Houseboat on the Seine

by William Wharton

  The rest of the rugs, three bedrooms and a hall’s worth, we get up and out about the same way. It’s obvious we’re ignoring the monster, that brown landing field of a rug in the living room. We don’t want to hold up these nice people, who are moving back to Boca Raton, any longer than necessary, so each trip to the boat, we leave the rugs rolled up on the gangplank. This must be the ultimate test for those beams and I-beams. It takes three different trips to haul them there. I’m beginning to think of carpeting the chemin de halage outside our boat as well, just to use up all this rug.

  When we start rolling the big rug, it becomes apparent we have another set of problems. One, the roll of rug is so huge, I’m not sure the three of us can lift it at all, let alone lift it up onto the railing of the balcony. I’m not even sure we can push it through the sliding doors out to the balcony. Then, I hate to think of what happens when it hits. Maybe someone will phone an ambulance or the fire department or the police. We might set off earthquake alarms.

  After much head scratching and staring down at this solid tube of wool and whatever it is the wool is woven into, we decide our only chance is for the three of us to yank and pull till we have one end up on the balcony railing. Then we’ll all push until we’ve reached the middle of the carpet roll, hoping the rail won’t collapse. I’ll run down and warn the local populace that the sky is about to fall in. They’ll turn the rug on a pivot and shove as hard as they can so as to clear the balcony below. We can’t think of anything else. It’s something like the problem Matt and I had with the I-beams, only worse.

  But, somehow we do it, just clearing the second-floor balcony.

  Thank God, nobody was sticking a head out down there, leaning over the railing to see what all the ruckus is about, or the head would have been sheared off and buried under a quarter-ton of carpet.

  When we’re finished, we’re all sweaty, dust-covered and mostly very shaky from exhaustion. The Goodwins, the people from whom we’ve bought the carpet, invite us up for a can of beer. He’s smiling and she’s still crying. The apartment seems really empty now. He looks around.

  ‘Ever since we sold this to you, I’ve been wondering how you intended to maneuver it out of here. I thought you’d have a professional team of movers, and even then I couldn’t think how they’d do it. I wasn’t here when it was put in; we didn’t move any furniture in until the carpet was laid. You guys are crazy.’

  Well, on that last part he’s definitely right. And this was the easy end of the job. Now we need to work it out onto the boat. I won’t bother going into the details of that, except to say we measure and cut pieces to fit out on the chemin de halage before we try to muscle it in. We pass the large piece for the downstairs rooms into the dinghy and through the large window in back, just over the new desk. Again, it looks as if we planned it. It’s enough to encourage someone into believing there’s a power greater than all of us that takes care of over-ambitious fools, like race car drivers, hot dog skiers, ultralight-plane fliers and people who move rugs weighing too much. By the way, the boat doesn’t sink a centimeter.

  Of course, we don’t always make our cuts and measurements right, so there’s much trimming to do. I buy three rug-cutting knives at the hardware store in Le Pecq along with a sharpening stone. After two days, we’re fairly good at estimating and cutting. One of our major problems is shifting the big pieces of rug around in the two large downstairs rooms, along with the rubber rug liners. The liners are too bulky to push down the inside stairs, so we’re wrestling them through that back window, too. There are a few times I think we’re going to carpet the bottom of the Seine, but in the end, it works out. It’s five in the afternoon of the second day when we finish. I pull a six-pack out of the refrigerator, and we sit around the table in the living room. The table’s still somewhat wobbly from missing glue but has served the purpose. We don’t talk too much because we’re out of breath and energy.

  I notice Matt leaning back in his chair against the river side of the boat where the original fire had been. He looks one way, then the other.

  ‘Dad, think about how great it would be if we had a bay window right here so we could look up and down the river.’

  Tom and I look at him as if he’s kidding. A bay window on a boat? But then, that original window right there never did really recover from the fire. It’s held together with wood putty, staples and glue. I start to laugh. Tom and Matt look as if I’ve gone mad. I’m thinking maybe they’re right.

