forget things easily. She was so tiny too, an entire person and spirit caught up in such a small amount of skin, holding the possibilities of babies within her when she left and making men remember her long after she was gone.

  Trainer sets the bucket of silverware down with a crash.

  ‘Arbeit Macht Frei,’ he says. ‘Let’s hurry up and get to the bar.’

  Trainer’s ancestors were German and his grandmother won’t let him wear his pink triangle button in her house. She is immune to his explanations of the movement of marginalized groups to reclaim negative symbols and language in order to subvert their original meanings.

  ‘Allons-nous then,’ Rummy says, picking up a fork.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Trainer says again.

  I wonder how I’ll ever be able to leave this place.

  Leaving the Cock after last call, I stand outside alone, preparing myself for the ping-pong tournament scheduled to begin in one hour. The dark expanse of the park to my left is quiet and filled with bare lilac bushes and the hollow black form of Jacques Marquette, the Jesuit priest. Standing alone on a concrete base in the center of the park, he is often found supervising Christian rallies, football games, locals, kids with cans of beer, Ultimate Frisbee matches, BMX competitions, late-night lovers – all this he does solemn and steadfast, covered in the thick white mess of seagulls. The guidebooks say he discovered the Mississippi river – after the Spanish, and after the two million or so Sioux, Algonquin and Ojibwa who lived along its banks I suppose.

  At home the river flows brown and polluted.

  Bryce told me Marquette went on missions as far away as Montréal, where the diaries of his extensive travels were lost after his canoe overturned in the rapids of the St. Lawrence. Therefore, he told me, little is known of his personal life except that he had an ear for languages and spoke exceptional Huron.

  ‘And you want to be an electrician?’ I said.

  Bryce joins me now on the front step of the Cock. Across from us, the two stories of the Tippecanoe are luminous and white with moonlight. A taxi clips by with harnesses jangling, one black horse, one brown, heading down Main Street filled with dock porters, servers, and housekeepers from other restaurants and hotels, everyone loud and paired with their respective late-night conquests. An islander named Richard or Roy rides past confidently on his battered Schwinn at a pace that suggests he is out for a leisurely bike ride, despite the fact that it’s three a.m. A regular for lunch at the Tippecanoe, he always orders three lemons with his mineral water and tips twenty dollars, regardless of the bill.

  Bryce gives him a wave.

  ‘Roy was in Korea,’ he says.

  Roy’s figure recedes into the night – his slow pedaling carrying him away, although it seems to me now the shadows are behind him, and not in front.

  ‘When he can’t sleep he rides around the island,’ Bryce tells me. ‘On late-night patrol.’

  Bryce then mentions he’d like to join the army maybe, be a soldier himself. I don’t respond. Our own bikes parked around the corner on Fort Street have been knocked down in a twisted show of turned wheels and scraped handlebars, pedals from one bike stuck in the spokes of another.

  ‘Drunk driver,’ nods Trainer, joining us. ‘Disgusting.’

  He swings a leg over a bicycle which is not his own, and continues:

  ‘You’d think the police would do something.’

  We begin to separate them. I pull mine upright and flip the kickstand down while everyone else files out the front door, discussing the upcoming event at Mackinac Pines.

  ‘Judgment day,’ someone says.

  Bryce points at Rummy as he stumbles out the door:

  ‘We’ll show you how it’s done here in the U S of A.’

  ‘Wait,’ says Tom. ‘Are we allowing girls?’

  Despite Tom’s generosity in giving me his old bike earlier this summer, he is the sort of person I have subsequently avoided talking to as much as possible: thirty-two years old, a rumored dishonorable discharge from the Marines, and nothing but plaid flannel shirts and odd comments. Tom has a photograph in his apartment of his aunt who passed away a year ago. She is posed and graying in a gold frame, and when he has had too much whisky he will bring the photo with him on late-night walks. She was my aunt Ava. He will talk about his aunt and show the picture and apparently everyone has seen it. We have all agreed that while Tom may be from Iowa and close with his family, this habit is still strange, and he has taken to drinking in his room by himself a lot.

