Afloat Read online

  Afloat

  Afloat

  JENNIFER McCARTNEY

  HAMISH HAMILTON

  an imprint of

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  HAMISH HAMILTON

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland

  (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

  Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Mairangi Bay, Auckland 1310, New Zealand

  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  www.penguin.com

  First published 2007

  1

  Copyright © Jennifer McCartney, 2007

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  All rights reserved

  Without limiting the rights under copyright

  reserved above, no part of this publication may be

  reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system,

  or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical,

  photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior

  written permission of both the copyright owner and

  the above publisher of this book

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  EISBN: 978–0–141–90201–2

  For Mrs Holder

  ‘O – at Mackinaw! That fairy island, which I shall never see again! and which I should have dearly liked to filch from the Americans, and carry home to you in my dressing box.’

  Anna Brownell Jameson, Winter Studies and

  Summer Rambles in Canada, 1838

  LEHI m

  Usage: Biblical, Mormon

  From an Old Testament place name meaning ‘jawbone’ in Hebrew. It is also used in the Books of Mormon as the name of a prophet.

  The Utah Baby Namer

  Your right hand, palm inward, thumb out, is the state of Michigan.

  Mackinac Island is off the tip of your middle finger. Green and heavy, this limestone outcrop of land lies in the straits of Mackinac between the lakes of Huron and Michigan. The island is nine miles around with forest in the middle and it takes one hour to circle it by bicycle. You cannot travel by car, because there are none. The narrow road surrounding the island, the M-185, is the only highway in North America on which there has never been a motor-vehicle accident, although the cemetery is full. The weather intrudes like a clenched fist. During the winters the five hundred horses are taken away to a southern state.

  It was May. The island lay underneath a sky shaded like the underbelly of a fish.

  As the ferryboat angled towards the pier I watched my summer becoming larger, the houses clearer, the postcard image of horse-and-carriage suddenly alive on modern, gray-paved streets. The air was cold on the top deck, and everything was sharp, clear, and bright. The island’s green crown, thick with forests, was welcoming. White seagulls turned pinwheels in the sky and the lake was calm as we docked – the horn loud. Descending to the wooden jetty to collect my suitcase, then tugging it behind me onto the cement sidewalk, I approached the building I had, until now, seen only in photographs.

  I will tell you everything that comes next, the exact events of that summer, so you can understand what I am waiting for now. It is 12:05 p.m. I have six hours until my visitor arrives. Enough time for everything to happen again.

  Mackinac

  Gracing the top of the document stapled to the front gate is the delicate, embossed image of a golden canoe.

  WE APOLOGIZE FOR THE INCONVENIENCE BUT THE TIPPECANOE (EXCLUDING THE FRONT GATE) HAS BEEN FRESHLY WHITENED FOR YOUR ENJOYMENT THIS SEASON. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH ANYTHING.

  The wet paint sign is not hand-lettered – it looks professionally commissioned.

  I set my luggage next to the wooden bike rack which says, TIPPECANOE GUESTS ONLY, PLEASE, and turn to the building, which months earlier had occupied an entire page of St. Paul’s Pioneer Press. Its two stories are incongruous next to the slightly dingy Pancake House and the half-full marina. The metal plaque affixed to the entrance dates the building back to 1926, and though the restaurant is closed until tomorrow the front door is open. The fumes are overwhelming.

  The owner’s hair is dyed black in a long sharp ponytail which does not swing as she advances towards me. She extends a perfect hand, and when she smiles her teeth are white. It’s impossible to determine her age as she is rich enough to have had any number of surgeries. She could be thirty-five or fifty-five.

  My teeth are not as white as hers.

  ‘Good morning,’ she says. ‘Welcome to the Tippecanoe.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I say.

  She continues smiling as she sweeps me into the restaurant, pointing towards a low, leather armchair that cannot be easy to extricate oneself from after a night of cocktails. Other new arrivals are already sitting properly in the half-circle arrangement, and among these even the men are beautiful. I wonder how she accomplished this as we were all hired over the phone.

  The interior has hardwood pine floors, clean lines, and soaring ceilings – the perfect design and symmetry the handsome result of renovation, investment, and impossibly high standards. Glass, leather, and wood all seem to glow with natural light. The only questionable item of taste is the cocktail bar’s appearance – the façade a glossy wooden half of a canoe.

  ‘Authentic,’ she assures me.

  Seated, I scratch the leather armrest with a fingernail and then rub the mark with my thumb. The lake looks black beneath textured gray clouds and in the marina beside the restaurant is a fantastic yacht flying a French flag. A girl with long blonde hair and eyes drawn black with eyeliner leans over to me and whispers while nodding towards the boat, ‘Who do you have to fuck to get a ride on that thing?’

  As an introduction the owner tells us she used to be a ballet instructor on Cape Cod and gives a slight curtsy in her pointed high heels. She is dressed in perfect black like a monochrome painting, and there is no sign of lint anywhere. Her name is Velvet.

