Afloat (4 page)

‘Not when you do it for weeks at a time,' she said.

But who's to judge? I map my veins as they come and go, down through my arms, into my wrists, thick and blue over the tops of my knuckles. My hands look swollen, and remembering my water pills, I take two and retreat to the bathroom to wait. I bought the ones with calcium included to help strengthen my bones. Two years ago I fell, breaking my collarbone in two places, but I haven't broken anything since. Sitting straight with my hands on my naked thighs I inspect each swollen finger, waiting for them to deflate as my body drains. Absently I wish we'd been bold enough to paint the
house a dramatic color instead of opting for off-white. When we moved in we did all the decorating and painting ourselves – wallpaper, paint, everything. Everything white. Clean. Empty. Our first place together – we thought we might upgrade in a few years and the real estate agent advised white houses sell better. That's what we did. Moved in thinking about moving out. We bought it the year Anna was born.

‘It's like living in an egg,' Alan had said approvingly, tapping the walls with a knuckle.

‘What happens when we hatch?' I'd asked.

He had raised an eyebrow at me then, a talent for facial contortion that I lack.

Anna's just done her house in terracotta and yellows, each room like a vacation. ‘I couldn't resist,' she said. ‘Now I'm on my own I can do the walls whatever color I want.' ‘Join the club,' I said.

My system flushed, I return to the kitchen, taking a sip from my mug and breathing the fumes back quickly. The tea is too hot, and, still, I am not quite ready for what lies before me on the table.

I put the mug back on its coaster, part of a set we received for Christmas years ago from Anna and her then-husband. They bought them during an eco-vacation in Venezuela and, according to Anna, the coasters are made of fair trade wood and painted with organic paints. The one under my mug has the stylized image of a naked woman on it, holding what looks like a bucket and spade and standing underneath a palm tree. Her nipples are round blobs of brown paint, and they are both the same size.

I think I will get rid of these too, never having liked them much in the first place. Moving my mug off the coaster I test its weight, smooth and light in my hand, before awkwardly
flinging it into the hallway like a Frisbee, listening with satisfaction as it smacks against the wall.

Funny what we hang onto because it never occurs to us to let it go.

The first evening Bryce and I spend alone together, we walk. My bike has been stolen. I was told to buy a lock but I didn't, feeling that rich tourists must be above thieving. It is now probably in the harbor, the victim of a drunken employee joy ride. This doesn't stop me examining every bicycle that goes by – a few BMX bikes like Bryce's from the eighties; some old-school Raleigh Choppers mostly owned by island kids; tourists on tandems; one Schwinn Sting Ray which Bryce points out to me, impressed; a few mountain bikes; one or two sixties-era Free Spirits from Sears. But none of them are mine, and it's exhausting. We are walking to a place called Sunset Rock, but we've missed the sunset.

Above us the clouds are gray illuminated trails, still and waiting. In the sharp promise of evening we leave behind the tourists, carriages, drunks, and the wide street curves up and away, becoming a narrow path with just enough space for one carriage to pass. He is taking me into the heart of the island, secret and isolated from the town that stands busy and erect by the water. Beyond Main Street, Bryce tells me, the land is inhabited by year-round and summer residents, and that's where the real island begins. He points out the grand façade of a million-dollar summer home, planted secretly among a stand of trees, and it is perfect with a front porch, stone chimney, lavender plants, and lemon-colored paint. There is a gate, but no garage, which makes sense but still strikes me as odd. We pass five more like it. Soon there's only forest on
either side, the trees labeled every so often with black placards – sugar maple, silver maple, balsam fir, yellow birch. The paved road turns to gravel, the sound of our passage marked by the crunching under our feet. Birds sing in the trees, hidden.

We follow the signs for the National Park, the Post Cemetery, and the rock formations. We follow the network of paths named and laid out and marched upon by British and American soldiers.

Above us to the north is Canada, and below us our entire country.

