Afloat

Afloat

JENNIFER McCARTNEY

HAMISH HAMILTON

an imprint of

PENGUIN BOOKS

HAMISH HAMILTON

Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London
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, England
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, England

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First published 2007

1

Copyright © Jennifer McCartney, 2007

The moral right of the author has been asserted

All rights reserved

Without limiting the rights under copyright
reserved above, no part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior
written permission of both the copyright owner and
the above publisher of this book

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

EISBN: 978–0–141–90201–2

For Mrs Holder

‘O – at Mackinaw! That fairy island, which I shall never see again! and which I should have dearly liked to filch from the Americans, and carry home to you in my dressing box.'

Anna Brownell Jameson,
Winter Studies and

Summer Rambles in Canada, 1838

LEHI
m

Usage: Biblical, Mormon
From an Old Testament place name meaning ‘jawbone' in Hebrew. It is also used in the Books of Mormon as the name of a prophet.

The Utah Baby Namer

Your right hand, palm inward, thumb out, is the state of Michigan.

Mackinac Island is off the tip of your middle finger. Green and heavy, this limestone outcrop of land lies in the straits of Mackinac between the lakes of Huron and Michigan. The island is nine miles around with forest in the middle and it takes one hour to circle it by bicycle. You cannot travel by car, because there are none. The narrow road surrounding the island, the M-185, is the only highway in North America on which there has never been a motor-vehicle accident, although the cemetery is full. The weather intrudes like a clenched fist. During the winters the five hundred horses are taken away to a southern state.

It was May. The island lay underneath a sky shaded like the underbelly of a fish.

As the ferryboat angled towards the pier I watched my summer becoming larger, the houses clearer, the postcard image of horse-and-carriage suddenly alive on modern, gray-paved streets. The air was cold on the top deck, and everything was sharp, clear, and bright. The island's green crown, thick with forests, was welcoming. White seagulls turned pinwheels in the sky and the lake was calm as we docked – the horn loud. Descending to the wooden jetty to collect my suitcase, then tugging it behind me onto the cement sidewalk, I approached the building I had, until now, seen only in photographs.

I will tell you everything that comes next, the exact events of that summer, so you can understand what I am waiting for now. It is 12:05 p.m. I have six hours until my visitor arrives. Enough time for everything to happen again.

Gracing the top of the document stapled to the front gate is the delicate, embossed image of a golden canoe.

WE APOLOGIZE FOR THE INCONVENIENCE BUT THE TIPPECANOE (EXCLUDING THE FRONT GATE) HAS BEEN FRESHLY WHITENED FOR YOUR ENJOYMENT THIS SEASON. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH ANYTHING
.

The wet paint sign is not hand-lettered – it looks professionally commissioned.

I set my luggage next to the wooden bike rack which says,
TIPPECANOE GUESTS ONLY, PLEASE
, and turn to the building, which months earlier had occupied an entire page of St. Paul's
Pioneer Press
. Its two stories are incongruous next to the slightly dingy Pancake House and the half-full marina. The metal plaque affixed to the entrance dates the building back to 1926, and though the restaurant is closed until tomorrow the front door is open. The fumes are overwhelming.

The owner's hair is dyed black in a long sharp ponytail which does not swing as she advances towards me. She extends a perfect hand, and when she smiles her teeth are white. It's impossible to determine her age as she is rich enough to have had any number of surgeries. She could be thirty-five or fifty-five.

My teeth are not as white as hers.

‘Good morning,' she says. ‘Welcome to the Tippecanoe.'

‘Thank you,' I say.

She continues smiling as she sweeps me into the restaurant,
pointing towards a low, leather armchair that cannot be easy to extricate oneself from after a night of cocktails. Other new arrivals are already sitting properly in the half-circle arrangement, and among these even the men are beautiful. I wonder how she accomplished this as we were all hired over the phone.

The interior has hardwood pine floors, clean lines, and soaring ceilings – the perfect design and symmetry the handsome result of renovation, investment, and impossibly high standards. Glass, leather, and wood all seem to glow with natural light. The only questionable item of taste is the cocktail bar's appearance – the façade a glossy wooden half of a canoe.

