A Commodore of Errors

by John Jacobson

  The chief and the others listened to Captain Tannenbaume explain to Mitzi as they walked down the passageway that pirate sightings were commonplace along their route of travel but that they presented no real threat. They could tell that Mitzi was not buying it. When Captain Tannenbaume and Mitzi were finally out of earshot, the chief told the others he wasn’t buying it either. Pirates were cause for concern and he and the other engineers knew it. They were all too aware that they were down below completely blind to what was going on topside while there were pirates lurking around. Trusting the mates to keep them safe did not give them a warm and fuzzy feeling, especially since the God is Able still used the same old method of deterring pirates—running out fire hoses on deck and blasting the pirates with water as they tried to climb up on deck. Fighting pirates—armed with Ak-47s—with water hoses did not inspire the engineers with confidence, especially since the deck department was responsible for manning the hoses.

  “We oughta be armed with a few good hunting rifles is what I think,” the chief told the others. “Something with a scope on it would do the trick. Relying on the mates armed with nothing but fire hoses makes me nervous.”

  “Why can’t we be the ones to man the hoses?” the second asked.

  “Union rules,” the chief said. “The deck department works the deck, plain and simple.”

  “Isn’t there anything else we could do?” the electrician asked. “Shouldn’t we at least have sea marshalls on board?”

  “The company’s too cheap to pay for security,” the chief said. “I asked. They said to run out the fire hoses.”

  “But there’s gotta be something else we could do,” the electrician said.

  “It wouldn’t matter if we could,” the chief said. “Like I said, it ain’t our bailiwick. Union rules forbid us from working the deck.”

  The others just nodded their heads, agreeing with the chief that there probably was nothing else they could do but hope the mates would protect them in case of a pirate attack.

  “We’re in the Hope business,” the chief announced. “And that’s all there is to it.”

  A THREE-STEP PLAN

  Captain Tannenbaume made it a habit to check in on Swifty at least once during cthe morning eight-to-twelve watch. Discovering that Swifty was unaware of what ocean they were in earlier in the voyage had been a bit unsettling to say the least. He normally gave his mates free reign to run their navigation watch as they saw fit but he knew he’d have to keep a closer eye on Swifty. And even though he had come to expect the unexpected whenever he popped in on Swifty, he never imagined that he’d find what he found today.

  He’d entered the navigation bridge from the starboard wing as he was fond of the surprise entrance—the better to keep his deck officers on their toes—but with the sun in his eyes, he didn’t see the chunk of plywood hanging from the overhead just inside the bridge wing door until it was too late.

  When the wooziness wore off, he could see that the plywood was actually a sign that read Mitzi’s. Whoever made it didn’t take the time to sand the rough edges where the plywood was cut with a handsaw, so now Captain Tannenbaume had a nasty gash on his head. It became immediately obvious to him what the plywood sign was for. In the space of a single day, Mitzi had turned the navigation bridge of the God is Able into a beauty salon.

  Captain Tannenbaume did not recognize his own bridge. Someone had rigged a makeshift hair dryer behind the captain’s chair using heat guns and aluminum paint trays bent and shaped in the form of a human head. Probably that little shit of an electrician. Captain Tannenbaume had to admit that the heat gun/paint tray gizmo was an ingenious idea, but he did not appreciate how the captain’s chair had been fashioned into a perfect barber’s chair. As the captain’s chair was only for the use of the captain, it was assumed that no crew member in his right mind would dare risk the captain’s wrath by taking the liberty of sitting in his chair. Captain Tannenbaume, who otherwise ruled his ship with a light hand, had once found a young AB by the name of Carlyle sitting in his chair at night, in the middle of the twelve-to-four watch. A number of years back, Carlyle’s father happened to be the head of Marad, the Maritime Administration, and no doubt because of his father’s position, the young AB acted as if he were untouchable. Captain Tannenbaume fired the boy on the spot. About three months later, he received a letter on official Marad stationery from old Tanner Carlyle thanking him for firing his son.

  Next to the captain’s chair was a table, another rough-cut job made of two-by-fours and plywood, with an assortment of nail polishes, polish removers, nail cutters, files, scissors, hairbrushes, combs, teasers, curlers, and an old Olympia curling iron he recognized as his mother’s. As his head cleared, the odor of nail polish, acetone, and hairspray hit him like a brick.

