by Peter Geye
“Where are we?” Rebekah said.
“The Duluth Boat Club, near as I can tell.”
“What’s a boat club?”
Odd crossed his arms and looked up at the building. “I don’t rightly know, but it’s a place to dock her. It’s lit up. I’m hoping they can at least steer me to where I might pull her out of the water for winter.”
As Odd spoke a dockhand came from the boat club. He was dressed in a blue blazer and khaki trousers. He wore also a blue cap in the style of a naval officer and black boots.
“Good evening,” he said. “Welcome to the Duluth Boat Club. I don’t think I’ve seen you before.”
Odd looked at Rebekah, then at the dockhand. “Hello,” he said without confidence.
Now the dockhand was standing beside them. “That’s a fine boat,” he said. “Looks brand new.”
“She just spent her first day in the water,” Odd said.
“Where’d you all come from?”
“We’re up from Gunflint.”
“A good day for a cruise,” the dockhand said.
“A good day for sure,” Odd said.
An uncomfortable silence passed between them. It was Rebekah who spoke next.
“We’re on our honeymoon,” she said.
“Well! Congratulations. Where are you staying?”
“We haven’t made arrangements,” Rebekah said. “Could you recommend a nice hotel?”
“Downtown here you’ve got the Spalding Hotel. It’s as fine a hotel as Duluth has. There’s a good dining room there called the Palm. It’d be a good place to honeymoon.”
“Where is it, exactly?” Rebekah said.
“Corner of Fifth and Superior.”
Rebekah turned to Odd. “It sounds like a fine place.”
“Sure does.”
The dockhand put his hand on his chin and said, “How long will you be in Duluth?”
It was Rebekah who answered. “We’re not sure.”
The dockhand said, “I only ask because most everyone has their boat out of the water by now. The harbor will probably be frozen before long.”
“I reckoned that,” Odd said.
“We offer wintering services,” the dockhand said. “Get your boat out of the water, store it for the season.” He pointed up past the boat club, at a storage yard that Odd had somehow missed since they’d been standing on the dock. Masts reached into the evening, the boats beneath them covered with snug canvas. There were dozens of boats there, sitting for winter.
“That’s just what we need,” Odd said. He turned to Rebekah. “I’ll have her put up for winter, right?” It was a question loaded with significance. More significance than Odd could even imagine, one Rebekah understood with a sense of dread. But there was only one answer. At least for now.
“Of course,” she said.
So they went into the boat club and Odd made arrangements to winter his boat. They’d hoist it from the water the next morning and store it in the yard. There were fees for the hoisting, fees for the storing, fees for the tarp, for everything. By the time Odd and Rebekah were standing outside, awaiting a cab to bring them downtown, Odd was forty dollars lighter in the pocket than he’d been on arrival. It irked him for a spell, spending all that money on something he could have handled himself in Gunflint, but as the carriage pulled up, and as he helped Rebekah onto the bench and heard the horse neigh, and as the cabdriver cracked the reins and the carriage started up St. Louis Avenue, heading for the city lights, Rebekah’s hand on his, he realized he’d have emptied his pockets entirely if it meant this scene played out forever.
In no time at all the road ended under the bridge, the cab stopped, and the driver climbed down and lit a cigar and told Rebekah and Odd that they had to wait for the gondola to carry them across the canal. Odd looked out the canal, at the lighthouse on the end of the pier. The wind had come around from the north. He felt it on his face, knew winter would trail that breeze.
“It’s getting cold,” Rebekah said, as though she could read his mind.
“We just beat it,” Odd said.
The gondola hung from the truss eighty feet above. By some magic of cables and pulleys that Odd could not decipher in the dark, it would cross the harbor entrance. The cabdriver walked the horse by the reins and set the carriage brake and the gondola started across the water. Rebekah and Odd remained on the plush seat in the back of the carriage, their hands warm in each other’s. The surface of the water just beneath them.