‘Authentic,' she assures me.

Seated, I scratch the leather armrest with a fingernail and then rub the mark with my thumb. The lake looks black beneath textured gray clouds and in the marina beside the restaurant is a fantastic yacht flying a French flag. A girl with long blonde hair and eyes drawn black with eyeliner leans over to me and whispers while nodding towards the boat, ‘Who do you have to fuck to get a ride on that thing?'

As an introduction the owner tells us she used to be a ballet instructor on Cape Cod and gives a slight curtsy in her pointed high heels. She is dressed in perfect black like a monochrome painting, and there is no sign of lint anywhere. Her name is Velvet.

The Tippecanoe is not a roast-beef restaurant. The menu we are given to study displays venison, smoked salmon, elk pepper steaks, and different sauces, most of which I've never heard of. Dishes are finished with pear walnut crème, fig confit or garlic sabayon. There is the full array of cutlery, including the shrimp fork: no corners are cut. The tablecloths are crisp and white, napkins the same. Crystal goblets are polished by hand. Velvet tells us apologetically that some tourists will
have to leave after being seated, realizing they cannot afford the restaurant. The clientele
do
fit the image for the most part however, Velvet assures us. I imagine men with business credit cards drinking Manhattans, and women with earrings and outfits purchased all at once, so that nothing is left to chance.

After a long speech and lots of handouts, we begin our hands-on training. My table of pretend guests is having tonic water, a glass of champagne, and a Brie and biscuit platter. In hushed whispers everyone is searching the kitchen, trying to complete their assigned tasks.

Where's the whipped cream?

What the hell is Abalone? Is that the hot line or the cold line?

How do I make this napkin look like a swan?

Velvet corners me by the espresso machine. Someone has left the grinder running and the air is hot and caffeinated. Smiling, she switches the machine off, then turns to me. She is much taller than I am.

‘You brought out tonic water without a lime,' she says. ‘All soft drinks must be served with one black straw, and one slice of lime.'

I nod. These are the details that must be remembered.

Velvet informs a young man wearing a baseball hat that for seventy-six years the sugar cubes at this restaurant have been presented to the guests in a china bowl, on a china plate, with an accompanying silver doily. The ketchup also goes on a doily plate – as does mayonnaise, syrup, hot sauce, salad dressing, soup, tea bags, and teapots.
When in doubt, doily
. She emphasizes her D's.

When Velvet leaves the dining area to retrieve our written tests, the hat-wearing waiter says, ‘Fuck the doilies,' and puts one in his mouth.

He is still chewing when Velvet returns with the stack of papers.

As she distributes the tests, she reminds us that the Tip-pecanoe is the
first
restaurant on the island to open for the summer season, and the last to close for the winter. It is one of the top six restaurants in Michigan. I receive a perfect score on the Chamber of Commerce's standardized exam for new island employees.

The island has four hundred and three year-round residents.

The visitors in the summer number over one million.

There are seventeen pubs, most of them on Main Street, which runs the length of the town and is parallel to the water.

There are three ferry lines running boats into the harbor every fifteen minutes.

There are bike rental shops that charge by the half hour.

There is an old British fort on a cliff that is open to visitors.

There is a taxi service of horse-drawn carriages.

There is one red-brick school.

There is a medical center.

One of the girls gets four out of twenty and has to write the test again.

What
www.mackinac.com
never told me, and what the written test excludes, is the incredible atmosphere. The streets in town are chaos, with ringing bike bells, and music pouring out of each pub and ferry horns blaring and school groups screaming and taxi drivers in their horse-drawn carriages shouting at tourists taking pictures in the middle of the road.

Conversely, everything is calm, green, the water is everywhere. There are no traffic lights and no exhaust fumes and no daily headlines save the weekly
Town Crier
and nothing is fast enough to be a problem.

At the end of this first day the espresso machine bears a sign,
DON'T FORGET TO TURN ME OFF
.