The River Queen (15 page)

It had not been a loving union, to say the least, but, after all, it had lasted almost sixty years and produced two children. He was my father and, at the very least, she might have acknowledged my need to mourn him. That night Larry and I stayed up late, discussing what to do. When Kate got up, we told her the news, and she wrapped herself in a blanket and wept.

Kate knew her own history. We had believed in full disclosure. She understood that my father had given me permission to have her and she had loved him in her own way. The last time she saw my father, she went with me to take him to the doctor. On the way back he tried to open the window, but accidentally opened the car door. As his frail body threatened to fly out, Kate caught his arm, pulling him back in. “Hey, Grandpa, where're you going?”

Since there would be no funeral, there was no reason to rush home. My nephews wouldn't be arriving before the weekend. And Kate had her prom on Thursday and the preprom party was to be at our house. It would be difficult to cancel. In the end we decided to sit shiva in Brooklyn, then fly to the Midwest at the end of the week.

For three days our house was filled with friends and food. A shiva candle burned. Flowers were everywhere. Neighbors dropped in. The rabbi stopped by to say Kaddish. Our house and our lives felt full. Then it was prom. When the three stretch Humvee limos pulled up in front of our house, children stopped playing in the streets. Our neighbors on all sides—the elderly Italians, the man who had just lost his wife, the neighbors we'd been arguing with over their construction—all came out to pay their respects. Everyone paused as fifty teenagers in bright satiny blue and red and lemon yellow dresses with stiletto heels and boys in tuxes, sporting white saddle shoes and aviator glasses, piled out of our house and into the limousines. There was palpable silence until an elderly neighbor blurted, “What kind of funeral are they having?”

We flew to Milwaukee on Friday. Against my mother's wishes, I had arranged for a short viewing and Kaddish before my father was to be cremated. When they wheeled him out, my mother poked his skin. “He's cold and he's in a cardboard box.”

“That's because he's going to be cremated,” I told her.

My mother sat uncomfortably through the Kaddish, then told her caregiver to take her home. Before she left, she went up to his body. “Good-bye, Sol,” she said. “It was fifty-nine good years. Good-bye. Now get me out of here.”

Perhaps it was dementia. Or some mind-altering drugs she was on for pain in her back and knees. Perhaps it was just the years of being unhappy and dissatisfied. A talented woman with a degree in fashion design who sewed costumes for her children. “Smile,” she'd say to him at the end of the day. “It takes 359 muscles to frown, but only two to smile.”

No tears were lost here. But I loved him. Perhaps because he believed in me. “Reach for the stars,” my father always told me. “You'll never get there. But you gotta reach.” Neither my mother nor my brother wanted his ashes so I asked that they be sent to my house. I was out when the ashes arrived and the chiropractor next door signed for them instead.

Joan Didion, delving into the loss of her husband, John Gregory Dunne, who died suddenly at the kitchen table, midsentence, writes that there are two kinds of grief. There is the uncomplicated kind when a person dies, is buried, and grieved. Then there is what the experts call complicated grief. This is brought on by an unresolved relationship, disagreement over final wishes, or delay of the funeral.

Delay of the funeral. I think about this when I think of my father and his ashes, tucked behind my piano where I cannot bear to move or lift the box. I have not touched it since I placed it there. When I consider the options, I realize I do not know my father's wishes. They were never made clear. Perhaps he too thought he'd never die.

My brother wants to scatter the ashes at Sportsman's golf course in western Illinois where Dad spent his Saturdays. My mother doesn't care what happens to them, though downtown Chicago in front of the building he built at Oak and Michigan makes the most sense to her. I rather like having him with me in Brooklyn. I think for some reason, even behind a piano that isn't played very often, he is happiest here.

I have heard of an Amazon tribe that makes a soup out of the ashes of its elders. A year to the day after their death the tribe ingests this bitter broth. Briefly I consider this possibility, but it would be a lonely soup and I fear I'd be partaking of it alone.