  The Tippecanoe is not a roast-beef restaurant. The menu we are given to study displays venison, smoked salmon, elk pepper steaks, and different sauces, most of which I’ve never heard of. Dishes are finished with pear walnut crème, fig confit or garlic sabayon. There is the full array of cutlery, including the shrimp fork: no corners are cut. The tablecloths are crisp and white, napkins the same. Crystal goblets are polished by hand. Velvet tells us apologetically that some tourists will have to leave after being seated, realizing they cannot afford the restaurant. The clientele do fit the image for the most part however, Velvet assures us. I imagine men with business credit cards drinking Manhattans, and women with earrings and outfits purchased all at once, so that nothing is left to chance.

  After a long speech and lots of handouts, we begin our hands-on training. My table of pretend guests is having tonic water, a glass of champagne, and a Brie and biscuit platter. In hushed whispers everyone is searching the kitchen, trying to complete their assigned tasks.

  Where’s the whipped
cream?

  What the hell is Abalone? Is that the hot line or the cold line?

  How do I make this napkin look like a swan?

  Velvet corners me by the espresso machine. Someone has left the grinder running and the air is hot and caffeinated. Smiling, she switches the machine off, then turns to me. She is much taller than I am.

  ‘You brought out tonic water without a lime,’ she says. ‘All soft drinks must be served with one black straw, and one slice of lime.’

  I nod. These are the details that must be remembered.

  Velvet informs a young man wearing a baseball hat that for seventy-six years the sugar cubes at this restaurant have been presented to the guests in a china bowl, on a china plate, with an accompanying silver doily. The ketchup also goes on a doily plate – as does mayonnaise, syrup, hot sauce, salad dressing, soup, tea bags, and teapots. When in doubt, doily. She emphasizes her D’s.

  When Velvet leaves the dining area to retrieve our written tests, the hat-wearing waiter says, ‘Fuck the doilies,’ and puts one in his mouth.

  He is still chewing when Velvet returns with the stack of papers.

  As she distributes the tests, she reminds us that the Tip-pecanoe is the first restaurant on the island to open for the summer season, and the last to close for the winter. It is one of the top six restaurants in Michigan. I receive a perfect score on the Chamber of Commerce’s standardized exam for new island employees.

  The island has four hundred and three year-round residents.

  The visitors in the summer number over one million.

  There are seventeen pubs, most of them on Main Street, which runs the length of the town and is parallel to the water.

  There are three ferry lines running boats into the harbor every fifteen minutes.

  There are bike rental shops that charge by the half hour.

  There is an old British fort on a cliff that is open to visitors.

  There is a taxi service of horse-drawn carriages.

  There is one red-brick school.

  There is a medical center.

  One of the girls gets four out of twenty and has to write the test again.

  What www.mackinac.com never told me, and what the written test excludes, is the incredible atmosphere. The streets in town are chaos, with ringing bike bells, and music pouring out of each pub and ferry horns blaring and school groups screaming and taxi drivers in their horse-drawn carriages shouting at tourists taking pictures in the middle of the road.

  Conversely, everything is calm, green, the water is everywhere. There are no traffic lights and no exhaust fumes and no daily headlines save the weekly Town Crier and nothing is fast enough to be a problem.

  At the end of this first day the espresso machine bears a sign, DON’T FORGET TO TURN ME OFF.

  My first night on the island I am alone. The other girls are in their apartments, already friends. I met them all during training, our nametags a strange exercise in alliteration: Brenna, Blue, Bailey. Bell. Blue said her parents let her two-year-old sister choose her name. Brenna, the girl who commented about the yacht, told me that as soon as she gets her first pay check she’s getting her roots done.

  The bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen don’t feel like my own yet. I leave my suitcase closed on the bed, unzipping only the flat compartment at the front to retrieve the last items I packed: the calendar and a box of thumbtacks. I press the month of May firmly to an empty white wall. The carpet’s a hotel-shade of pink and each room is adorned with laminated instructions about the fridge, microwave, and kettle, reminders about remembering to lock the front door and close all the windows, a warning about ants. It smells as if other people lived here once but have been away a long time.

  Through the open doorway of my suite the grounds are illuminated by old-fashioned lampposts, two of which are working. The long gravel road is lined with weeds and pine trees, the sign at the entrance reads, MACKINAC PINE SUITES. The bike racks are full, my father’s mountain bike indistinguishable from the rest. There are beer cans in the garden, and it has the atmosphere of a place that is cared for but not invested in, tucked conveniently amongst the trees and away from the eyes of tourists. I wander out a bit further, guessing the long building must hold about thirty apartments and I wonder who else is alone tonight. Directly above me is an apartment on the second floor with a balcony. It’s filled with light and people, but the stairs are steep and I wasn’t invited. A bare ass appears at one of the windows, followed by shrieks. A silhouette calls out, ‘You’re new?’

  ‘I’m new,’ I say.

  ‘Come on up, grab a beer.’