When the gondola reached the downtown side of the canal the cabdriver unset the brake and cracked the reins gently and the cab moved toward the hills, toward the city. As they moved into the lights, onto the busy streets, among the ten-story buildings, Rebekah lifted Odd’s arm around her and settled into him. He felt hopeful after that. And as they drove up Superior Street, behind the streetcars, under the gas lamps lining the street, all he could see was the beauty of it all.
They’d been twenty minutes in the cab before the driver stopped in front of the Spalding Hotel, seven stories of stone and leaded glass that was all the proof Odd needed of his insecurities. Still, he stepped from the cab, offered his hand to Rebekah, who took it and jumped down, landing beside him.
“Sir,” a bellhop said, stepping from beneath an awning, “may I take your bags?”
Odd looked at him, this man dressed like a Mountie, and said, “You bet.”
The bellhop retrieved a rolling cart and loaded their belongings. Odd and Rebekah moved cautiously behind him.
Odd heard Rebekah’s breath catch as they entered the hotel. The chandeliers hanging high above the lobby cast a refracted light on the Oriental carpets, the long, elegant sofas and beautiful mahogany tables, each with a vase of fresh flowers at its center, the guests lounging on those couches, their muslin dresses and fine English suits lit by the chandeliers above as though made for that express purpose. All of it was gorgeous and elegant in a way that Rebekah couldn’t have imagined. If the downtown lights, as they approached them in the cab, had softened her, the loveliness of that hotel lobby melted her.
At the counter a man with a handlebar mustache and slicked-back hair greeted them. He wore a black suit and a black tie and a boutonnière of blood-red roses blossomed from his lapel. “Good evening,” he said. “Welcome to the Spalding Hotel. Will you be checking in this evening?”
“We will,” Odd said.
Rebekah said, “We’re on our honeymoon!” and curled her arm into Odd’s.
The man looked from Odd to Rebekah and back again at Odd. “Your honeymoon, yes.” He looked again at Rebekah. “Well, congratulations from all of us here at the Spalding.” His mustache curled up with his forced smile. “Let me see what rooms we have available.” He opened a ledger on his desk and ran his finger up and down a column of numbers. “We have a suite on the seventh floor. How long will you be staying?”
“Can’t say,” Odd said. “Three or four nights, anyway.”
The man behind the desk checked the ledger again and said, “A suite is a must for your honeymoon.” Now he raised his hand and snapped his fingers and the bellhop who had unloaded the cab stepped quickly to the desk. “Bring their bags to the Harbor Suite. Draw the curtains and turn down their bed.”
The bellhop nodded and was gone with the rolling cart of their luggage.
The man behind the desk pulled his watch from his vest pocket, checked the time, and replaced the watch. “Will you be having a late dinner in the restaurant? Or would you like dinner brought to your suite this evening?”
Again Rebekah and Odd looked at each other. They must have appeared as children, so giddy were they.
Rebekah said, “Bring dinner up. Roast beef and potatoes and something sweet for dessert.”
The man behind the desk leaned forward, glanced once in each direction, and whispered, “Would you fancy a bottle of champagne? To celebrate your nuptials?”
Rebekah’s eyes spread wide and a broad smile came across her face.
“
Very well,” the man behind the desk said.
He had Odd sign the registry and snapped his fingers again. Another bellhop stepped to the counter. “Bring Mister and Missus Eide to the Harbor Suite. See that their needs are satisfied.” Then to Odd he said, “I hope you enjoy your stay. If there’s anything I can do — anything — please don’t hesitate to ask.” He handed the bellhop the key.
The Harbor Suite was perhaps even more elegant than the hotel lobby. There were three rooms and a turreted sitting area overlooking Superior Street and the harbor below. An enormous four-poster bed covered in silk with a dozen pillows at its head filled the sleeping chamber. The bathroom was twenty feet square with a marble-topped table in the middle of it, a crystal vase with a hundred flowers sat atop it. The tub was claw-footed and cast iron and large enough to bathe a bear.
