MIST

17

IT IS night as we reach Lock and Dam 11 just north of Dubuque. There’s no traffic and the lockmaster lets us float free. Normally I like floating free with no ropes, but, as we drop down into six feet of blackness, there’s an eerie feeling as if we are sinking into a dark hole. For the first time in days there’s silence on board. Jerry has rigged up a beacon on the flybridge, but the river is onyx as we sail into Dubuque.

It has been a very long day and we’re tired as we float beneath a railroad bridge and past the huge floodgates of the city. As we ride through them, these gates loom above us and seem to lead into a netherworld. Before us sits Diamond Jo Casino, illumined as fireworks, with calliope music seeping from its decks, and paddleboats, used now only to take tourists for rides. But as we enter the harbor and look around, it’s clear that there is no marina. There are no pleasure craft here at all. Jerry has a memory of the marina being between the floodgates, but as we gaze around, it’s not. “Do you see anything?” Jerry asks Tom, who stands with me on the bow.

“No, Sir, I don’t.”

I don’t either and I’m crestfallen. I was very much hoping for a shower and some amenities and I feel the irritation rising. I check the map and see that the Dubuque Marina is at river mile 582.0, which was a few miles upstream, just below the lock and dam, and we missed it. I show Jerry the map. “Can’t we go back?” I ask.

“It’s too late,” Jerry says, clearly annoyed. “I’m not going upstream in the dark.”

“Well, what’re you going to do?”

Jerry scans the harbor into which we’ve sailed. Tied beside Diamond Jo Casino is a commercial paddle wheeler called The Spirit of Dubuque. “I know the people who own that paddleboat, a guy named Walt. I’ve met him a few times,” Jerry says. “We’ll tie up here.”

“Here?” I stare at him, amazed. There is nothing here except the casino and this paddleboat.

“What do you think, Tommysan?”

Tom shrugs. “I’m tired. I think we can get power off that boat. If not, I’ll use the ‘genie.’” This is what he calls his generator.

“I want to find the marina.”

“Well, it’s too late now,” Jerry snaps as he maneuvers beside the big paddleboat. So it will be another night of no water, but it seems as if Tom can rig us up for light. We secure our fenders as Jerry pulls in beside the empty paddleboat. I can see a walk along the levee. It is dark, but the walkway is lit. Lovers sit on the wall, smoking, drinking beer, kissing. But I have no idea how to get there.

As Tom and Jerry tie up, I’m trying to figure out how to get off the boat. Jerry says that the only way is to inch along the outer railing of the paddleboat, go down the gangplank to the walkway, climb under a chain-link fence, and go past security into the back door of the casino.

This whole endeavor has a slightly criminal feel. With Jerry’s help, I make my way around the outer railing of the paddleboat, the river black and murky beneath me. Plastic bottles and debris float in greasy muck ten feet from where I hover. I shimmy along the railing, reach the gangplank, slip along it, follow the narrow walkway, and slide under the security chain, expecting to be stopped at any moment.

As I make my way to the casino, I pass a young man in gray slacks and a cranberry shirt. He is smoking a cigarette and slips under the chain, heading toward our boat, I assume to arrest us for trespassing. As I enter the casino via the service entrance, a huge bouncer stands at the escalator. He’s wearing a shiny gray suit and is built like a vault. I ask him where I can get dinner. He tells me that the restaurants are closed, but that I can get deli sandwiches on the top floor.

I don’t want deli sandwiches. I want food. Something hot that doesn’t come between two slices of white bread, preferably home cooked. I ask the hostess and she informs me that the restaurant closed at nine. It is 9:10. “You mean I can’t get anything to eat on this huge floating casino?”

She shakes her frizzy red head and says with a sweet midwestern twang, one it took me thirty years in New York to lose, “You can get deli sandwiches on three. You can get breakfast at about five. And, of course, the bars are all open until two.”

Wow, I think, you can’t eat, but you can drink for the next five hours. Now that should help you drop some serious change. I call Tom and Jerry on my cell and inform them there’s no food to be had, just booze and slots. “Well,” Jerry says, “there’s a hotel right there. Why don’t you just go spend the night there? You might like that better.”