  Captain Tannenbaume became aware of Swifty for the first time and overheard him on the phone. “No, she’s all booked up today. Try back tomorrow.” Swifty hung up the receiver. “I tried to call you, sir, but the phone has been ringing off the hook. The entire ship wants a pedicure from Mitzi.”

  “Where the hell is Mitzi anyhow?” Captain Tannenbaume asked.

  “Coffee time.”

  “Well, call down to the lounge and get her ass up here.” Captain Tannenbaume looked like a gunslinger with his feet planted firmly into the deck and his hands at his sides. “I want my bridge back.”

  Before Swifty had a chance to pick up the phone, Mitzi, his mother, and Sylvia sauntered onto the bridge.

  “Whew,” his mother said as she reached the top of the stairs. “That nail polish remover is honking.”

  “It smells just like a beauty salon,” Mitzi said, with obvious pride.

  Captain Tannenbaume nearly pushed his mother aside to get at Mitzi when she reached the top of the stairs. “What the hell do you call this?” Captain Tannenbaume pointed toward the captain’s chair and the heat guns.

  “You told me to get to work.” Mitzi pointed at Sylvia, who stood shyly on the top step behind her. “You want me to turn her into a Great Neck wife or don’t you?”

  Captain Tannenbaume simply could not allow Mitzi to speak to him that way in front of his crew. Yet, standing there in front of Mitzi, he had the absolute sense that he was no match for her. He glanced over his shoulder and saw that, sure enough, Swifty and Ski were waiting to hear his response.

  “Oh, I see,” he said. “Yes, I did order you to get to work on your sea project. And I see now that you are simply following my orders.” He turned and looked at Ski when he said the bit about following orders, as if to say, “Make sure the crew gets the message.”

  Mitzi ushered Sylvia to the captain’s-cum-barber’s chair and pushed her down in it. Sylvia didn’t seem to mind, which surprised Captain Tannenbaume, who knew his wife to be a tad headstrong like most teenagers. Mitzi then motioned for him to stand a few feet in front of the chair.

  “Look at her,” Mitzi said. “Do you see what I’m seeing? The flat hair. The boring fingernails. Do you see what I’m talking about?”

  Captain Tannenbaume looked at his young wife and liked what he saw.

  “No,” Mitzi said. “I can tell that you have no idea what I’m talking about.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Does she look like a Great Neck girl to you?”

  Captain Tannenbaume did not respond. He agreed that she didn’t look anything like a Great Neck girl but that was precisely what he liked about her.

  “She don’t even wear makeup for God’s sake!”

  “Do we . . . have to make her look like a Great Neck girl?”

  “The Commodore said it’s important she fits in right away,” Mitzi said. “He’s really concerned that she look good at the unveiling of that monument he’s so excited about.”

  “What monument?”

  “The monument for that idol of his, what’s his name,” Mitzi said. “The cadet who died in World War II.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “But, he’s, like
, the hero of the academy,” Mitzi said.

  “I never went to the academy.” Captain Tannenbaume waved his hand dismissively. “They turned me down when I was a kid. I sometimes wonder why I want to be superintendent of that place anyway.”

  “But, sonny,” his mother said. “Think about it. What great revenge.”

  Captain Tannenbaume sighed. He looked at Sylvia. “You sure you want to go through with all this, sweetie?”

  “In my country, the headmaster of a school is a very prestigious position.”

  Captain Tannenbaume didn’t give a rat’s ass about the prestige. All he knew was that he had been on these ships for too damn long and that the thought of never having to see the likes of the chief again was more than enough reason to take the job.

  “Oh, what the hell. Let’s just go through with it.” He looked at Mitzi. “So what do you propose to do with my wife?”

  “Well, actually,” Mitzi said, “we do have a plan.”

  “A lesson plan,” Mrs. Tannenbaume said.

  “It’s a three-step plan,” Mitzi said.

  “Sylvia has to look the part, act the part, and talk the part,” Mrs. Tannenbaume said.

  “The first thing is to make her look the part,” Mitzi said.

  “Hence the beauty parlor.” Captain Tannenbaume’s voice dripped with resignation.

