Afloat (14 page)

He lowers his paper, and stares over at Brenna who is arguing with Chef Walter about a blonde hair he found in the ice machine. Waiting for Rummy's answer I add more sugar cubes to my coffee, using my pen as a stir stick.

‘I liked her,' he says finally.

While sucking coffee from the end of my pen, I remember Rummy at the end of the dock this morning and suddenly connect.

‘Is she okay?' I ask.

He shrugs.

‘And Brenna knows?'

He nods. I've secretly always assumed that Rummy was a virgin, but I don't ask him about it anymore.

‘What did you wish for?' I ask him.

Rummy stares at me.

‘With your coin. In the lake.'

‘World peace,' he says, and goes back to his paper.

I realize in spending all my time with Bryce, my relationship with Rummy has suffered.

‘So what's going on in that great country of yours?'

He straightens the paper and turns the front page towards me so I can see the photo of a black and brown dog. ‘The pit bulls are eating the children. They're thinking of banning the dogs.'

‘The dogs? What about the owners?'

Skimming the column he shakes his head.

‘Well, that's the debate. Four people have been killed in just the last month. A five-year-old girl was mauled to death in front of her mother by a trained attack dog.' He looks up and winks at me. ‘And you thought Canadian culture wasn't violent.'

I roll my eyes at him. ‘What else?'

‘Global warming, religion… horoscopes?' he asks, and I nod. ‘
Keep your eye on the prize, Virgo
,' he reads. ‘
Don't get caught up in the small details. Things will soon become clear and your path will unfold itself before you. Avoid travel on the 17th
.'

‘Great.' I drink my coffee.

He looks up. ‘Mine says I'm handsome.'

After my morning shift I call my mother using the pay phone furthest away from the restaurant. Located on one of the ferry docks, it is noisy as people load and disembark, their feet pounding along the wooden planks. I wait until the boat sounds its horn briefly and begins to back out and turn around. I put a pocket full of quarters into the slot and the receiver is hot and wet, the humidity suggesting a storm later on this evening. I pray for rain so the restaurant won't be busy. My mother picks up quietly at the other end, happy to hear from me. To use the library's internet is costly, and without a phone in my apartment there is little way to get a hold of me besides sending letters.

‘I got your letter, Mom.'

‘Oh, well. It's fine, I was going to call, but I thought a letter, maybe.'

She tells me there are appointments to keep, and my dad has rearranged his work schedule so they can drive into the city together.

‘We'll make a day of it,' she says. ‘A little day trip. We still haven't tried that Thai place you recommended to us.'

‘The Friendly Thai,' I say. ‘Make sure you get the pineapple-fried rice.'

‘It's a long way from plucking chickens,' she says.

This is a saying she uses sometimes, referring to her childhood farm chore of plucking the feathers off the dead chickens
her brother killed. The family chores were divided evenly along gender lines: her brother would kill the chickens, and she would pluck them while her mother, my grandmother, cooked the chickens for dinner with potatoes and corn and carrots. Whatever was left over would go into a soup.

She repeats this saying when she's trying new things or visiting new places to remind herself of just how far she's come. It reminds me of just how far I've gone.

‘So tell me about your day,' she says.

When I hang up the phone I observe a man wearing a twenty-five dollar novelty foam cowboy hat on his head, walking towards the docks to wait for the next ferry. His hat is neon orange, although you can get them in pink or green as well. His friends follow close behind him, all of them drunk.

‘Barry, you shithead!' one of them is yelling. ‘You still owe me twenty bucks for eating that burger off the floor.'

The group pounds past me, the wooden dock shuddering with their heavy feet, the space filling with masculinity, sports teams supported on various T-shirts and one man smacking a miniature basketball against the planks.

‘Fuck off!' Barry in the neon orange cowboy hat yells at him. ‘You threw up afterwards. It doesn't fucking count.'

I return to work thinking of pit bulls and abortions and malignant growths, all wearing novelty hats atop their heads.

