“This is the ice cream line, lady. Pizza is on Deck Five,” shouted an agitated guy swiping neon zinc on his nose in a crooked stripe.
“Not so,” said an elderly woman wielding a cane and a sun umbrella. “This is my seventeenth Paradise International cruise.” She paused to point to a shiny gold pin in the shape of an anchor attached to her flowered sundress. “This means Anchor Society. Technically, I have access to a different ice cream machine with a shorter line on a different level. But I didn’t want to miss the sail-away party. Anyway, the pizzeria is always on Deck Five. In between Shoe Plus Plus and the jewelry store.”
Darius felt a pit forming in his stomach. He wouldn’t have thought a boat would have stores beyond a vending machine where you could buy shampoo and a toothbrush. Would his mother dare go there in front of the whole family? Maybe this could be a good thing. Surely one of his grandparents or his dad would take notice of his mom’s behavior, assuming she was willing to risk hitting the shops hard in front of them. That would take the pressure off of him to do something. Rachel had already shed him like a bad habit, barely nodding her head in agreement when he’d suggested they meet at the party. And now she was nowhere to be found. In fact, Darius hadn’t seen a single family member at the party. He decided to walk around a little, sick of roasting in the sun, wanting someone to talk to even if it was one of his parents. He gave his ice cream cone a big lick. It didn’t compare to the mint chocolate chip at Sundaze, the shop where Marcy worked. He’d blown a good chunk of his lifeguard earnings on scoops.
He came upon Grandma Annette sitting in a shaded area, staring toward the water. DJ Mast-a-mind was announcing that everyone should start counting down from ten because the boat was ready to depart. Passengers crowded along the deck’s railing to wave good-bye to the shore, even though all that was visible from the boat was the string of desolate industrial buildings surrounding the port. Grandma Annette didn’t budge. It seemed like she couldn’t even hear the DJ, even though his voice boomed through a speaker directly over her head. Darius moved in her direction and sat down on the chaise next to her.
“Hi, Grandma. Do you want to go over to the balcony with me?” Darius asked. Though she smiled at him, her eyes looked teary. Darius chewed nervously on the paper wrapping his ice cream cone. There was something so terrifying about seeing a grown-up cry.
“Are you okay? What’s wrong?” He’d heard his mom and grandma snipe at each other at the safety demo, but that didn’t seem like anything out of the ordinary.
“Of course I’m fine, sweetheart. It’s just old age. Loosens the tear ducts.” His grandma chuckled and he joined in too. He was pretty sure she wasn’t being literal. “Help me up. Let’s go wave to these buildings and get on with it.”
He extended a hand and she took it and together they walked with arms linked toward the balcony. At “one,” a foghorn sounded and confetti rained on them, little threads of silver and gold attaching to his swirl of vanilla and chocolate. He tried not to see it as a sign of things to come for the rest of the trip.
FOURTEEN
Elise woke up to the first full day on the boat with a pounding headache. She reached her arm across the bed and felt the empty space beside her. Briefly she wondered where Mitch had gone until she spied a note propped up on the night table that read: “Went to gym. Meet at breakfast at 9 at Skipper’s?”
She pressed her thumbs into her temples, as though she could massage the molecules of her hangover into a more diffuse form. The last time she’d had that many margaritas was in college and she’d spent the entire next day doing a repetitive loop from her bed to the communal toilet. She’d had no intention of getting drunk last night—in front of her kids, no less—but when she’d arrived at the reserved family table at the fiesta she’d had to face Natasha propped on Freddy’s lap, feeding him chips and guacamole. The two of them were as carefree as ever, as if thousands of passengers hadn’t been delayed from starting their vacation because of them.
To be fair, she was already aggravated before she made it to the Feldman table. From the moment she entered the dining room, Elise was overwhelmed by a sea of heads stretching in every direction. It was impossible to flag down a maître d’, and her heels, a strappy pair that cost the same as four sessions with Darius’s SAT tutor, were already blistering her heels. She couldn’t remember feeling less special or, to put it in the words of the ship’s brochure, less “pampered, catered to, and indulged.” Even when Elise squinted she couldn’t see the end of either side of the room, which was filled with hundreds of round and rectangular tables.