I’m standing in the parking lot, staring up at the generic hotel that looms ahead of me. My feelings are definitely hurt. “Are you asking me to leave the boat?”

Jerry hesitates. “No, I’m not asking you to leave. I just thought you might be more comfortable.”

“I don’t want to do that.”

“We’re going to order pizza,” Jerry says.

“Where’re you going to have it delivered?”

“Oh, Tom’s got that all figured out. They’ll bring it to the parking lot of the Hampton Inn, which is nearby. Shall we order something for you?”

I hate pizza. I hate all that doughy stuff. I want a meal, shower, amenities. “Order me a veggie pizza, okay? Lots of veggies.”

Jerry agrees and I tell him I’ll touch base with him in half an hour. I’m going upstairs to have a drink. Three young Asian men get carded as they try to get into the casino, but it seems I’m of age and the bouncer lets me go upstairs without an ID, which I don’t have with me anyway.

As I enter the casino, I am stunned by the flashing lights, the hordes of people, the clinking sounds of the one-armed bandits. Tumbling change. The roll of the dice. The spin of the roulette wheel. Croupiers in purple jackets are closing all bets. I sit down at the bar, which is essentially a paneling with about half a dozen games of electronic poker.

An elderly woman a few barstools down is sitting with a pile of quarters, an ashtray full of cigarettes, focusing on her game. The bartender with a bad toupee asks me what I’d like. I ask what he’s got in white wine and he tells me chardonnay. “I’ll have that.” He takes a cardboard container out of his cooler and pours me an eight-ounce glass of wine through a spout.

A blond-haired woman, thin, in a white baseball cap and white capris, plunks herself down two stools up from me. She orders a double Scotch and the bartender seems to hesitate. I can see that she is completely sloshed. He brings her her drink, which she sips as she wins at solitaire and bends the bartender’s ear. He listens attentively. Something bad has happened to her. He’s nodding compassionately. A man comes by who seems to be with her. He is young and handsome and she shoves him away.

He gives a shrug and goes off and she slides over to the stool next to me to play electronic poker. Her cigarette rests in the ashtray and smoke blows in my face. I’m feeling lonely and she doesn’t seem as if she’s having the best night of her life either so I ask if she’s all right. “No,” she says, her words slurring like she’s a bad actress in a bit part, “I am not all right.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I tell her. “Is there anything I can do?”

She shakes her head. “There’s nothing nobody can do. My best friend died last week.…”

“Oh, I am really sorry.…”

“My stepfather. But he was my best friend in the whole world.”

I tell her I am really really sorry about this. I am about to tell her that I just lost my father, thinking we could commiserate, but she goes on, “And then I had surgery on Tuesday, the day after he died.”

I was surprised to see that she was smashed and playing electronic poker so soon after surgery. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” She brings her face close to mine. “Hemorrhoids,” she says. I smell the whiskey on her breath. “The pain is excruciating.” Then she turns back to her poker game.

*   *   *

Once Dubuque had more millionaires than any other city in the world. Grand houses on the bluff attest to this wealth. These were men who got rich on the river trade—men who fought the railroads and the bridges that now cross the river. And failed. There is a sense here of a town that thrived and is now coming to terms with its ordinariness and its down-home roots. Leaving the casino, and hoping to find a restaurant open, I stroll across the Third Street Bridge. Most of the closed shops sell candles and potpourri. I pick up the local newspaper, which has four sections—News, Sports, Classified, and Religion.

The bleakness of the downtown depresses me. Several stores are vacant. As with many midwestern cities, it seems as if all the life has been leached out to the malls. It’s just ten o’clock and the whole place is shut down. I was hoping I’d find something open, but it looks like it’s pizza for the night.

I make my way back across the bridge to the main entrance of Diamond Jo Casino. I go in, then out the back, the way I’d come—through the service door, past the laundry. Why security lets me go this way is beyond me. Once again I’m waiting to be arrested for trespassing when I meet the guy who I passed coming in. He’s still puffing on a cigarette, but this time he gives me a hi. “So, are you with Captain Jerry?” he asks, holding up the chain so I can slip under.

