It was Death Day when Mitch made up his mind about leaving the newspaper.
Every Wednesday at the Bee, the reporters tackled writing obituaries for people who were still alive, healthy mortals who were drinking their morning coffee and paying their bills while simultaneously a journalist they’d never met sat summarizing their accomplishments in approximately four hundred words. This was standard practice for newspapers. Unlike other events the reporters covered, gas explosions and weather events and political scandals, the obits were predictable pieces of reporting. It was a fact that everyone would eventually die, so in the newspaper world, it paid to be prepared. Sundays and Mondays were devoted to breaking news and features; Tuesdays were for follow-ups and analysis. Thursdays and Fridays were spent covering the local weekend events, mostly cultural activities. So Wednesdays were for the deaths. In his career, Mitch had edited hundreds of obituaries, so he was an expert at distilling a life into bullet points. It was only natural for him to imagine his own obituary, even down to the adjectives that would be chosen.
Sacramento—Mitchell Joseph Connelly, 99, died peacefully at home surrounded by his family on Tuesday. (He figured he might as well be optimistic about his longevity.) He leaves behind a wife of 70 years, Elise Feldman Connelly, two children, Rachel and Darius, and six grandchildren (why not?). Mr. Connelly, a graduate of Notre Dame University and the Columbia University School of Journalism, spent his entire career at the Sacramento Bee, starting out as a sports reporter, then running the metro desk, and finally retiring as its long-standing managing editor. His contributions to the paper included expanding its arts coverage and adding a late edition on Sundays. He, along with a group of his colleagues, was the recipient of the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for an in-depth analysis of the effects of gerrymandering in local elections. An avid football fan, Mr. Connelly spent his time out of the office cheering on his beloved 49ers. He was a long-standing Little League coach and worked at the local soup kitchen once a month. Friends and family gathered to say farewell to Mr. Connelly at St. Luke’s Church in Modesto Thursday morning.
On Death Day each week, while Mitch edited the obituaries of legendary opera singers who’d lit up the stage at the San Francisco Opera, Caltech scientists who’d discovered cures for rare diseases, Stanford professors remembered for influencing thousands of young minds, he couldn’t help feeling that he—Mitchell Connelly, age 47, newspaperman—had yet to leave his mark. It was too late to go back to school, that much he knew. But the literary magazine fit squarely within his wheelhouse. And it would mean he’d created something where nothing was before, not just carried a well-lit torch responsibly from predecessor to successor. Readers would type in a web address that was entirely new, read fresh content with a unique bent, and their lips would form smiles strictly because of him.
And so he was pumped when he stepped onto the ship’s gangway, even with his wife a stress case, his children utterly disengaged, and his in-laws on edge. Mitch felt like the dock was a portal into his new life and that when he came back to shore, great things lay ahead for him. He just needed to get over the hurdle of sharing his news with Elise. He mentally affirmed his plan to drop the bomb at the formal dinner—Elise had once said she couldn’t resist him in a tux. And with her family around, she couldn’t really throw a hissy fit. By the time they were alone again—many hours and glasses of champagne later—the initial shock would have dissipated and whatever tirade she’d been practicing in her head would hopefully be reduced to a slurred lecture.
He walked a few paces behind Elise as she made her way to their room. He felt a little nervous to engage with her at the moment. Since Freddy had announced he was staying in a suite, his wife had looked like she could spontaneously erupt, as though her body had been a dormant volcano all along. Mitch was happy for his brother-in-law. He had probably sprung for the suite to impress Natasha, who was clearly under some kind of delusion as to Freddy’s situation. Or maybe he could afford it, which would mean he’d finally landed on his feet. That should please Elise, but that was not the vibe he was picking up from her. In fact, it seemed as though Freddy’s larger room had the power to shrink theirs, as though size was purely a comparative thing. If he was honest, Elise hadn’t seemed like herself in quite some time. It was another reason he wanted to tell her about his career decision on the boat. He hoped she would be relaxed, that her shoulders would drop from their perpetual hike, and that they would have sex that felt a little bit less assembly line. He wished women were less complicated, like men. Elise could drop just about any bomb on him after he had an orgasm and he’d just smile and say “no problem.”