“Excuse me, do you know how we find our table?” Elise asked a woman who looked about her age dressed in a floral jumpsuit and wearing way too much eye shadow. “I thought there would be a host or at least some signage.”
“You a virgin, hon?” the woman asked in a thick Southern drawl.
“Pardon?” Elise said, nearly stumbling backward.
“A cruise virgin, darlin’. Didn’t mean to startle you. I lost my V-card on a cruise to the Bahamas fifteen years ago and never looked back. Best way to travel. Anyway, I see my gang back there. Just push on through and you’ll find your folks eventually.”
Can’t wait, Elise thought uncharitably. She had seen in the ship’s brochure that there was an option for dining as a family or for random assignment, and at this moment she couldn’t decide what she’d have preferred, eating with the Feldmans or rolling the dice with strangers.
Waiters continued to float through the room with military precision, radiating as much emotion as Buckingham Palace guards, and finally Elise spotted a hostess with a megaphone directing traffic. How she would have loved to grab that megaphone and point out Freddy. “This is the guy who didn’t think it was important to show up to the safety demo,” she would say. “This guy kept you from your cocktails!” She imagined a storm of tomatoes flying in his direction.
When she was finally led to the Feldman table, her parents and children weren’t there yet, so it was just her, hovering while Freddy and Natasha played Tostito toss. Fortunately she quickly spotted Mitch, chatting animatedly with a family one table over. He’d left their cabin earlier to catch the tail end of American History trivia and she could see him thrusting his score sheet hotly, debating answers with another middle-aged man boasting the telltale dad bod. When Mitch noticed she’d arrived, he bid the other table good-bye and sat down next to Freddy—well, technically Freddy and Natasha, since she was presently stapled to his thighs as though he were Santa Claus. Mitch looked totally at ease with the arrangement, sipping his martini and telling Freddy and Natasha about an Abraham Lincoln question that had really stumped him. Elise didn’t know why he was bothering with those two. She knew her husband couldn’t possibly have missed it when Natasha botched a metaphor earlier. Complaining about the server at the lunch buffet counting how many cucumber slices she took, Natasha said, He was watching me like I’m a hawk. Mitch, passionate linguist and smug grammarian that he was, drank his coffee from a mug that said: Let’s Eat Grandpa! Let’s Eat, Grandpa! Punctuation Saves Lives. Elise flagged down the nearest waiter and ordered the specialty margarita, the Prickly Pear. Nothing could suit her mood more.
“So, Freddy, I hadn’t realized you’d lost your hearing,” she said when she caught her brother’s eye. “Have you seen a doctor about getting a listening device?” She seized her drink by the stem and took a delicate sip, attempting to appear relaxed.
“What are you talking about?” Freddy asked. Natasha looked uncomfortable and Elise had to give her credit for picking up on where she was going before her brother did.
“Um, I was just curious because three thousand other people heard the siren go off telling everyone to attend the safety demonstration, but sadly you seemed to have been the only one who missed it. Which is why I’m concerned about your hearing.” Elise saw Mitch shoot her a warning glance, but she chose to ignore it. Why would her husban
d try to silence her just to avoid conflict with Freddy and a virtual stranger? Honestly, she couldn’t figure Mitch out lately, his head seemed so fixed in the clouds. Whenever he had that far-off look, it usually meant there was some big story brewing at the Bee that he wasn’t ready to tell her about. She steeled herself for another series of weeks on end where he’d be living at the office.
“Elise,” Mitch said, this time making it impossible for her to ignore him.
“I heard you,” she hissed, redirecting her attention to Freddy. She noted with pleasure that Natasha had slid off his lap and returned to her own seat. It felt good to make someone sweat.
“We didn’t hear it,” Natasha said earnestly. “The loudspeaker in our room is broken.”
