“It was so good last night,” he said, squeezing her hand on his leg.
“Alvin Ailey?”
“Well, that too.”
“Did you like Revelations?”
“I did,” he said, playing with her diamond, feeling spectacularly fine. “I would gladly watch it again. In fact I’d like an entire replay of last night.”
She leaned over the console and put her face against his arm. “It was yummy.”
“God, when I had you… And you were… And…” His shoulders gave a little twitch remembering.
“That thing with the thing?”
“Oh my God.”
“Yeah, I kind of lost my mind there,” she said, and then yawned against her fist. “I’m really quite sleepy.”
She always fell asleep on long drives, but he liked thinking he had something to do with her nodding off today. Once he negotiated his way out of Montreal and they were cruising along the A20, he turned on the radio and relaxed into the ride. By the time they crossed into Ontario and A20 became the Macdonald–Cartier Freeway, he had fallen into a zone which was half song lyrics and half stream of consciousness. With the occasional loving glance to the hand still curled on his leg and the sleeping face turned in his direction.
They stopped for lunch in Cornwall then continued along Highway 401 until the turnoff to Route 137, which would take them over the Thousand Islands Bridge and into New York.
“What’s scarier,” Daisy said, as they left border patrol. “That someone will recognize you or no one will?”
“Stop knowing me,” Erik said.
She was carefully putting their papers away. They had to travel with both American and Canadian documents and tended to call the little folder they kept them in The Football.
“Are you nervous?” she asked.
He touched his chest. “I’m a little…thumpy. Yeah.”
“When was the last time you were here?”
“I think I was twelve? Maybe thirteen? Probably a moody little fuck, not paying much attention to anything.”
“Unlike now,” she said.
Every nerve in his body was sitting up straight and taking notes. It was a straightforward drive. Down Route 12 into Clayton, two right turns and then they were parking on Riverside Drive. It was a postcard day, with stunning blue skies over the river and the bridge sparkling in the far distance.
“God, it’s beautiful,” Daisy said, her hand shielding her eyes. “This is a sweet little town.”
Erik said nothing as he stared across the street at the double-verandas of the Saint Lawrence Inn. “Holy shit,” he said.
The fish was still hanging over the stairs.
“It’s still here,” he said, catching Daisy’s hand as they crossed Riverside. At the foot of the front steps, he took a picture and texted it to Christine.
She texted back: Touch the tail and make a wish. Long tradition.
Sure enough, as they mounted the wide steps, they saw the varnish on the tail was worn away and dulled from thousands of hands making wishes.
Erik’s phone pinged again. I remember two wooden carved planters by the front door. Like fish. Flowers in their mouths. Still there?
The planters by the door were plain urns. Then Daisy pointed to the far end of the porch. “There’s one.”
In the corner by some wicker seating it stood. A beautifully carved fish perched upright on its tail fin. Its mouth full of geraniums. Erik snapped a picture and sent it. Here’s one. Don’t see another.
Your father carved his initials in the tail of one of those planters, Christine replied.
Rather than shove aside furniture and tip over private property to look for initials, they decided to go inside first. A cool dry breath of conditioned air greeted them.
“I have no memory of this place,” Erik whispered hoarsely, like Gandalf. Daisy elbowed him.
The lobby—chairs and couches and friendly bookshelves—was empty. No one was behind the front desk. It was quieter than a library. The solitude allowed them a few minutes to prowl. Erik frequently stopped and looked around, trying to get his bearings. Daisy went in search of a bathroom.
The stairs were in the same place at least. He remembered those. But he couldn’t seem to get the galaxy of the rest of the hotel to rotate around it the right way. He couldn’t remember. Left was right. Up was down. Vaguely, he recalled the dining area being open to the rest of the space. Now it was firmly partitioned off. As was the bar on the opposite side.
Daisy returned from the ladies’ room.
“Want a beer?” he asked.
“I do.”
They went into the bar and perched on two stools. The woman behind was in her fifties, blowsy and bleached-blonde. She dealt coasters like they were playing cards and pulled two beers without taking her eyes off the TV. Her voice was friendly though. “You two visiting for the weekend?”
