Afloat

by Jennifer McCartney

  In the first few weeks after they’d taken my breasts, I would lie in our expensive sleigh bed, the white down comforter protecting me from winter and the unexpected – waiting for the thought of something that required leaving my bed. Some days I’d wonder if I’d received any letters. Some days Alan brought home Roma’s pizza for lunch. Some days I smoked Anna’s leftover pot. Or I just wondered what I looked like, how I’d changed from the night before. In front of our bedroom mirror with the Russ for Congress stickers on it, one hovering just above my right temple, I’d stand the way they teach you to when being photographed so as to emphasize the narrowness of your waist. I’d place my hand way up on my ribcage to make me look slimmer, and I’d look at the leftovers. Not enough of a body to make a whole anymore. And I’d squint. Sometimes I’d wear sunglasses so the pink scars were dark and tanned.

  I had hips all out of proportion in a way I never really noticed until the top part of me was gone, the part which kept my figure looking like it was supposed to. Over the years I had acquired large thighs from somewhere, and it’s odd because your calves don’t change much – above the knees age sneaks up on you.

  I had nice feet.

  The day I smashed the mirror I used the corner of our pewter snow globe/picture frame that Russ had given us for our fifteenth anniversary. He’d bought us his standard bottle of Dewar’s as well, and he’d thought the snow globe was particularly funny. Celebrating St. Paul’s Bicentennial, it said. It smashed the mirror in an unsatisfying way. The shards were supposed to explode outwards, cutting me, giving me gashes that would need stitches. But instead, after a few dull swings, my reflection just kind of cracked, and then fell apart.

  Cleaning up, I got a sliver of glass in my foot. I wanted to think something romantic and meaningful about how all glass used to be sand and how in each grain of sand there is a universe, but it was too exhausting, so I just sat on the cream sheets of our unmade bed with my heel awkwardly in my hand, letting the too small shard of glass work its way out in a wet ooze of blood.

  Mackinac

  During a break from work Trainer and I get ice-cream cones and sit in Marquette Park. He has heavenly hash, I choose chocolate mint, and our tongues are working quickly because of the heat.

  We talk about how Tom never brews more coffee after he has used the last of it, and how Brenna wears so much mascara that clumps of it fall into the food she serves, and then we talk about Cedar Point, the massive amusement park in his hometown.

  ‘That’s where all my hats are from,’ he tells me. ‘Assholes would lose their hats on the upside-down rollercoasters – like at ninety miles an hour it’s going to stay on your head? Brand new baseball caps. I must have at least thirteen that I still wear.’

  I nod, using my tongue to mash the ice cream further into its cone.

  ‘I was there four summers,’ he says.

  ‘Where’d you stay?’

  ‘Cedar dorms,’ he says nostalgically. ‘All male.’

  He changes the subject.

  ‘Did I tell you about the fucking woman at lunch today that ordered her Merlot straight up?’

  ‘Like a Martini?’

  He thinks some people should not be allowed to drink wine.

  ‘And that’s twice in two days, yesterday a woman asked me for her Zinfandel on the rocks.’

  I try and match him. ‘I had a guest on the patio ask me if there were any sharks in the ocean.’

  ‘Well, I had some dick point at a seagull and ask me what sort of bird it was.’

  He pauses. ‘A fucking seagull.’

  We sit in silence.

  ‘You’ve got to lick faster than that, darling.’

  My chocolate mint is running down my wrist.

  From where we are sitting we can see a massive freighter making its way through the straits. This happens maybe once a week. I’ve heard they are filled with iron ore going up through the Sault locks to Canada, or coming down and around to Wisconsin or Minnesota or Detroit. Appearing at least half a mile long, the boats slide through the water quickly, even in deep fog, their horns low and strange to the ear. There has never been a collision in these straits, although locals still talk about that one close call: two steamers lumbering towards each other blaring their horns, both moving too quickly to stop. The spectators had gathered at the shoreline, watching the watery game of chicken to see who won. That they missed each other by a quarter of a mile is told with a hint of regret. Something spectacular had been so close at hand.

