Truth in Advertising

ONE BEAUTIFUL THING


They called it a boat, not a submarine, and it was 260 feet long and back then it ran submerged during the day and surfaced at night to recharge the batteries, which needed air to operate. Bow to stern: the forward torpedoes and the forward battery, which was a bank, five feet high, of forty batteries. Then came the control room, the after-battery, and the engine room, which consisted of twin twelve-cylinder Nelsico engines. Then came the motor room. I read this online. It’s the kind of thing he might have told me about if we’d been close, if he’d stayed. Perhaps he told Eddie. Perhaps he shared it with my mother on one of their early dates. “What was life like on a submarine?” she might have asked. It was an all-volunteer service. There was extra pay. Better food. There was also diesel rash, when fumes from the engines caused your skin to break out. You couldn’t sit up in your bunk; you had to slide in and out. Four years in a submarine. At night in the dark, at war, bombs going off, locked in the motor room with a dead man in your lap. Fascists wanted to take over the world. Young men, teenagers, said, F*ck you. Over my dead body. My father was one of those men. He served. Not for himself but for a principle. He was also angry and hit Eddie, hit Kevin, verbally abused my mother, abandoned his family, left us ruined people. What narrative do we choose to live by?

• • •

The plane is half full, an early morning flight to Hawaii. Keita has the window seat. He was waiting in the lobby when I came down at 6 A.M. Our seats are in the back, by the toilets. I hold the FedEx box on my lap.

“You can’t do that,” the flight attendant had said, pointing at the box. She hated us on sight for some reason. You could feel her bad mood. A fight with her husband or boyfriend, her surly teenage daughter who now can’t stand her mother, where once they sat close, watching Sesame Street together. How painful that must be. Her makeup was too heavy and it looked as if she hadn’t slept well.

I smiled. “I’m sorry?”

She didn’t smile. “You have to put that package in the overhead.”

It seemed logical enough. But I had visions of a section of the roof popping off and the FedEx box being sucked out into the thin cold air, falling into the Pacific. I’d read just a few weeks ago of a similar incident on a flight from Tucson, horrified passengers looking up into open sky, fierce wind and noise. No one was hurt. The pilot made an emergency landing. The story did not say whether anyone’s ashes were lost.

I said, “If it’s okay, I’d really prefer to hold on to it.”

She said, “Federal regulations.”

I was about to hand it over when Keita said, “Inside the box is his dead father. His ashes.”

She looked at each of us, one to the other, slammed the overhead, and walked away.

Keita opened a large Four Seasons bag he’d brought on the plane and spread out the breakfast that he’d had them prepare. Bagels, lox, capers, croissant, and jam.

Keita said, “You’re a good son, Fin. Maybe I think your mother would be proud.”

There was something about the way he said it. I looked at him and smiled, saw small flakes of croissant around his mouth, a dab of jam on his chin.

I said, “Would you do it for your father?”

He reclined his chair and closed his eyes. He said, “My father once told me I was biggest disappointment of his life. He said these words to me. Because I wasn’t like him.”

Then he opened his eyes and looked at me. “Would I do it? Yes. Because I always hope that one day he likes me.”

He closed his eyes. I stared out the window until I fell asleep.

• • •

Later, after a cab from the airport, we stand at the railing, looking out over the water at the remains of the USS Arizona, and I wonder if we look like a bad print ad for the Pearl Harbor Museum, with politically correct casting. Below us the souls of a thousand men, trapped on the Arizona that day. Another 1,300 killed that Sunday morning. I wonder what went through their minds as the bombs started exploding around them. Did they simply react as trained soldiers or did they panic, fear for their lives? Do you know, in the flash moment before your own death, that you are going to die?

I’ve watched the footage from that day and the days after. Movie-tone newsreels. Sixteen-millimeter film, a handheld camera that reporters used called a Bolex. No sound. We use them on shoots sometimes for their grainy quality. “A day that will live in infamy.” Except that wasn’t what Roosevelt originally wrote. He wrote, “A day which will live in world history.” I saw a story about it once in the newspaper. It stayed with me, how carefully he chose his words.