It is dusk, and it doesn't seem possible the island can stretch so far. We veer off into deep grass that is slightly trampled, then into the forest. The canopy of trees absorbs the evening light. He loses his way and flicks his cigarette lighter. The ground cover is leafy and black, and we can't find the trail. The metal keeps burning his hand; each time it lights we search the undergrowth.

‘There are only a few bears on the island, so we should be okay,' he says.

Then he points. ‘There.'

As if we are walking through a crowd and I need to be led, he reaches his hand back to grab mine, and I follow him onto the path.

Sunset Rock is a man-made balcony built into a steep hill overlooking the lake. It is made of both cement and rock and the words ‘Sunset Rock' are spelled out in pebbles embedded along the ledge. It faces southwest, and the sky is gray now. I can see Mackinac Bridge in the distance, crossing the straits and connecting the hand of Michigan to its upper peninsula. It is the third longest suspension bridge in the world although I'd never heard of it until now. Bryce tells me that in 1977,
twenty years after it opened, a gust of high wind swept a woman and her Toyota right off the bridge into the water. Her car was found although her body never was.

Lights from the mainland are starting to become visible. Headlights move far away along the bridge. There are no sounds except for the wind and the lake. Of all the Blues and Brennas, it is me who is here.

From the bushes Bryce retrieves a bottle of red wine and two glasses.

‘I didn't know whether to buy red or white.'

‘Holy shit. Come here often?'

He pretends to be hurt.

‘I don't even like wine,' he says. ‘But it seemed better than bringing cans of beer.'

I have to agree with him.

Despite his planning he has forgotten a corkscrew, so we improvise with his penknife, gouging out small pieces of cork until it finally drops down into the neck of the bottle. We strain the bits of cork through our teeth.

After half the bottle, I set my empty wine glass on the pebbled balcony, enjoying the pleasant sound as it scrapes the stone. Bryce does the same and we lean on our elbows, staring out together into the horizon.

As we talk he doesn't ask what my favorite color is, whether I have a birthmark somewhere on my body, and he doesn't want to know my middle name. He does not ask and then say,
I could tell you were an Aquarius
.

Instead he points to something on the rocky beach below us.

‘Look.'

I can't see anything. Bryce moves closer to me, our cheeks touch as I look down the length of his arm to where he is pointing. Then, slowly, it moves. Backside waddling carefully,
tail flat and serene, the black shape reaches the water, wades in, and disappears. We stay silent, watching, but nothing else moves except the waves.

‘Nice beaver,' Bryce says, and I punch him in the arm.

We talk more about the island and he mentions all the things he'd like me to see.

‘We have lots of time,' he says.

And we do. By the time we finish the wine it is black out. It is too cool for mosquitoes but we think we hear a raccoon.

‘Let's toss our glasses.'

This is my suggestion; I want to hear them break. He agrees without hesitating.

‘On three, ready?'

He starts to count. I hold the fat part of my glass upside down in the palm of my hand like a baseball, the stem extending between my knuckles. We reach back and throw together. There is nothing to reflect the light as they spin out into the night. His lands in the water with a far-away swallowing sound. My throw is shorter and the glass smashes on the narrow lane of the M–185 below.

‘Do you think that'll shred some kid's bike tires?' I wonder.

He thinks it probably will.

Then he tells me he borrowed the wine glasses with Velvet's permission, promising their return. He shrugs.

On the walk back, I break my shoe. It's only a black flip-flop made of plastic and can be easily replaced. I leave them both behind, feeling carefree. We are ten minutes into the twenty-minute walk when the path turns to gravel. The wine doesn't keep this from hurting.

An unforgiving sunrise illuminates his narrow bed the next morning and I leave it reluctantly, moving slowly. The feel of the thick white scar running down his left bicep stays on the
end of my tongue – the place where his sister's ice skate opened his skin when he was ten. The ridge of flesh where it healed is uneven, soft, and oily to taste. I myself have a scar from my uncle's threshing machine, but we didn't discuss this.

I have just enough time to throw up, find my clothes and run to my apartment to find my work clothes before leaving for my eight a.m. shift.