After Freddy and Natasha had left for the VIP check-in station (were those appletinis he saw being handed to them?), Elise had stalked off with an overloaded bag in the crook of her arm and moved wordlessly onto the ship, not even pausing to comment on the majesty of the boat’s interior. He was speechless himself from the grandeur, so the two of them stood in the dazzling foyer not exchanging a word while his eyes squinted at a crystal chandelier that had to weigh three tons and hung the length of four stories on a red velvet rope. Around him, there was food, glorious food: patisseries, boulangeries, a pizzeria, and a stand just for egg rolls. It was a food court on steroids, reminiscent of being at Epcot with the kids when they were younger. Except here everything was free—well, not quite free but all-inclusive—and he wasn’t the one footing the bill.
Mitch’s stomach rumbled and he was tempted to make a stop at Fifty Knots, where New York–style pretzels rolled in dozens of different toppings hung in unlocked glass cases for the taking. But Elise was on a mission, and that mission seemed to be getting to their cabin as fast as possible. He dreaded hearing what she’d say the minute the door closed behind them. At least she couldn’t rant for long. They were all due on Deck Two in an hour for a safety demonstration. Mitch didn’t remember any of the Love Boat passengers being forced to listen to instructions on how to put on a life jacket just after boarding, but he supposed that was hardly the only unrealistic thing about the show. For starters, the overall attractiveness of the crew and passengers was way—and he meant way—overrated.
Finally they reached their room, which felt like a good half-mile walk from the elevators. The cruise was going to be amazing for his step count, Mitch thought, tapping at his wristband pedometer. “You know your phone counts your steps too,” Rachel had told him in a snooty voice within minutes of her return home from campus in June. “I don’t always walk around with it like you do,” he’d retorted, but she didn’t seem to grasp the dig. He saw Elise bend over to slide her key card into the metal plate. She’d bizarrely decided to purchase a hideous lanyard to house her ID—the card they would need to access their room, pay for any extras on board, and gain admission to the shows. Actually, she’d bought three of them as soon as they’d reached the ship’s first convenience shop, cracking a joke about needing options to match her various outfits. There was nothing particularly sexy about a Paradise International family-oriented cruise, but Mitch didn’t think they needed to wear ID passes around their necks like they were touring NASA.
“Can you hold the door for—” Mitch called out as he awkwardly wheeled two pieces of carry-on luggage. He had one in front of him and the other trailing behind because the hallways were too narrow for him to roll them at his sides. The preboarding email from Paradise International had said their checked luggage might not get to their rooms until after dinnertime so they should prepare hand luggage with whatever essentials were needed for the first day. Suggestions included a bathing suit, suntan lotion, and a sombrero. The first night’s dinner had a Mexican theme. Mitch had patted himself on the back for having the best attitude in the Connelly household about the cruise, but he drew the line at costumes. He couldn’t imagine what Elise had stuffed into her carry-on, which was busting at the seams. Probably the Fiske Guide to Colleges, the massive tome that Elise had dog-eared and sticky-noted the hell out of.
He heard the door slam shut before he got the rest of his sentence out. What had he done wrong? Should he have pretended to care more about Freddy’s upgrade? Should he have gotten in the middle of the swipes that Annette and Elise were taking at each other? To what end? Nothing was going to change in the long run. Mother and daughter would still bicker; sister and brother would still resent each other. He was a reporter, not a psychologist, and this was supposed to be a vacation, not a family therapy session. When he got to the room he fumbled for the key card in his wallet, spilling out a few folded bills and a handful of business cards. What he could have used was a lanyard.
