Adding a Little Levity Read online

  Before I had fully memorized the parts of the boat, Vic began explaining the use of the thousand or so ropes on board, at least half of them requiring a unique knot. He patiently showed me how to tie each knot and then tested me, but other than the one I use for my shoelaces, I wasn’t able to tie any of the knots twice in a row. I needed to find some other way to impress him.

  Overloaded with instructions on sails, ropes, and knots—few of which I retained—I was next led below deck to learn the operation of the toilet. Located in a room I would have called a broom closet rather than a bathroom, the toilet stared at me imperiously, with an array of buttons and pumps, taunting me to master its use. One button—to be pressed three times—injected a fluid that treated the waste left in the toilet. A second button released water and was not to be pressed more than four times, because we had a limited supply of water on board; a third button flushed the waste away. Oh, and don’t flush used toilet paper (Odd. I thought toilet paper was named that for a reason). Instead, toss it into the small plastic container on the floor next to the toilet. Now, between the toilet and this container, there was just enough floor space left for one’s feet. Maneuvering inside this room was a challenge. One errant move and you might find your foot inside the plastic bin, something I successfully avoided on most of my visits.

  The bathroom was adjacent to the dining table, separated from the last seat at that table by a wooden wall thin enough to ensure that anyone sitting on the toilet wouldn’t miss a word of the dinner conversation taking place. At one point, I believe the toilet was part of the dining table seating, the wall having been added later on. This “familiarity,” along with my waning confidence that I would have any chance of remembering the bathroom rules, made me resolve to time my bathroom use when everyone was on deck.

  Gear stowed, instructions given, Vic navigated the sailboat out of the marina and into the open water using the boat’s motor until he detected sufficient wind. The skies were blue, the sun shone, the sea was calm, with gently rolling waves rocking the boat up and down and side to side. After several minutes, Vic announced that we were setting sail, reminding all of us of our tasks.

  With speed, energy, and coordination, each family member scurried about, tying and untying ropes, avoiding moving beams, winching, and grabbing the helm. I had intended to do my part but remained inert. My breakfast reminded me that it hadn’t been properly digested. Not at all happy with the undulations since departure, it threatened to reappear. Hopefully, everyone was too busy to notice.

  After about an hour of sailing and straining to be part of the group, I sat up for the first time and uttered a full sentence—either not loud enough for anyone to hear, or of little interest. I must have sat up too abruptly. My dizziness reasserted itself, and I returned to the supine position on a bench at the back, (ahem, stern) of the boat.

  At last, the waves subsided, a signal that we were nearing land and the cove where we would anchor for the rest of the day and night. The moment the boat was secure, I saw the family hurtling through the air from all directions, diving from elevated parts of the boat, the names of which I had long since forgotten. Never having entered water by any means other than wading, I found the boat’s ladder and descended quietly.

  Once I was in, Diane invited me to join the group free-diving for conch. This activity seemed to be as much about collecting conch for lunch as it was a competition to see who could dive the deepest on a single breath. I was eager to participate, but after a mild sinus irritation two months before, I was under doctor’s orders not to get my hair wet.

  When we had our fill of swimming and diving (or ladder-climbing, in my case), Vic suggested that we go to shore to hunt land crabs. I wished aloud that I had packed my butterfly net, but Vic told me he didn’t use any equipment. Not having ever seen one of these crustaceans, I was struck both by their swiftness and the size of their castration-grade claws.

  Vic brought us to one of their holes (caves would be a more accurate description of the home of these giants) to demonstrate his technique. He explained that the crab will always sit at the back (aftermost) of the hole facing outward. Knowing this, he reached into the hole, keeping his hand open and flush against the sidewall of the hole. When his hand was behind the sitting crab, he snatched it from behind and brought it out. Crab salad tonight! Coincidentally, just as Vic was about to have me try my luck at the next crab hole, I began to sneeze with uncommon frequency and was forced to return to the sailboat for some Benadryl.