“You only have one?” Mitch asked. “I would have thought with your luxury suite there would be at least two.” Elise was pleased to finally witness some cojones from Mitch (it was fiesta night, after all), but when she made eye contact with him, he seemed to be gently teasing them and not upset at all.
“Sorry we’re late,” Annette interrupted, sidling up to the table with, of all people, Darius. Elise was surprised to see her son and mother palling around the boat together. It was hard to imagine what they could possibly be discussing other than their common enemy, which had to be her.
“We ran into each other at the sail-away party and ended up walking around the ship together. Did you know the boat has a rock wall and a bumper car track?” Annette said.
“Hi, Uncle Freddy,” Darius said enthusiastically, choosing a seat opposite him. “Glad you’re okay.”
Elise inhaled sharply through her nose, trying to contain the boil inside her. Dr. Margaret said breathing exercises could be very effective. Of course, she was instructing Elise on how to relax her body when she felt the urge to shop coming on, but surely these same principles could be applied to maintaining self-control with her family. Trying as she did to draw more oxygen to her lungs, she still felt herself wondering: Could it really be she was the only one still upset about Freddy’s absence? Everyone else had apparently moved on, scooping chip after chip into the blood-red salsa and marveling at the Mexican lanterns strung from the ceiling. Elise pulled another deep breath into her body, imagining that the air inflating her organs was helium instead of oxygen so she could drift away.
“Hi, Mom. Hi, Darius. Freddy and I were just discussing why he and Natasha were MIA before,” Elise said.
“Their loudspeaker is broken,” came Rachel’s voice from behind, approaching their table with David at her side. Elise said a silent prayer that it wasn’t another alliance forming. It was true she had Mitch if she needed a partner with whom to commiserate on the boat, but he seemed so distracted—or at least not attuned enough to pick up on the hundreds of tiny insults that were scattering like shards of broken glass.
Rachel was wearing a ruffled miniskirt in blue, a white tank top, and a cowboy hat. It didn’t exactly scream Mexican, but considering Elise hadn’t bothered to change out of her madras shorts and polo shirt, she was in no position to judge creativity.
“And how do you know that?” Elise asked, aghast when she observed that Rachel was standing a good four inches taller than usual. Normally they were neck and neck—Annette too—the three Feldman women stacking up at five foot three each, like dominoes. Elise looked down to assess the footwear that brought Rachel up to this newfound height: a ridiculous pair of black stilettos, rhinestoned things coiling around her ankles that looked more dominatrix than Stanford sophomore. Certainly Annette would notice and wonder why Elise let her dress like that—as if she had that kind of control over Rachel. Elise prepared herself for a little dig.
“Because he told me,” Rachel said, apparently satisfied with Freddy’s excuse. “I went to his room to thank him for the gift cards.”
Elise’s daughter plopped down in the open seat next to Natasha and complimented her dress, a blue halter that looked like it had been spray-painted on her body. Despite Elise’s tendency to buy just about anything of late (the two-hundred-foot expanding garden hose she’d picked up at Lowe’s came to mind for some reason), even she wouldn’t have parted with a dime for Rachel’s cheap shoes or Natasha’s trashy dress. Standing out in contrast to these two was Annette, who looked perfect as usual in a navy shift dress and cream cardigan draped over her shoulders. In a subtle nod to the evening’s theme, she had put a single pink carnation in her hair. Elise pettily resisted the urge to issue a compliment.
“Thanks, honey,” Natasha said to Rachel. “I love that color of nail polish you’re wearing.” Rachel beamed and within seconds the two girls, who couldn’t be that far apart in age, were whispering to each other about the virtues of shellac manicures. Elise cringed reflexively.
“I guess this seat is for me,” Elise said, noticing that all the other seats had already been occupied while she was brooding. She was in between her parents and across from Freddy, Natasha, and Rachel. Mitch and Darius were at the other end of the table, her husband studying the menu and her son staring off into space. When she saw her son glassy-eyed and unfocused it reminded her of no one so much as Freddy, and with her brother and son seated at the same table, it was impossible to avoid seeing the resemblance.
As if he could read her mind, Freddy addressed his nephew.
