Chapter 44
Six Days
SATURDAY: When we arrived at the dock that evening, there was a crowd waiting for us. People were snapping pictures of one another standing at the edge of the bulkhead smiling, with Arcinella in the background.
“The power of the press!” declared my mother, and she and Patti and I were exultant as we piled out of the car and went about the business of preparing for the evening’s excursion.
Our work was interrupted often by questions from the assembled multitude, most of them about the dunking of the mayor’s wife.
“Where was she standing, exactly, when she went over?” asked a man about my father’s age.
“Oh, just over here,” said my mother, indicating the approximate spot.
“Mind if I get a picture of Doris standing there?”
“No, of course not,” said my mother.
She handed Doris aboard, and Doris stood in the spot where Sweetie had stood.
“Make like you’re going over, Doris,” called the man, raising his camera to his eye. Doris widened her eyes and opened her mouth and threw her arms in the air and leaned over the side and very nearly lost her balance, but her husband got the shot he wanted.
“Great! Thanks!” he said. My mother extended a hand to him, assuming that he would want to come aboard, but instead Doris squeezed past her, grasped her husband’s hand for support, and hefted herself back onto shore. They walked to their car, got in, and drove off. Some of the other curiosity-seekers drifted off, too.
I think that there must have been thirty or forty people in the crowd when we arrived at the dock. When we set out on the excursion, only eight of them came along. The rest snapped pictures from the shore as we chugged downriver.
My mother whispered to Patti, as they began passing sandwiches and pouring champagne, “I thought we’d have more.”
“Tomorrow night,” said Patti. “You’ll see.”
SUNDAY: We were ready, we were nervous, we were hopeful, and we were anxious. We were, all of us, still full of hope for our enterprise, my mother’s enterprise. My mother’s dream was still our dream, and it was still a young dream, still a dream that held the door at least half-open, still offering a view of pleasant prospects, but I had begun to suspect that hope was full of trickery and I had to wonder whether the pleasant prospects weren’t illusions, like the cardboard dioramas in sugar eggs.
Only two couples arrived at the dock to embark on an elegant excursion that evening.
“We heard it was quite an adventure,” said one of the women as my mother handed her aboard.
At the end of the evening when my mother handed the woman back onto the wharf, she said, “It was very nice,” but she sounded disappointed.
We were silent for quite a while, making Arcinella shipshape and packing up for the drive home.
“It was because it’s a Sunday night,” I said, because I felt that somebody had to say something. “That’s why only two couples showed up.”
“Right,” said my mother, eager to agree. “We’ve learned something: Sunday is not a night when people go on nautical excursions.”
“After all,” said Patti, “they’ve got to be at work Monday morning.”
“That’s why the couples who did show up were so old,” I added.
“Over seventy!” guessed Patti.
“They were retired!” said my mother, in the manner of Archimedes discovering displacement, “They don’t have to go to work on Monday!”
“But just about everyone else does,” said Patti.
My mother nodded her head and then, raising a finger to underscore the lesson we had learned, said, slowly and emphatically, “So, it would probably be best not to sail on Sunday nights in the future.”
The three of us smacked ourselves on the forehead simultaneously and on the ride home we repeated the lesson several times and each time laughed about our failure to consider the unique nature of Sunday nights.
MONDAY: On Monday, we saw no excursionists at all. We sat on the hatch cover and waited, and with each passing minute hope closed that open door another fraction of an inch, and we grew a little bit gloomier.
I looked at the sky. It was clear overhead, with a thin sketch where the moon would later shine. The sun was beginning to set, and in the distant west a cloud or two stretched lazily above the horizon.
“It’s the weather,” I said.
Patti and my mother looked up, looked around, looked at me, looked skeptical.
Pointing westward, I said, “See that bank of clouds in the west? People probably figured that they might drift over here, bringing rain. One of those summer downpours. One of those sudden summer downpours.”
“But,” said my mother, “they didn’t.”
“No,” I said, “but they might have.”