My father was here. He saw what I am seeing now. He walked here, a boy of sixteen who lied about his age. I have seen photos. I remember finding an envelope in my mother’s room, in a box in a closet behind shoes. Photos of him in his police department uniform, in a sailor’s uniform. I remember one clearly. He is standing alone looking at the camera, so skinny, more a boy than a soldier. Dress whites, no hat. His arms hanging down by his sides, as if he didn’t quite know what to do with them. He is smiling.

Keita says, “I feel that I should apologize. On behalf of the Japanese people. For this.” He extends his arm, palm up. There is a moment when I think he is making some kind of horrible joke. But then I look at his face and he looks like he might cry.

I say, “Then I should apologize, on behalf of the American people, for Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”

He nods and thinks about this. Then says, “Thank you.”

It begins to rain sideways.

• • •

Keita made a call to his assistant. Calls were made on his behalf. A boat was found. A taxi takes us across the island, my father in the FedEx box between us. I roll down the window, the brief shower over, and the humidity hits me in the face, soft and warm, the smell of flowers and ocean.

We drive through roads cut through hills, the occasional breathtaking view of an inlet. I write and produce television commercials for diapers. I have a good job with a good wage. I use my brain. I am successful. This is the story I have been telling myself for many years. Why is it that I have always thought that I was a better person than my father, when, in truth, I’ve done very little with my life, certainly nothing that took courage?

My phone rings. It’s Martin. I am supposed to be in New York at the edit house. Jan is scheduled to come by tomorrow. We have a deadline to make. Super Bowl spot. Make your mark. Sorry, Martin. I’m running a little late this morning.

• • •

One imagines things, one plays out scenarios, populates them with people, things, colors, sounds. When I imagined this playing out, I saw clear Hawaiian skies, soft breezes, sun. I imagined a spotless, white pleasure boat, thirty feet long, with the only crew member a beautiful, dark-skinned woman of twenty-three. Cut to one mile out. Cut to me nodding gravely, dumping the ashes over the side, shrugging. Cut to my Polynesian friend fixing me a drink with dark rum, massaging my shoulders. Cut to a wide shot of us slowly heading back to shore.

Our cab drives through a shipyard that opens on massive, industrial piers. Most of the berths are empty, save for two, one an exceptionally large cargo ship, one smaller but still an awe-inspiring sight.

“Where’s our boat?” I ask Keita.

“There,” he says.

“I don’t understand.”

Our boat is different than I had imagined. It’s black, first of all. It’s also five hundred feet long and nine stories high. I learn that it is one of Keita’s father’s and that it’s scheduled to leave next week for Anchorage, via the ports of Los Angeles and Seattle. It will carry hundreds of tractor-trailer-sized containers holding many tons of pineapples, limes, flash-frozen mahi-mahi, macadamia nuts, and brown sugar. Today, empty, its only cargo will be the six-pound remains of Edward Lawrence Dolan, Sr.

Keita says, “What do you think?”

I say, “Do you have anything bigger?”

Keita says, “Short notice, Fin. If we wait until Wednesday there’s a 1,600-foot tanker coming in from Dubai.”

• • •

There are rooms with carpeting and bunks built into the wall. There is a dining room with a bar area. Tables bolted to the floor. We are offered coffee that is surprisingly good. My forearms ache from switching the box back and forth. Four to six pounds, the average remains. Anywhere from two to three hours at normal operating temperature between 1,500 and 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. I can’t seem to put the box down.

Keita and I stand just below the bridge at a railing watching the pier recede.

Keita says, “Fin. There are many types of ships. Do you understand?”

I smile and nod. No, I don’t understand.

Keita says, “This. This is small ship. This is called Handy Size, up to 40,000 deadweight tons. Then there is Handymax, up to 50,000 deadweight tons. Then Aframax, up to 115,000 deadweight tons. Suezmax, the largest ship that can pass through the Suez Canal. Panamax, the Panama Canal. Malaccamax, the Malacca Strait.”