“What are you going to get, D-money?”
Darius smiled, oddly unfazed by being nicknamed within hours of a reunion with his estranged uncle. Freddy had that effect on people. They immediately felt close to him, like they shared history and inside jokes. He’d tease people and they’d immediately feel like they were in Freddy’s inner circle, where gentle ribbing was the norm. She had the opposite effect, holding people at bay, from the mothers at her children’s school when they were growing up to the sweet woman who had come to clean their house every Monday for the past twenty years. When Elise tried a little joshing, the other person’s face would indicate just how ineffective she was at adjusting her tone correctly. “I was kidding,” she’d all too often have to tack on.
Elise knew she wasn’t just being her own worst critic. One of her medical school professors, during a third-year rotation in gastroenterology, had suggested she might want to focus on radiation. “Less patient facing,” the professor had said, as though it was obvious to the both of them that this was a problem of hers. The only people she’d managed the most comfortable relationships with—other than her husband, whose conversational skills and relaxed demeanor more than made up for her deficits—were salespeople. The transactions were blissfully straightforward: Would you like another size? Credit card or cash? Elise knew when she chose to buy something, especially when she filled an entire cart, she was making the clerk happy, saying and doing all the right things. Salespeople never rolled their eyes like her kids or made her doubt herself like her parents. Even her friends made Elise tentative—their plastic smiles gave nothing away. Mitch was wonderful, but she couldn’t very well follow him to the office each day like her mother followed her father. That kind of symbiotic relationship wasn’t for her. She and Mitch had a solid marriage, but they had their own lives. In fact, it was a testament to how much independence they had that her husband had no idea the way she’d gotten their family up a creek without a paddle, how she swiped her credit card nearly as often as she blinked.
All of a sudden she felt her mother’s elbow dig into her side. Elise looked up and saw Annette had taken a spoon and was clanking it against a wineglass, oblivious to the fact that each time she made contact with the glass, her elbow collided with Elise’s rib cage.
“I’d just like to make a toast and say how happy I am that we’re all together for the week. It’s not often that we—”
But she couldn’t finish. A four-piece mariachi band, wielding guitars and clad in glitzy black-and-gold outfits and matching sombreros, had strolled into the dining room and set up shop right next to their table. Once the first chord was
plucked, Annette’s toast was drowned out.
It was just as well, thought Elise. She didn’t have much interest in hearing a saccharine toast, a nod to all things Elise was dreading. She reached for the pitcher of margaritas, filling and refilling her cup like it was an empty shopping cart at Target. And that was what led her to wake up the next morning with a bowling ball in her skull, still feeling blinded by the blingy embroidery on the entertainers’ vests. Had it been a dream, or was there a giant piñata unveiled at the night’s end that had forced her to duck and cover?
Elise dragged herself out of bed and traversed the three small steps it required to reach the shower. If she needed to shave, Elise could actually prop her foot up on the bed from the shower stall if she left the door open. That image wasn’t in the brochure. Neither was the interior of the closet, which had barely enough room for an American Girl to unpack. Rachel had loved those overpriced dolls when she was little, begging for Elise to join her on the floor to hash out all sorts of made-up scenarios: school, dance recital, new baby. Elise was a left brain and she recalled these pretend play sessions as pure torture. Now she would stand on her head if it meant spending time with her daughter.
Freshly scrubbed and dressed, and feeling a bit better, Elise set out to meet Mitch at the breakfast buffet. Skipper’s was located on Deck Ten and was the largest buffet available on the ship. Darius had shown her a YouTube video of a similar meal on a rival cruise ship. Danishes, doughnuts, and fruits were piled to the high heavens, but still people were jockeying for position, balancing multiple plates on their arms like waiters. “I think they’re trying to get to an omelet station,” Darius had said, the two of them bent over his laptop in a rare moment of camaraderie a few days before embarkation. “This has to be staged,” Elise had protested, but Darius claimed the video was authentic. It had more than one million views. Now she had the chance to see for herself if it was theater or reality.
The Floating Feldmans Page 14
