Elise stepped off the boat and sucked the fresh air into her lungs. All that recycled air clearly hadn’t been good for her or anyone else in her family. Instead of her parents quickly acquiescing to her request, they’d frozen. Mitch was as distracted as ever, scribbling notes for work on scraps of paper every time she turned around. So much for him not seeming to care about being absent from the Bee. And her kids, if it was possible, looked even more glazed than normal. It was amazing how a boat so big could still feel suffocating. The way everyone was desperate to get off, it was as though they’d been crammed in a stalled elevator for the past forty-eight hours.
She hadn’t signed up for any of the excursions because all of them required getting piled into a van and shuttling somewhere else as a group, and she was sick of feeling like herded cattle. What Elise needed was some time alone, even if it meant she’d be wandering aimlessly around Philipsburg, Sint Maarten, for eight hours before the boat set sail for St. Lucia. She had almost decided to leave her wallet in the cabin safe. It would be healthier for her to cut this leather limb of hers loose for the day, but in the end she decided it wouldn’t be prudent to wander around a strange place without identification and some emergency money.
Her plan was to find a café with dependable Wi-Fi and contact Dr. Margaret. She desperately needed to vent. The only problem was that an hour would hardly be enough time to cover the latest developments: her mother being sick, Freddy pretending to be a baller, Mitch the most distracted she’d ever seen him in his life, Darius’s college essay word count still at zero, and even reliable Rachel dressing like one of the cabaret performers from the adults-only show.
She stood outside on the pier for a moment staring at the gigantic moorings tethering the Ocean Queen to land. The boat rocked gently to and fro in the calm waters of the Caribbean but remained anchored to within three feet of the dock. It made her think of her children and the way they must see her, as the rope tethering them to home when their place was really on the open sea.
She turned her back on the vessel and headed away from the water. Around the port there was a smattering of touristy shops peddling seashell picture frames, beaded jewelry, magnets in the shapes of flip-flops and sand toys, and Sint Maarten spirit gear. The vibe around the port was very Bob Marley, steel drums pulsing somewhere in the distance and dreadlocks a popular local style, but even she knew he was from Jamaica, not here. Elise soldiered past the stores where salespeople stood in the doorway beckoning her with offers, pretending like the coffee shop she saw in the distance had ions that were pulling at the metallic strips on her credit cards. She made it, and opened the doors to a charming, though unair-conditioned, bakery with a sign advertising Wi-Fi at the rate of five dollars per hour. Well, not everything could be free, Elise reasoned, and she couldn’t expect to spend an entire day off the boat without parting with any money. She pulled out her wallet, noticing that the stitching was already coming loose.
Elise ordered a bran muffin and an iced coffee and found a seat at a small table in the back. She pulled her laptop from her beach bag. Dr. Margaret wasn’t on call twenty-four/seven, but Elise sent her an urgent email requesting a live chat session for sometime during the day. It was only nine in the morning, and therefore too early to reach her banker—the other desperate call she needed to make—so she decided to take a stab at drafting the opening paragraph for Darius’s essay. She hadn’t been able to sleep well last night and while she tossed and turned she had thought about the essay prompts, trying to channel Darius, or at least the plausible thoughts of any given teenager.
The essay topic that stood out to her the most was the one about the people she’d like to have over for a dinner party. Mealtime in the Connelly household was a sacred thing. Before Rachel left for college, it had been the only part of the day where the four of them were together for longer than a ten-minute burst, and there was something about the chewing and the passing of dishes that relaxed everybody. For a long time, if Elise had been asked which three people she’d like to share a meal with, she’d have picked Mitch, Rachel, and Darius. Now she wasn’t so sure. Was she really that desperate to watch her kids pound away at their phones? Did she really need to hear Mitch utter his perfunctory “delicious,” his adjective of choice no matter what she made? She considered alternatives: the medical school professor who thought she was personality challenged, so he could see that she’d done all right in the end, or Michelle Shapiro, to show her banker that what she lacked in financial management skills she more than made up for with her chicken française. And then Freddy came into her mind. They had shared thousands of meals together as children but hadn’t sat down at the same table to eat consistently until this trip. She wouldn’t mind having him to herself, to find out what the hell he’d been up to for the past decade and check if he was genuinely okay, though she was probably too late to be of any help to him. And that was when it hit her. If she were to write an essay where she could choose any three people to have at her dinner table, she’d pick the people who she’d had the opportunity to help in the past but hadn’t done so. To make amends. Freddy would top that list.
Of course the theme of recompense wouldn’t remotely work for a teenage boy—certainly not hers. She chuckled at the implausibility and then Googled “teenage icons” and started jotting down ideas. Some famous downhill skier whose legs had been amputated below the knee came up. She decided that should definitely be one of Darius’s picks.
