Chapter Twenty-Two
The House Boat
From Elk Rapids, Victoria followed the asphalt 31 North through Charlevoix and Petoskey. The mostly two-lane country highway lay like a pale ribbon over a feminine body of rolling hills bordered by inlets from Lake Michigan. Compared to the limited views from the factory windows of her rented flat, a million views opened before her along the roadway--little shacks and stone cottages, cherry orchards, fruit stands, roadhouse restaurants, white-framed farmhouses with windows open to the fresh Spring air. She noticed people moving about in the small towns and roadside parks, cleaning winter debris from their yards, walking dogs, all scenes of life different than her own. On her left, she took in the infinite sparkles of the Lake Michigan waters. She looked so intently at the scenery, now and then she would hit the rumble strips on the side of the road.
This was Victoria’s first move, the first time she had ever picked up and left anywhere on her own, a tentative step, her static life now in motion. She looked through her rear view mirror at a farmer riding his tractor on a side lane in from a field. She began to have long thoughts: “How does he see the world? How does he think the world ought to be? What does he think of me passing him by? How much land does he own? What does the inside of his house look like? I have always seen myself as still while the rest of the world’s in motion. Now I’m moving. The farmer is moving, and I’m moving.” She lowered her window, and smelled up-turned earth. She hit another rumble strip.
The two-way highway occasionally widened to passing lanes, and along the cinder berm dead deer lay every so often, first hypnotized by headlights then compressed and exploded by the metallic impact of a car or truck. More white crosses marked the spot of human accidents covered over by weeds. Victoria thought again, “I have been a slow-to-act person my entire life. I would have stayed working at that mill until I retired had I not been let go. I like order and harmony. I tend to under-react, to ignore the obvious. Is this what killed these people and animals? Were they not fast enough to react to something coming at them full speed?”
As she headed north out of Petoskey towards her father’s home on the Crooked River, she saw a marina on the western edge of Crooked Lake. She stopped to see if she could rent a pontoon boat for a week. She planned to surprise her father. arriving by water. Most other people her age would have rented something sleeker and sexier than a pontoon boat, but for Victoria, it was perfectly adequate. Absence of the unnecessary characterized her approach to living.
While she was in the marina office, the late afternoon sky darkened. To the northwest, a cloud mountain dwarfed the landscape. Rain splatted down with a pummeling weight like hail. The wind felt like it was coming from different directions at once. The temperature dropped ten degrees in just a few minutes. Her plans for an open boat changed. She noticed that all the rental boat slips were filled with unrented boats. She asked about the small house boat at the end of the dock, and negotiated a lower price. She parked and locked her car, taking Scratchy in her arms along with a small duffle.
The twenty-five foot house boat boasted an aqua-colored sliding board draped over the stern next to a 60-horsepower outboard. On top of three pontoons, a white squarish cabin sat like a large block of dirty ice--something that would burn the cheeks off any teenager. On the outside of the cabin, a large-lettered sign read, “Rent Me” with a phone number. The boat reminded Victoria of the lunch box shape of her Honda Element. Equally unconcerned about optics, Scratchy happily jumped inside the cabin to lick herself free of rain drops.
When the dock boy approached Victoria with his clipboard, she summoned all her training as a quality inspector. She wanted to make sure her deposit would be refunded. She found scratches, cracks, and other flaws in the boat for the record--a crack in the outboard engine cowling, paint nicks on the gelcoat, gouges in the bumpers, and a faulty microwave that she would never use. The dock boy tried to flirt with Victoria. She didn’t notice. After reading, re-reading, and signing all the papers, she pushed the throttle sharply forward, and lurched off to follow the channel markers in the lake, aiming for the opening of the Crooked River. She had kayaked to her father’s place some years ago, so she knew her father lived on the north bank of the river around a sharp bend called “Devil’s Elbow.”
The ancient Inland Waterway formed 10,000 years ago when the last great ice sheet retreated from what the native people called Lake Algonquin. Victoria entered the waterway at the southwestern edge near Lake Michigan. As she followed the channel markers around a large sandbar, she entered the river, and negotiated the lock and swing bridge. She then entered the zigzag river, an area of vast marshes surrounded by forests of pine, birch, cedar, and maple. She could hear birds all around her, and frogs wheezing in and out, in and out, in and out like squeezeboxes.
Victoria sat in the captain’s chair in the cabin just off of the bow deck with Scratchy in her lap. The old chair wobbled, and the cat squirmed. Scratchy batted at the strings hanging down from Victoria’s hoodie. The six-year-old cat appeared more kitten-like today, as if she liked this adventure a bit more than Victoria. Victoria craned her neck and squinted her eyes through the rain-splattered window to keep the boat from grounding. Her large round brown eyes worked slowly and methodically from left to right as she looked for the next set of green and red channel markers. Once in a while, she looked back to check her wake. She didn’t want to exceed the speed limit.
