“This is very thoughtful, Mr. Torr.”
“This stuff has been across the equator twice. There’s caraway in it, and in order to blend the flavors, it needs the roll and pitch of the ocean waves. This bottle started out in Norway, crossed the Atlantic, come up the St. Lawrence, went back down the St. Lawrence, spent a week bound for Cape Town, then back again to Duluth. Now here it is. Won’t work for taking paint off the house, but enough of it will put the feeling fine in you.”
“Should we open it?” Natalie asked.
“Save it for a special night,” Olaf said. “There must be something else to drink around here.”
Noah led his father to the study, where two guys in tuxedos manned the bar. Olaf ordered a drink and turned his attention to the room.
“What is all this shit?” he said. “It looks like some kid’s bedroom.”
“Mr. Maier is a huge Red Sox fan. This is his memorabilia. You don’t even have to ask and he’ll tell you Johnny Pesky grew up right down the street.”
They stood silently for a few minutes while Olaf looked over the autographed baseballs and jerseys, the framed ticket stubs and bobble heads. “Well, it beats the hell out of me. To each his own, I guess.”
“Listen, he’s a really good guy. They’re all good folks. Take it easy on them.”
Olaf had already turned back to one of the bartenders and signaled for another. “Take it easy on them? What am I, a lout? Chrissakes, I’m here. I brought them a gift.”
“That was thoughtful,” Noah admitted.
Olaf quaffed the first third of his cocktail in a single, effortless pull. “Anyway, I don’t need a goddamn babysitter.”
“I know.”
“Then go mingle with your friends.”
At the end of the rehearsal dinner Olaf stood at the curb with a half-drunk beer in his paw. He had his eyes on the night sky. Noah stepped from the front door and walked down the brick footpath to say good-night.
“There isn’t a cloud in the sky and still hardly a star to be seen,” Olaf said. “But you can goddamn smell the ocean.” His words were slightly slurred. “Funny, all that time on a boat and I never saw the ocean.”
“How about I take you back to the hotel?” Noah said.
“I’m okay to get back to the hotel.”
“Really,” Noah insisted. “I can show you the town. Solveig can drive you to the wedding tomorrow.”
Olaf relented.
The silence on their short trip was broken only by the din of traffic. When they pulled up under the hotel marquee, Olaf drummed his fingers on the dash. “Why don’t you come in for a nightcap? The least I can do is buy my son a drink the night before his wedding.”
“I don’t need a drink.”
“Didn’t say you did. We’ll call it old time’s sake.”
Noah looked at his watch, thought of many reasons not to have a drink with the old man, and pulled up to have the valet park the car.
In the bar Olaf ordered twelve-year-old bourbon from the top shelf. Noah asked for beer, trying to estimate the number of cocktails the old man had put down. It didn’t seem possible a man could drink so much and still be coherent. The drinks arrived, and Olaf twirled his slowly. Tea candles flickered in small bowls of water beside ramekins of cashews on the mahogany bar. Through the curtained windows they looked onto a harbor with sailboats still in their slips.
“Natalie’s a nice gal,” Olaf said. “How she came out of that brood I can’t imagine.”
“I told you they’re decent people.”
“That is what you said.”
A piano concerto that both men knew filtered through the faint conversations taking place around them. Occasionally Noah could hear the halyard lines ringing on the masts of the boats in the harbor. Olaf finished the last of his drink and signaled for another.
After it arrived Olaf said, “Marriage, it humiliates a man.”
“What?” Noah said. He had not been expecting this.
“Makes a man less of what he is.”
Noah shook his head in complete awe of the old man’s audacity. He looked at the jigger of bourbon set before his father and said, “It’s not marriage that makes him less of what he is.”
“I’ve got firsthand proof, boy. I know what a lifetime of marriage can do to a man.”
“What do you know about a lifetime of anything but coming and going, huh? You were always gone. I’m really supposed to sit here and listen to life lessons from you?”
“I’m doing you the favor my old man should’ve done me.”
Noah faced him. “Do you have any idea what you’re saying? Can you not see how insulting this is? To Mom. To me. To Natalie.”
“I don’t mean to insult anyone.”
The calm in his father’s voice only made Noah more upset. “What bullshit. It’s exactly what you mean to do.”
Olaf didn’t waver. “Someday you’ll—”
“For god’s sake, spare me the rest of the lesson. I won’t hear it,” Noah interrupted.
“You will hear it, goddamnit,” Olaf boomed, loud enough that people turned to look. “Marriage dogs a man his whole life. Your mother dogged me. Natalie will dog you. Mark it down.”
Noah took a minute to memorize his disdain. When it was burned in his mind, he dropped a twenty-dollar bill on the bar and stood to face his father. “What happened to you?” he said. He wanted to continue, but his loss of words overwhelmed him, and he left without saying another.
The next afternoon Olaf showed up in his rented tuxedo. He had trimmed his beard and combed his rim of white hair. He sat there easily during the ceremony, kissed Natalie on the cheek while they danced at the reception, even offered Noah a wink from across the ballroom.
That had been the last time they’d seen each other.
OLAF WAS SITTING in the great room with a cup of coffee when Noah woke the next morning. Noah was still smarting from their talk on the beach the night before, but he said good-morning and poured himself a cup and sat down.
Without pleasantries Olaf said, “You mind running into town for me?”
“Not at all.”
“I need a length of chain. Forty feet. Polyurethane coated. Go to the hardware store. Knut will help you.”
“I’ll go after this.” He held up the coffee. “You mind if I take your truck?” Noah wanted to see what it felt like to be behind the wheel of that thing.
“The keys are hanging by the door.”
“Anything else you need?”
Olaf shook his head. An awkward moment passed while Noah sipped his coffee. Before it was a quarter gone, he got up to leave.
By the time he got to Misquah he’d made a short list of things to do himself, and as he dialed his sister’s number on the pay phone outside the Landing, snow flurries began to blow across the parking lot. Solveig answered on the first ring, singing hello and asking how he was. They exchanged pleasantries, but the conversation became as dismal as the weather the moment he announced his whereabouts. She had managed, through her own adult years and despite the fact that her childhood had been just as fatherless as Noah’s, to forgive the old man most of his disgraces. Perhaps this was because Noah had borne most of Olaf’s brutishness. Solveig still dutifully visited the old man each Christmas, still invited him to her summer home each Fourth of July. Though Noah had never understood her devotion, he was glad for it.
She of course knew that only extraordinary circumstances would have brought Noah to Misquah, so she asked plainly what he was doing there. Noah filled her in, sparing no detail. When he neared the end of his recounting, he told her how feeble and sickly their father appeared. It was as if Noah had forgotten his audience altogether.