“This is positively lilliputian,” Elise said when he finally entered. She was standing by the foot of the bed and, in her defense, if she stretched out her arms she could reach the window, the closet, the desk, the bathroom, and the front door. As if reading his mind, Elise extended her limbs to drive the point home, looking like she was playing Twister. “Wonder what Freddy’s palace looks like.”
“Our room isn’t huge,” Mitch agreed, silently congratulating himself for finding a woman who used words like “lilliputian” (and “herculean” and “philistine”) in casual conversation. “But I don’t think we’ll be spending much time in it. Except at night. And then it’ll be good that it’s small.” He winked at Elise, but she seemed to thoroughly miss the overture. Now Mitch was hating Freddy too, spoiling the mood with his braggadocio.
“Right. We have to go to that stupid emergency thing now anyway. Apparently they check you in and won’t start the demonstration until everyone is there. Feels like the teacher is taking attendance.”
Mitch rubbed the back of Elise’s shoulders gently, trying subtly to push them down.
“We’ll get it over with, then start having fun. Let’s go to the casino after for a little bit. When’s the last time we gambled?”
Mitch saw his wife’s face light up momentarily but fade to black quickly when a loud buzzer sounded loudly in their cabin, three short but forceful blasts that could wake the dead.
“Good afternoon, passengers aboard the Ocean Queen. This is your cruise director, Julian, speaking. Please proceed now to the safety presentation so we can set sail and start the good times.”
“I’m sure that alarm won’t get annoying,” Elise said, rolling her eyes in the same way Rachel was prone to do. But then she reached for his hand and smiled. “C’mon, let’s go find out where the emergency exits are. You never know when we might need to jump off this thing.”
“Ha,” he said. “Let’s try to stay optimistic.”
“Fine,” Elise said, tugging him down the hallway. “Let’s discuss something more interesting than what to do if our ship hits an iceberg. How old could Natasha possibly be? I put the over-under at twenty-eight.”
Mitch chuckled quietly. He couldn’t believe it had taken his wife this long to bring it up. He wanted to put his money on under, but for the sake of his wife’s sanity, he decided to go with over.
“Will Frederick Feldman and Natasha Kuznetsov please report to the Sunset Lounge on Deck Two? I repeat, will passengers Frederick Feldman and Natasha Kuznetsov please report to the Sunset Lounge on Deck Two for the mandatory safety training? The ship cannot set sail until every passenger is accounted for.”
The loudest collective groan imaginable sounded. The two missing passengers were the only thing keeping three thousand antsy people from their drinks, the pool, the casino, and, most tragically, the free food. So far, everyone had been gathered for fifteen minutes waiting, but it seemed more like an hour with so many options available the minute the boat left shore. For his part, Mitch was planning to hit the slots. He’d read that the games were rigged to make winners on the first day in order to entice people to return to the casino, where they’d give back their winnings and then some. Well—he wouldn’t be fooled by that! Not everyone had spent as much time as he had on CruisingCentral.net, a blog run by some of the most enthusiastic cruisers imaginable.
He felt his stomach twisting into knots. Freddy wasn’t his brother, but it was hard not to feel responsible when it was his party that was keeping the boat docked in the aptly named Dodge Island, a seedy cruise terminal adjacent to Miami. He looked over at his wife and kids. Rachel and Darius seemed to be the only two people delighted by the delay, their uncle’s absence being the reason they could squeeze in extra time on their devices. But Elise. She looked like she could murder someone, her teeth bristling like sandpaper as they ground and her knee shaking violently. Annette had slipped sunglasses on, to avoid having to make eye contact with anyone. And his father-in-law? David Feldman rose from his folding chair with a fierceness that alarmed him.
“That’s it,” David roared. “I’m going up to drag his ass down here. The least he could do is show up for the goddamn safety presentation. I’m going to wring that no-goodnik’s neck but good.”