He turns and looks at the water. “Look, Fin. Seals.”

I turn and see a herd of seals, maybe eight, swimming off the right of the ship. Sleek and fast. They look like they’re playing.

Keita says, “Okay. Now we mention the big ships. VLCC, Very Large Crude Carrier, up to 320,000 deadweight tons. And the ULCC, Ultra Large Crude Carrier, up to 550,000 deadweight tons. Over 1,500 feet long. Okay. Maybe this is a big boat, Fin. Too big for our needs today.”

He turns to me. “I work at my father’s company for twenty-five years, since I was ten years old. He make me read everything, make me travel on them for months. I throw up. I miss home. I hate ships.”

• • •

We were met by a representative of the company, a Japanese man named Aki, early thirties, who is clearly in awe of being around Keita, son to the famous Nagori-San. Aki gives us a brief tour that ends on the bridge, high above the main deck, 360-degree views. Aki introduces Keita and me to the ship’s captain. His name is Swede Walker and he’s 6' 3" and has more hair on his forearms than I have on my head. He’s late fifties, tall, military bearing, brush cut, clean shaven, all business. From the few words he’s said I’d guess he’s from Oklahoma or Texas. I’d also guess that he hates me. Two other men are on the bridge with him, punching numbers into a computer. Both are quiet, deferential. One is Japanese and works for Keita’s father’s company and I don’t get his name. He’s training on the boat for a year. The other is named Larry, early thirties, James Taylor’s twin brother. He laughs a lot and looks like someone who might follow The Grateful Dead from city to city as a hobby.

Keita says something to the Japanese sailor and Aki, in Japanese, and the three of them laugh. He turns to us and says, “I do not mean to be rude, speaking Japanese. I say to them that it is strange that the son of a Japanese shipping empire gets seasick.”

Larry smiles. Swede Walker stares out the window.

Keita leans over to me. “Fin. I do not feel very good. I must lie down.”

He and Aki leave the bridge. I feel awkward, sense that the captain wants me to leave.

I ask Larry how he likes working on a cargo ship.

“Awesome, sir.” He laughs. “Ya know. The people. The quiet. Like, the ocean, right?”

I ask him where he’s from.

“Nova Scotia. So I kind of have to be around the ocean, sir.”

I ask him if he sees himself doing this for a while. He laughs.

“No big plan. Just kind of working my way around the world. Have you seen the aurora borealis?”

I shake my head no.

“You have to see it.”

I envy his easygoing nature, his ease with the unknown future.

The Japanese sailor excuses himself. It’s just Swede Walker and James Taylor now. Swede stands behind a large chair looking at a bank of computer screens, arms folded.

Swede says to the computer monitors, “So what is this shit show?”

Larry says nothing, knows that Swede isn’t talking to him.

I say, “What do you mean?”

I know exactly what he means but I ask to annoy him. He reminds me of my father at his worst, of temperamental bosses who like to instill fear, who operate by intimidation. My reaction to that is always the same; to be intimidated and then to feel profoundly unmanly for feeling intimidated, to feel that I have done something wrong.

He says, “What the hell are we doing out here?”

I say, “My father died. He wanted his ashes scattered here.”

Larry turns, surprised, and says, “Did you consider a smaller boat, sir? There are fishing charters.”

Swede is looking at me—the disgust palpable—but turns back now, looking ahead, out the window. He says, under his breath but clearly audible, “Un-f*cking-believable. If you’re rich enough you get to do anything.”

My stomach tightens and I turn to leave. He’s someone who thrives on confrontation and anger. But I don’t leave. Instead I stop, turn back around, and say, “He wasn’t rich.” It’s the way I say it. You know nothing. Go to hell.

Swede, excitement in his voice now. He turns and stares at me. “What did you say?” He’s looking for a fight. And he’s much better at intimidation than I am.

But I’m not backing down. Not today.