Erik nodded and took a long pull, wetting down his dry throat. “I used to live here.”
“Where?” the woman said over her shoulder. “In Clayton?”
“Here,” Erik said, gesturing around. “My family owned the hotel. I grew up on Hugunin Street.”
“No kidding? When did you move away?”
“When I was nine.”
“Oh.” She made the single syllable into a song around her gum. She moved a bowl of popcorn in their direction and then returned her attention to the TV.
“Salut,” Daisy said, touching her glass to his.
“I guess you can’t go home again,” he said in his klutzy French, weirdly disappointed. A part of him expected to be recognized. By whom? His face hadn’t been seen in this building in more than twenty years, what the hell was he thinking?
The phone behind the bar rang. The blonde woman had a long conversation about a fish delivery. She caught their eye in the middle and, unexpectedly, winked at Erik.
“Hey listen,” she said into the phone. “I’ve got a guy in the bar who says he used to live here. Says his family owned the place. What’s that?” She put her hand over the mouthpiece. “What’s your last name, hon?”
“Fiskare,” Erik said.
“Fiskare,” she said into the phone. “He says he l—… Hello? Hello? Can you hear me?” She held the phone away, then back to her ear, shrugged and replaced it in the cradle. “Weird. He hung up on me.”
“Who were you talking to?” Daisy said.
“Phil MacIntyre. Old Phil. He bought the place back in the nineties. Phil Junior and his wife run it. Old Phil just barks orders and brings in the fish.”
“Who would he have bought it from?” Daisy asked Erik. “Your grandparents?”
He shook his head. “They both died in the eighties and they didn’t own it. Farfar had his boating business. Farmor worked here. In the kitchen, I think.”
“You want to talk to Cassie,” the bartender said. “Cassie MacIntyre, she’s Phil Junior’s wife. She’s the heart of this place. And she’s super active in the historical society. She loves this shit. Pardon my French.”
“Your French is doing life, Roxanne,” said a woman’s voice behind them. “No pardon or parole.”
“There she is,” the bartender said.
“Here I am. Still. Please shoot me.” A woman looking to be in her late forties, with greying red hair, plopped onto a stool and put her face in her palm.
“This guy’s family used to own the hotel,” Roxanne said, drawing another beer.
“I’m Cassie MacIntyre, I own it now. Do you want to buy it back? Please? Put me out of my misery?” She smiled and shook their hands. “I don’t mean it. I love it the way you love a teenage daughter. I’m sorry, what’s your name?”
“Erik Fiskare.”
“The Fiskares, of course. My father-in-law bought it from them. He kept some pictures.” Cassie slid off her stool and went behind the bar. “Weird thing about Old Phil. He’s a total grouch in the present, but he has a soft nostalgic heart for the past.”
On either side of the mirrore
d wall behind the liquor bottles were clusters of photographs and vintage ads for soda and beer. Cassie took a picture down, wiped it off with a bar towel and set it in front of Erik.
In a faded, black and white shot, a family posed on the front steps of the hotel beneath the fish. A man and woman, she holding a baby in her arms. Four boys lounging at their feet. A handwritten caption in the corner: The Fisher Hotel, 1932. Emil and Ingrid Fiskare and children.
“Ingrid,” Daisy said. “This is Emil’s first wife. Your grandfather’s mother.”
“The fish has been hanging over the steps all these years,” Erik said.
Cassie nodded. “And Fisher Hotel is still etched into the front windows. Old Phil changed it to the Saint Lawrence Inn, though. Not sure why.”
“Maybe his soft spot isn’t that soft,” Roxanne said.
“Do you recognize anyone?” Daisy asked, peering at the four Fiskare sons.
Erik shook his head. Not one of the boys looked especially like him, although in a weird generic way, they all looked like him. He could fall into the picture, sit down on the steps and fit right in.
Cassie brought down another picture. Four young men standing on a dock, holding up impressive catches. Another handwritten caption: Fiskare boys, 1938. Beneath each boy’s feet a name was inscribed. Kennet. Erik. Bjorn. Emil.
