“Are you coming or not?” Chico forced Harpo right to the edge of the dock, where everything was in soft focus, purple and black and dangerous.
Harpo hesitated.
“Well?” said Chico.
“I’m going.” It was windy now too. And it smelled like seaweed. And it was hard to breathe with all the rushing air. He’d just have to step down, grab the side of the boat, the dock maybe?
“Go on then.”
“I am.” Harpo shuffled closer to the water. He bent at the waist, but there was nothing to hold onto. His brothers probably had no intention of getting into that canoe anyway. They were probably just going to shove him in and shove him out.
“So get in already, Harpo,” said Chico. “Checkout is on Tuesday. We only have a week left.” And then he crowded in so close that Harpo had nowhere to go but down.
Harpo stepped into the canoe, but his foot bobbed and moved out from under him, and suddenly he was falling backward, and just as suddenly he wasn’t. Chico grabbed him, and then Harpo was somehow folded into the canoe, holding that funny piece of wood that smelled more like the lake than the lake did. He couldn’t see the bottom of the boat, but there had to be water down there, because his knees and shins were suddenly cold. “Is this thing safe?”
“You do know how to swim, don’t you?” said Groucho. Then he put an oar across the top of the canoe. Chico did the same, then they settled into the boat without the whole thing sliding out from under them.
They were off, gliding into the dark lake, Harpo bobbing and rocking with the water, his brothers busy with shushing oars. Things changed so fast. One minute he was lost in the trees and the next he was rushing over the water, feeling the air grow warm and close like a hug.
“We have to look out for lights,” said Groucho. “We’re pretty far away from the lodge now, right in the river. Barges come down here all the time, because it’s part of the trade route.”
“Okay.” Harpo could feel a fine mist on his forehead. He closed his eyes and the gentle little drops touched his eyelids.
Then there was silence. And then, “We’re here.”
Harpo looked up. The sun had set completely so he couldn’t see anything at all. “Where are we?”
“Coronation Island,” said Groucho.
Both of his brothers stopped paddling, and for a moment they just bobbed and rocked in silence. There was an occasional crack as something hit against the boat, and Harpo had no idea what that could be. Driftwood? Fishing lines? What did people trade in Kingston, Canada?
Finally, Groucho raised his arm. “See that?”
Harpo saw a line of black on black, and his eyes followed it to the far distance, to pinpricks of light.
“That’s the Kingston Penitentiary,” said Groucho. “It’s like San Quentin in Canadian.”
“I’ll pay you one hundred dollars if you yell ‘jailbreak,’” said Chico.
“Not on your life,” said Harpo.
“Get out,” whispered Groucho. “We have to show you something. Quick. Climb out. Climb up.”
Harpo could now just barely make out that there was a dock in front of him that the canoe was hitting against with every passing wave. That was the cracking sound, the banging feeling. He felt for the slimy wood with careful fingers, then hoisted himself up onto it.
“Where are we again?” He reached a hand out to his brothers, but they were already pushing themselves off the dock with their oars.
“Coronation Island,” said Groucho. “This is where the real morons are crowned.”
Harpo sat back on his heels. “Mormons?”
“He’s had two hours to think about it,” said Chico “And that’s the best he could come up with. Coronation Island.”
“It’s been a busy week,” said Groucho. “You’ll have to forgive me. I’ve had a lot on my mind.”
Harpo lowered his hand. Frenchie’s funeral, Groucho meant. And he understood. That had been a hotbed of jokes, just one after another after another in quick succession, just Grouch to him to Chico and back again, then to Zep and Gummo. Then there had been the other people, and that had been the worst. Nobody should be allowed to make eye contact at a funeral. Sympathetic looks should be punishable by prison time. Harpo looked at Groucho’s bobbing form, or was that Chico? Because he felt it too. He was wrung out, twisted round, dried up, even here, even though he was in the middle of a lake.
“Well, goodnight, Harp,” Chico said as the canoe slid away again, fitting perfectly into the darkness.
“Oh.” Harpo saw the joke now. “I get it. You’re leaving me here.”
“We’ll pick you up in the morning,” Chico called.
Harpo stumbled from one side of the dock to the other, and felt the cold water lapping up from all directions, the spray cold on his arms and cheeks. Then he walked around the periphery. The dock was a small thing, the size of a king-size bed, and there was no island attached to it at all.
“Hey, Chico,” he said. They should be turning around to pick him up again. Any second now.