“I said he wasn’t rich. And you don’t know what you’re talking about, pal.”

“Who the f*ck do you think you’re talking to? This is my ship and—”

I don’t know where the anger comes from, on those rare occasions when it does come. I have always been afraid of anger, seen it as a weakness, a fault. I saw so much of it in my father, in Eddie, saw the result. I have tried to pretend it didn’t exist in me. But all that has done is bury it deep, letting it fester over time, until it erupts in strange, unexpected ways. I cut him off at the knees.

I say, “F*ck you. It’s not your ship. It’s Keita Nagori’s father’s ship. And I needed a favor. And I have no idea what I’ve done to ruin your day, but my guess is most of your days are ruined by someone. So I don’t know what your f*cking problem is with me, but I don’t have time for it today. And don’t assume you know anything about me or my father.”

It’s the last line that surprises me. I feel drained and tired, as I always do after it happens. I looked it up once. The body releases adrenaline. A turbo charge, then a crash.

He looks at me and I think he’s going to come over and kick my teeth down my throat.

I say, “And he wasn’t rich. He was a cop. He was in submarines in World War Two. His sub was here. The day the war ended. He was here.”

He stares at me. “Your old man was in subs?”

I just stare, eager to leave because for some reason I suddenly feel like crying.

I’m waiting for the line but it doesn’t come. He just looks at me. Then he says, “You ever been in a World War Two sub?”

I shake my head.

He says, “I have. Took a tour at Groton. Wouldn’t wish it on anyone.”

No one says anything for a time. I start to leave when he says, “What was his name?”

“What?”

“Your father. What was his name?”

“Ed Dolan.”

“Was he a good man?”

I’m surprised by the question, the personal nature of it, the intensity with which he asks it. James Taylor’s twin has turned and is looking at me, waiting for my answer.

Let me go, Finny, she said. Let us go.

“Not really,” I say. “But he tried like hell.”

• • •

I have searched online, late into the night. I have found the crappy-looking websites put together by liver-spotted old men. Sullystributetosubmarines.com; heroesofthesilentservice.org. I can picture them, these old men, shoeboxes of old photos, pristine memories of their war years, trying somehow to work the damned computer, peering over their glasses, looking around the screen, trying desperately to figure out how to make a website, put up facts, grainy old black-and-white photos. Their granddaughter/grandson/nurse’s aide helping guide them. HTML, not Flash, not interactive and cool like the Snugglies site that has music and movies and funny interviews with toddlers. How is it I am eighty-seven years old? they wonder alone, at night, widowed now. How will I be remembered? We fought in a war. We risked our lives for a cause. It mattered. We mattered. Didn’t we?

And so they share their history, their story, their moment in time.

The United States submarine service sustained the highest mortality rate of all branches of the U.S. military during WWII.

One out of every five U.S. Navy submariners was killed in WWII.

Take a steel tube, put it three hundred feet underwater, take away its sight except for the most rudimentary sonar, send it out into a war. But before you do, fill it with teenagers and tell them not to be afraid.

Would you go to work if you had a twenty percent chance of dying?

• • •

You are a camera with a fish-eye lens on a helicopter moving high and fast over a wide-open expanse of ocean. No land in sight. The fish-eye rounds the edges of the lens, giving a sense of curve to the shot. There, on the horizon, is a tiny dot. Closer now and you see that it is a ship, a large ship dwarfed by the sea. And on the side of the ship, being lowered down by motorized winch, is a lifeboat.

It was Swede Walker who suggested the lifeboat.

He said, “The ship can’t exactly stop on a dime and at this height it’s not really the ideal ashes dispersal vehicle. Also, there is the small matter of reversing course, which will take us an hour. Plus we need to conduct our monthly lifeboat training exercise anyway.”

His tone was different. He didn’t look at me, but he was trying. Later, James Taylor would tell us that Swede spent twenty years in the Navy on a Tender.