  ‘Of course girls are allowed,’ Bryce says, patting my head condescendingly. ‘So long as they’re topless.’

  He moves to reach his hand up my shirt and I drop my bike, wrestling with him, trying to stomp on his instep until I manage to pull him over. We smack painfully onto the pavement, laughing.

  ‘She’s crushing me!’ he yells.

  ‘Lovely,’ says Trainer, from astride his locked bike. ‘Mature love, what an inspiration.’

  ‘I’ll see you all at the tournament,’ John says from the door of the Cock.

  Tom looks suddenly bored. ‘I wish the island had a strip club,’ he says.

  An employee games room has been created out of the old Pine Suites office. It is a small awkward space, the standard pink carpet etched with golden beer stains. The room is just large enough for a faded dartboard hanging above the front desk, eight board games, and a ping-pong table, which has become the center of a never-ending tournament among the few male wait staff. Tonight and every other night, behind the door that still says ‘office’, they make bets, drink, and engage in the sort of behavior they have probably read about in magazines or senators’ biographies; one night involved Cuban cigars, and has been rated one of the top three island evenings thus far. The winners are recorded on a wall chalkboard, and only the designated scorekeeper is allowed to touch the chalk.

  Bryce and Rummy face one another across the table, which has been duct-taped in the middle. I’m not sure how exactly it broke, as no one will own up to being a participant in the how many people will the table hold experiment. Tom holds the chalk, Trainer throws the only dart supplied with the dartboard, and Brenna sits on the edge of the office desk, leaning forward, looking like she’s ready to start waving pompoms. John’s lanky form arrives with more beer, the evil clown tattoo on his calf always surprising when I see him outside of work. He and Trainer take turns throwing the dart. I stand near the door, smelling the wet sweat of competition and hot beer and wondering how the month of August can seem so long and contain so much.

  Bryce gives the ball a practice bounce, blows on it, then rubs it on his polo shirt.

  ‘It’s okay, Rummy,’ he says. ‘I’ll start off slow so you can get the hang of it. Don’t feel bad when you lose.’

  Bryce’s first serve misses the table.

  ‘Let’s go, Bryce,’ Brenna calls, clapping her hands.

  Cheerleading is a sport involving dedication and fitness, and our high-school trophy case was full of golden figures in tights balancing atop wooden pillars – but whatever female genetic code may be responsible for instigating excitement at men’s physical competition is not one I am in possession of.

  My own family, apart from my father’s 1974 bowling trophy, is sadly lacking in golden statues, the kind of sporting legacy one leaves to their children. There was never anyone cheering us on from the sidelines and so it seems we are losing the competition slowly, to everyone else – the object to be the lucky ones without tragedy.

  Needing space, I step outside and there is the island moon again, making the pine trees look black. Outside my apartment, number eight, I notice someone has left flowers as they occasionally do. A tribute by the island tourists who are not interested in fudge and romance, but axe-murderers and the real history of the human race that doesn’t involve the noble discovery of land or riv
ers. The bouquet, upon closer investigation, is made up of pink carnations and some baby’s breath. Sold by Mackinac Mart for eighteen dollars. I have never seen anyone delivering their offering, and upon discovery I usually put them in water. I might still tomorrow morning. Standing above the dampening cone of paper, I wonder when they come out – the ghosts – the remnants of the vacationing family chopped up by their father. It’s easy to suppose they’re here, wanting to remind everyone left to never feel safe, not even when you’re surrounded by water. I wonder where exactly he swung first, if he aimed for the head or neck or if the first blow had been buried into abdomens, if there had been any second thoughts.

  A moth hits the back of my head, its thick body heavy and its wings loud.

  ‘Hey, ding-dong, show some support for your man in here!’ Tom yells out of the office door.

  I hear Trainer’s voice over the shouting and the hollow smack of the ball hitting the paddles.

  ‘I’ve been meaning to ask you, Tom, where do you get all your great flannel?’