Rebekah moved from room to room with her finger pressed to her lip. She appeared to be levitating. He stood at the window in the turret, watching her, marveling at the contrast between this place and all the other places he’d ever been. He rolled a cigarette and stood there long enough to smoke it while Rebekah inspected every inch of the suite. As he stubbed the cigarette in an ashtray there was a knock at the door.
He crossed the room and opened the door. A waiter in a white coat pulled a linen-covered cart into the room. Two covered plates and a basket of bread sat on the cart. Odd’s mouth started watering at the smell of it.
“Would you like me to set this in the sitting room?”
“Sure,” Odd said.
“Over here,” Rebekah corrected. She was sitting on a sofa with pink paisley pillows on it. “Put it on the table here.” She patted the coffee table before her.
The waiter wheeled the cart across the suite and covered the coffee table with another linen. He set the plates of food on the linen, set silverware on either side of the plates, put the bread basket and a ramekin of whipped butter and bowls of salt and pepper on the table. From the second shelf of the cart, covered by the linen, he removed a silver bucket filled with ice and a bottle of champagne. There were two coupes in the bucket as well, and he set one before each plate on the coffee table. He uncorked the champagne and poured each coupe full and said, “Is there anything else I can do for you?”
“No, thank you,” Rebekah said.
He bowed and was gone.
When the door closed behind him Rebekah stood up and said, “Look at this!”
“They think we’re the king and queen of someplace,” Odd said.
“You mean we’re not?” Her smile was luminous.
“Let’s eat some of that food.” Odd sat beside her.
They removed the cloches in unison. On each plate was a slab of roast beef and a crock of au gratin potatoes, a pile of broccoli florets, and a sprig of parsley. Before Odd picked up his knife and fork he lifted his champagne and raised it before him as he’d seen folks in the Traveler’s Hotel saloon do. He looked at Rebekah with all the earnestness he could muster and said, “This is it, Rebekah. This is the first night of our happiness. The first of a million.” He chinked the rim of his glass against hers and drained it. “Now,” he said, “I aim to fill my belly up with this here plate of food.”
Rebekah didn’t say anything, only sat there beaming, sipping her champagne. Odd cut into the roast beef, sprinkled the forkful of meat with salt and pepper, and started eating.
“We’ve never had anything like this. Not once,” Rebekah said, looking around. “All those nights in your fish house, sitting on fish boxes.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe it.”
Odd said, “I told you so.”
Rebekah finished her champagne and poured them each more. Odd quaffed his between a bite of potatoes and meat.
“You’re supposed to sip it,” Rebekah said.
“These glasses are nothing more than thimbles,” Odd said. “I can’t help it.”
She smiled. She could not stop smiling.
“Ain’t you gonna eat?”
“I can’t eat right now.”
So Odd ate alone, first his plate of food, then half of hers. Rebekah nibbled on a crust of bread, birdlike. They talked and laughed and behaved exactly as if they were on their honeymoon. When they finished the bottle of champagne, Odd fell back on the couch, unbuckled his belt, and let out a deep and satisfied breath.
“I never ate so much food in my life.”
Rebekah put her hand on his taut stomach. “If anyone ever deserved a feast, it was you,” she said.
“Why’d I deserve a feast?” he said, taking her hand in his.
She spread her free hand before her. “For this. For all of this. For having courage.” She took her hand from his and ran it through his messy hair. “How in the world did all this happen?” she said.
Instead of answering he stood up, went into the bathroom, and plugged the drain in the tub. He turned the hot water on and from a bottle on the edge of the tub poured bubbles into the rising water. He went back to Rebekah, took her hand, and led her to the tub. There he left her, walking backward from the room as she undressed slowly, for his benefit, and stepped into the steaming bath.
He returned a couple of minutes later, naked himself, two cigarettes smoking in his mouth, a flask of whiskey and the ice bucket in his hands. There were two crystal glasses beside the bathroom sink, and he filled them with ice from the bucket. He poured the whiskey over the ice and set the glasses on the edge of the tub and took one of the cigarettes from his mouth and handed it to Rebekah.