But there was nothing.
“There isn’t even an island here,” said Harpo. “It’s only just a dock!”
And then he sat. The seat of his pants was cold. It was wet too. There was a wet spot. He sighed, and the night sighed back, the breeze and the water and the strange bird sounds whistling in answer.
Harpo lay down on his back and stared at the stars. He didn’t deserve Susan. She was better off without him.
He struggled to his feet. Then he walked.
This was why he didn’t like to be trapped out in the middle of lakes. It was because he paced and his thoughts did too, and they always ended up in forbidden areas. Verboten!
Harpo sat down again, chuckling a little at the memory of Frenchie’s voice, that fake-o anger. It had never worked. Frenchie couldn’t even raise his voice. A few times he’d taken off his belt, pushed Harpo into the hallway and slammed the door shut on the gaping faces inside. But then he’d hit the wall so it only sounded like discipline. His wet black eyes could slay him though, when Harpo knew he’d let him down.
Harpo lay back. He curled in a ball and pain radiated outward in every direction. It always surprised him that it was physical. Missing a person was physical. His chest hurt, but not just that, his head and throat also, they all screamed in bright white agony. Other people should be able to see it. This grief, it should make him bright like a star.
Harpo closed his eyes, remembered standing by Frenchie’s bed. It was the last time he’d ever see his father. An earthquake rolled the hospital and suddenly Harpo was in a corner of the room, trapped by his father’s bed. His arm was pinched by the headboard, and he had to look at his dad, really look. Frenchie was gone. He’d already checked out. His cheeks were hollow, his skin yellow, his eyes open and vacant. His mouth made a perfect O. And oh God. He loved him. Harpo loved Frenchie so much, and he wasn’t coming back again so he couldn’t even say it. I love you, Frenchie. I love you, Dad. The words burned in his throat. And he couldn’t get out of the hospital room because he was stuck between the bed and the wall, and he couldn’t call for a nurse because his vocal cords were useless. And they were busy, it sounded like. Something was wrong. Harpo could hear yelling in the hallways, pounding feet, crashing machinery, and he sort of understood what was happening, but sort of didn’t. The earthquake meant nothing to him, even as an aftershock shook the room and the bed rolled into Harpo’s stomach, so hard he could hardly breathe, so hard his eyes filled.
Now Harpo was back on the dock all alone, eyes watering again, again and always. “I love you, Frenchie,” he whispered, his voice cracking, still barely audible.
Just before he’d left for the lodge, Chico’s daughter had asked him about Frenchie’s last days. Harpo remembered putting his hand on her little head, stroking her dark hair, saying nothing. How could he answer? He’d pictured that gaunt face and the smell, the smell of antiseptics and something else, something sour and terrible, his father’s body shutting down. He couldn’t tell her that. She was just a little kid. Harpo would wire Maxine in the morning. He’d tell her that Frenchie had bilked money out of the nurses. He’d write, “On his last day on Earth, Frenchie taught the nurses pinochle. He made a four dollar bid and got it.” It was time to start taking care of Frenchie’s memory. He’d be the grown-up now. When he needed to be, anyway. When it was necessary.
Then Harpo thought he saw movement somewhere, a flash of black on black, and he stood. “Hello?” he called, suddenly cold in all the places he’d been folded up. “Is someone out there?”
There was no response. Where were his brothers?
“Help?”
They should have come back to rescue him by now. Could they have started a card game and forgotten him? He didn’t want to be out here forever. He had things to do now. He had purpose. He had to fix his career, be an adult somehow, get Susan back. He didn’t want to end up a pile of bones on a dock. One more wild night. But after that…
“Help!”
And then the dock shook violently. Harpo fell to his knees.
The old man climbed up onto the dock, but this time Harpo wasn’t ready for him. “Well good evening,” said William, the moonlight making him glow, surreal and strange and dry like a bone.
Harpo stood.
“Imagine meeting you here,” said William.
Harpo scrambled over to the far side of the dock, to where William had just appeared out of the darkness, but there wasn’t a canoe. There were only some ripples in the dark water, and an extra little piece of dock jutting out, a section he hadn’t noticed before. He dropped to his knees. He’d already known the old guy might be a ghost, hadn’t he thought that when he’d wandered out of the woods? But he hadn’t really believed it, it seems, not until now.
“So how are you doing tonight?” asked William.