  Stepping away from the light I walk out into the trees. Eyes closed, I keep my arms before me in a cross, flexed against the branches. Pine needles touch my legs and skin, my arms held out in protection, my weight breaking the undergrowth beneath me. An animal crashes away from my approach, and after three steps I start to squint but pretend it still counts. I do not run into anything.

  Dropping my arms, I stand in the dark, wanting a ghost, deserving one. There are crickets, there is wind, and possibility. But they won’t come because I don’t know their names. Perhaps they were called something thoughtful like Edward or Lily, after grandparents. Or something modern and genderless – Taylor, Alex. Their last name was Mc something. Something Scottish sounding. Bryce said they were sleeping. I imagine the axe thunking into the flesh of them, all the effort of learning proper manners and shoelace tying come to nothing, just a body full of blood let out all over the sheets.

  It seems the closer I come to leaving here, the more registration letters and residence information from St. Kat’s I receive, the more history and the past descend upon me, undeterred by my island hideaway. For now, the letters are folded, and ignored. I will return soon, to learn about the world and examine the blood stains on the soil of each country, but the island comes first.

  It is four a.m., and my shift begins at seven. The island gives everyone the gift of irresponsibility, and the game moves outside.

  ‘Bell, what the fuck are you doing?’ Trainer yells as he comes out to the front porch. ‘You on a nature hike?’

  The next morning the cement pathway is a sea of ping-pong ball carcasses, stepped on and broken, the half orbs scattered like moons. Only one paddle, the red one, can be found again, despite searches throughout the brush and flower gardens.

  ‘Serves all of you right,’ I tell Bryce.

  ‘Speaking of serves,’ he says. ‘Dickweed is bringing over his volleyball net tonight.’

  St. Paul, 4:26 p.m.

  We sent Anna to private school.

  The Tate Academy had white columns out front, a security guard, cameras, and well-groomed teachers with masters’ degrees. Miss Fedora Hall had impossibly long dark hair which she pinned and curled in complicated twists, and she wore long skirts that made me want to take a vacation.

  One June afternoon, the sky hazy with pollution, she motioned gracefully to the granite bench positioned just inside the school gates, and invited me to sit. In Memoriam the bench said. It was placed in memory of the young Dakota boy, Hinto, who drowned in the school’s ornamental pond three years earlier. They found him floating, Anna told us solemnly, arms and legs spread like a star, drifting. From the Prairie Island reservation, Hinto had been one of the thirty-two children on a government scholarship to the Tate after Minnesota’s first RWP and the subsequent flooding of the Mississippi river eight years previous. His reservation had been just south of St. Paul, located on a floodplain, and the rising waters had destroyed the island’s two nuclear reactors and damaged the seventeen dry cask containers used for storing spent fuel rods. Hinto’s elders had been warning the federal and state governments of this possibility for years. Now twelve people were dead, the land contaminated along with the Mississippi river, all the way down to Louisiana. The compensation from the Minnesota government involved new homes, new schools, and new land.

  Hinto had developed a fascination with tree climbing, teaching Anna how to distribute her weight near the crook of each branch so as to reach the highest possible point before retreat.

  His granite memorial bench carries an engraving of a sailboat.

  ‘Please will you sit?’ Fedora asked me again.

  Smiling at her, I sat. The cherry blossoms smelled musky and thick and I tried not to breathe deeply. A local judge strode past on his way up to the school, nodding as he spoke into his headset. In casual but expensive denims, he had an American eagle on his belt buckle.

  The Tate Academy was a favorite dumping ground for St. Paul’s political offspring – Benjamin Gerhardt confided in me solemnly one day after Russ had locked him out of the inner office, that he had eight friends in his Tate kindergarten class, and they all had swimming pools. Four-year-old Benjamin was enrolled at the academy until Russ’s not-yet-ex wife transferred him to a different school because his teacher kept referring to him as Ben.

  ‘If I’d wanted to call him Ben, I would have named him Ben,’ she explained to me the night of my dinner party.