“I’m about as foul as a man can get, sweetheart.”
Rebekah took a long drag from her cigarette and as she exhaled said, “Well, then, I suggest you join me in here.”
He had one foot in the tub before she finished talking.
For a long time they sat in the tub without speaking. They finished their cigarettes and Odd drank his whiskey and they rested their heads on the porcelain, the steam from the bath soaking the mirror above the sink. Odd was a kind of happy he’d never been before, loose after the champagne and whiskey, his gal there in the city with him, in the tub, with no more need to speak. He felt the fatigue from the last four days’ labor seeping out of his back and shoulders and into the bath water. He hadn’t known, hadn’t ever even suspected, that this feeling was in the world to be had.
Rebekah, though, was growing distant. As they sat in the tub she was reminded of the baths she used to take with Thea — with Odd’s mother — and the weight of those memories, of all their implications, was drowning out the pleasure of being where she was with him. She realized, also, that their lives in Duluth would not be roast beef and honeymoon suites all winter long. Odd was a fisherman, after all, and even if he was flush now, as he claimed to be, he couldn’t afford this forever. They’d end up in some tenement with noisy neighbors and the rank smell of sauerkraut in the halls. She remembered that from Chicago even if she remembered nothing else.
And beneath all of these bothers, she felt some strange and distant guilt about Hosea alone in his big shop, moping around the flat plotting his revenge. She didn’t know what he was capable of. She didn’t want to know.
It was Rebekah who finally spoke. “I suppose he’s burned the woods down by now, trying to smoke us out.”
Odd cocked his head and looked at her. He thought of saying nothing at all but couldn’t help himself. “I guess he ain’t found us.”
“You know he’s been to see Danny. He would have stopped there first.”
“And you know Danny would sooner kiss Hosea on the lips than spill.”
“I know.”
She reached into the bathwater and rubbed Odd’s foot, which was resting at her waist. She tried to forsake her doubt. She couldn’t. “There’s no part of you that sees the folly in all this?”
“Are we going to circle around this for the rest of our lives?” Odd said. “For God’s sake, Rebekah, we ain’t fifteen-year-old kids.”
Rebekah looked at him and the thought of the years that separated them hit her h
ard. “What are we, then? Tell me, because I can’t see. This isn’t who we are —” she gestured at the lush accommodations, held up one of the crystal low balls “—not by a long shot.”
“Of course this isn’t who we are,” Odd said sharply. “But it’s who we deserve to be, for a few days at least. We’ll figure the rest out after that.” He looked at her softly now, feeling bad for snapping. He saw tears in her eyes. “Listen, Rebekah.” He sat up, leaned toward her. He took her head in his hands and kissed her and then put his hands on her shoulders so they were only a few inches from each other. “I told you, I’m going to take care of you now. You and the baby. You don’t have to pay for nice dresses anymore, for a nice bed to sleep in. I’m going to see to that.”
She looked doubtful. Sad. “What if I’m no good with the baby? If I’m only suited to take care of myself?”
“I ain’t worried about that.”
“I’m worried about it, Odd.”
She tried to pull away from him but he wouldn’t let her. He tried to kiss her again but she turned her head.
“What if the life you describe isn’t what I want?” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
“Is that true?”
“Sometimes. I don’t know.”
Now he let go of her shoulders. She looked up at him quickly, grabbed hold of his hands. “I’m scared, Odd. I’m scared is all. I don’t want you slipping away from me.”
“You think I’m going somewhere?” He shook his head, almost laughed. “You think I ain’t worried?”
She put her face into his neck and started to cry. “Men don’t act like you, Odd Einar Eide.”
“The hell they don’t.” He took her again by the shoulders, made her look at him. “I’ve been thinking about my mother. About the price she paid for me. Since you gave me those pictures on my birthday I can’t stop thinking about her. I owe it to her to take care of our baby, to raise him the way I should have been raised. Never mind what I’m afraid of or how hard it will be or goddamn Grimm.”