  Creative Life and Dancing

  The houseboat seems very conducive to me for creative work. There’s something about being separate from the land, being alone, having the big desk and a quiet place to work. I also have a set of filing cabinets I bought at Abbe Pierre’s. I find that working on this boat seems to open up blocks based on confusion and a sense of being scattered all over the landscape. I bear down and write two books within three years. One of them is published by a major publisher, and I have an advance on it equal to ten paintings. When the paperback sale comes in, we have the kind of money that lets us consider not selling paintings anymore at all, just paint and use the money to buy materials. I’m playing Theo to my own Vincent. I’ve never had life so good.

  Rosemary likes teaching, and I can’t convince her to quit and do whatever it is she wants, but she insists teaching kindergarten is exactly what she really wants to do. There’s still the problem of the enormous tuitions for our children at the American School, which we’d need to pay if she quit. The paperback sale isn’t for that kind of money.

  The day I sign the contract for the paperback, we decide to celebrate by having the dance party we’d promised way back when we were nailing floorboards with Neil, Barbara, Robin, Donna and Jo. We roll up the rug in the back section of the boat, pile it on top of my desk to protect everything, borrow the sound system from the school so we can have loud music. I photocopy an invitation to all of Rosemary’s kindergarten parents, most of our friends on the faculty, and a few other non-school related friends.

  The invitation tells them there will be a dance on the boat. We’ll supply the music, wine and beer. Each person is encouraged to bring something to share around. If they want to enlarge our wine and beer supply, that’s also welcome, but no hard liquor. Also, and, especially, no smoking except on the front deck of the boat.

  The night of the dance, I run around town putting up arrows and signs to help people find the boat. We’ve invited about seventy guests, expecting maybe twenty. Over eighty arrive. Luckily, the gangplank is strong, and the boat has two stories. I also put no smoking signs all over the boat with a cigarette-cum-arrow pointing to the front deck. I’ve covered the deck with Astroturf and put some extra chairs out there, so it’s a comfortable place to kill yourself.

  The way it works out, without any actual planning on our part, is that in the living room, where we have a small fire burning in an open Franklin stove we’ve installed, we have what I call the philosophers’ corner. This attracts the kinds of people who like to sit around at a party and talk, solving the problems of the world and laying their own problems on each other. They’re also close to the front door so they can go out to smoke whenever the spirit or addiction hits them. The deck party is not just smokers but people who want to talk, often pulled from the philosophers’ corner, and those young of heart who want a nice dark place. I try not to worry about people falling off the boat, but I remind all of them about the life preservers, just in case.

  Downstairs, at the foot of the stairs, we set up tables on which we spread out the food as it arrives. We keep a steady running supply of pizzas coming from the small oven in our kitchen. It’s to fill in any empty spaces, but there never are any; there’s more food than anybody could ever eat. This is more of a gourmand cocktail party.

  People stand around and chat or gossip or whatever while drinking and eating. This part of the party is where my ladder-staircase comes down and is usually jammed chock-full. There, we have adequate but not bright electric light, enough
to see with whom you’re speaking and what you’re drinking or eating.

  In the back section downstairs, where we’ve rolled up the rug, we have the dance party. There’s all kinds of dancing. We’ve asked special friends to bring tapes of the kind of dance music they like. Back there with the music and the darkness, it usually starts slowly, but by ten o’clock it’s a regular discotheque. It’s my favorite part of the party.

  I dance with everybody. Rosemary likes to dance, too, and between pulling pizzas out of the oven, we dance down there. I have my little wrist alarm set at twenty minutes for each pizza. Here, the only light is from candles in wine bottles. It’s very romantic and everybody dances with everybody. No discotheque ever was as jumping as this is. The entire boat gets to rocking; one can feel the swaying and rocking from front to back.

