Truth in Advertising (38 page)

My stomach tightens and I turn to leave. He's someone who thrives on confrontation and anger. But I don't leave. Instead I stop, turn back around, and say, “He wasn't rich.” It's the way I say it.
You know nothing. Go to hell.

Swede, excitement in his voice now. He turns and stares at me. “What did you say?” He's looking for a fight. And he's much better at intimidation than I am.

But I'm not backing down. Not today.

“I said he wasn't rich. And you don't know what you're talking about, pal.”

“Who the fuck do you think you're talking to? This is my ship and—”

I don't know where the anger comes from, on those rare occasions when it does come. I have always been afraid of anger, seen it as a weakness, a fault. I saw so much of it in my father, in Eddie, saw the result. I have tried to pretend it didn't exist in me. But all that has done is bury it deep, letting it fester over time, until it erupts in strange, unexpected ways. I cut him off at the knees.

I say, “Fuck
you
. It's
not
your ship. It's Keita Nagori's
father
's ship. And I needed a favor. And I have no idea what I've done to ruin your day, but my guess is most of your days are ruined by someone. So I don't know what your fucking problem is with me, but I don't have time for it today. And don't assume you know anything about me or my father.”

It's the last line that surprises me. I feel drained and tired, as I always do after it happens. I looked it up once. The body releases adrenaline. A turbo charge, then a crash.

He looks at me and I think he's going to come over and kick my teeth down my throat.

I say, “And he wasn't rich. He was a cop. He was in submarines in World War Two. His sub was here. The day the war ended. He was here.”

He stares at me. “Your old man was in subs?”

I just stare, eager to leave because for some reason I suddenly feel like crying.

I'm waiting for the line but it doesn't come. He just looks at me. Then he says, “You ever been in a World War Two sub?”

I shake my head.

He says, “I have. Took a tour at Groton. Wouldn't wish it on anyone.”

No one says anything for a time. I start to leave when he says, “What was his name?”

“What?”

“Your father. What was his name?”

“Ed Dolan.”

“Was he a good man?”

I'm surprised by the question, the personal nature of it, the intensity with which he asks it. James Taylor's twin has turned and is looking at me, waiting for my answer.

Let me go, Finny
, she said.
Let us go
.

“Not really,” I say. “But he tried like hell.”

•   •   •

I have searched online, late into the night. I have found the crappy-looking websites put together by liver-spotted old men. Sullystributetosubmarines.com; heroesofthesilentservice.org. I can picture them, these old men, shoeboxes of old photos, pristine memories of their war years, trying somehow to work the damned computer, peering over their glasses, looking around the screen, trying desperately to figure out how to make a website, put up facts, grainy old black-and-white photos. Their granddaughter/grandson/nurse's aide helping guide them. HTML, not Flash, not interactive and cool like the Snugglies site that has music and movies and funny interviews with toddlers.
How is it I am eighty-seven years old
? they wonder alone, at night, widowed now.
How will I be remembered? We fought in a war. We risked our lives for a cause. It mattered. We mattered. Didn't we?

And so they share their history, their story, their moment in time.

The United States submarine service sustained the highest mortality rate of all branches of the U.S. military during WWII.

One out of every five U.S. Navy submariners was killed in WWII.

Take a steel tube, put it three hundred feet underwater, take away its sight except for the most rudimentary sonar, send it out into a war. But before you do, fill it with teenagers and tell them not to be afraid.

Would you go to work if you had a twenty percent chance of dying?

•   •   •

You are a camera with a fish-eye lens on a helicopter moving high and fast over a wide-open expanse of ocean. No land in sight. The fish-eye rounds the edges of the lens, giving a sense of curve to the shot. There, on the horizon, is a tiny dot. Closer now and you see that it is a ship, a large ship dwarfed by the sea. And on the side of the ship, being lowered down by motorized winch, is a lifeboat.

It was Swede Walker who suggested the lifeboat.

