Purple Golf Cart: The Misadventures of a Lesbian Grandma (13 page)

“Berit?” I asked. “What’s he talking about?”

“Mom, you’re gay. Granny says all gay people have AIDS. Do you have AIDS?”

What???? I was shocked! “Of course I don’t have AIDS! Why would you think that?”

“Granny said you do. She said if we touch you or hug you, we’ll get sick and go to the hospital and die.”

“Oh, Berit, that’s just not true! First, I don’t have AIDS. Second, you can’t get it from touching someone with AIDS. I can’t believe Granny told you that!” Yes, I could. The witch was going in for the kill. I could feel it. Berit was 12, the age of consent in Florida back then. She could make a decision to live with me if she wanted to, although that conversation never came up between us. I had no doubt it was grand chatter in Jake’s parents’ house.

“I believe her,” said nine year old Erik so innocently, “and I want to go home now.”

“Home, like back to Orlando, home?”

“Yes.”

“Berit?”

“Me, too, Mom. We don’t want to be here. We’ll get sick.”

I was dumb-founded! Truly, I was beyond understanding what was happening. We drove the two-and-a-half hours back to their house in Orlando. So many things raced through know and not know? I tried to talk with them, but nothing. Just silence. It was all I could do to not cry as I drove.

When we got to their house, the children quickly jumped out of my car. As they walked towards the door to their house Berit stopped and turned around to look at me. She said, “Mom, don’t call us anymore” and ran into her house. Erik also stopped and looked back at me. He said nothing, then ran into the house behind his sister. The door shut. The battle was over. I lost.

I drove around the block, stopped the car, and cried harder than I can ever remember in my life. The end. My body ached. I drove back to Jacksonville, up the coast on A1A, my favorite road. I stopped at the beach to breathe the healing salt air and to watch the waves. I was exhausted from the years of anger, of fighting these hateful people for my children’s love. The ebb and flow of the water calmed me a bit as I tried to figure out what had just taken place. Stuffing it all down inside of myself, I knew I could at least go back to the safety of my home, my boat. I suspected in that moment that I wouldn’t see my children again for a long time.

~~~~~

I named her
Curious Wine
for the Emily Dickinson poem, a fitting name for a dream come true in the midst of the nightmare of rejection by my children. I held my breath as I watched her be lowered into the water, the big arms of the boat lift hoisting her gently from yard to river. Slowly the water parted and soon she was bobbing gently on her own. She came fully furnished in every room. All I added were the outdoor chairs and tables and flower pots, and the barbeque grill on which I cooked nearly every day.  Beautiful red portulaca plants hung all around the front and back patio roof.

I moved aboard the day she went into the water. The Lighthouse Marina was situated on the Ortega River in Jacksonville, in the redneck-laden west side of town, although the marina itself was a little bit of yuppie heaven. I could barely breathe, knowing that I finally owned my own home, my beloved
Curious Wine
. Jeff, the owner of Lighthouse Marina, told me to spend a couple of days getting used to her and then we’d take the first cruise down the Ortega. That day I moved my clothes and kitchen items aboard, and stocked the fridge and pantry. I sat in each room, looking at the floors, the walls, the ceiling, feeling the essence of myself in the moment on my very own boat. That first evening, after dinner and alone by choice, I sat on the front deck, opened a bottle of wine, and toasted my good fortune in the midst of my heartache. I went to bed and slept peacefully on the water.

I awoke at sunrise as I always do. The circadian rhythm of my body is tied to daylight—up when the sun rises, down when it’s dark. I poured a cup of coffee, my first on board. In my sweatpants and work shirt and with my coffee mug in hand, I went out onto the deck to greet my first boat-morning. Whooop!!! I landed hard on my butt, coffee flying! I slipped on something that looked like raisins, hundreds of them, all over the deck.

“What ARE all these little black things?” I asked the guy who lived on the boat next to me, and who jumped aboard my boat to help when I went down with a giant thud and a yell.

“River rats, “ he said evenly. “Welcome to the Lighthouse Marina.”

“S’cuze me?” Did I hear him correctly?

“River rats. They live all around here but we don’t hardly ever see ‘em.” He had a drawl. “Just the gifts they leave behind for us.”

“Shit!” Literally! I was dumbfounded and not at all happy. I did NOT want river rats—or their gifts—on my boat.

“What should I do?” Incredulously, I was feeling violated by those rodents.

“Cat.”

“What?”

“Get a cat. That’s the only thing I can think of that might work,” he suggested, half smiling.

I am not a cat person. I’ve had dogs my whole life, except not right now. I know nothing about cats nor about being a cat owner, but I was willing to do whatever it took.

It was Saturday. No work today. I showered and dressed and took myself to the Jacksonville County Pound out on Beach Boulevard.

“Hi,” I walked into the reception room. “I need a cat.”

“Perfect timing,” said the young woman as she got up from her desk. “We had a momma and eight kittens dropped off just yesterday. The kittens are adorable and old enough to be adopted out.”

“I don’t know. I never had a cat. I think I need an adult.” I explained about the river rats.

“Let’s walk through the shelter and see if any of our cats catch your attention.”

So many cats. I stood before every cage, seriously considering each one. Orange cats, white cats, noisy cats, sleepy cats, and one obnoxious black cat who seemed perfectly aloof. Black with white paws. He watched me with one eye, ignored me with the other. I stopped at his cage. I’m sure his face said, “Big friggin’ deal, lady.” I moved on, then came back, moved on, came back. He hated me.             

“Okay, pal, “ I said right in his face. “I need a working cat. I’ll provide room and board, no questions asked. All you have to do is keep the river rats off my boat.” I swear I saw his eye twinkle for a split second when I mentioned river rats.

“I’ll take this big boy.”

“Great!” The woman suddenly seemed a bit too cheerful. “His name is Farley.”

Farley came home with me. He took to the boat like a true pirate. In fact, I was convinced he must have been a boat cat in one of his previous lives because he knew exactly what needed to be done and I never had raisins on my deck again. Farley and I kept our agreement with one another as we adjusted to life on the
Curious Wine
.