  One rule in France is that if you’re going to give a party, and you can give only one party a month, you must notify your neighbors a week ahead of time, then close it down, at least the loud music, by two A.M. It’s also considered good form to invite immediate neighbors to the party. A party such as ours is called by the French, a ‘boom.’

  We warn everybody both in the invitation and through the night that the party will shut down at two, promptly. Rosemary and I are not young, and the cleanup is a big job, so at five minutes to two, we blink the lights and come down with plastic sacks. We encourage everyone to put their plastic cups, paper plates and so forth in one sack and their bottles in another. We also remind everyone to gather up their dishes or pans in which they’ve brought food. Some heed these requests, while others are more recalcitrant. Rosemary keeps a subtle watch for those who participaté or reciprocate, and those who don’t. At two, I start blowing out candles and turn off the music.

  At the first party there was much moaning and groaning, but then as we gave more parties, gradually eliminating the recalcitrant from the invitations, things go like clockwork, literally. We can be in bed by two-thirty, with the place cleaned up, rug rolled in place and everything back to normal.

  The only trouble is the constant demand for more parties. We begin to feel we’re running a commercial discotheque, so we make the parties seasonal, one for spring, one for end of summer, one for fall (costume) and one for winter. These parties have been going on for many years now and are one of the fun parts of living on the boat. As they grow up, our children join the parties and the dancing, and come to know their teachers in a way they never would have. Rosemary also likes having all the mothers and fathers of her little kindergartners there. Many new friendships are struck up between these people with similar situations and interests. The boat becomes a real social center for Americans living in Paris.

  A Marriage on the River

  The best party we ever have on the boat is a family one. Our oldest daughter, Kate, decides she wants to marry a wonderful man with whom she’s teaching at an international school in Munich. His name is Bill.

  Neither of them wants an ordinary marriage. In fact, they want to be married on the boat. Most of Bill’s family from Oregon have never been east of the Rockies or west of Puget Sound. But they’re all coming. I’m glad we have those thick rugs in the rooms downstairs. We borrow sleeping bags from everywhere.

  We set up the area for the marriage with the window looking out on the Seine behind the bride and groom. Jo, my painting buddy with whom I share a studio in Paris, marries them. He does a very moving ceremony with much compassion and wisdom. He’s been a family friend since Kate was a little girl. He has five children of his own, about the age of ours.

  We play a tape of Mendelssohn’s wedding march. Everyone is sitting on the floor all over the upper boat. We drink champagne and then prepare for the fun part. Today is the first of November. This is the birthday and wedding anniversary of Rosemary’s sister Emmaline. She’s been dead several years at the time of this wedding.

  The dance is a Halloween-like costume affair and there is much wild dancing and stomping. I begin to worry about those boards we nailed in so casually, but there’s no problem. However, what with all the drinking champagne, beer and wine, nobody falls off the boat.

  Now that Kate and Bill and their two babies are gone, killed by a combination of greed and cupidity under an eighteen-wheeler truck in the smoke of fieldgrass burning in Oregon, we can begin to look back on that wonderful moment and rejoice for them.

  It’s been more than five years since we lost this large part of our family, and the emptiness will always be there, but in our grief, it’s been healing to have those poignant memories of their wedding, the madhouse, the fun, the laughter, the confidence in continuity. Somehow, their having been married on the boat made the entire pattern of their brief lives make some sense.

  ∨ Houseboat on the Seine ∧

  Eighteen

  A Wonderful Surprise

  About three years after the wedding, after traveling for the summer, we come home to find that Sam and Matt, along with Camille, Tom and some other friends, have fulfilled Matt’s wish about a bay window. They really did it. I’m glad I wasn’t even around to watch this project. I’d probably have had apoplexy.

