The River Queen

by Mary Morris

  “What is this?” I asked my husband. “The Twilight Zone?” He shook his head.

  “It’s a hospital,” he replied.

  “But there’s no one here.” It was a brand-new thirty-bed hospital, state of the art, in the middle of nowhere, that had, it appeared, no patients except for my father. My father, Sol Henry Morris, was almost 102 years old. He was so old that when we had his prescriptions filled, the druggist had to call them in because the computer would default and think my father was only two. It seems that you cannot administer blood pressure medication to a two-year-old.

  In his youth he used to walk miles every day and attributed much of his longevity to exercise and temperate habits. “Nothing in Excess” was his motto. We attributed it to his rotten disposition. (Articles have linked longevity to bad tempers.) Whatever the causes, my father was as old as a land tortoise. His age has always been a cause of both fascination and concern.

  I suppose there are reasons why my father didn’t marry until he was forty-four. Or my mother, for that matter, until she was thirty-four. He spoke with nostalgia for the friends, the speakeasies of old Chicago, and the girls of his youth. He admitted to me once that his bachelor days were better than his married days. I had the old photos to prove it.

  For years my father joked about his age. As he got older and older, he looked twenty years younger than his chronological age. Once he repeated his motto “Nothing in Excess” to a group of aging widows as the secret to his longevity, but apparently they misunderstood and heard “No Sex.” When he saw their troubled faces, he corrected the error.

  Whatever his secret, my father was very old. He remembered the invention of the automobile, the airplane, moving pictures. He saw one of the first automobiles rumble down a Chicago side street. He was a young man during the Jazz Age. He grew up between the wars. He was still in his twenties when the stock market crashed. He was too old to fight in World War II, though he tried to volunteer.

  Doctors studied him. At ninety-five he had the physical stamina of someone seventy. Indeed, people took him for seventy. Until he was a hundred, he remained handsome and strong. He was the oldest patient his urologist or cardiologist or pulmonologist had ever had and keeping him alive became their private calling. To me my father simply seemed invincible.

  But the day before my arrival in Milwaukee, my brother called to say, “If you want to see him, you’d better come now.” If my mother had called, I would have assumed it was a tactic to get me to come home. She has done such things before. But not John.

  As we approached the hospital, fork lightning skirted close to the high-tension towers. The glass doors slid open, cool air blew our way. Before I could say a word, the elderly receptionist looked up. “Oh,” she said, “you’re here to see Mr. Morris.” She knew who we were coming to see. How was this possible?

  Except for the sounds of whirring machines, the hospital was eerily still. There were no voices, no footsteps, no one crying out in pain. In fact there was nothing. No signs of life. I held tightly to Larry’s sleeve. We took the elevator and got off on the second floor and found ourselves in a circular corridor filled with empty hospital beds, empty rooms, waiting rooms, conference rooms, offices. Travel pictures of the Pyramids of Egypt and Mount Rushmore hung on the wall.

  We followed the circle until we came to a corridor filled with light. In the first room lay an enormous woman with tubes coming out of everywhere, machines pumping away. At her bedside was a man, silently sobbing. In the next room lay a thin, young woman, also connected with tubes.

  At the nurse’s station two or three nurses and what I assumed were a few doctors were working. One of the doctors was talking on the phone. He rattled off organs: Kidneys, heart, liver. No one looked up at us. No one paid any attention to us at all. Across from the nurse’s station a large man lay almost naked on a gurney. Tattoos covered his arms and chest. Snakes, women, a wolf. A rose bloomed on his chest.

  In the next room I found my father. He was sitting up in bed, eating vanilla ice cream and watching television. On the screen in black-and-white a woman stood on a dock beside a swamp. A group of men who appeared to be scientists were with her. Beneath the dock a creature that looked like a man in an iguana suit swam, trying to grab the woman. Its claws reached out of the water toward her feet, but the woman, unaware, walked off the dock unharmed. And the creature disappeared back into the darkness from whence it came.

  My father, engrossed in Creature from the Black Lagoon, didn’t see us come in. Then he looked up. “Hi, kids,” he said, “thanks for dropping by.” He put down his dish. “Lousy ice cream,” he went on. “They’re gonna kill me in here. Lousy food. Lousy service.” He talked about the Milwaukee Heart Hospital as if it had three Michelin stars and was about to lose one. “See my doctor?” He pointed to the nurse’s station where I did see his doctor on the phone. “He’s running some kind of racket. All he does is talk on the phone. Making deals.”