~~~~~

Farley hated it when the engine cranked. He’d jump off the boat and make a bee-line for some derelict vessel in the marina. I discovered that I needed to toss him into a bedroom and shut the door prior to turning the ignition key. Once away from the dock, I could let him out. He never attempted to jump to shore. Ever. He hated the water more than he hated the sound of the engine.

The first ride was the shakedown, the inaugural cruise of the
Curious Wine
. Jeff, the Marina owner, started the engine. My girlfriend Miley was with us. Farley was safely in a bedroom, hollering at the top of his furry little lungs. Jeff moved us slowly away from the dock then guided us down the Ortega and into the St. Johns.

The Ortega River is narrow, maybe two miles long, lined with statuesque antebellum homes on either side. One of the oldest draw bridges in the U.S. still crosses the river at about mid-way. The St. John’s River opens up dramatically around the last bend in the Ortega. The Jacksonville skyline and bridges are easily visible to the left, to port, while the long Buckman Bridge and the Naval Air Station (NAS), loom large to the right, to starboard. At the point where the Ortega flows into the St. Johns, the St. Johns is very wide, several miles perhaps, and often has small waves and whitecaps when the wind blows. Today, though, the water was smooth as glass.

Jeff had me practice piloting my boat. It was a bit tricky because the drive station was inside the cabin, causing severely limited visibility on either side and none to the rear. The long flat 43-foot sides of the boat acted almost like sails when the wind picked up. The 115 horse-power Mercury engine was way too small for such a large boat. She was slow as molasses and awkward to maneuver. Top speed was about 7 knots, or 8 mph, if we were lucky enough to have a tail-wind. The boat sometimes moved on an angle—crabbing is what airplane pilots call it—but I didn’t care. The joy of the boat for me was simply being on it. I didn’t need to go anywhere to enjoy my life on the
Curious Wine
.

As we returned to the dock from the shake down cruise, Jeff had me practice parking, or rather, docking the thing. It was much easier, I decided, to simply throw a line to someone standing on the dock and have them pull me in rather than to try to actually maneuver such a big boat with such a small single engine. I quickly became an accurate line-tosser.