  We had no idea what they were planning. Under Sam’s direction, first they push out the wall of the living room and kitchen to the edge of the boat, extending the floor, roof, ceiling, everything, more than half a meter. With the wall, they’ve moved the big plate-glass window. Then they put in multipaned windows across the new, enlarged kitchen. They’ve built Matt’s bay window in the living room, out yet another half-meter over the river with six interlocking, hinged, glass multipaned doors from floor to ceiling. It makes a perfect bay in which we can put the dining table and chairs so they don’t block the way in the living room. It would have been a great place to have had the wedding ceremony. Now, as Matt said, we can really see up- and downriver wonderfully.

  They’ve built new cabinets in the kitchen, put in a new gas stove and, miracle of miracles, a beautiful refrigerator and freezer. There’s also a stainless steel drainboard with two sinks. Such luxury, like something out of House & Garden, or maybe that should be Houseboats & River. Also, hidden under the drainboard is a dishwasher. This is something we’ve never had, or thought we ever would have.

  ♦

  When we come back from our trip, they’re all there excited and celebrating. What a great christening party we have for the new boat. It’s hard to believe. Rosemary goes from one room to the other, trying to adjust herself to the additional space, especially the kitchen.

  They’ve put in a new ceiling joist to span the section that had been resting on the wall before, and they’ve used two posts to hold the weight. The engineering is definitely Sam’s. The bay windows open directly out over the Seine itself. The entire bay window is cantilevered. It looks like a fine place to dive from, if they ever get the Seine as clean as they say they’re going to, or it could be a convenient suicide jump.

  Rosemarys Retirement

  Rosemary comes to a point where she has only one more year to teach. Then, by French law she must retire. In France, like it or not, the year you turn sixty-five, you must retire. She fights it, but it’s no use. The Ministre de Travail knows his rules, and there can be no exceptions. At first, Rosemary is very put out, and so is super-mothering this last nest of kindergartners through the year. She says it’s the best class she’s ever had, but I can’t remember a year when she didn’t say the same thing.

  She’s setting up a sort of kindergartner alumni association of all those she’s taught over the past twenty-two years. She searches out addresses and consults her own records. Some of these kindergartners are almost thirty years old now. What she wants most is to have a place of her own on the boat as an office, a place to carry out her kindergarten alumni plans, and to write. Her idea is to have it in the place where I’ve built my aviary.

  During the last twenty-five years, I’ve been raising my wonderful singing birds. At times I’ve had over fifty birds in that aviary. It’s my pride and joy. But the
birds do hold us down. Each time we leave for the mill or to travel, we need to find someone who will care for them. Also, because they’ve inbred for so long, I’m beginning to have empty nests, empty eggs and birds that don’t do their jobs as parents, won’t feed the young, so they die.

  I agree that Rosemary should have her office. I think about putting the birds in smaller cages or maybe letting them fly free and just keep putting out food for them in a feeder on the roof until they lose out in the battle for survival in the big world. This last solution fits my feelings better about captive animals. I build the feeding station and let the birds go. It’s late summer and they stay around the boat, singing in the trees, flashes of yellow against the green, flying their wonderful undulating flight and learning to avoid magpies, hawks, cats and all the dangers of the free life for a song bird.

  Sam and I take down the aviary. Sam has wonderful plans. He’s graduated from high school now and has married our second daughter, Camille. Who knows how many lives this boat has affected?

  He spends three days down at my desk drawing. What he shows me when he’s finished is almost an entirely different boat. Rosemary has given him all the input as to what she wants in her office. This includes big windows looking out on the river, with a large desk under the window, small, clerestory windows on the side facing our upriver boat neighbor, a large closet all the way across on the land side. Sam decides to overlap the lower boat both on the sides and at the back of the boat. Rosemary’s office will be directly over the office I use in the bottom of the hull. Symbolic!

  It’s like the wooden boat is being moored on top of the metal hull, another river marriage.

  The design calls for a door on the river side opening toward the front of the boat. Sam is planning a veranda to run all along that side of the boat, past the suicide windows of the bay and out to the front deck. It’s a beautiful solution. I just can’t help but wonder how he’s going to hang it there.