  We reassembled on the boat and dug into our first lunch together. Before we finished, I was overcome by an untimely but implacable urge to move my bowels. I excused myself and walked the eighteen inches or so from my seat at the dining table to the toilet. It was a particularly tumultuous and gaseous session. All efforts at noise control on my part were fruitless. I held in a sneeze, only to hear everyone at the table say, “God bless you.” Embarrassment turned to panic when, confronting the confusing array of pumps and buttons, I noticed the abnormally large contents I left behind in this undersized toilet bowl. After filling the plastic container to the brim with used toilet paper, I planned my assault on the toilet.

  Did I treat first and then pump water, or pump water then treat? How many pumps of each? I couldn’t remember what to do but knew that if I weren’t successful soon, then the odor, like the noise, would depart from the bathroom and descend like a miasma on the dining table. I pumped, treated, and flushed furiously. I knocked over the plastic container in the process, only to see the toilet contents unmoved.

  With whatever dignity I could muster, I asked for help. Vic came in, scooped out the contents from the toilet bowl, and threw it overboard, with me, I was quite certain, soon to follow.

  • • •

  DRILL, BABY, DRILL

  Outside or inside, Milton Figenbaum always wore sunglasses, which would be problematic if he were a surgeon or a dentist. He was a dentist. And he wasn’t just any dentist; he was my family’s dentist. My dad, attracted by Milton’s low prices, first took me, at age six, to see Doctor Figenbaum and insisted that I go every six months thereafter.

  Doctor Figenbaum had his office in one of the smaller rooms of his four-and-a-half room apartment. Since this room was small and Dr. Fig was not, a standard-sized dentist chair wouldn’t fit. The clever doctor instead found a chair that didn’t recline, sized to accommodate a prepubescent child. I remember having difficulty getting out of that chair and office from nine years old on, and I mark that time as the onset of the claustrophobia from which I suffer today.

  Every bit of wall space was covered by sagging shelves, overloaded with dental tools, every mold he had ever taken of his patients, and part of the pastrami sandwich he hadn’t finished last week. In fact, there were food scraps everywhere, causing me to wonder whether the Food and Drug Administration had been in there recently to perform an inspection. I was startled when I first saw a rat traversing the shelves, helping clear away scattered comestibles. Doctor Figenbaum assured me that Willard was domesticated and harmless. To the left, was a small window, but because the sill was piled high with more molds, only a few rays of natural light ever came through. I strained to find a diploma of some kind, but of course, there was no available wall space to hang one—assuming he had one to hang—only those menacing shelves, threatening to collapse onto anyone unlucky enough to be trapped in the chair at the time.

  Milton’s genius in underpricing his competition stemmed from keeping costs low. Unlike other dentists, he never used anesthesia; he never needed to. When it came time to drill a cavity, out came the “high speed” drill, which emitted a noxious odor that knocked the patient unconscious. Because the door between the office and the waiting area didn’t seal properly—wait a minute; there was no door—everyone in the waiting area lost consciousness as well. When Doctor Figenbaum awoke, it was usually time for everyone to go home.

  I had thought that somewhere on one of those shelves there might be equipment to clean teeth. But no, M
ilton’s approach to dental hygiene was to hand out toothpaste and toothbrushes, many of them in their original packaging. Also notable by its absence was an X-ray machine; there was no room for it anyway. Doctor Figenbaum searched for cavities by turning out the lights, grabbing a flashlight, and asking the patient to open wide. Over his sunglasses, he put the 3D glasses he received at the movie theater showing of Creature from the Black Lagoon. He was very good at keeping his balance, stumbling only a few times against the base of the chair before finding my mouth.

  In a few short minutes, he located my teeth, and his search for cavities began. I was too young to know where silver for fillings came from, but on one of the back shelves, I did notice some empty gefilte fish cans with tiny holes in them, remarkably similar in size to fillings. One day when I had three teeth filled, I spotted three new holes in one of the cans.