He said, “The ship can't exactly stop on a dime and at this height it's not really the ideal ashes dispersal vehicle. Also, there is the small matter of reversing course, which will take us an hour. Plus we need to conduct our monthly lifeboat training exercise anyway.”

His tone was different. He didn't look at me, but he was trying. Later, James Taylor would tell us that Swede spent twenty years in the Navy on a Tender.

It is a new and terrifying experience, hanging sixty feet above the water. The lifeboat has a plexiglass top and is completely enclosed and rolls us in our seats when it hits water level, which changes with every swell. We motor away from the ship. The captain told James Taylor to go five minutes east, that that would be, approximately, the coordinates.

The ride is rough as we motor away from the ship and I can tell from Keita's expression that this is hell on his stomach. The engine is loud and makes talking hard. After about ten minutes, James Taylor cuts the engines, the boat bobs to a stop, moves gently back and forth in the swells. He unhinges two of the plexiglass plates, rolls them back. There are no man-made sounds. We can't hear the engines of the cargo ship at this distance. What I hear instead is the soft slap of swells against the lifeboat. Above, patches of blue sky, high clouds, seemingly still, and lower, faster moving, wispy clouds. The air is so clean. The wind comes in gusts, and sea spray flies in my face. I'm tempted to call Eddie or Maura or Kevin, some connection to family, some sense of ceremony, of meaning.

Keita says, “Maybe it is time, Fin.”

Once, a submarine broke the surface, here, near here, right here, and the hatch opened and my father climbed up and signaled to another ship during a training exercise and learned that the war was over. There was so much possibility for him then, everything in front of him.

Keita holds up his iPhone. “I will record it for you, yes?”

I nod.

I open the FedEx box. Inside is another box. I open that one and remove what I thought would be an urn. But it is, instead, a plastic container with a hinged snap-lock. It's the kind of container you might keep leftovers in. Tomato sauce, or stuffing, or maybe bolts
and screws in a basement tool room. I assumed it would be an urn, the kind one might see in a movie. Silver and cylindrical, with a thick screw top. Something one could place atop a mantel. Instead he sits in a fucking piece of Tupperware. Inside the Tupperware is a plastic bag holding my father's remains. My hands shake slightly and my stomach tenses and here I realize, in a moment of embarrassment and sadness and regret, that our family would have needed to have had the foresight, the concern, the love, the tenderness, the forgiveness, to buy a proper urn, the way one does with a casket, with funeral arrangements. I'm overwhelmed by the sadness of this, the apathy. There isn't a jury in the world, presented with the evidence against Edward Dolan, Sr., that wouldn't find for his wife and family. But what would be their judgment against his surviving children in this moment, in this piece of hard plastic Tupperware, in this nothing thing? Perhaps he deserved better from us, too.

The side of the boat—surely there's a name for that—is high, to the middle of my chest. I press myself against it. I try to gauge the wind. For some reason I stretch my hand out, try to touch the water. A swell comes up, washes over my arm. The water is far colder than I imagined it would be. I smell my arm, turn, and see Keita and James Taylor looking at me.

“Okay,” I say to Keita.

Should I say a prayer? Give a eulogy?

I hold the container out over the edge, nervous that I am somehow doing it wrong, and turn it upside down, watch as a surprising quantity of ash flies, watch as my father's incinerated body—this body that once held me, held my siblings, made love to my mother, smoked a cigarette, raised a beer to his lips, threw a ball with Eddie, climbed the ladder of a submarine, struck his children, tilted his head back on a summer's day and wondered, knelt in church and prayed to God—rides the wind, dissipates in the distance, disappears into the water. I watch for a long time. I want to feel something, know something has changed. But I'm not sure it works that way.

I turn to see Keita, tears streaming down his cheeks. He reaches his hand out, holds my shoulder.

“Fin. Do you believe in reincarnation? In the possibility that maybe we come back as something better?”

I don't know what I believe. But I don't see why not.

I shrug. “Sure.”

“You have ash on your face, Fin. Maybe this a good sign. Maybe someone lives inside you who want to be better.” He smiles.