“Most people are very concerned about not getting their good clothes wet,” Patti offered, looking at my mother, hoping she’d accept the offer.
“Overly concerned, if you ask me,” I said. “Especially when you think about how little damage water actually does to clothes.”
“And rain,” said Patti, making another offer, “puts a damper on things, even just the chance of rain.”
“You said it,” I said. “The notion of rain as an agent of depression is so ingrained in our culture that we can’t really expect people to rise above it.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Patti. “Rain is so deflating. Getting wet, being wet. It’s all deflationary. Just think of the things people say, like, ‘Don’t rain on my parade.’”
“Or, ‘Don’t be a wet blanket,’” I said.
“Or, ‘It’s a washout,’” said my mother.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Yeah,” said Patti.
The three of us frowned as one. We began packing up. We were glum. I wished, in the inarticulate way that one wishes for things, that I could make us all happy, and I happened to glance upward, at the sky, at the clarity of the sky, the glaring emptiness of it that threatened to expose our hopes as delusions, ourselves as self-deluded fools, and in the mysterious manner of all inspiration, its accusatory clarity afflated me. Pausing to look at the sky, holding my hand out as if to feel the rain, I burst into song: “Trickle, trickle — ”
Patti understood at once; to my call she responded, “Splash, splash — ”
We were off, singing “Trickle, Trickle,” a song recorded by the Videos, now recognized as a doo-wop classic, and a favorite of Patti’s and mine from the moment we first heard it, but a commercial flop when it was released. We packed up and drove home in the mood of people whose summer picnic plans have been disappointed by a downpour, people who are singing to keep their spirits up but singing as if they were singing because their spirits are up, floating quite well on their own, undampened by that downpour, needing no songs to keep them up.
TUESDAY: On Tuesday, as departure time neared, I saw a couple walking toward us along the road from the area near the Lodkochnikovs’ house. They were clamdiggers, with the look of peasants — good, sturdy, honest folk, but not the sort that one would ordinarily expect to be interested in taking an elegant excursion. However, as they drew nearer, it began to seem to me that they really were headed for Arcinella. “Hey,” I said to my mother, not much above a whisper, “I think we might have some customers.”
She looked down the road and said, doubtfully, “Really? You think so?”
“I guess you must be Ella,” said the woman when she reached us.
“Why, yes,” said my mother. Certain now that she really did have a couple of customers, she added, formally, “Good evening. Welcome to Ella’s Elegant Excursions.”
“We heard that the trip was very restful and romantic,” said the woman, who didn’t seem to notice my mother’s offer to hand them safely aboard and clambered onto the foredeck unaided. “That’s what old Lord Caught-yer-cough told us.”
“Lord — ? Do you mean Mr. Lodkochnikov?” I asked.
“Lod — ? Say it again?”
“Lodkochnikov.”
“Is that how you say it?” She seemed astonished.
“Well, I think it is,” I said. “It’s how Mrs. Lodkochnikov says it. And it’s how I say it when I’m talking to him, and he’s never corrected me.”
“Never corrected me, neither,” she said, “and I been calling him Lord Caught-yer-cough ever since I’ve known him, which must be” — she became coy and gave me a poke — “let’s just say quite a few years.”
“That’s all anybody ever calls him,” muttered the man.
“Maybe I’ve got it wrong,” I said. “But I’m really glad he suggested that you come for an excursion.”
“He said it’s restful and romantic,” the woman said again, nodding her head.
“But be sure to bring your own food, he told us,” said the man, “because otherwise you don’t get enough to stuff a guppy.” He held up a paper bag.
We gave them the full treatment. They drank the champagne, refused the caviar, sampled the little sandwiches out of politeness, ate the fried chicken and potato salad they had brought, and held hands and smooched in the sunset.
WEDNESDAY: On Wednesday, while we were loading supplies on board, the harbormaster came by. I knew right away that he was the harbormaster because he came chugging up in a launch with HARBORMASTER painted on the side in big red letters.