It is a new and terrifying experience, hanging sixty feet above the water. The lifeboat has a plexiglass top and is completely enclosed and rolls us in our seats when it hits water level, which changes with every swell. We motor away from the ship. The captain told James Taylor to go five minutes east, that that would be, approximately, the coordinates.

The ride is rough as we motor away from the ship and I can tell from Keita’s expression that this is hell on his stomach. The engine is loud and makes talking hard. After about ten minutes, James Taylor cuts the engines, the boat bobs to a stop, moves gently back and forth in the swells. He unhinges two of the plexiglass plates, rolls them back. There are no man-made sounds. We can’t hear the engines of the cargo ship at this distance. What I hear instead is the soft slap of swells against the lifeboat. Above, patches of blue sky, high clouds, seemingly still, and lower, faster moving, wispy clouds. The air is so clean. The wind comes in gusts, and sea spray flies in my face. I’m tempted to call Eddie or Maura or Kevin, some connection to family, some sense of ceremony, of meaning.

Keita says, “Maybe it is time, Fin.”

Once, a submarine broke the surface, here, near here, right here, and the hatch opened and my father climbed up and signaled to another ship during a training exercise and learned that the war was over. There was so much possibility for him then, everything in front of him.

Keita holds up his iPhone. “I will record it for you, yes?”

I nod.

I open the FedEx box. Inside is another box. I open that one and remove what I thought would be an urn. But it is, instead, a plastic container with a hinged snap-lock. It’s the kind of container you might keep leftovers in. Tomato sauce, or stuffing, or maybe bolts and screws in a basement tool room. I assumed it would be an urn, the kind one might see in a movie. Silver and cylindrical, with a thick screw top. Something one could place atop a mantel. Instead he sits in a f*cking piece of Tupperware. Inside the Tupperware is a plastic bag holding my father’s remains. My hands shake slightly and my stomach tenses and here I realize, in a moment of embarrassment and sadness and regret, that our family would have needed to have had the foresight, the concern, the love, the tenderness, the forgiveness, to buy a proper urn, the way one does with a casket, with funeral arrangements. I’m overwhelmed by the sadness of this, the apathy. There isn’t a jury in the world, presented with the evidence against Edward Dolan, Sr., that wouldn’t find for his wife and family. But what would be their judgment against his surviving children in this moment, in this piece of hard plastic Tupperware, in this nothing thing? Perhaps he deserved better from us, too.

The side of the boat—surely there’s a name for that—is high, to the middle of my chest. I press myself against it. I try to gauge the wind. For some reason I stretch my hand out, try to touch the water. A swell comes up, washes over my arm. The water is far colder than I imagined it would be. I smell my arm, turn, and see Keita and James Taylor looking at me.

“Okay,” I say to Keita.

Should I say a prayer? Give a eulogy?

I hold the container out over the edge, nervous that I am somehow doing it wrong, and turn it upside down, watch as a surprising quantity of ash flies, watch as my father’s incinerated body—this body that once held me, held my siblings, made love to my mother, smoked a cigarette, raised a beer to his lips, threw a ball with Eddie, climbed the ladder of a submarine, struck his children, tilted his head back on a summer’s day and wondered, knelt in church and prayed to God—rides the wind, dissipates in the distance, disappears into the water. I watch for a long time. I want to feel something, know something has changed. But I’m not sure it works that way.

I turn to see Keita, tears streaming down his cheeks. He reaches his hand out, holds my shoulder.

“Fin. Do you believe in reincarnation? In the possibility that maybe we come back as something better?”

I don’t know what I believe. But I don’t see why not.

I shrug. “Sure.”

“You have ash on your face, Fin. Maybe this a good sign. Maybe someone lives inside you who want to be better.” He smiles.

“Let’s hope so.”

James Taylor starts the engines and ferries us back to the ship, where we are hoisted up and made safe.