  I climb the cement stairs at a pace that doesn’t appear too eager, but when I get to the top he isn’t looking at me. On his white T-shirt is a large blue ribbon that says, 1st Place County Fair. There’s no hemp necklace or gold chain or earring in one ear, and though his top front teeth are crooked he is passably handsome. He turns, tells me his name, wiping his palm on his jeans before shaking my hand. The accent is from Michigan, and I wonder which part.

  ‘Want a drink?’

  I shrug, smiling, and I still haven’t brushed my teeth. I stop smiling. The beer cooler outside the door is full of melting ice, and he gives me a wet can. ‘Thanks.’

  I pull the tab, trying to remember when I last drank beer from a can. I think it was in high school, and I hope he doesn’t crush the can on his forehead when he’s finished. I don’t ask about the ribbon.

  Leaning our elbows on the metal railing, we stare out over the tops of the trees. He tells me Velvet bought the Pine Suites after someone killed his family in one of the guest rooms, and no one wanted to stay here anymore.

  ‘Killed them all with an axe,’ he says.

  We consider this.

  ‘Imagine bringing an axe with you on vacation,’ I say.

  He laughs, nodding. ‘Sunglasses, bug spray, unwieldy murder weapon…’ He counts the items on his fingers.

  The island seems full of things I’d like to discover and it’s only been eight hours.

  ‘Which suite was it?’ I ask.

  Bryce winks at me. ‘You’re in suite eight, right? Just don’t be in your bedroom after midnight.’

  I punch him in the arm. ‘Fuck off.’

  He rubs his arm. ‘He’ll be waiting for you.’

  Someone inside is yelling for him, and Bryce excuses himself. I stay at the top of the stairs feeling alone, and I should have followed him in, but it’s too late now. After a while he returns in a light-blue shirt that buttons down the front, but he hasn’t unbuttoned it too far. The county fair ribbon is gone.

  ‘You want to come down to the bars with us?’ he asks.

  ‘I don’t drink,’ I say, handing him my empty can.

  He puts it in the plastic bag he’s allotted for recyclables.

  A group gathers and we wander down into town, everyone electing to walk the mile or so instead of riding bikes as there are so many of us. It becomes second nature to sidestep the wet piles of horseshit. They rarely get a chance to harden as there are men employed with brushes and wheelbarrows and shovels to scoop the piles out of sight. Tourists taking pictures of the carriages don’t like to smell horseshit, I imagine, not at the prices they’ve paid to come here. These men are everywhere, wearing gray coveralls and standing beside their rapidly filling wheelbarrows. Bryce tells us that last summer immigration officials took most of these men away. They were chained by their ankles in the middle of the road, and led onto a waiting coast-guard boat. People took pictures. More men arrived to take their place.

  One of the girls at the front of the group thinks this is totally sad.

  At the bar the couches are leather and I sit by myself, wondering whose bare ass I was witness to earlier. Someone with a pink martini is talking to Bryce, and in the dim light I notice her long luminous nails, legs crossed towards him. He nods encouragingly for a few minutes while I wish for anyone to join me, to save me and talk about their city or cat or the poetry they write in spiral no
tebooks labelled POETRY. Anything so there isn’t empty space around me. When the girl with long nails retreats to the bathroom on wobbly stilettos, Bryce sits beside me.

  ‘Looks like she forgot to finish getting dressed,’ he says, nodding towards her backless top tied with string.

  The couch seats two comfortably.

  ‘Not your favorite person?’ I ask.

  ‘I try and stay away.’

  I cross my legs towards him. ‘Why the name Bryce?’

  ‘It’s a canyon in Utah. My family’s Mormon.’

  ‘Just your family?’

  ‘You can’t be Mormon and drink beer at the same time. Cheers.’

  I imagine running my hands through his beautiful hay-colored hair as our beers click together. They are huge, bigger than a pint, and I have trouble lifting the glass with one hand. He is drinking Miller Light. I am drinking Labatt Blue.

  Seated, Bryce and I are the same height.

  The opening night of Velvet’s restaurant is a carefully orchestrated event. Soft jazz plays through small expensive speakers mounted near the ceiling. The new menus stand sleek and upright in their leather jackets next to the cream-colored candles, the napkins are folded to look like swans. The air smells of orchid, fresh pesto, and starched linen, and the front door has been propped open with a tiny brass doorstop in the shape of a galloping horse. The sounds of cutlery and tinkling glassware and laughter echo with perfect pitch as the room fills. Nothing is too loud.

  In a smooth black skirt and turtleneck, Velvet spends the evening air-kissing her friends and hissing instructions at the staff.

  ‘Nicole and Alan, welcome! Nicole, you look wonderful in that shade of beige, or is it more of an ecru?’

  Then turning smoothly, with a sixth sense for incompetence as I pass with my tray, ‘Soup spoon, soup spoon, soup spoon!’

  Rummy from Canada is nervous. He lives in apartment seven at the Pine Suites, and when you ask Rummy what time it is, he says things like, ‘time for a beer,’ or, ‘time for you to get a watch.’