  Sitting awkwardly with Fedora, I wished Alan had come in my place, though this personal attention was what we paid for. We wanted Anna to be safe, not stabbed or shot or kidnapped – all the things you worry about happening to your child. Who knew this extension of yourself could be so painful? The pain of delivery can’t possibly compare to the torture of having something from inside you suddenly outside, walking about, alone.

  ‘Your Alan is always walking,’ Fedora commented, as she arranged her skirt. ‘That is how he has legs so big and strong.’

  ‘He does a lot of walking,’ I agreed.

  Her skirt was orange, the colour of popsicles. I was wearing all black, but my purse was beige.

  ‘He even walks in the rain,’ I added.

  She nodded and her long earrings were made of warm gold, almost touching her shoulders. Her neck was much longer than mine.

  ‘Now your Anna,’ she began.

  I waited. Other women always seemed better informed about my daughter than I was.

  ‘She knows very well what she wants from her life.’

  Anna was eight.

  ‘Yes.’

  I looked for Anna, walking down the paved path with her pink backpack in the shape of a ladybug, but she wasn’t there. I became slightly more nervous.

  ‘Just today she has made a wall hanging of the sea turtle. From hemp. Do you know this material?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘She wants to be a marine biologist.’

  Fedora looked to the sky for a moment, and then back at me. I was suspicious of being prayed for, and of not having all the information. Checking the time on the Tate’s clock tower just visible above the gray-green pine trees, I remembered the clock was broken – the time was always noon. I waited for her to continue.

  ‘I am from an island,’ she said. ‘Majorca, you have heard of this, yes?’

  I nodded. Russ and his new wife had gone to Magaluf for a week’s holiday last year.

  ‘The sea, it is very important to us there. I would like to encourage your daughter in this interest.’

  ‘I lived on an island once,’ I said, surprising myself.

  ‘You know what I say then,’ she said enthusiastically. ‘To be alone surrounded by water, dependent on boats. It does an important thing to a person.’

  ‘What made you come to America?’ I wondered.

  ‘I have left a man there,’ she said, waving a hand. ‘Is this not why every woman travels?’

  We laughed together. A brown petal landed on my knee, and though she said n
othing else about Anna she still seemed to want to talk. Giving a quiet sigh, she looked upwards again.

  ‘We are all islands,’ she said thoughtfully.

  I decided not to comment. The cherry blossom scent was now overwhelming, the sky burning yellow with the suspended particles of car fumes and cigarettes and skin.

  ‘It must be hard for you here,’ I said finally.

  I wanted suddenly to smoke – to be alone with the God of Peace and his onyx pipe, surrounded only by the dead.

  ‘It is very cold,’ she admitted.

  Anna finally arrived, and I stood abruptly, my black kitten heels sinking into the lawn. Reaching the paved pathway, I turned with relief to say goodbye.

  ‘Say to your father I said hello,’ she called after us.

  That evening I ordered in from the Friendly Thai and changed into a dark-green sweater for dinner. Our house seemed huge, white, and empty, and I remembered wondering what it would look like with the walls blackened, paint cracked and bubbled, everything destroyed by fire.

  Alan insisted over our bowls of soup that Miss Hall was too young for him, wore too much make-up, investing in juicy lip gloss that made her mouth look wet. I pointed out at least she had good taste in men.

  When Anna brought Michael home for the first time they had already been dating for a year. It was July and too hot to be sitting outside, but we were trying to make the most of our expensive new patio furniture. The shapes of the metal and oak chairs were inspired by the praying mantis, an endangered insect which a local artist had immortalized in an admittedly abstract way with his new line of outside installation pieces. Alan and I were drinking a new Slovenian beer, and the spindly-legged table was wet with condensation.

  We didn’t hear the doorbell, and suddenly there they were. He had a Florida tan, a native of the Sunshine State. Wearing long shorts that came past his knees, a gray T-shirt and black hoops that stretched his earlobes from the inside out, I was impressed that he hadn’t made an effort before meeting us, and I thought I might like him. Anna had met him on an alligator hunt in the Everglades.