  “You think this is easy? Look at her.” Mrs. Tannenbaume pointed at Sylvia, sitting primly in the chair.

  While Mrs. Tannenbaume and her son continued to talk, Mitzi walked over to the captain’s chair, straddled Sylvia’s legs, and began to push up Sylvia’s hair with her hands. Sylvia’s limp hair fell down the second Mitzi let go.

  “Hair spray!” Mitzi called out.

  Mrs. Tannenbaume jumped into action.

  “Hair spray!” Mrs. Tannenbaume thrust the oversized can into Mitzi’s hand.

  Mitzi worked fast, pushing up Sylvia’s hair with one hand while she sprayed with the other. Captain Tannenbaume could only take a step back and marvel at what was unfolding in front of him. Mitzi sprayed with the ferocity of a crop duster. After a minute of nonstop spraying, a cloud of aerosol enveloped Sylvia’s head, and she began to gasp for air, trying to fight off the crazy woman with the big can of aerosol. But the slightly built Sylvia was no match for Mitzi, who continued to primp and spray while deftly parrying Sylvia’s blows with her forearms and elbows. It was a virtuoso performance.

  Captain Tannenbaume naturally felt the impulse to come to the aid of his wife, who was very clearly on the losing end of a hairdresser catfight, but then again, Mitzi’s dexterity downright awed him. Captain Tannenbaume did not have a dexterous bone in his body and he felt inferior to the more adroit Mitzi. In the end, it was Mrs. Tannenbaume who hip-checked Mitzi out of the way when she saw Sylvia go limp.

  It took a moment for the aerosol cloud to dissipate, and when it did, the others on the bridge gasped at Sylvia’s transformation. Her hair stood straight up on her head like a castle with peaks and turrets and gargoyley-looking wisps of hair locked in place by the big can of hairspray.

  “Now that’s what I’m talking about!” Mitzi said.

  Captain Tannenbaume looked at Mitzi in disbelief. “She looks ridiculous.”

  “Maybe to you,” Mitzi said. “But not to the women of Great Neck. With that head of hair, she’ll be the envy of the shul.”

  Captain Tannenbaume looked to his mother for confirmation. She nodded.

  “The women in Great Neck like to wear their hair high,” she said agreed.

  Captain Tannenbaume walked over to his wife. “Do you have any idea what you look like?”

  Sylvia shook her head.

  “I thought so. Mother, could you hand me the mirror, please?”

  When Sylvia looked in the mirror, her entire countenance changed. Just like that. Gone was the teenaged child. In its place was a self-assured young woman. The others noticed the change, as well.

  “You see?” Mitzi said. “The higher the hair, the more confidence you have. I don’t know why it’s true, but it is.”

  Captain Tannenbaume could not believe his eyes. “Are you telling me that high hair makes a woman feel more confident?”

  Mrs. Tannenbaume nodded. “The women in Great Neck are pretty darn confident.”

  “They’re more than confident.” Mitzi straddled Sylvia’s legs again and pointed her finger right in Sylvia’s face. “They’re assertive.”

  “Damn right,” Sylvia said.

  Sylvia’s words stunned Captain Tannenbaume. It was true that Sylvia could at times be a difficult teenager, but by and large she was a sweet young lady. What on earth is happening to my humble wife?

  “Nail polish remover!”

  Mrs. Tannenbaume handed Mitzi the bottle and Mitzi, still straddling Sylvia’s legs, grabbed Sylvia’s hand and rubbed the cafe-au-lait colored nail polish off with the palm of her hand. Mrs. Tannenbaume gave Mitzi a rag, and Mitzi removed the last bit of old polish. Captain Tannenbaume had never seen a woman work so fast with her hands.

  “Nail polish!”

  Mrs. Tannenbaume was right there with the nail polish, a bright, garish, glossy red.

  Mitzi had the nail polish on Sylvia’s finger nails so fast it was as if she’d dipped them in the bottle. When Mitzi was finished, she pushed Sylvia’s hands up over her head so that the heat guns could dry the wet polish. To Captain Tannenbaume, Sylvia looked like a poodle standing on her hind legs with her paws in the air. Mitzi swung her leg over Sylvia’s legs and stood with her hands on her hips, panting from the exertion. After a moment, she shook her head.