  “Actually, Dad, I think he’s arranging for organ donations,” I told him. My father’s eyes widened. “I think all the other patients in the hospital are brain-dead,” I said. “You’re the only one who’s alive.”

  This gave him pause and the complaints stopped. Just then my father’s doctor came in. He explained to me quite simply that last night my father had zero kidney function. We both looked at my father, eating his ice cream, watching television. “Basically,” Dr. Brown said, “if I had his kidney function, I’d be in an irreversible coma right now.”

  My father put his hand to his ear. “What’s going on?” he asked. “Are you talking about me?” He smiled his whimsical smile. On the television the woman dove into the lagoon and swam as the creature, circling beneath her, tried to pull her down.

  16

  TOM’S ON the flybridge, talking to Samantha Jean. He’s telling her to be a good girl and stay in her jacket. “No, don’t give me those sad eyes, Sam.” I can hear him as I step across the starboard engine, which has its hatch open, and climb what Tom calls the “Jesus” ladder. This is because if you’re about to sail off of it in a storm, you’d yell “Jesus!”

  But Samantha Jean is standing up, begging with her big brown eyes.

  When Tom sees me coming, he gives a special stern look to his dog. “Okay, Girl,” he says, “big leap,” and the dog catapults into his arms. “Now you stay in Daddy’s lap.” I give Samantha Jean wide berth and sit on the bench across from Tom, but the dog follows me with her gaze.

  It’s only day two on the river and early afternoon at that, but it feels as if we’ve been sailing forever. I’m looking for a change of scene. I like it up here on the flybridge, though Tom, unlike Jerry, will talk my head off. In a way it’s just another side of loneliness, but the vistas are wide and the breeze cool. And I’m ready for a little company.

  Tom steers, hugging his dog to him. “Sammy likes the boat because it’s a nice smooth ride. See how relaxed she is?”

  I look across at Samantha Jean and smile. “Yes, she seems relaxed.” For now, I want to add.

  “Oh, yeah, this is her vacation too.” He nuzzles his face against hers. “Look how smooth the ride is. You know, this River Queen, look how nice she handles,” Tom tells me, staring straight ahead. “She’s like the Thunderbird of houseboats. You know, an old skirt and cardigan sweater. Ten-cent hamburgers. They don’t make them like this anymore.”

  “They don’t?”

  “Naw, she’s a vintage boat. About 1969 or so. You don’t see many of these around.”

  “I knew she had class,” I say, running my hand along the shiny trim. I didn’t know that the boat I fell in love with was a vintage, that she came of age as I did. A girl of the sixties. I am starting to understand her appeal.

  “Yep,” Tom says, “you don’t see many boats built the way she is. Do we, Baby?” Tom says to Samantha Jean, who licks his nose. “Don’t build ’em like this anymore. We sanded her three times before we painted her with the fiberglass paint. Up until midnight doing that.
” We are silent for a moment as I think of the work Tom and Jerry put into this boat to get her on the water. I’m taking in the wide river, the sunlight streaming down. Tom’s hands move the wheel gently and it is a smooth, easy ride.

  Then, he looks at me with that slightly ominous eye. As if reading my mind, he says, offering me the wheel, “You wanta take over?”

  “Naw, it’s okay.” The river is open without a vessel in sight, but I am hesitant. “I didn’t do so well this morning,” I say, thinking back to Jerry losing patience with me.

  “Aw, you’ll get the hang of it,” he says as he buries Samantha Jean in her black bomber jacket. “Don’t you even think about getting out of there.” Then he relinquishes his captain’s chair to me. I settle into the high chair with the cushioned seat for the first time and almost topple over backward.

  “Oops.” Tom catches me. “Don’t lean back.” (Later we will retire this chair.) As I reach for the wheel, I’m having visions of destruction and mayhem. As with our stick shift back home, I’m sure I’ll never learn how to drive this thing. “Keel over” has taken on new meaning for me. “Just like a woman driver,” my father would say.

  But as I take the wheel and begin to steer, the boat responds to my touch. This wheel seems to have less play than the one below. If I turn, the boat turns with me. When I straighten her, she goes straight. I feel her move with me in a watery dance à deux. I move her back and forth and she glides. Also I can see the river much better from this vantage point. I see why Tom likes it up here on the fly.