Captain Jerry now, is it? “Yes, I am,” I tell him, surprised he knows who we are.

“Oh, he’s a great guy. Well, enjoy your night.”

“Sure. And you enjoy yours.” I give him a little wave and wonder if he’s being sarcastic, though I must admit sarcasm seems to be an alien mode in the heartland, reserved for the distant coasts. I wander down the levee to the gangplank that takes me on to The Spirit of Dubuque. Then, I shimmy once more along the railing until Jerry sees me coming and holds out his hand, making sure I don’t drop into the river. Nice way to travel, I think. But I hear the sound of a “genie” and know we are hooked up with power and light.

“So, what’d you say to that guy?” I ask Jerry as he hoists me on board.

“Oh, I just dropped a few names. Offered him a beer.” Apparently the mere mention of Walt’s name got us hooked up for electricity and a place to moor. Jerry is on the deck, sipping a beer, proud as a lord in his fiefdom. He stares at the levee and at Tom who is making his way, pizza boxes in his hand, as he does a funny side step along the levee wall down to the gangplank.

“Captain Jerry,” Tom says, holding up the pizza boxes.

Tom hands me mine. As I open it, all I see is a thick crusted thing with lettuce and tomato sauce, slathered in deep fried taco chips. I stare in dismay. “What is this?” I ask him.

“You wanted veggies, didn’t you?” Tom says.

18

AT STRAHOV Monastery in the city of Prague there is a room full of ancient globes. They are kept behind ropes and an iron gate, but I have long had my eye on them. Last summer I was able to get into this room. I wanted to see what the world looked like to the mapmakers almost four hundred years ago. With my fingers I twirled globes from 1630, 1645.

These are some of the oldest globes in the world. London and Rome already exist. But America is a vast, undiscovered land. In between Europe and the New World is a sea filled with serpents, long-tailed monsters, winged demons with claws, ready to grapple a sailing ship down, born of some mad, dark traveler’s tales.

America itself is terra incognito. Virgin territory that exists no more. When I looked at the oldest globes, the Mississippi, if it is there at all, is a mere trickle, a barely visible line that doesn’t cut a continent in two. Only DeSoto in 1524 has seen it. But it made little impact on him or his men. He made note of it, seemed unimpressed, and promptly died. No one had described it. At the time when these globes were made, America is as unblemished as a baby’s cheek.

*   *   *

This is how it looks to me that morning as we sail out of Dubuque. A white mist rises as we chug through the floodgates the way we came. No one has arrested us or put us in the stocks. It is the coldest it’s been and I wrap myself up in Kate’s flannel moon and stars blanket I’ve brought with me. I’ve got on an all-weather jacket, but still I’m shivering up on the bow.

This scene is out of Brigadoon as the river widens and the mist engulfs us. A flock of egrets darts along the surface, dipping in and out of the fog. I am aware of a clattering noise but don’t pay it much heed. I’m deciding it is time for a home-cooked meal. The taco pizza almost did me in.

The coolness of the morning makes me think of Bolognese. I’ve got the bottle of merlot that will go nicely, though Jerry has put it on chill. As we start our day downriver, I go into the cabin to brown the meat with a little butter. I’ve yet to find olive oil in any of the stores. As the meat cooks, I dice two tomatoes. I pour off the excess fat and stir the meat, then add the tomatoes and adjust the seasoning.

The clattering grows louder. Tom is piloting from the fly-bridge where I assume he must be freezing. As I am putting my tomatoes into the pot, I hear Tom give Jerry a holler. “Will you take over below, Sir? I’m going to go smell my engines.” Tom is always smelling his engines, sniffing the air, listening like a bird to the ground. He can hear the slightest strain to a motor when the fuel isn’t quite moving along. He talks to his engines the way I imagined he’d talk to a lover, or to his dog. “Come on, Girl. Do it for me. Don’t let me down.”

This time we hear a big bang and Jerry goes, “Cowabunga. What’re you doing, Tom?”