  Trainer reads out the name of the steamer as it slides past, an intrusion among the ferries and holiday yachts.

  ‘I wonder where it’s going?’ I ask.

  ‘Pittsburgh.’

  I look at Trainer and he shrugs. ‘You can tell by the number of funnels,’ he says.

  We look back out at the steamer negotiating the narrow straits and numerous yachts.

  ‘You’re lying,’ I venture.

  ‘Of course.’

  There is just one famous ship that sank in these Great Lakes. Broke in two, like a heart, and was lost. Living near the straits, it is hard to imagine how there is enough open water nearby to swallow anything. There is land everywhere, two lighthouses, and each port awaits ships patiently. I suppose some ships are too far from safety and have to weather the storms on their own. I guess it’s the water that always wins.

  HOMES, is how I remember all the lakes. It is how we were all taught in school: Huron Ontario Michigan Erie Superior. The last, the deepest.

  Trainer thinks it’s funny that he lives on Lake Erie, Rummy lives on Lake Ontario and now we are all here in the straits between two others.

  ‘Get it?’ Trainer asks me. ‘Without Superior, we’re HOME.’

  He waits, looking at me.

  ‘You’ve been hanging around Rummy too much,’ I say.

  At four forty-five we cross Main Street to start our shifts at the Tippecanoe. There is talk that Velvet will fire Trainer.

  She’s called him into her office. I think she’s heard about his water bottles at work. Everyone agrees that he is fucked. Staff have been fired for much less. One unsuspecting kid showed up for work at the beginning of the summer with dreadlocks, his lip pierced, and a T-shirt that read, ‘How did our oil get under their sand?’ Velvet had told him that there’d been a mistake, and in fact she’d meant to contact him sooner, but there was no longer a place for him at the restaurant. He had to catch the next ferry home, taking his canvas duffel bags with him.

  Trainer has been in her office for about ten minutes when he emerges, then leaves the restaurant with his bag containing his work clothes. I am sick. The pattern we have woven together here is too intricate to become unraveled now. We work the entire evening shift, each of us speculating on what has happened. There is nothing else to talk about.

  Taking a tray of lobster in a beurre blanc sauce out to the dining room, someone comments, ‘I just can’t believe she fired him.’

  Bringing dirty plates back to the dish pit someone else wonders, ‘Will he stay for tonight to say goodbye?’

  ‘Keep your mind on your work, shitheads,’ Chef Walter tells us absently. ‘You’re not in Kansas anymore.’

  Bryce finds me alone near the broom closet, as I search for a dustpan to sweep up the wine glasses I’ve dropped. Loud and hard, they had smashed on the hardwood floor, scattering shards under tables, making the woman next to me pull her daughter’s chair closer, as if worried I’d leap up and slash her with a leftover wine stem.

  ‘He’s not fired, I promise,’ Bryce says. ‘She doesn’t fire people that she likes.’

  He takes the broom and dustpan from me and heads off towards my accident, and in the face of such logic I have to believe him.

  At the Cockpit Club that evening Trainer is absolutely bombed, and gives us the thumbs up as we all walk in.

  ‘She gave me the night off!’ he yells at us.

  Then lower, and with a wink, ‘She’s a bit of a drinker herself, you know.’

&n
bsp; ‘Alcoholism is like a club,’ he tells me later, after a few beers. ‘We all look out for our own.’ He tells me that once he was in Velvet’s office she’d offered him a glass tumbler full of water, poured from a carafe on her desk. He had declined, too nervous, too uncertain for such pleasantries. She’d set the glass before him anyway, and as she talked he’d taken a sip.

  ‘Belvedere,’ he says. ‘The good stuff.’

  ‘Fuck off!’ I say.

  He nods.

  ‘She’s a fucking drunk, and it takes a drunk to know a drunk. The night I dropped three trays in a row, she wondered what the hell was wrong with me.’

  It doesn’t take too much to figure it out, I guess. Not on this island. The night he dropped the trays is one that I remember. Trainer had gone to the bar after his morning shift ended and left just before his evening shift began, several shots of vodka and several pints of beer heavier.