  “The bracelets have to go,” she said, more to herself than to anyone else.

  On each wrist, Sylvia wore the cotton woven bracelets that were popular in Thailand. Mitzi called out for scissors and quickly snipped the bracelets off. And, ominously, Sylvia did not try to stop Mitzi from removing them. Mitzi took off her own gaudy gold bangles and slipped them on Sylvia’s wrists. Mrs. Tannenbaume added a few of her own fake gold bracelets and Sylvia rotated her wrists so that they clanged. She seemed to like the sound of that.

  While Sylvia played with her bangles, Mitzi applied makeup to her face. First came thick layers of dark foundation, then gobs of ghoulish rouge. Black eyeliner followed blue eye shadow. Mitzi finished Sylvia off with black lip liner and glossy, blood-red lipstick. When she was done, she ordered Sylvia to stand up. Sylvia got out of the captain’s chair and stood before Mitzi with perfect youthful posture.

  “Posture’s gotta go,” Mitzi said. “You look like a cadet on parade. Push out your butt.”

  Sylvia did.

  “Now push out your chest.”

  Again Sylvia did as she was told.

  “Now walk.”

  Sylvia walked to the other side of the bridge and back. Gone was the graceful glide that Captain Tannenbaume so admired, and in its place was the gait of a goose.

  What had they done to his sweetie? He, of course, knew that he had only himself to blame. Mitzi would have been happy to play the femme fatale for the entire voyage, but it was he who insisted that she get to work on her “seaproject.” He only did that because he knew from experience the havoc to be wreaked by an idle crew member, especially when the idle crew member happened to be female and put together the way Mitzi was. And since he had agreed to this crazy plan of having his mother and Mitzi join the ship in the first place, he figured it was wiser to keep them both occupied.

  He, however, had never imagined that the two of them would transform his wife into such a creature. Captain Tannenbaume thought back to the memo he received from Commodore what’s-his-name. The Commodore wrote that he had Sylvia’s interests in mind—and only Sylvia’s interests—when he conceived of the plan to have Mitzi and Mrs. Tannenbaume join the ship, as he put it, “To prepare Sylvia for life under the microscope.” Sylvia would feel so much more at ease, the Commodore wrote, if she “fit in” with the other wives. Captain Tannenbaume didn’t know the Commodore, but from the tone o
f his memo, he seemed like a man who put others before himself. And maybe he was right—maybe Sylvia would feel more confident if she fit in with the other wives. Captain Tannenbaume could see that Sylvia already looked more confident and this after a change of hairdo and makeup. What else did Mitzi and his mother have in store for his young bride?

  After several forays around the bridge, Mitzi told Sylvia to sit down in the captain’s chair again.

  “Swifty,” she said, “fetch Sylvia here a cup of coffee. Milk, two sugars.”

  “I don’t really want—”

  Mitzi put up her hand to silence Sylvia. The moment Swifty placed the coffee in Sylvia’s hands, Mitzi whispered something in her ear. Sylvia took a moment to compose herself, and then she handed the coffee back to Swifty. “It needs more milk.”

  Swifty took the cup from Sylvia’s hands and looked at Captain Tannenbaume, as if to say, “Do I have to be your wife’s coffee boy?” Captain Tannenbaume thought he understood what Mitzi was doing. He recognized it as something that he first took notice of as a kid growing up in Great Neck. Whenever he ate in restaurants in Great Neck, he noticed that the women always sent stuff back to the kitchen—the soup was too cold, the coffee too hot—something was always wrong with their order.

  Captain Tannenbaume could not bring himself to look Swifty in the eye. He just waved his arm at the coffee station. He knew what Mitzi was up to, and there was no sense in trying to prevent her from doing what she was on a mission to accomplish.

  All Captain Tannenbaume could do was let out a long, tired sigh. Good God, what have I wrought?

  On his way down to his cabin, Captain Tannenbaume stopped in on Sparks and gave him a good ass chewing for being kept out of the loop on the pirate thing. Sparks told him if he’d seen one pirate warning, he’d seen a thousand. Besides, Sparks said, the reports just mentioned pirate sightings—they said nothing about an actual pirate attack.

  Captain Tannenbaume agreed that the reports looked pretty cookie-cutter but he told Sparks to keep him better informed in the future.