“Let's hope so.”

James Taylor starts the engines and ferries us back to the ship, where we are hoisted up and made safe.

•   •   •

Henry David Thoreau wrote that “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” I can clearly remember reading that in college and thinking,
Wow. He is so right.
Now, I think,
Wow. What a pompous asshole.
This from a guy whose idea of a sojourn to the deep woods took him all of a mile from his home. Quiet desperation?
Most
men? Who among us can say that? Who can know what goes on in someone else's life? In their worries and fears and hopes. Their history and pain. Who knows the quiet joy that one might feel in the quotidian thing, the nothing thing; a child's evening bath, volunteering at a soup kitchen, walking the dog when the family is asleep, the neighborhood quiet, a cigarette smoked alone. Lunch with a favorite coworker. Who can know the little worlds of beauty we try desperately to guard during the onslaught: watching your wife go through chemo; your father waste away from Alzheimer's; your sister relapse into alcoholism. The simple truth is that we know nothing about the inner life of the person sitting next to us on the plane, in the subway, the car behind us in traffic. We know nothing unless we choose to listen. Quiet desperation? What about quiet resilience. Quiet courage. Quiet hope.

•   •   •

Keita's flight leaves first.

“Thank you,” I say.

“For what? I did nothing.”

“You commandeered a container ship.”

Keita laughs. “It was easy. I just paid for the gas.”

“How much was that?”

“$125,000.” He laughs again when he sees my expression.

Keita says, “It's just money, Fin. Also business travel. Tax deductible.”

I wish he wasn't leaving.

He says, “Maybe instead I think that life is about having a passion.”

“What's your passion?”

“This depends on the day. Today, it is helping you.”

“Why?”

“Because you are my friend. Because today you needed help.”

“What if you don't have a passion?”

“Everyone has a passion. I say to you, okay, there is something you can't do tomorrow, forever. Someone you can't see, talk to. A place you can't go. A food you can't eat. What comes to mind? What are your passions? What can't you live without?”

He extends his hand and we shake and he bows to me, smiling the whole time.

Except the formal Japanese good-bye isn't quite cutting it for him today.

“I will miss you,” he says.

“I'll miss you, too.”

He nods. And standing there, in his diminutive Converse sneakers, he looks suddenly to me like a boy of ten. A quick hand wave and he turns and walks to the mouth of the jetway, hands the agent his boarding pass, and disappears.

•   •   •

Before I board my flight I transcribe the letter my father wrote to me into an e-mail. I send it, along with the video of today, to Eddie, Maura, and Kevin.

Dear family,

At 3:51
P.M.
, I spread our father's ashes over the Pacific Ocean. It was windy and overcast and colder than you might have imagined. I wish you'd been there with me.

It's the closing I pause with. How do I sign off?

Your friend?

Your brother?

That's the news, I'm Katie Couric?

Fondly?

All best?

In the end I opt for what I wished was true, what was once true, what could be true again if only we would try.

Much love,

Finbar

I call Phoebe but get her voice mail.

“Hey. I'm at the airport. In Hawaii. I just . . . I just spread his ashes. My father's ashes. Keita borrowed one of his father's container ships. It's a long story.”

I say to her voice mail, “Okay, then. Good message. Beautifully conceived and delivered, I think. It's Fin, by the way. I miss my friend.”

The flight attendant has asked us to turn off all electronic devices.

It's time to go home.

•   •   •

There are fifty-four countries in Africa. There are over two thousand languages spoken. There is a country called Mayotte. Its capital is Mamoudzou. Four billion people live in Asia. In India alone they speak over eight hundred languages. The Sahara Desert is roughly the size of the United States. There are sand dunes six hundred feet high. It's said that beyond the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, when the wind dies down, there is no sound of any kind, neither man-made or natural. There is a country snug between India and China called Bhutan, the only country in the world whose king insists that they measure the nation's Gross National Happiness. I have two first-class tickets anywhere in the world.