The chef special this evening is Horseradish Crusted Michigan Whitefish with Caramelized Onion, Seared in a Bacon Emulsion. With a different special every day, I sometimes get the adjectives mixed up, sometimes the meat as well. I had an entire table order veal chops once when the special was actually pork. Depending on the amount of French included in my descriptions, eyes will either glaze over as they hurriedly
order the lobster fettucini, or there might be a knowing nod to the rest of the table. ‘I love mascarpone,' they'll say, or, ‘the BC salmon has been particularly nice this year.' I have three tables tonight, two with water and pastas, one with wine (Château Grand Traverse Late Harvest Riesling, 1998), Scotch (Laphroaig), and two chef specials.

The air outside is slightly damp with mist and the sky is gray with clouds. An older woman with beautiful white hair waves me over.

‘Do you know the weather report for this evening?'

‘I think it's supposed to rain later on,' I say, having no idea.

Her tanned husband with cufflinks in the shape of anchors wants to know which bars will be good tonight. I list a number of them, telling him whether or not they have live music, and which bar supposedly makes the best Manhattan – his drink of choice. This earns me a wink. I avoid mentioning the Cock.

‘So are you from the island, Bell?' he asks, reading my nametag.

‘Actually I'm from St. Paul.'

‘St.
Paul
.'

They look at one another, smiling.

‘Dina
loves A Prairie Home Companion
,' he says.

All across the restaurant everyone carries on the same conversations.

The evening drags, and outside the sky gets darker. Waves with rough whitecaps roll towards the shore. I gravitate towards the window and watch the light change. Rummy stands beside me and we stare at the lake, though we are always alert for Velvet's quick ponytailed figure. I am holding a crystal water pitcher, and he has a tray of carefully balanced dirty dishes, both of us able within seconds to appear busy.

The air in the restaurant changes slightly, cools, becomes heavy. Small sailboats and yachts gather together, heading for
the safety of the marina which fills quickly. The black clouds advance and lightning blazes down to meet the water, splitting and cracking with bright silver light. The storm swoops in. The sky is lit every few seconds with sharp lines of electricity, and the wind hurls sheets of rain into the windows. Thunder invades the pleasant tinkling of the Tippecanoe.

‘It never gives up its dead,' Rummy says, looking out the window.

‘What doesn't?'

‘The lake.'

‘What?'

‘Gordon Lightfoot,' he says.

‘What?'

‘Gordon Lightfoot lyrics. Look it up.'

Rummy likes to lord his useless knowledge over me. I go and find Bryce, forgetting that he does the same. He is in the back polishing silverware with a muslin cloth. Velvet gets these cloths from a supplier in Ann Arbor who imports them directly from India. ‘The best muslin,' she says with a sigh, ‘is from Mosul of course, but it's impossible to get.'

‘Who's Gordon Lightfoot?' I ask him.

‘He sang “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”,' Bryce says immediately. ‘But it sank in Lake Superior, not here.'

‘What?'

He sighs and puts down the knife he was rubbing.

‘Gordon Lightfoot is the folksinger that sang “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”, about the ship that sank in Superior. Twenty-nine people died. Famous song.'

‘Why have I not heard about it?'

‘Because,' he says, smacking my ass with the flat part of the knife then putting it in the pile of clean cutlery, ‘you're adorable.'

I go back and find Rummy.

‘He's a folksinger,' I say.

‘A
Canadian
folksinger,' he corrects me. ‘Like Stan Rogers.'

I sigh. The rain runs gray and streaming down the windows, distorting the view, and someone motions me towards their table to ask when the storm is going to stop.

‘Not tonight,' I tell them.

Hearing the sound of a car door, I go quickly to the living-room window. The sky to the north is dark now, almost black above the rooftops and a small V of Canadian geese flies overhead and disappears. I look to see if, perhaps, because of the weather warning and my guest's subsequent determination to ensure an arrival, he has come early.

Across the road and the fading green lawn, Alison and her teenage daughter Amy are getting into their van, quickly, both wearing winter jackets. I lift my hand to wave, even though the van is already backing out and I'm sure they can't see me anyway. Lowering my hand I cross my arms, leaning slowly forward until my forehead rests on the glass.