Erik’s finger touched the first boy on the left. The tallest. With the biggest fish. “That’s my grandfather, Kennet,” he said. “That’s Farfar.” He touched the last boy on the right. “And that’s Uncle Emil.”
A man spoke behind them. “I bought this place from Emil’s widow.” The voice was full of gravel. Erik spun on his stool. Two yellowed eyes stared back at him. Watery blue in creased, sunburned skin. Disobedient eyebrows and tufts of white nose hair.
“You’re Kennet’s boy?” he said.
Erik stared back, feeling young and in trouble. “I’m Byron’s boy,” came spilling out of his mouth and he felt Daisy glance at him.
“This is my father-in-law, Phil MacIntyre,” Cassie said. “Be nice, Phil. He doesn’t want to buy it back from you. Although I begged him to.”
Phil MacIntyre didn’t shake hands or sit. He went around the bar. Erik turned on his seat, following him.
“You bought the hotel from Emil’s wife?” Erik asked. “From Kirsten? Is she still alive?”
“She’s alive,” Phil said in a grunt, his back to the guests, perusing the photographs. He picked one down and used another bar towel to wipe off the frame. When he turned around, his face had transformed. He was smiling. As he laid the picture on the bar in front of Erik, his expression was pleased to the point of smug.
“Jesus,” Erik whispered.
It was a black and white photograph, five by seven. Three men clustered at its center. An old man seated in an armchair. Bald with a mustache, dressed in a plaid sport coat and a tie. He held a blanket-wrapped baby in his arms. A young man was seated on one wide arm of the chair and a middle-aged man stood stiffly on the other side, hands in his pockets. Handwriting in the picture’s corner—The Fisher Hotel, January 1971: Four Generations. None of the men were labeled, but Erik didn’t need help. His finger reached and touched the man sitting on the chair’s arm.
“That’s my father,” he said. Then he touched the standing man. “That’s Farfar.”
He touched the old man and looked up at Phil MacIntyre.
“That’s Emil,” Phil said. “Your great-grandfather.”
Erik looked down. His finger hesitated and then pressed down on the baby. He looked up at Phil again. Who smiled and nodded.
“Look at me, I’m bawling,” Cassie said, touching fingertips under her eyes.
“Oh my God,” Daisy said, her hand curling around Erik’s elbow and her finger joining to point to the baby in the old man’s arms. “Honey, that’s you…”
PHIL TOOK ONE MORE picture down from behind the bar. In it Kennet Fiskare stood as a soldier, sharp and creased in his uniform. One arm stiff at his side, the hand almost in a fist, wishing for a pocket to hide in. In contrast, the blonde girl next to him was all softness. Round, laughing face, young curved body in a sundress, a bare foot kicked fetchingly up behind. One hand on her hip, the other around Kennet’s shoulder, she draped on him like a blanket thrown over a straight-backed chair. Kennet and Gertrude Fiskare, 1945 was written in the corner.
“Aunt Trudy,” Erik said.
“He must have just come home from the war,” Daisy said.
“Trudy married Louis Pettitte,” Phil said. “He and I were school buddies. He died in oh-three. Trudy retired down to the Carolinas. Mike Pettitte’s her oldest. He runs boat tours out of Alexandria Bay. You should give him a call.”
Cassie already had a phonebook out on the bar and was thumbing through the yellow pages.
“Do you know him?” Daisy asked.
“Honey, everyone knows everyone around here,” Roxanne said, putting out a fresh bowl of popcorn.
“You think he’ll see me?” Erik asked, as Cassie picked up the phone and swung her hair aside to fit it to her ear.
“Of course,” she said. “He’s your cousin.”
Daisy took the piece of paper with Erik’s sketched-out family tree from her purse. She smoothed it on the bar and set an index finger in different boxes, matching up the generations. “He’s your father’s first cousin.”
“Hey, is Mike Pettitte around?” Cassie said into the phone. “Thanks.” She smiled at Erik, drummed her fingers on the bartop then ran them along the frame of the four generations picture. “I have a scanner in the office,” she said. “Let’s try to get this out of the frame and make you a copy.”