  ‘I didn’t even need my water bottle that night,’ he remembers. ‘But,’ he adds, with just a hint of embarrassment, ‘that lady was pissed about her jacket. Daiquiris are hard to get out of suede.’

  I can’t wait to tell Bryce about Velvet, though when I tell him he will no doubt nod as if he suspected all along. When Bryce arrives, he claps Trainer on the back and buys him a beer saying,

  ‘I knew you’d pull through.’

  He stands behind me, wrapping both arms around my neck and licking my eyebrow. In my ear he says, ‘Your mole is delicious.’

  We chat for a bit and then he challenges Dickweed to a late-night game of volleyball, leaving Trainer and me to drink ourselves into oblivion. When he leaves he gives a salute, and Trainer turns to me and asks:

  ‘Are you in love with Bryce?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’m making conversation.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ But I’m lying.

  He nods wisely. ‘Mackinac fever,’ he says.

  Behind us, Chef Walter feeds a bill into the Pac Man machine, ignoring our presence. His body presses against my back as he shifts with the movements of the game.

  ‘Fuck you,’ he tells the ghosts.

  Changing the topic, I ask Trainer, ‘Did you think she’d fire you?’

  Trainer assumes a sober expression with difficulty. ‘You’re a good girl, Bell.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means whatever you want it to mean.’

  I feel oddly comforted, and he decides to answer my question.

  ‘I thought I was gone,’ he says. ‘And the thought of going back to Sandusky. Well. Jesus.’ He pauses. ‘What a place.’

  But I’m not entirely sure which place he is referring to.

  When we finally decide to leave, Trainer puts an arm around my shoulders and says, ‘Stick with me, kiddo. Today’s my lucky day.’

  We grab our bikes and I follow him unsteadily up the road away from the town. Trainer pedals quickly to the side of a carriage heading in the same direction we are.

  ‘Mind if we grab a lift?’ he asks.

  The carriage driver nods and I am surprised. The drivers usually rebuff the drunken island workers saying, ‘Sorry, not allowed,’ and urge the horses to go faster. I have done this only once before, with Bryce, and the initial tug when you grab the metal frame, stop pedaling, and let the force of the carriage take you, is surprisingly strong. Trainer picks the left side of the carriage just behind the driver and I the right; two people can’t grab a hold of the same side in case the person in front was to let go.

  With his right hand holding onto the carriage Trainer steers the bike with his left hand, and I mirror him, concentrating on keeping my bike pointed uphill. The driver sits on his raised seat directly behind the horses, and ignores us. We yell across the empty seats at each other.

  ‘What’s your favorite thing about cock?’ he shouts at me.

  I think for a moment. ‘Besides getting rammed with it?’

  ‘You stole my fucking answer. Fuck! That’s so my answer, you bitch!’

  We both start laughing, and my bike starts to wobble and I have to concentrate – though my thoughts are swimming with the lake and the ice cream in the park and my relief that we’re still here. Our voices echo up and out into the black of night where they die, with no one but the driver to hear. He snaps the reins, and the horses give a jerk. My hand cramps a bit as the speed increases, the metal pulling at my fingers. We fall silent as the carriage continues upwards towards the Pine Suites, the hooves clopping on the pavement, the metal of the harnesses jangling, the weight of the wheels crunching wayward stones with sharp cracking sounds, and the landscape moving by us in silence.

  Trainer says, ‘Hey,’ and I look over, but he’s not looking at me, he’s looking down at his handlebars.

  ‘Fuck,’ he says, and lets go his hold on the taxi, sliding from my view.

  The bike scrapes the pavement, the carriage jostles and he’s down.

  ‘Shit, Trainer!’ I’m laughing. ‘Are you okay?’

  I pedal a bit to pick up some momentum, so I can let go of the carriage.

  ‘Trainer, are you okay?’

  I grab my left handlebar and press the brakes, but he still hasn’t answered. I stop and look back. He is lying in the road with both legs still twisted in his bike and the back wheels of the carriage have run over his chest.

  St. Paul, 5:00 p.m.