20

I
N THE
early evening as we sail into Clinton, Iowa, the rain stops and the sky is a burst of violet and rose. The
Mississippi Belle,
a huge casino paddleboat, is moored in the harbor, its lights blazing and music blaring. At first I am disappointed at the thought of sleeping beside another casino, but Jerry heads beyond the casino toward the small marina. We drift into a quiet cove, passing houseboats with names like
The Bottom Dollar
and
Blue Tonic,
and come to a courtesy dock and tie up next to a boat named
Sol,
which, of course, in Spanish means “sun,” but it was also my father's name.

The dock is in an inlet, filled with mallards and egrets, and I am grateful to be here. As we tie up, once again I watch Tom and Jerry doing their knots. They make crazy loops, circling, tugging, winding in side-winding bends like the river, in and out of itself. “Jerry,” I say, “I want to learn how to do that.” He gives me one of his stares. “I want a rope lesson.”

“What do you mean?”

“I want to learn to tie up the ropes.”

Jerry nods, taking a sip from his beer mug. “Well, the first thing you need to know, Mary, is that as soon as a rope comes on a boat it's a line.”

I smile. “Thank you, Captain,” I mutter under my breath. “I'd like a line lesson. I want to learn how to tie up.”

“Sure, we'll teach you.” He raises a professorial finger in my face. “One thing at a time.”

Tom shows me where to plug into the electricity on the dock and I drag the cable and plug it in. The sky turns scarlet as a bouquet of roses and I sit on the dock, feeding stale bread, of which we seem to have a good amount, to the ducks. I've done this since I was a girl. On every family vacation I'd wait at the kitchen door of restaurants and take stale rolls and bread crusts to the duck ponds. I have spent entire vacations rubbing hard loaves of bread against the trunks of trees that lean across the water. My father used to complain that we'd gone to Idaho to do what I could do a few feet from home.

I've got about a dozen ducks squawking at my feet when Jerry sits down beside me. As I'm tossing bread, he's snapping pictures. I look at his hand as he clicks. “Jerry,” I say, “can I ask you something?”

“Sure,” he says.

“How'd your lose your fingers?”

“What fingers?” He laughs. “Oh, those.” He holds up his right hand with its finger stubs. “Well, I lost the tops of two when I was a boy. The third one I lost when I was working on a houseboat a few years ago.”

“When you were a boy?”

“Yeah.” He's staring out at the river now. “You know, my dad was a fireman and he had a workshop in the basement. He made furniture and stuff. Anyway he was at work one day and I went down and used his saw.”

“Oh, my god.… How old were you?”

“I was about four.”

“Four? Wasn't anyone watching you?”

“You know, these things happen. Kid'll get away from you in a minute. I think my mom was home. I know my dad felt awful about it.”

“I'm sure he did.…”

“It was a technical violation,” he says with his usual laugh. “Funny how these things happen. You know, same thing happened to my son, Chris. He swallowed a bottle of Liquid-Plumr when he was two. Don't know how he got into it.”

“He swallowed Liquid-Plumr?”

“Oh, yeah, god it was terrible. His eyes were rolling back in his head. He smelled like a tank of gasoline. I didn't think he was gonna make it. The doctors didn't either. You know most kids when they do something like that…” Jerry was shaking his head, whistling through his teeth.

“Well, was he alone…?”

“You know, these things just happen sometimes. But, Chris, well, he's lucky to be alive. Burned his whole esophagus. But…” Jerry tosses his hands in the air. “That's a whole other story.”

We sit, tossing bread to the ducks. The sun is setting behind us and soon it is dark.

“How about some dinner?” I ask him.

“Sure,” he says. “Sounds like a good idea.”

We go into the cabin to fix dinner and Tom's got the satellite dish working. CNN is on and George Bush is standing with the head of FEMA, Michael Brown. Bush is saying something about how he stands by Michael Brown and FEMA's response. I stand in silence, listening to Bush defend Michael Brown. Jerry glances at the television. “What an idiot,” Jerry says under his breath, flicking open a beer.

“Really?” I ask.

He rolls his eyes. “Oh really,” he says. “Don't get me started,” he says.

“Actually I'd like to…” He just gives me a wave of the hand.

It is dark as we sit on the bow and I proudly serve up my Bolognese with farfalle. “Wow, this looks great,” Tom says, popping perhaps his tenth diet Dew of the day. “What's that white stuff?”