Anna used to baby-sit for Amy; the two of them spent all their time outside, throwing baseballs at one another, rollerblading, biking. Amy loved Anna, the two of them so alike. Now I never see her without a short skirt, jewelry flashing from across the street. Anna didn't approve of this transformation, her sporting protégée transfigured from tomboy to tart. I loved it. One night a few years ago when I couldn't sleep I saw Amy, maybe fifteen, spread-eagled on the front lawn of her house, her body covered by a man wearing a bright-blue shirt. I watched, fascinated, wondering if my white face in the window was bright and visible from where they were lying. An hour they were there, fully clothed, first him on top, then the other way round. I watched to make sure she was okay, the neighborly thing. I felt proud of her. This secret we now shared was important; she was unknowingly
connected to me. To her I was just the woman across the street who picked the gravel from her hands so long ago when she fell off her bicycle. In fact it was Anna's old bike, stuck in the garage for years, offered to our young neighbors just starting out with new jobs and struggling with money. An old BMX, smooth and quiet with a bit of grease.

The first bicycle was invented in Scotland, in 1840 I think it was. I've seen pictures, a big monstrous thing made of wood and metal, the seat curved way up in the back like a chair. Not the penny-farthing, not the one with the giant wheel in front, that came later. After this came a version with no pedals, everyone just scooted around using their feet. Aristocrats in Germany and France snapped these up, using them to coast along almost as quickly as a horse and carriage. Everyone was able to go places faster than they had before. Women were free to self-propel themselves wherever they liked. They wore bloomers; the bicycle
forced the invention of women's pants
. Though I never thought about it back then, I think the bicycle deserves more credit as an integral part of the women's movement.

After leaving the island that summer, I was determined to ride my bike more often. But that feeling of wild alive-ness was impossible to recreate. Without the place that made it all real a bicycle is boring, useless on the streets of a modern city except for bike messengers and women that don't mind wearing helmets or taping one pant leg so it won't catch in the chain. I never rode one again. Not once. When Anna learned to ride I ran behind her with my hand on the seat of that purple BMX, waiting until the wobbles had stopped, letting go. Does anyone after the age of ten look at a bike as anything other than a toy? They are impractical really. Cars are affordable and gas is plentiful again. The vast Athabascan oil sands at twice the size of Lake Ontario are the largest
in the world, and our northern neighbors have been generous if only because of NAFTA. The massive RWPs and violent weather patterns are everything we were warned of, I suppose.

Do I get nostalgic when I look at bicycles? Of course. I am a stupid old woman that stares misty-eyed at children as they rush past, feet pedaling furiously. I am especially moved by the older models, the ones with baskets, like my own taken from the airport so long ago. As I watch the children getting smaller, disappearing from me, I imagine these bicycles as metaphors, and pretend I'm the only woman wise enough to have ever thought of this.

But there are no bicycles today; the children are kept at home using websites for lessons. Anna did a safety unit once on what to do in case of an RWP. ‘Duck and cover,' she explained, the instructions never going out of style. Smoke rises from every chimney except my own in anticipation of a disruption in electricity.

Alan used to stop and chat with everyone on his daily walk. Once around the neighborhood every day after he retired, I think it reminded him of work. Even in winter when it was icy, I think he took pleasure in everyone saying, ‘Alan, what the hell are you doing out today in this weather, you'll kill yourself.'

‘Been out in worse than this,' he'd say cheerfully, always cheerfully. ‘Neither rain nor sleet nor snow!'

Then he'd come up to the front porch and stomp the snow from his boots, always two hard stomps for each foot. It annoyed me one day, that he was so predictable.

‘Why can't you switch it up a little?' I asked.

The next day he waded into the house with all the snow still stuck to his boots. ‘No stomps today, your highness,' he said. The white mounds became tiny lakes filled with bits of
gravel, cold and isolated on the carpet and tile. We stepped in wet puddles for the rest of the afternoon.

Sometimes I laugh when I remember these things, but not today.