“You don’t have to,” Erik said.
“Of course I do,” she said. “This is your life. Mike? Hey, Cass MacIntyre over at the Saint Lawrence Inn, how are you? Good, good. Listen, I think I’ve found a cousin of yours. He’s sitting right here at the bar. His name is Erik Fiskare. He’s…” She moved the phone under her chin. “Byron?”
Erik nodded.
“He’s Byron’s son. And—” Abruptly Cassie moved the phone away from her ear and through it came a Miss Othmar squawk of unintelligible words. She put it back to her ear. “Yes, he’s right here. Swear to God. And… All right. No, I don’t think so.” Again she moved the phone. “Are you guys staying locally?”
“We’re staying here,” Erik said.
“They’re my prisoners. I won’t let them get away. All right. Nine?” She looked from Erik to Daisy, who nodded. “Nine then. We’ll see you here. Okay, Mike. Take care.”
She hung up. “You are to report back here at nine and not a minute later. Mike’s coming down.”
“He remembers? I mean, he knows me?”
“Sure sounded like it. Nearly yelled my ear off.”
Daisy’s fingertips curled into his forearm. His own toes curled in his sneakers. “This is crazy.”
“Finish your beers and we’ll get you checked in,” Cassie said.
“The beers are on me,” Phil said, and finally extended his hand across the bar to Erik. “Welcome home.”
“You, buy a round?” Roxanne said. “You must be dying, Phil.”
Checked in, Erik and Daisy went down the front steps of the hotel and walked around the block.
“Look,” Daisy said, pointing across the street. “Clayton Opera House. You can come home and get a job.”
“Cute,” Erik said absently, looking around his old neighborhood. He swore there had been fewer houses and more trees. As they moved further south down Merrick Street it grew shadier. The two houses at the far corner had tall maples on the property.
They turned left onto Hugunin Street. After a hundred feet, Erik pointed across the parked cars. “There.”
“That one? That was your house?”
He nodded but made no move to cross the street. He didn’t want to go any closer. They walked along and he viewed the house nervously, as if it were a bear he shot and it might not be dead.
It was still the same buff color. The little front porch under the triangular gable had been open when he was a boy. Now it was enclosed with louvered windows. Other than that, it looked the same. It looked too the same. He prayed no one would come out and see them gawking at it. Invite him in. He couldn’t go in.
“All right?” Daisy said softly, her hand creeping into his. “Must be weird.”
“Yeah,” he said. His glance fell on the driveway along the left side of the house. His eyes lifted to the two upstairs windows, then down again. The driveway was paved. It was gravel when he lived here. From one of those upstairs windows he’d heard wheels crunching on stones as his father’s truck backed down the driveway. Watched the sweep of headlights as the vehicle rolled into Hugunin Street. The red tail light eyes looking back at him from the corner as his father made a left onto Webb Street and disappeared.
He went to forever.
And I was sad.
He cleared his throat. Pointed again. To the house next door. “Farmor lived there.” He turned around, looking up at the corner house on this side of the street. “And I think some other relative was there, but I can’t remember who. I used to cut straight through from the sidewalk to the hotel. I think it was gardens back then…”
Daisy made a soft noise in her throat and stood still, holding his hand. They didn’t talk on the way back to the parked car. On the ride out of town, down Route 12, they stayed quiet.
The village cemetery was cool and green, with a small-town majesty. Neat rows of headstones dotted with a dozen tall monuments and few noble mausoleums.
The sexton was an old woman who apparently lived for visitors. A computer sat on her desk, but she ignored it in favor of the back-up leather ledger. She knew her shit, though, and in five minutes she had written names and locations on a slip of paper and was pointing them in the right direction from the step of her office hut. She waved goodbye after them as if they were off to climb Mount Everest.
“Nice people here,” Daisy said.
The caught hands as they walked along a neatly manicured path. Dragonflies and grasshoppers jumped away from their steps. A breeze blew through the pines piled up at the cemetery’s border. The world seemed to shrink and draw in tight around them.
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