  I ask him for the binoculars and he hands them to me. The sun warms my face as I scan the river. Tom stares straight ahead. “Just hold her steady now,” he says. “Keep an eye on your buoys.” I seem to be able to do this better from above. At least I am able to keep us off the riverbanks.

  Once Tom sees I’m handling her well, he turns his attention to his dog, who, despite orders, has left her bomber jacket and whines at his feet. He gazes down at her as if she’s just a stubborn child, which in a way she is. “Okay, Sammy, you win, big jump,” and once again the little dog leaps into his brawny arms. “I can never say no to her.”

  The river makes a wide turn and I follow the bend. Then I’ve got a straight shot down and it’s easy. “I’m sorry Kim couldn’t come with us,” I tell him. We haven’t really had a chance to talk privately and I’ve been wanting to tell him that. “Oh, it’s all right. It would’ve been fun if she came, but it’s fine. This trip is really about me having time with Samantha Jean.” Tom cradles the little dog in his huge arms. “She had breast cancer, you know.”

  “Kim?”

  “No, Samantha. But Kim helped me find the vet who would operate on her. I figured she could lose a tit or two. She’s got about a dozen.” He rubs Samantha Jean’s belly. “Anyway, Kim helped me save her life and I’ll never forget that.” Tom explains to me how he has two dogs by two mothers. Samantha Jean was given to him by one of his girlfriends. “But when I thought I was gonna lose Sammy I got Monster Dog. He’s a Jack Russell and drives Sammy crazy. So it’s good for her to be on this trip. Gives her some time with just me.”

  Apparently Monster Dog’s mother works in a petting zoo. “I don’t date her anymore,” Tom says, “but I go back to see the snakes. Ralph and Ezra. I call Ezra King Tut. I can get him to stand five feet high in the air. Just a trick I taught him. Sammy doesn’t like it when I touch the snakes.”

  Tom gazes down at Samantha Jean, giving her belly a big rub. “Oh, you’re not jealous of old King Tut, now, are you, Girl? Come on, Sammy, doggy hug. Doggy hug.” And Samantha wraps her paws around his neck and plants a wet one on his lips.

  Tom’s just rambling and I’m not really listening. I’m piloting the boat. I still don’t see the ripples in the water, but with my binoculars I scan the banks as any seaworthy captain would. And I am holding eighteen thousand pounds of ship on a steady course. “Do you ever think of getting married?” I ask him. “To Kim or anyone?”

  “Oh, I think about it,” Tom says. Then he caresses Samantha Jean’s paw. “But you know in a way I already am.”

  “You mean…,” I gaze at the dog with her wiry hair, her beady eyes.

  He’s still stroking her paw. “I kinda am.” I reach out to stroke Samantha Jean’s paw as well and she looks up at me and growls so I turn back to the wheel.

  * * *

  At Lock and Dam 10 we luck out. A huge fuel barge is just coming through, heading north. “We’d have been sitting here for two hours,” Jerry says, poking his head through the cabin window, “if she was just locking in.” His jaw drops when he sees me at the wheel, but he doesn’t miss a beat. “I’ll take her below.”

  “Aye aye, Sir.” I’m getting good at my “aye ayes.”

  When I feel him take the wheel, I let go. Jerry maneuvers us into position and the lockmaster, a woman this time, greets us. “Are you Barb?” Jerry asks, friendly as always.

  “I sure is,” Barb replies.

  “Well, pleased to meet you,” Jerry replies.

  It’s a standard six-hundred-foot-long lock, 110 feet wide, and once again we have it to ourselves. I tug the rope, holding the line, and in ten minutes we’re through. Guttenberg, Iowa, which is right ahead, has a fuel dock. Jerry doesn’t want to stop at this little marina, but I’d like to visit the town.

  I convince him. “What if we don’t make Dubuque by tonight? We need fuel, don’t we?” He shakes his head, clicks his tongue. He points out that even if we run out of gas we’d still be sailing downstream at three miles per hour. Then he shakes his head again. “Not safe, though. You don’t want to travel that way.”

  Just ahead is the fueling dock and we pull in. There’s no one there, but there is a telephone and across it a note that reads “For Gas, Dial Randy,” and an extension. Randy answers and says he’s up at the hotel and, a few moments later, a young man with searing blue eyes who reminds me of Brad Pitt appears. A little too good looking, I think, for this tired river town.