“Ahoy, Arcinella,” he called out.
My mother said, “Oh, hello,” and then rather self-consciously corrected that to, “Ahoy — um — Harbormaster.”
“Permission to come aboard?”
“Oh, yes, of course,” said my mother.
He swung the launch alongside with consummate skill and nonchalance, hopped aboard, and looked around. After a while, he said, “Nice job you did on the paint. Very nice.”
“Why, thank you,” said my mother. “Would you care for a glass of champagne?”
“No, no. I couldn’t do that.”
“How about a sandwich?” asked Patti.
The harbormaster considered the plate of sandwiches very carefully, and very carefully selected a pink one. Juggling the sandwich and his clipboard, he said, “Happens that I’ve got something for you. Mm, delicious. You see, Arcinella is still registered to Captain Macomangus.” He began filling out a form. “Doesn’t really taste pink, if you know what I mean. Tastes like clam dip.”
“It is,” said my mother.
“No kidding. Well, she’ll have to be re-registered in her new owner’s name before next Wednesday.” He finished filling out the form on a pad that made four copies, tore the bottom one off, the one that was almost illegible, and handed it to my mother. Then he saluted us briskly and hopped back into his launch.
“What’d you do, use those Tintoretto’s Tints to get it pink like that?” he asked, with one hand on the wheel and the other on the throttle.
“Yes,” said my mother.
“Cute idea,” he said, and chugged off, waving what remained of his sandwich.
My mother, Patti, and I huddled over the form.
“It’s expensive,” said Patti.
“Oh, not that expensive,” said my mother.
“More than we’ve brought in so far,” I pointed out.
THURSDAY: “Somebody in Babbington has got to be looking for a good time,” said my mother, pacing the deck.
“You’re right!” said Patti. “Here they come!”
Four carloads of noisy people pulled up and began spilling out of their cars. They’d already been drinking, and they’d brought their own liquor. They were not an elegant bunch.
“Uh-oh,” said my mother.
By the time we had reached the bay it was clear that the group was indeed looking for a good time, but their idea of a good time was getting good and drunk and tossing their inhibitions into the bay. One of the women — tipsy, voluptuous, and, to be frank about it, thrilling — cornered me in the wheelhouse while Arcinella was on her long arc at midpoint in the excursion.
“Hi there, Captain,” she purred.
“Hello,” I said. “Hi.”
“I think you’re doing a great job.”
“Um, thanks.”
“You haven’t hit anything yet.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I mean no. Not yet.”
“Do you suppose you could show me how to drive the boat?”
“Um, well — ”
She wriggled in between me and the wheel. After a minute or so of moving the wheel a little this way and a little that way, she turned herself around so that she was facing me and asked, “Can you keep your mind on your driving and on me at the same time?”
I was flattered, excited, flustered, and suddenly shy. Here was a grown woman showing the kind of interest in me that grown women ordinarily exhibited only in my dreams, and, on top of that, admiring my boat-handling skills.
“I can try,” I said, and she snickered lasciviously.
Wham! Patti slid the window glass aside. “Peter!” she spat. “Would you tear yourself away from what you’re doing and turn this damned boat around? I’m black and blue!”
“Um, sure, yeah,” I said.
Patti glared at the drunken bimbo I was more or less embracing, and the drunken bimbo glared right back. Patti stormed off. I began turning the boat slowly toward home.
In another moment, my mother was at the window. “Peter!” she said. “Take us home! Full speed!” She turned away, shaking her head and saying, “This is not what I had in mind, not at all.” I assumed, of course, that she was talking about my conduct in the wheelhouse, conduct unbecoming the helmsman of an excursion boat, a young man in a position of trust.
“You’ll have to go now,” I said to the woman.
“Game called on account of mom?” she said. Then she raised both eyebrows, winked, and shrugged, and ducked under my arms and wobbled out of the wheelhouse.
When Arcinella was secure in her slip and the drunken excursionists were all gone, we climbed into my mother’s car and went home without a word.
[to be continued]
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