A bald eagle with a huge fish in its beak lumbered in to a high nest from the big lake, two minks bounded in the shore rocks, and a large buck swam in the channel ahead of her like a floating branch. She watched the buck clamber ashore, and followed its high white tail bobbing as it darted towards the woods that lined the marsh. Her eyes began to feel droopy from the long car trip, the lolling motion of the water, and the repetitive, rhythmic sound of the motor. The boat moved as slow as molasses across a cold plate.
As she gently turned the wheel from left to right and back again, Victoria fell into a gentle self-hypnosis. She thought as if someone was saying “repeat after me”: “I am moving through this meandering flatland of water. I am moving on the same plane, but not in a straight line from point A to point B. This crooked river is not a straight line, and there are no angles, just one curve after another. I like lines and rectangles better than curves and circles.”
Her head nodded, and she jolted awake. She thought, “I need to be alert. I’m not sure of my destination, neither this one or the next one. Where will I go after visiting my father?” At this moment, the hypnotic voice returned: “I am both leaving and arriving. I don’t like in between. I like to know what I’m doing, like reading black ink on white paper. I am gray as the sky today.”
She cycled in and out of this trance-like state as she progressed, at one moment fully alert; at another, wandering into abstraction. Victoria was physically, mentally, and emotionally meandering down the river. “I’m going through an experiment right now,” she thought, “but not a quality experiment where I compare actual to expected--this experiment is not planned or controlled or predictable. I have no plan. There are no limits to control the acceptable quality level for my acceptable quiet life. I wonder what’s going to come out of this mess? I feel like I’m spilling me. I feel displaced without my mother, without my brother, without my work. Other than my father, the people who loved me are gone. I want to feel more at home, whatever that means...what a zigzag river!”
Staying within the red and green channel markers comforted her. Her discomfort came from a faint stirring of life within her quiet, contained life. Hope, possibility, opportunity were about to disturb this old lady in the body of a young woman. She was about to be tilted, like a pitcher of milk tilting, slow, faster, faster, then spilling over on a table top. From her rigid two-dimensional view of the world, she could only see what was happening at eye level from the table’s edge, the spilled milk coming right at her. She was living a boxed-in life, like a sketch of a woman inscribed within a circle, and the circle inscribed within a square. Change was coming at her faster than she could possibly fathom.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Victoria’s Arrival
Victoria continued ruminating. Even as the boat motor puttered down the river at a steady pace, her mind moved with an underwater slowness. As she came around the hairpin bend of Devil’s Elbow, her murky world of thought shifted to full panic just before she pulled the throttle back in sharp reverse, but not in time to avoid crashing into her father’s deck. Wood splintered, joints groaned, and she could hear crashing noises and a woman’s scream from inside the cottage. The stubby little house boat battered and bounced against the planks and railing.
As the boat began to swing stern out into the current, her father appeared just in time to grab the bow line. He looked white-faced, and one arm hung limp. She turned the propellers in towards the deck, and let the boat settle back while Nick quickly tied the bow line to what was left of a broken post. At last, he grabbed the stern line with a boat hook, and secured the homely craft to what remained of his deck.
“Dad... I wanted to surprise you, but not like this,” Victoria yelled over the weather. “I’m so sorry. Are you injured?”
“Victoria, you about knocked my house down the river!”
“Are you okay?” Victoria hopped out of the boat, and administered some well-meaning hugs. Nick’s arm flinched with pain.
“Ow, my arm.” Just then Zizi limped onto the deck.
“I hurt your father’s arm...a mistake.”
Zizi looked like she had just been jumped on and mauled by a bear. Her hair had come undone, and her dark eyes were watery and wide, bouncing between Nick and Victoria, wild and wary. Her forehead looked cut, and her elbows were skinned.
“Did I cause all this damage? I am soooo... sorry!” said Victoria.
“He jumped on me when your boat hit the deck,” Zizi said.
“Yes.” Victoria said sadly. “A leftover from war... sometimes he hits the ground when he confuses woodpeckers for small arms fire.”
“We just met last night at a benefit supper. So you are...?”
“His daughter, Victoria. And you?”
“Zizi.”
“So how did you get from the supper to my Dad’s place?”
Nick interjected, “She slipped and fell on some spaghetti sauce, and I took her back here to examine her injuries.”
“Dad, that doesn’t make sense, but if you say so....”
Zizi instantly liked Victoria. Victoria had let them off the hook, at least for now, and had accepted her father’s lame explanation. Zizi looked directly at Victoria with relief, and modestly bowed her head.
This exotic-looking woman fascinated Victoria. Even though Zizi was not much older than her, Victoria sensed a kind of world weariness in her dark eyes, like someone who had been somewhere, done something, and suffered doing it.
The soaking rain and wind moved them inside. Nick would have to ask Stretch to help him repair the deck. Other than a broken bow light and a small dent in one pontoon, the rugged little boat appeared undamaged. Victoria would most likely regain most of her deposit.
Once inside, Zizi took over the first aid. She asked Nick to remove his shirt, and then wrapped his swollen arm with an Ace bandage and fastened it with metal clips. She felt his pulse to make sure the wrap wasn’t too tight, then gave him an anti-inflammatory pill. She would have to monitor the arm for signs of damage to the radial nerve or ligaments. Victoria’s head had knocked against the boat window at impact, so Zizi gave her a compress to place on her goose egg. She then applied salve to her own scrapes.