  Milton’s wife, Hilda, would come into his office every ten minutes or so, usually to bring him lunch and snacks, but mostly to verbally lacerate him, reminding him of how little he earned. Milton’s drill hand was noticeably less steady and his drilling more erratic after each of Hilda’s visits. One time, I was the last patient of the day. As I left the office to walk home, I could hear, from a distance, Hilda’s rantings escalate in both volume and frequency. Then I faintly heard the buzz of the high-speed drill, which puzzled me because all the patients had gone home. I paused for a moment when both the drill and Hilda went quiet. Then, looking back toward the office, I saw Doctor Figenbaum closing the office door behind him with a twinkle in his eye, and a sly, satisfied grin on his face.

  Milton loved to talk and insisted on telling me his life story. It was difficult to say I wasn’t interested when the good dentist had my mouth jammed open with one of the clamps he retrieved from the shelf with the gefilte fish cans. He was an intimidating figure with his 3D glasses, which he had forgotten to remove after the X-ray session. My intimidation turned into white-knuckle fear when I saw a drill in his hand and the 3D glasses still on his nose. To his credit, he never drilled more than a couple of teeth before finding the correct one.

  Perhaps sensing that I was unnerved by the abundance of shelving and absence of diplomas, Doctor Figenbaum recounted his past. A Russian by blood and birth, he graduated from Murmansk Community College, where he had a dual major in dentistry and strip mining. Normally a six-year program of study—the first two years devoted to strip mining and the last four years to dentistry—it was reduced to two years because, as it was a time of war, there was a shortage of dentists, most of them having been sent to fight at the Russian front. Luckily for Milton, he was granted a military deferment for flat feet, allowing him to start his dentistry practice after two years.

  Milton’s father, well-connected in the Communist Party, had been a cook for the Bolsheviks during the Revolution. His culinary specialty, which he named Beef Stroganoff, almost got him executed when Lenin complained of an upset stomach. Milton ran into problems of his own when his father recommended him to fill an aching cavity for Sergei Alexandrovich. Milton’s father knew Alexandrovich from the days of the Revolution when Sergei had been Lenin’s barber. Sergei lived in constant fear that he had taken too much off the top. But his meticulous trimming enabled him to rise through the ranks, eventually becoming a member of the Politburo, as well as its barber. Milton examined Sergei, and, as would plague Milton throughout his professional career, he mistakenly drilled the wrong tooth, leaving Sergei with two toothaches instead of one. Milton was dispatched to a Siberian gulag and sentenced to five years of hard labor.

  Ever resourceful, Milton avoided being assigned strenuous tasks by giving clinics to the guards on the importance of daily flossing. He further improved the quality of his life and secured extra food rations in return for demonstrating to the guards methods of flattening their feet to avoid military service. Most of Milton’s work was outdoors in the Siberian snow, where the glare of the sun weakened his eyes. This explained the sunglasses he had to wear indoors and out later in life, but not necessarily his habitual inability to find the correct tooth to drill. Milton’s foot-flattening lessons weren’t working; every week, a few more guards were dragged off to the front. After nine months, there were no more guards left, so Milton packed his belongings and simply walked out of the gulag. He caught a train to Murmansk, hoping to complete his dentistry degree. He found, though, that his college had been converted, out of wartime necessity, to a delicatessen dedicated to providing take-out orders for the troops at the front. He joined the deli, and thanks to Milton, it became famous for its borscht.

  When war ended, Milton married Hilda (who had been in charge of pickles at the deli), and they moved to the United States, where they opened a deli specializing in pickled borscht. When that enterprise failed, Milton had no option but to open a dentistry practice and begin the on-the-job training he had never received.

  By the time Doctor Figenbaum finished his story, nightfall had arrived, I had fallen asleep, all of the waiting patients had gone home, no money had been made, and Hilda was furious. Because no work had actually been done on my teeth, I made another appointment for the following week.

  Once I arrived at the appointed time and squeezed into the dentist chair, the forgetful Doctor Figenbaum asked me if I had heard his life story.