“Just wanta move the fuel along, Sir.”

“What’s wrong with the fuel?”

I finish slicing the onion and put it all in the pot to simmer. Then take my place back at the bow, shivering once more as I sip coffee and write in my journal. I feel a kind of stutter to the boat as if it is moving in fits and starts. The engine seems to be making burping noises.

A blue heron rises from the bank. I turn to show Jerry and see him and Tom bent over the Chrysler Marine Engine Service Manual. They are studying a drawing and I can decipher the upside-down words FUEL PUMP. Somehow I suspect that when you see your river pilots staring into the engine service manual, this cannot be a good sign.

“God. I hate those little marinas,” Jerry says.

“Yep,” Tom says. “Never should’ve stopped there.”

“And they know we aren’t going to go back upstream and yell at them.” I’m hiding my head, starting to feel very guilty as I recall the Guttenberg marina where I persuaded Jerry to stop. Jerry explains that, perhaps inadvertently, they sold us watered-down gas, which creates pockets of air in the engine, and that has destroyed our fuel pumps and so on. “We’ll go on one engine until we get through the next lock and dam. Then we’ll have to fix it.”

Tom is working on his engine and I’m stirring my sauce. “Tom, I’m going to take the throttle,” but Tom can’t hear him with the engines running.

Tom shouts back. “The plugs don’t seem to be wet, Sir.” But Jerry doesn’t hear this.

“Mary, will you please relay?”

“Jerry’s going to take the throttle.”

“Tell him the plugs aren’t wet.”

“The plugs aren’t wet,” I say. For a few moments I shout messages between them as we sputter into Bellevue Lock and Dam 12. Jerry says we won’t float free. “You don’t float with one engine,” he says, shaking his head. “Not enough control of the boat.” We go to our positions. Me to the front with my small stick, Tom to the back. Here we’ll drop down six feet.

“We should get through okay,” Jerry says. “As they say in Oslo, no sweat.”

Jerry asks the lockmaster if he could tell us the nearest place for boat and automobile parts. “Just a sec,” the lockmaster says. “I’ll give it to you as you’re heading out.”

On our way out the lockmaster attaches a slip of paper to a long, pointed stick. “What do you call that stick?” I ask him as we let go of our lines.

“Oh, we call it a hand-me-down long stick.” And the boys have a good laugh over that one.

Just below the lock and dam we spot the Bellevue gas dock, and Tom says, “I could use a shower.” I’m nodding in agreement. Three days seems like about my legal limit. “But if I have to,” Tom goes on, “I’ll jump right in. I’ve been christened in these waters all my life.”

I’d prefer hot water—which is starting to become a bit of an obsession—not a cold, muddy river, but I don’t say so. A sign for “broasted” chicken catches our eyes and Tom and I both sigh. I don’t even know what “broasted” means, but I make a mental note to bring some back for lunch. We’re looking for a landing where there’s a marina and also an auto body shop since our engines are Chrysler and can be serviced by auto parts.

We pull up to the funky metal Bellevue Courtesy Dock. It appears that this place is also a trailer park because there are perhaps a dozen or so trailers, most with some kind of dinghy attached. A man named George who seems to be the proprietor helps us tie up. “You looking for gas?” he asks.

“Nope,” Jerry says. “We don’t need gas, but we’ve got engine trouble. What we need are parts.”

George nods. “You’ll find a place in town. Well, let me know if I can help you out. Showers are three dollars apiece. You’re welcome to use my phone. Your cell phones aren’t going to work around here.”

“Well, we appreciate that,” Jerry replies.

After we’re tied up, George disappears back into his trailer park and Tom and Jerry go to work on our shopping list and I sneak a peek. Heet for gas tank (to suck up the water), spark plugs 2 sets of NGK, six bottles of carburetor cleaning additive, 3 fuel pumps, hoses and clamps, DIL filters, half quart of 50 Valvoline.