  When Alan died, it was not a surprise. He had the flu; such a simple thing and it made him sweat. So hot. All the time I asked for water to cool him and the one nurse, the one who understood, she always brought him water.

  The house is cold now, very cold, but I’m sure the furnace is on and must remember to check. I don’t want my guest to be uncomfortable.

  I was next to Alan when he went. Safe at United Hospital, his room was light purple with a window that overlooked the summer landscape of St. Paul. The weather was fine that summer, it didn’t give me any problems, it was predictable. They were repaving the main entrance to emergency and the air smelled of tar, even inside.

  There was a green and waxy plant on his windowsill that kept growing even when I didn’t remember to water it. I forget who sent that one now. Russ’s Foundation sent lilies, and Patty signed the card.

  She’s doing well for herself now. Or has she retired?

  But she didn’t know Russ. He never would have sent flowers.

  Send them cash, he always said. Cash and a bottle of Dewar’s. Instant cure.

  The cut flowers went on Alan’s bedside table – carnations and other arrangements that sick people get – though he stopped noticing them after a while.

  If only the floor had been carpeted the whole thing might have been bearable. If only they had thought to make the room warmer, more like a bedroom, I could have stood it. Sometimes after it rained my shoes would still be wet by the time I got to his door. I would try to plant my feet flat on the linoleum as I walked, so I wouldn’t squeak as I entered. If only there’d been a carpet, maybe I could have imagined more easily that I was at home.

  The food was fine, when he was still eating. He was on a soft food diet, because of his difficulty swallowing. The dietician said it was the best thing for him, eating being as painful as it was. Apple sauce, puddings, Jello, along with some vitamin supplements. Baby food. He could never eat enough, his body drifting into nothingness.

  Alan joked in the beginning – when it was just a cough, when they thought he’d be part of the 75 percent that recover after a week or two – how he’d had to go into hospital to have someone cook for him. We’d laughed, because in all our years of being married he had always done the cooking. Once in a while I’d try to make something, a fried egg or some just-add-water cookies or pancakes, but they were always burned or hard or salty. My kitchen always upset me.

  I visited him every day. I watched him go from the hamburgers to the chocolate pudding to the feed tubes. Once, when he was asleep, too weak to be awake for long, I told him how we’d met, hoping he might dream about it.
/>   I prayed, because Alan had prayed for me and I was still alive.

  Jesus, Lord, Dear Mary, not yet, just leave him be a while longer, Lord, keep the roads clear, please, I have my story yet. I just want the chance to tell it.

  I lost weight as well, and I was proud of myself for losing it. I ordered take-out meals at night, but the cartons full of spring rolls or sushi or hamburgers sat greasy, uneaten on the kitchen counter. The piles of mail soon took up the whole kitchen table. The grass grew. If we’d had a dog, it would have run away, taking charge of its own survival. I left the house alone; it began to look like no one really lived there. Anna had no idea how bad it was until she came to pick me up the afternoon my transmission failed.

  ‘Jesus Christ, Mother,’ she said.

  Covering her nose with her shirt, Anna examined the kitchen. There were maggots in my refrigerator.

  That was when she left the school indefinitely.

  I’d find strange tasks for myself during this time, taking Alan’s shirts out of the closet and ironing them, or scrubbing the floor of the shower at two in the morning until my hands couldn’t hold the brush. I started sleeping on the recliner in the living room, watching television until I fell asleep. This turned into a habit I couldn’t break and I sleep there still. Our bedroom is a foreign place to me now, thick with the scent of nothing and no one.

  ‘Why does he have to die from such a stupid disease?’ I asked Anna.

  But he did. All those years I’d been sure it would be me first.

  Soon after this, we began organizing my house. Packing, Anna calls it sometimes, which worries me.

  So much death, and I don’t understand where everyone goes. I had looked up, wondering if he could see me looking up, imagining he was there above me taking a last look. Isn’t that what they say happens, the people that have died but come back? They don’t immediately go anywhere, they get to hang around and watch. The room was quiet, with nothing to announce that there was now one less person in it. I think I waved. I waved at the empty white ceiling because I couldn’t think of anything else to do.