“David, David,” Annette hissed, gently reaching for her husband’s arm to guide him back to his seat. Mitch was surprised when she didn’t give him a more powerful yank. His mother-in-law hated any kind of scene.
“Grandpa, sit down,” Rachel yelped, looking up from her phone. “Let the boat people deal with this.” His daughter looked painfully embarrassed and Mitch found himself delighting in the fact that neither he nor Elise was the cause of her mortification for once.
“No, he should go get him,” the man next to Mitch said. He was a rather large fellow, dressed in a Jimmy Buffett shirt and cargo shorts, with a dense thicket of arm hair. When Mitch looked down, he saw that his feet were clad in Tevas strapped over socks, which made him a hell of a lot less intimidating. “I could be in the Jacuzzi with a beer right now,” the man said squarely in David’s face.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” came a voice from the podium. “Welcome aboard the Ocean Queen. I apologize that your trip is starting with this inconvenience. Let me introduce myself. I am Julian Masterino, your humble cruise director.”
Mitch looked toward the stage, where a strikingly handsome, perfectly tanned man dressed in a full sailor suit stood. His black hair was gelled to withstand whatever ocean breezes came its way. Mitch had never thought much about what a cruise director would look like, but it wasn’t quite this.
“I was waiting to show you my good-looking face and let you hear my charming accent—that’s Brooklyn, New York, that I’m covering with a faux British inflection for those of you who couldn’t tell—at tonight’s fiesta, but given the situation, I figured I better come out of hiding. We’ve dispatched crew members to locate Mr. Feldman and Ms. Kuznetsov and in the meantime we’ve decided to go ahead and start the briefing without them. If the boat crashes, they are on their own unless one of you is kind enough to show them where we store the life buoys.”
The room devolved in stitches and even Annette and Elise smiled. David, however, still looked grim, like he was ready to strangle the next person who crossed his path, which, considering his prolonged absence, was unlikely to be Freddy.
“And now, lucky cruisers, please direct your attention to the closest screen, where you will see a four-minute video on what to do if this boat goes Titanic on us. I promise it’s entertaining. De Niro directed.”
An animated film started and Mitch shut his eyes, trying to imagine how in the world his brother-in-law could manage to get away with acting like an unruly child. All Mitch felt when he woke up in the morning was the weight of his responsibilities, bearing down on him like a heavy barbell on his chest. He looked into the faces of his children and saw a running tally of how much they cost him. When he opened the chipped pantry doors to take out his coffee grinds each morning, he thought about how many thousands a desperately needed kitchen renovation would cost. Sitting at his desk at work, he worried how his pension was faring with the volatile stock market of late. But Freddy, forty-eight-year-old man that he was, was getting away with skipping a mandatory safety briefing with no consequences. What was this cruise director going to do to him? Ban him from the craps table? Quite unlikely. It was exactly a bozo like Freddy the cruise companies wanted in their casinos, ordering drinks at the bar and piling far too many chips on the pass line.
“Let’s go,” Elise said to him. Mitch hadn’t even noticed the film had ended. “I desperately need a drink.”
“Elise, did I hear you say you’re going for a drink?” Annette piped in.
“Yes. Do you want to join?” Elise asked. Mitch was proud of her for being inclusive, though he assumed his wife just wanted a partner for Freddy-bashing and he’d never give as satisfying commentary as Annette would.
“No,” Annette said. “Your father and I are going to get something to eat. I just wanted to tell you that we only signed up for the Doubly-Bubbly soft drink package. For alcoholic beverages, you’re on your own.”
“You’re joking me,” Elise said, her voice sharp and menacing. “I would have thought booze would be the first thing you’d spring for, considering you’ve tethered the eight of us on a boat together for five days.”
Annette’s face fell and even David’s eyes widened in surprise.
Mitch forced his face into a smile.
“Elise, you’re hilarious. But let’s leave the joking to the cruise director.” To Annette he added, “You know Elise. Her jokes don’t always land.”