  But Randy is all smiles, an all-American kid, and we kibbitz with him a bit. As he’s pumping, Tom’s got Samantha Jean in the waves. “Hey!” Randy shouts. “You don’t wanta walk in the shore barefoot there. The clam shells are razor-sharp!”

  He seems like a nice kid, I think, though I’m looking at the gas prices, which I’m going to have to pay, and I feel a lump in my throat. $3.86 a gallon. I now know that we get a mile a gallon and that this fuel bill will be almost four hundred dollars. I gasp when our automobile gas at home comes to thirty dollars, but this seems like a lot more than I bargained for.

  “So, where you guys headed?” he asks as he pumps fuel into our gas tanks.

  “St. Louis,” Jerry says.

  “Maybe Memphis,” I quip.

  “Wow, that’s gonna cost you,” Randy replies. “But it sounds like a great trip.”

  Once we’ve fueled up and I pay for the gas, which may as well be liquid gold, I head into town. I walk past Lock 10 Hair and Tanning Salon and pass a sweet place where I’d love to stay called The Courthouse Inn. A few blocks off the main drag I come to a supermarket where I pick up some ground beef that’s looking a little brown, salad fixings in a plastic bag, a bottle of merlot, pale pink tomatoes, and onions that look like they’ve seen better days, green peppers, bowtie pasta. I am determined to cook a meal for these guys in my three little pots.

  It’s a beautiful day and I don’t feel like rushing back to the ship. I’m enjoying having earth beneath my feet. I pop into the Café Mississippi for a cold drink. The bartender, a young college-age girl, is at the bar, smoking. She pours me a club soda, which is flat. But the view of the river is gorgeous. “Pretty town,” I say to her as I sip my club soda.

  “Yeah. Kinda small,” she says, taking a drag. “And getting smaller.” She stubs out her cigarette and hands me my check for seventy-five cents. If only our boat could run on club soda. I leave two dollars on the bar.

  On the way back to the boat my phone rings. It’s Kate calling. “
Hey there,” I say, picking up on the second ring. I am thrilled to hear her voice that sounds so grown up. Friends often confuse her with me on the phone. She tells me about her poetry class where there are students who have already been published in anthologies, her roommate with whom she is now “joined at the hip,” and a bizarre initiation dinner in which she had to dress in pots and pans. We’re laughing away as I head back to the dock. She’s on her way to a class right now. “I’ll call you back later,” she says.

  “You know where to find me,” I reply.

  Tom who’s working on deck sees me say good-bye. “So was that your daughter?”

  “Yes, it was,” I tell him proudly. “Wanta see her picture?”

  I have brought with me a small album with pictures of our family—of Larry, our house, our dog, and snapshots of Kate. Last summer she worked at the New York Aquarium with marine mammals. I have a picture of her on her last day of work. She’s leaning over a pool and a beluga whale is jumping out of the water, nuzzling her cheek.

  Later that afternoon my cell phone rings once more. “Is that the Whale Kisser again?” Tom asks.

  “Who?” I have no idea who he’s talking about.

  “Your daughter,” he laughs. “The Whale Kisser.”

  I glance at my caller ID. “Yes, it is.”

  It was my father who told me to have this child. I was thirty-nine years old and traveling through China with my companion of five years. Jeremy and I had walked the Forbidden City and sailed through the now-destroyed gorges on the Yangtze. We had climbed to the Potala Palace in Tibet. But Jeremy, a renowned legal scholar, had to leave me in Shanghai. He was returning to New York, then flying on to New Zealand to deliver a series of lectures on the rights of the Maori. After months of trying to get him to alter his plans, I decided to continue across Asia on the Trans-Siberian Railway alone.

  I was in search of family roots on the outskirts of Kiev.

  The year was 1986. Just as this Mississippi journey was marked by Katrina, my trip to Kiev was marked by disaster as well. The nuclear accident in Chernobyl occurred two weeks before we left and my venture into Ukraine was looking dim at best. But it was still my intention to persevere. On the six-day train ride to Moscow I was sick and lethargic, the result I assumed of too much vodka, which flowed quite freely on that train, and travel. But by Leningrad I knew. Jeremy and I were going to have a child. I was looking at forty. We’d been together five years. It never occurred to me that we would not marry.