He's pointing at the pasta and I tell him it's like spaghetti except it fits into our little pot. “It's called ‘bow ties,'” I explain.

“Doesn't look like spaghetti to me,” he says. I've set the table with our best paper plates, napkins, whatever utensils I can find. “Mind if I get some bread?” Tom asks.

“Of course I don't mind.”

He fills his bowl, heaping the bow ties with Bolognese, which he then spoons on to a piece of Wonder Bread and eats as a sandwich, gulping down his diet Dew. He has one or two more of these sandwiches, declares them good, and gives what's left in his bowl to Samantha Jean. When Samantha Jean is done with my Bolognese, Tom takes her for a walk on the levee. Then, without saying goodnight, he crawls up to his resting place on the fly-bridge and settles onto his air mattress. He puts on his headphones and goes right to sleep.

But I never seem to go right to sleep. Even in this gentle cove, my heart beats too fast. After the dishes, I crawl into bed. I work on a crossword puzzle I've brought with me. “Has to do with ribs.” I'm thinking “barbecue,” but I get it wrong. Later I'll discover it's “babyback.” Same number of letters. I hate trick questions. For tank top I put halter, but it's gas cap. Another trick. I hear Jerry's heavy breathing. I resist at first, then pop an Ativan and, when I don't seem to get groggy, an Ambien and finally fall off into my drugged sleep.

In the morning we are off early. I am sorry to leave this quiet cove. The river is smooth as glass and we seem to skim its surface as we sail. At Mile 507 we come to the confluence with the Wapsipinicon River, which translated means “the river where you find white potatoes.” We don't find any. River pilots call this the “Wapsi” and just below the confluence we come to the Wapsi River Light 506.4.

At Mile 498 the river makes a sharp left-hand bend. For the next 43 miles we will be traveling west. There is an Indian legend about this bend. It is said that the Mississippi was on its way to the Gulf of Mexico, but, after passing through the northern bluff country, the river did not wish to go on. It turned for another long look before continuing its journey south.

CURRENT

21

J
ORGE
L
UIS
Borges wrote that there are only four plots in all of literature. The story of the love of two people, the love of three people, the struggle for power, and the journey. I feel as if I have been through the stories of love and the struggles for power. Now it is time once again for the journey.

My teacher John Gardner reduced it to two: You go on a journey or the stranger comes to town.

Or as Stanley Elkin said about science fiction: You go there or they come here.

In any case the journey figures in.

I'm thinking about this while I'm listening to Bix Beiderbecke. We're approaching his hometown of Davenport, Iowa, and “Riverboat Shuffle” is playing on my laptop. I'm thinking about the sweet sound of Bix's solo when the song switches to a lively “It's a treat to beat your feet on the Mississippi Mud. What a dance, do they do, people look around and I'm telling you…” Jerry's snapping his fingers and Tom's grooving to the beat.

The tempo shifts to “Slow River” as elegant Victorian houses rise above the floodplain on the hillside. There's a hint of old money and better days here. “Slow River” is a lazier tune than “Mississippi Mud,” but it's still high-pitched and breezy. No blues, no heartbreak here. Bix plays a soft, playful horn, reminiscent of an adolescent boy's voice, just starting to deepen, still cracking from time to time.

He was a white boy with a horn, and like many of his great black contemporaries, he couldn't read a note. He was a piano prodigy, but for some ungodly reason, at least in his own family's view, he was drawn to the river and its jazz. He was born the year after my father, and if Bix had lived past the age of thirty, I'm wondering what he might have done. I'm sure my father heard him play at the “black and tans” on the South Side or with the Wolverines on the Indiana Dunes.

But no matter how far Bix wandered from Davenport, the river was in his blood. At the turn of the century when he was a boy, “steamboat fever” was all the rage. Mark Twain published his
Life on the Mississippi
in 1883 and
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
two years later. In the 1890s the Streckfus family, one of the biggest names in steamboats, settled across the river from Davenport in Rock Island, Illinois, but Streckfus men tended to marry Davenport women and Davenport was considered to be a gracious, cultured place. The city soon became home to Streckfus Steamboats, a line of excursion boats that, along with its moonlight cruises, offered jazz.