• • •

Henry David Thoreau wrote that “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” I can clearly remember reading that in college and thinking, Wow. He is so right. Now, I think, Wow. What a pompous a*shole. This from a guy whose idea of a sojourn to the deep woods took him all of a mile from his home. Quiet desperation? Most men? Who among us can say that? Who can know what goes on in someone else’s life? In their worries and fears and hopes. Their history and pain. Who knows the quiet joy that one might feel in the quotidian thing, the nothing thing; a child’s evening bath, volunteering at a soup kitchen, walking the dog when the family is asleep, the neighborhood quiet, a cigarette smoked alone. Lunch with a favorite coworker. Who can know the little worlds of beauty we try desperately to guard during the onslaught: watching your wife go through chemo; your father waste away from Alzheimer’s; your sister relapse into alcoholism. The simple truth is that we know nothing about the inner life of the person sitting next to us on the plane, in the subway, the car behind us in traffic. We know nothing unless we choose to listen. Quiet desperation? What about quiet resilience. Quiet courage. Quiet hope.

• • •

Keita’s flight leaves first.

“Thank you,” I say.

“For what? I did nothing.”

“You commandeered a container ship.”

Keita laughs. “It was easy. I just paid for the gas.”

“How much was that?”

“$125,000.” He laughs again when he sees my expression.

Keita says, “It’s just money, Fin. Also business travel. Tax deductible.”

I wish he wasn’t leaving.

He says, “Maybe instead I think that life is about having a passion.”

“What’s your passion?”

“This depends on the day. Today, it is helping you.”

“Why?”

“Because you are my friend. Because today you needed help.”

“What if you don’t have a passion?”

“Everyone has a passion. I say to you, okay, there is something you can’t do tomorrow, forever. Someone you can’t see, talk to. A place you can’t go. A food you can’t eat. What comes to mind? What are your passions? What can’t you live without?”

He extends his hand and we shake and he bows to me, smiling the whole time.

Except the formal Japanese good-bye isn’t quite cutting it for him today.

“I will miss you,” he says.

“I’ll miss you, too.”

He nods. And standing there, in his diminutive Converse sneakers, he looks suddenly to me like a boy of ten. A quick hand wave and he turns and walks to the mouth of the jetway, hands the agent his boarding pass, and disappears.

• • •

Before I board my flight I transcribe the letter my father wrote to me into an e-mail. I send it, along with the video of today, to Eddie, Maura, and Kevin.

Dear family,

At 3:51 P.M., I spread our father’s ashes over the Pacific Ocean. It was windy and overcast and colder than you might have imagined. I wish you’d been there with me.

It’s the closing I pause with. How do I sign off?

Your friend?

Your brother?

That’s the news, I’m Katie Couric?

Fondly?

All best?

In the end I opt for what I wished was true, what was once true, what could be true again if only we would try.

Much love,

Finbar

I call Phoebe but get her voice mail.

“Hey. I’m at the airport. In Hawaii. I just . . . I just spread his ashes. My father’s ashes. Keita borrowed one of his father’s container ships. It’s a long story.”

I say to her voice mail, “Okay, then. Good message. Beautifully conceived and delivered, I think. It’s Fin, by the way. I miss my friend.”

The flight attendant has asked us to turn off all electronic devices.

It’s time to go home.

• • •

There are fifty-four countries in Africa. There are over two thousand languages spoken. There is a country called Mayotte. Its capital is Mamoudzou. Four billion people live in Asia. In India alone they speak over eight hundred languages. The Sahara Desert is roughly the size of the United States. There are sand dunes six hundred feet high. It’s said that beyond the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, when the wind dies down, there is no sound of any kind, neither man-made or natural. There is a country snug between India and China called Bhutan, the only country in the world whose king insists that they measure the nation’s Gross National Happiness. I have two first-class tickets anywhere in the world.

I land at JFK in the late afternoon, having lost a day on my twelve-hour flight, with a stop in L.A., and it’s already dark. I want to go home and sleep for a day but I ask the cab to take me to the editorial house in SoHo. The driver clips his fingernails as he drives, speaking one of the eight hundred languages of India on a headset. Five thousand miles away, my father floats in peace, at last. The war is over.