I read an article about how glorious night boating could be, so the next trip after the shakedown was an evening cruise to downtown Jacksonville for dinner at the Charthouse. I invited Miley and several of our friends to come along. The weather was perfect, the moon was full, and there was little other boat traffic on the water. Even the docking was easy both at the Charthouse Restaurant and back at the Lighthouse Marina. A perfect evening which served to bolster my confidence about my skills as a skipper.

Several weeks later Miley moved aboard the
Curious Wine
with me. She was about 12 years younger than I, spunky as all get-out, and just plain fun. She had a variety of jobs during the time we were together—an apprentice in a printing company, a director of sorts for a satellite Planned Parenthood clinic, an exterminator, a time-share hawker, a pizza delivery person. Through it all, she was also first mate on my boat, which meant that when the engine blades got tied up in crab trap lines, Miley was the one who jumped into the water, knife in mouth Errol Flynn style, and cut the line to free us. Such a gallante swashbuckling little dyke!

For as outrageous as Miley was at times, her mother was truly wacky. Miley’s mother had a desire to make more money than she was paid in her various places of employment, usually dentists’ offices, so she helped herself to some of the dentists’ insurance money on a fairly regular basis. Of course she got caught—repeatedly, and sent to Lowell, Florida’s women’s prison near Ocala. Each time she went “up the river” we ended up with her poodle, Fluffy. For now, Fluffy was at home with Miley's mom.

~~~~~

Feeling confident of my new skippering skills, Miley and I went onto the St. Johns River for a long weekend cruise. Out of the Ortega, we turned right on the St. Johns and headed south towards the Buckman Bridge. Just after going under the Buckman I accidently ran over a Styrofoam ball. The ball, it turned out, was attached to a crab trap that sat on the river floor and captured unsuspecting crabs who entered the trap for the dead chicken bait. Yuck! The rope that tethered the crab trap to that particular Styrofoam ball was tightly wrapped around my engine’s propeller. Since I was the skipper and Miley was the mate, she jumped into the river with the knife to free the propeller. We learned later that messing with someone’s crab trap even in dire straits was illegal.

Once free from the crab trap rope, we continued on down the river which was absolutely glorious. Everything was perfect. Through Orange Park, past Green Cove Springs, we approached Palatka late in the day. The water was like glass as the sun set. We found a spot in the river near where the cranes and egrets were searching the tall river grasses for food. We threw anchor and settled in for a lovely evening and night. The sounds, the full moon, and the very gentle rocking of the water made for a setting truly created only by God.

Just as the sun was rising the next morning, we were abruptly awakened by a loud horn and a megaphone. “Hey! Ahoy! You on the houseboat!”

What???? Holy crap! A barge was coming around the bend to the north of us! Coming right at us! I scrambled to get the engine started as Miley pulled the anchor. We had to get out of the way of that floating flatbed fast! Whew! Made it just in time! As they passed us, the captain from the tug hollered into his bullhorn.

“Hey! Are you crazy? You’re anchored in the Florida Barge Canal! You could have been rammed!” The Florida Barge Canal? Who knew? “We tried to hail you on the radio. No response.”

Huh? Radio? I didn’t have a radio! Didn’t know I needed one! I’d been taking classes for the Captain’s exam but we apparently hadn’t gotten to the chapters on barges and radios yet.

We were spared a horrible accident but I must have shocked the engine because it was now deader than a door-nail. There was a small fishing boat nearby so we hailed it for assistance. As it got closer we saw that it carried two young men who were seriously drunk. At 7:00 AM. They boarded my boat and tried to grab us. Miley shoved one of the guys overboard as I grabbed a kitchen knife and threatened the second guy. He jumped. Once they were back into their little boat, they left quickly. That was fine but we were still stalled. I threw anchor so that we didn’t float back over into the barge canal. What a morning! Anything else?

Our engine was still dead. We could see another small boat off in the distance, a lone person checking crab traps. I waved the orange emergency flag in the boater’s direction. It worked and soon a weather-beaten old woman with a dirty fishing vest and a frayed straw hat boarded the
Curious Wine
. She expertly assessed the situation. We were out of gas.