“How did you get here?” whispered Harpo.
“You’re a bit confused. That can happen. Other than that, how do you feel?”
“My brothers left me. And you’re not really here.”
“I’m not?”
The wind ruffled Harpo’s hair. Minnie used to do that. That’s how he’d known he’d done something right. Now the Kingston nighttime was telling him well done. So he’d guessed it. He was sitting with a ghost. Now what?
“I’ve been looking out for you,” said William. “And I thought you might want some company this evening. Maybe a rescue too, if you don’t get any better offers.” Then he seemed to hear something and turned to the shore. “You might get a better offer, however.”
Harpo turned to follow his gaze, and saw nothing, an inky lake shimmering with moony reflections. But this wasn’t so bad. William seemed friendly enough. And if he was a ghost, then his parents might be ghosts too, and William might even know them. If anyone could fix this problem with Susan and right his tilting career, it was Minnie. Harpo breathed. If they were ghosts, then he might see Minnie and Frenchie again.
“I’ve been thinking,” William said suddenly. “If you do go to Russia, you might meet some friends of the Jewish lodge family, the Kogans.”
“That would be a coincidence,” said Harpo.
“Maybe it could be the kind of coincidence you arrange before you leave. Sometimes when I listen in the windows, the Kogans are talking about the mitzvah, good deeds. Sometimes, inside the lodge, they’re worrying about the people they left behind in Russia. I think it would be considered a good deed if you looked in on those people while you’re there.”
“I can do that.”
“You can?”
Harpo gathered some pebbles and dropped them in the water. They tinkled musically. “Have you ever heard of Minnie Marx?” he asked. “Or Frenchie Marx?”
“Yes,” William said softly.
“They were my parents.” Harpo felt that same searing hurt in his forehead, burning all the way down his chest. It should be visible. But it wasn’t. It was still just as dark out, and nobody could see his grief but him. “I love them, you know.”
“It was in all the newspapers,” William said.
“It there pinochle in heaven?”
“How could there not be?”
“Then that’s okay.” Harpo rubbed his eyes. He didn’t want the ghost to see him crying. It was vanity, but there it was. “My parents liked playing cards. So it would be nice if they could play together now.”
“You’re a nice son,” whispered William.
“Minnie was never that good. She had five boys, so she always waited for an inside straight.” And Harpo took a shuddering breath. “Does Frenchie know how much I love him?” Because he did love him. He loved Susan too. He didn’t say it enough to either of them. Was it enough, just to love them, and trust that they know they were loved? Maybe it was that simple, because that’s how radios worked after all. You turn a dial and the sound comes. “We always said we were Minnie’s boys, but we were Frenchie’s boys too. He travelled with us, you know, when we were touring.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“He used to sit in the audience and start all the laughs. That was his job. People are more likely to laugh if someone else laughs first.”
“That sounds like the perfect job for a father.”
“My brothers and I are performers,” said Harpo. “I don’t think I told you that. Before he died, I promised my dad I’d stop being so wild, such a hedonist, my brother would say. I said I’d be more like him.”
“You were with him at the end,” said William. “That’s what I seem to remember.”
“The last day before Frenchie died, he taught a couple of nurses how to play pinochle. He made a forty dollar bid, and got it.”
William nodded, then dipped his fingers into the water. “The lake feels warm now that the night is cold,” he said. And then he pointed across the lake. “You’re not so far from home, you know.”
That was New York he was pointing to, probably. Not the city but the state. But even so. Harpo thought about the tenements, the long days stalking the city, the hot nights on piled mattresses, all the brothers in the same stuffy room, all those times with his brothers and mother and father, and all his dozens and dozens of relatives and kind of relatives, fighting a lot, being wild, laughing like maniacs. Once, he stabbed Groucho with a fork over a dinner roll. “My brothers are at the lodgehouse right now,” he said.
Chico and Groucho were probably sitting in the dining room, or in that room that had all the windows, probably pretending to lose at pinochle until the end of the night when they’d throw down and play like the card sharps they really were. Those two boys who looked so much like him even his parents got confused.
Harpo closed his eyes and smelled the soggy air, the cold and the water and all those flowers that didn’t open in the daytime. And there were other smells he hadn’t known about before. And then, in front of him, the Kingston Penitentiary, all lit up like a birthday cake. And beside him, nothing.
William was gone.
Harpo ran to the other side of the dock. There were definitely ripples in the lake now.