I’m stuck at “3 fuel pumps.” How many fuel pumps does an engine need? Definitely not good. I take my sauce off the burner and put it in the fridge. I guess we won’t be dining for a while. “My treat for the showers,” I say. No one argues this time. In fact no one seems to be paying much attention to me at all. I assume I will have time for a very long hot shower. Several if I wish. We are in cell phone limbo (as we will be on much of our journey) and Jerry needs to call for a cab. He’s gazing into the engine as Tom starts ripping it apart. “I’ll go find George,” I offer.

I head into the trailer park where people have set up their campers with signs that read YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE IRISH TO HAVE ATTITUDE. BUT IT HELPS; DANGER NO SWIMMING; or DON’T BOTHER ASKING. I’M IN CHARGE. There are statues of the Virgin, American flags flying. One trailer is landscaped entirely in plastic flowers and shrubs.

As I’m looking for George, I run into a woman from Iowa whose license plate reads IOWA SHROOMS. Dee has got her camper set up on the water’s edge. She’s got her hummingbird feeders up and her barbecue. Dee has on three or four layers of pancake makeup and her hair is all fixed in one motionless swirl with spray. “Hey there,” Dee says. “You just taking a rest?”

“Actually we have engine trouble.… I’m trying to find a phone, then I’m going to take a shower.”

“Really. I didn’t know they had showers here.… How d’ya like that. Been here a month fishing and didn’t even know I could get a shower. Got everything I need in my camper though.” She points to her pull-out breakfast nook, her barbecue and hummingbird feeders where several hummingbirds are flitting along. “You with that houseboat?” Dee asks.

“Yeah, I think we’ll be here for a while. My captain is trying to get a cab to take him into town so he can buy parts.”

“Well,” Dee says, her pancake makeup cracking a little, “my husband can take you. He’ll be glad to.”

I find Jerry, who is happy for the ride. He says he’ll be back soon. I pack up my towel and my cosmetic bag and I go to find the shower. It is located in a pump house off the side and despite the wooden floor and cobwebs and the chill in the air, it isn’t bad. The most important thing is that it has good water pressure. I take a very long hot shower, relishing the flow of water down my back. When I return, Tom goes up to take his. He drags his wheely suitcase with Samantha Jean tucked under his arm. “She needs a bath too.” He says he’ll throw her in the shower with him. I tell him I’ll watch the boat.

Tom’s got the starboard engine lying in pieces along the stern and, as I gaze at them, I’m not optimistic about what’s ahead. Since I can’t make any calls, I have time on my hands. It’s a cold morning, almost raw, and the river is a monotonous shade of gray. It takes Tom what feels like forever to return from his shower. “I’m going for a walk,” I tell him.

“Oh, take your time.” I hate it when they say this because I know he means we’ve got a long layover.

“I’ll bring you back some of that chicken,” I say.

I decide to go sightseeing in scenic Bellevue. To a New Yorker, Bellevue is our most famous insane asylum, but this place seems pretty stable to me. I leave the trailer park and head up the road where I see a Phillips 66 station and a sign that reads CAR WASH, GAS $2.64, LUBE JOB, LAUNDROMAT, OLD-FASHIONED ICE CREAM CONES, SPECIAL ON AMMO. Then I head to the Richmond Café for that broasted chicken.

When I walk into the Richmond Café, the music video to “Mississippi Girl” is playing. I see two gay guys sitting, having lunch. This wouldn’t surprise me, of course, in New York, but it does in Bellevue, Iowa. In fact it looks as if the whole restaurant is filled with guys, right out of Brokeback Mountain, eating burgers and fries. At least I think they are gay. Then I realize that the two men I first spotted are just both wearing the same sleeveless T’s with the name of the cement company they work for across the front.

All the men in the restaurant are in uniforms bearing names like TRUE VALUE, TACKY JACK’S SURE WAX, and PROFESSIONAL RESCUE INNOVATORS. All the women are wearing rhinestone crosses and taking their mothers to lunch. Everyone in the Richmond Café is either in a company uniform or wearing a rhinestone cross or both. And now I’m pretty sure no one is gay.