After settling down in the living room, Victoria helped one-armed Nick start a low fire in the fireplace. Zizi sat in the Morris chair with her legs propped on the ottoman, Victoria reclined on a sofa holding her compress, and Nick sat in a rocker grimacing once in a while from the pain. They looked like patients in an emergency room trying to make small talk. After awhile they conversed with increasing ease as the room darkened then glowed from the fire.
Nick opened the screened windows slightly to increase the draw up the chimney. The wind carried in the scent of marsh grass, and the sounds of water lapping against the boat. It was now ten o’clock on this eventful evening.
“Am I the only one who’s tired?” Victoria said. By now Victoria had heard her father tell a short story of his life to a woman he had only known for a few hours. He told the truth, but he focused on certain topics, and glided over others. For example, in his career with the Navy, he described how much he wanted to be a Seal, and the rigors of the program. He did not tell Zizi in any detail about what happened in Vietnam. He didn’t mention much about his business career after the Navy. He glossed over the hurts in his personal life. Victoria noticed the effort he used to impress her. Zizi listened attentively, and did not probe. She gave him the slack you give someone you care about. Victoria kept glancing up at the framed picture of her mother standing on a side table. She wanted to go to bed.
The rain stopped and a full moon filled the living room with white light. Nick went outside to inspect the deck, saying, “Yes, it’s about time to go to bed, but I want to take another look at the deck. As he exited, Victoria glimpsed the moon-bleached boat gently rocking like a porcelain meat locker on the water. Zizi’s dark eyes followed him, then she turned to Victoria and said, “I am embarrassed you found me in this house with your father. I don’t know why I came here with him. I am new here, and he was so sweet to me when I slipped and fell at the benefit supper...truth is...I knew who he was, wanted to meet him, and flirted with him...then I slipped and fell.” Zizi went over to where Victoria was sitting, lifted the compress and examined her forehead. She sat down by Victoria on the edge of the sofa.
“He is a very sweet man,” Victoria replied, “and he’s always been good to me.”
“Are you too tired to tell me about your family?” Zizi asked.
Victoria rallied. She seemed comfortable with Zizi, and gave her a brief history of what came to mind at the moment, a little more than she would normally share with a stranger.
“I was the middle child in our family. We were always moving around. Dad wanted us to have a good life, and always took the next job that paid more money...so we kept moving. We finally settled in West Michigan when I was in high school. My mother grew up with money, and liked to have a lot of nice things we couldn’t afford. Dad would do most anything for her, but we never had enough to please her. There was always a thin line running through our family--between making it or not...lots of arguments about money. It scared me...probably why I’m so frugal now.”
“Did you have brothers and sisters?”
“My brother died when I was in high school...killed in Afghanistan. My older sister went to college, then married and moved to Montana. I was the only one left at home when my mother died, then I left.” Victoria looked at the picture of her mother and began to tear.
“I lost both my father and mother when I was young, and I lost a brother like you.” Zizi’s arms went out, and Victoria buried her face in Zizi’s silk blouse. After a moment, Victoria pulled her head back, and wiped tears with her knuckles.
“I couldn’t stay in the house after my mother died. I felt lost and sad at home. I couldn’t stay, even though I knew my father needed me.”
“Where did you go after you left home?”
“I went to work for a paperboard mill after high school, about twenty miles north of our home. I moved into a second story loft in an old factory building near the mill...I’d still be there if they hadn’t laid me off.”
Nick returned from the deck, and said, “Victoria, why don’t you take one of the bedrooms down the hall, and Zizi, I’ll set you up in the boat house so you have some privacy.” Nick helped Zizi out of the house and up the boathouse stairs, gave her fresh towels, and a flannel shirt and sweat pants to wear to bed. As Nick turned to leave, Zizi whispered something so softly that Nick asked her to repeat.
“Good night, handsome,” Zizi said as she looked up at him with her moonlit forehead and black eyes.
“Night.” Nick nodded, and gave her a sideways hug with his one good arm.
He then returned to the house and entered Victoria’s bedroom after knocking. She was already under a comforter. Scratchy lay over her feet.
“I’m glad you decided to visit,” Nick said.
“Dad, I lost my job.”
“Laid off at the mill?”
“Yes...I didn’t think it could happen to me.”
“Feeling bad about it?”
“Yes, sort of knocked-down.”
“At least, you’re free in a new way.”
“I’ve made nothing of my life so far.”
“You’ve made my life worthwhile.”
“I just thought if I was nice to people...worked hard...I’d be okay.”
“You are okay, pumpkin.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
“Good night.” Nick kissed her crystal, sad face.
As Nick entered the hallway, Victoria said, “Dad...do you like Zizi?”
“Yes.”
“Then you should put Mom’s picture away.”
Across the river from Nick’s place, roots recently frozen as hard as coffin covers reached to grow in the newly-warmed subsoil of the marsh. Growing roots sing even in the dark, as much as limbs sing in the light.
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