From the Pine Suites I turn right on the road into town. Except for a few early morning workers coasting past, tires whizzing, feet motionless on the pedals and disappearing in seconds, the wide street is empty. The small blue house on my left is used as staff quarters for one of the souvenir shops downtown, a dozen bicycles lie on the lawn and by the front door. Five minutes further on, the road is lined with red and yellow tulips, the golf course wet with morning dew on the left. The air smells of clean laundry and sweet fudge and the lake. Wet and alive and calm. I am relieved of the guilt accumulated from childhood science projects on pollution; this air is separate from industry.

By the time I reach town the morning mist is lifting, taking with it my hangover. Almost.

Turning left, Main Street is straight and long, with porches, balconies, and wide sidewalks. There is no place for modernity here it seems; everything built recently matches the architecture from the past. The older buildings have been carefully preserved and are all made of wood, whitewashed, and joined together in rows. Though most of the doorways enter into pubs there are also stores selling candy, ice cream, and fudge. Interspersed between these are the Tippecanoe's competitors – the Lakeview, the Carriage House, the Island House. There are flags everywhere. Stylish old-fashioned banners, half circles of red, white, and blue hang from atop buildings. These banners
have a historical feel to them, and I imagine in sepia tones a presidential parade with everyone on fine horses, the president munching on a half pound slice of peanut butter fudge.

I give a nod to one of the trash collectors. I don't know his name, but he has an eight ball tattooed onto his forehead, and a long black pool cue complementing this on his cheekbone. The trash collectors come around once a week, sitting atop massive dumpsters pulled by a team of horses. Free from the stigma this occupation carries at home, this man has risen to the top of the island's job chain. Or so Bryce has told me. The guy with the spider-web head stops at every establishment on the island, picking up the trash from restaurants and pubs, and making drop-offs to his clientele. This is how the drugs circulate the island. A weekly pick-up and delivery service.

By the store that sells plastic shot glasses I walk past a woman in a sweatshirt holding a camera and wearing American flag shoes. They are flat slip-on shoes made of canvas. The day's first ferryboat must have arrived.

The school groups, the bus tours, and the families who can't really afford the island arrive very early in the morning and leave on the last ferryboat home. They come for the fudge, the beer, the guided tours, and the main street. The visitors with money are the businessmen, the retired couples, the yachters, and the politicians. Sleeping off hangovers in their expensive island hotels and floating mansions during the day, they emerge at night for the food, the wine, and the fairytale.

I walk into work, through the back into the changing room. Velvet gives me a brief nod as I meet her in the hallway.

‘Five minutes late,' she says, as she passes.

Trainer emerges from the bathroom in the hall and cheerfully gives both middle fingers to Velvet's retreating form. Then he takes a closer look at me.

‘You look freshly fucked,' he says.

The weather will be warm today, I can feel it.

Five hours later my hands still smell like orchids. Velvet has her favorite purple orchids flown in every morning from a flower shop in Chicago. A man who I hear was late for delivery only once, and never again, delivers them to the restaurant from the airport. My job is to fill the square glass vases on each table with one cup of water, and one flowering purple orchid. These are knocked over every other night by drunk customers as the vases are really too tall for the tables, but the tradition continues proudly in the face of common sense. Bryce tells me this practice costs her over a thousand dollars a day. When the weather prevents the plane from making its daily delivery, we learn to stay out of her way.

The further inland I walk from the Tippecanoe the more the tourist/nature divide becomes evident. The forest is thick and silent with no bicyclists or carriages, and the hot sweat of work becomes easy to forget. The only reminder is the thick perfume on my hands, and I decide never to buy orchids for any reason in my lifetime or stoop to smell them wherever they may be. The afternoon is now mine, and I have a lead on a bicycle. Tom, one of the cooks from the restaurant, said he stashed his old bike at the airport last year, and this year returned with a new one. Over six feet tall, Tom had winked at me from behind the hot line this morning.

‘It's yours if you want it,' he said.

Then, seemingly to himself: ‘What I wouldn't give to be a bike seat some days.'