  • • •

  LATE TO THE ALTAR

  No, I wasn’t late to the altar on the day of my wedding. I just took a great deal of time finding someone to marry. I celebrated my thirty-ninth birthday having—to the chagrin of my long-suffering mother, desperate for grandchildren—no prospects in sight. I learned from a neighbor that my mom had been visiting a fertility clinic, figuring that her chances of becoming a grandmother were better if she started over with a new child of her own.

  I dated regularly throughout my adult life, but as the cliché goes, the right girl just wasn’t coming along. It didn’t help that I had become more exacting as is natural with advancing age. To this, I had the added concern about potential gold diggers, particularly after my recent promotion to co-assistant manager at the local Dairy Queen.

  I had been making a concerted effort to date older, financially self-sufficient women, who were less likely to have designs on my nest egg and hopefully more interested in who I was rather than who I had become. Such a woman would likely be more sophisticated, someone I could be comfortable taking to a convention of Dairy Queen assistant managers or a business dinner at Denny’s.

  One night, a friend invited me to a professional basketball game and sent my heart racing after introducing me to a very attractive and sophisticated woman, named Allison Prescott. Allison had graduated from Miss Porter’s School and Harvard, and she had the type of job in the finance world that could make me relax about protecting my money.

  We had a wonderful conversation that night, although I now recall that I did most—or was it all?—the talking. I had trouble contacting Allison over the next few days, and I asked my friend to find out if she had any interest in me. Allison told him she was allergic to ice cream. Poor girl. A life without ice cream was a burden too painful to imagine.

  I never wanted to be a trophy husband, nor was I interested in acquiring a trophy wife, although I was once tempted. At a county fair, I was introduced to, and immediately smitten by, Margaret Elmendorf, partly because she was young and pretty, but mostly because of her position as manager of the local Outback Steakhouse. Being in the food service business myself and knowing how difficult it is to rise through the ranks, I was impressed with the level she had achieved at such a young age.

  We chatted a bit, but my nervousness caused my tongue to malfunction and made me sound both unintelligible and unintelligent. I allowed myself to daydream about dining with her at the Outback, at an employee’s discount, then proudly moving over to Dairy Queen for dessert, also at an employee’s discount. My reverie was interrupted by the arrival of her husband, who was making a triumphant return from the pig races, where his entrant had won.

  N
ot long after, I met Emma Pearson, who had moved to the United States from Great Britain on a job assignment a couple of years earlier. She was good-looking, very reserved, and I loved her accent. After a couple of dates, I brought her to my friend Joe’s house for a Sunday barbecue.

  Joe was married with two toddlers and at least as many dogs. Emma did her best to hide her revulsion to children and pets, not to mention hamburgers and hot dogs (Oh, because the cuisine in England is good?) We continued to date a few more times, but Emma was Emma, someone who epitomized the typical British caricature, with a stiff upper lip who made rigor mortis sufferers seem ebullient.

  Starved of warmth and feeling, I rebounded from Emma with Sunshine Williams. Yes, that was her real name. I met Sunshine at a park, where she was tossing a Frisbee to a dog and playing hide and seek with her sister’s young children. She had a pretty face, probably an appealing figure beneath her loose clothing, and most certainly had beautiful hair if it hadn’t been affixed in some inscrutable combination of corn rows and dreadlocks. But most of all, she possessed a sensitivity that had been absent in Emma.

  We agreed to a date. I thought dinner and a movie would be a promising way to start. I soon found out there wasn’t a social itch Sunshine didn’t want to scratch: abortion rights, gays in the military, censorship on campuses, people who wear fur coats, climate change, equal rights for men and women. We began seeing each other, but that dinner and movie proved elusive. Our dates—all of which took place at some rally or protest—started with me waving a placard and Sunshine hurling insults, then objects both soft and hard, and ended with us fleeing from horse-mounted police wielding billy clubs.

  I endured months of this routine before I realized that Sunshine’s sensitivity didn’t extend beyond her causes to the men she was dating. I broke up with her and wanted to immediately put that whole experience out of my mind, but couldn’t because it took several months to rinse the last bits of pepper spray from my eyes.