“All Jacked Up” comes on the Country Music Channel as I order a hot meal. Chicken, a baked potato, a salad. Sitting there I am suddenly incredibly dizzy. The table, the booth are all moving. I feel as if the boat has entered me. I think it is a combination of the river and the drug cocktail I’m taking. I decide to try to ease off my pills.

Walking around Bellevue, there are smiley faces, Jesus and Mary statues, and names on the door such as HELMUT and SCHRODER. Two men in brown shirts get out of a van and smile at me and say hello as if they have been recently returned by aliens.

As I head back to the boat down a side street, a freight train passes me so closely that I can reach out and touch it. The engineer waves. I wave back. I find this river custom so quaint, yet so odd at the same time. I try to imagine waving at bus drivers, at subway conductors, at strangers on the street. But here we just wave and wave. On the river a fuel barge heads north. Nothing is moving south.

I return up the beach with two bags of chicken, fries, sodas for the boys. I know we must be very delayed because Jerry has gone for a shower. Tom is groaning at his engine. “Come on, Baby. Come on, Girl.”

The man who drove Jerry into town stands, rocking on his heels nearby, watching our progress. “Your husband looks like a good mechanic,” he says. I look at Tom in his Harley T-shirt, his belly spilling over his pants, as Samantha Jean, her tongue hanging out, peers down at him from the flybridge where he’s stowed her. “That’s not my husband,” I say.

Tom grunts, tugging at engine parts, tossing some into the trash. I am completely skeptical and Jerry, who’s back and all cleaned up from his shower, is calmly sipping a beer. But somehow after four hours of throwing out damaged parts and putting in new parts and greasing and lubricating and testing the fuel, it seems we are ready to roll. The chill has left the day and with waves and a push off from the dock we are moving again.

It is good to feel the motion of the river beneath us, the boat chugging along. A huge flock of white pelicans does its strange interweaving dance. Bald eagles perch in the treetops. I had anticipated that the river would grow more industrial below Dubuque, that there would be more signs of man, on the river or along the banks, but it is remarkably devoid of human traces.

I want to stop at Savanna, Illinois, but given the hours we’ve lost, we have to pass it. We won’t make a landing or a marina by dark if we stop anywhere now. We come to a railroad bridge and Jerry is worried about clearance. “Can we make this, Tommy?” he asks.

“I couldn’t jump up and touch that, Sir,” Tom says.

Tom is right. We sail smoothly beneath the bridge. “Rock ’n’ roll,” Jerry replies.

The cloudy gray skies open up and it starts to pour. For several miles we are in a driving rain. Jerry calls ahead to the marina at Clinton to see if we can get slippage for the night, but no one answers the phone. “We’ll figure something out,” he says, shaking his head.

We go by a fuel barge, the Penny Eckstein. One crewman, holding an umbrella with one hand, is barbecuing on a small Weber grill on deck. We come up on two islands that have their trees stripped bare. Thousands of cormorants roost in the naked branches. The trees are filled with nests the birds have made from the leaves and bark. We drift past the islands in silence, except for the chatter of the birds. It feels as if ghosts could dwell here.

19

MY FATHER died on May 14, just four months ago, which happens to be my birthday. Or at least he died at the very end of it. We had gone to the theater that night, Larry, Kate, and I, and were walking home along Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn. It was close to midnight and a woman was dragging a suitcase toward me. I stepped aside to let her pass and she kicked me in the gut, knocking me into the street. She screamed obscenities as her punch took my breath away.

Larry and Kate helped me as I staggered home, shocked by the blow. When the phone rang an hour later with my brother calling to tell me that our father was dead, I already knew. I felt certain he breathed his last as that woman kicked me into the street. As I spoke to my brother, I could hear my mother shouting in the background. Not in sadness or grief. And she certainly was making no effort to console me. “Tell her there’s no funeral!” she yelled. “Tell her we aren’t doing anything at all!”

I never spoke to my mother that night, but I know that she never shed a tear. She had reasons, I suppose, for being bitter. He had sold buildings he shouldn’t have sold. They hadn’t shared a bedroom in thirty years. He never took her anywhere. Once I asked her if it was his temper that had ruined the marriage for her and she said, “No, it was his indifference.”

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

IN 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.