“This seat taken?” came a familiar voice. Elise looked up to find the cruise director standing over her, carrying a tray overflowing with dishes: oatmeal, a croissant, juice, and a fruit salad—not a ringing endorsement for the ship’s cuisine. He was wearing spandex and a tank top instead of his white uniform and it had taken a moment for Elise to place him from the night before.
“No, no,” Elise said, moving her beach bag off the empty chair opposite her. She looked around the tiny café and saw it was the only empty seat. How thoughtless of her to prop her bag on it like it was a person. Is that how elevated she was treating possessions these days? She’d be sure to mention that to Dr. Margaret, who had already responded that she could Skype at noon. Elise would have to go back to the boat for that, which wasn’t a big deal. There was only so long she could loiter in this restaurant or stroll through downtown Philipsburg, which according to a map posted outside, was about three streets long. She couldn’t imagine what the heck her parents would see on the van tour.
“Thanks,” he said, placing his tray on the table. “You’re from the boat, yes?”
“Guilty,” Elise said, flattered he recognized her out of three thousand passengers. Then she remembered the lanyard around her neck with the cruise line printed on it.
“I’m Julian, the cruise director. You might not recognize me without my megaphone.”
“I know who you are,” Elise protested. “Get a workout in this morning?”
“Yes. Just took a fabulous yoga class. You ought to try the three p.m. if there’s still space. Have you been enjoying the trip so far?” Julian added three Splendas to his oatmeal. She remembered testing artificial sweeteners on rats during her first summer internship in medical school and recording all the negative effects, but she decided not to caution him. Score one point for having EQ!
“Oh, yes,” Elise said brightly. “It’s incredible.” But something in her eyes must have conveyed the opposite.
“You can tell me the truth,” Julian said. “I won’t take offense. Honestly, you’d be doing me a favor by giving me some constructive criticism.”
Elise considered Julian. He had gentle eyes, which he focused on her exclusively. She couldn’t recall the last time anyone had looked at her like that—without seeing everything else in the background or mentally running through their to-do list. Sure, sometimes Mitch trained his gaze on her this intently, but that was only when he had certain intentions. From what Elise could size up about Julian, there was no chance he had those same thoughts about her.
“The cruise ship is great. I had my doubts about how three thousand people could be fed and two thousand cabins could be cleaned and one thousand people could be corralled into a conga line, and yet, you manage to pull it off with aplomb.” Elise was proud of herself for being so gracious and for not letting her foul mood pervade their interaction. It certainly wasn’t the cruise director’s fault she was in the seventh circle of hell. And Julian, with his earnest face, tidy gelled hair, and double dimples, was hardly the punching bag she had in mind.
“Well, I don’t do it alone. We have thirteen hundred in crew. If the guests don’t properly line up to conga, I blow a special foghorn and it’s all hands on deck until they do,” Julian said, giving her a wink.
“Have you worked on the boat long?” Elise asked. Julian looked like he was about her age. She couldn’t remember the last conversation she’d had with a contemporary that didn’t revolve around the children. She was sick of the logistics: where to park for the SATs and what time to pick up from the winter dance and what the going rate was for a calculus tutor.
“Almost eleven years,” Julian said. “I started out as a concierge. It was an easy way to see the world. Moved my way up the ladder and here I am now, master of ceremonies.” He looked mildly self-conscious and Elise had the urge to speak out of turn. She wanted to tell Julian that it was nobody’s business what he chose to do with his life. She wondered if he had parents who were disappointed in him, who’d hoped their seafaring son would become a marine biologist instead of the judge of a blindfolded pie-eating contest, which was on tomorrow’s schedule. But she held herself back, realizing she was probably just projecting. Come to think of it, Julian didn’t actually seem embarrassed.
“Anyway,” Julian said, collecting his empty cup of oatmeal and piling the rest of his food into a to-go bag, “it was nice to talk to you.” He produced a card from his wallet. It read, Julian Masterino, Cruise Director, the Ocean Queen, Paradise International, and underneath, in smaller italic font, it said, Where Everyone Is Treated Like Royalty.
“You too,” she said, sad to see him go so quickly. “I really am having a fabulous time. You’re doing a marvelous job.”
“You’re on with family, aren’t you?” Julian asked.
“What gave it away?” Elise asked.
“A sixth sense,” he said. He pulled mirrored sunglasses from his pocket but hesitated briefly. For a moment she thought he would sit back down and continue their conversation. Julian looked like he had something on his mind. But why would he choose to confide in her, a woman he didn’t know, who had chosen to be alone in a random café instead of being with her family? “I like your necklace, by the way,” he added.
Elise’s hands floated to her collarbone. “Thanks,” she whispered, the shame of her splurge at the Golden Nugget lodging in her throat.
When Julian was gone, Elise reached for her cell phone and dialed Michelle Shapiro’s office number. After four rings, voice mail took over. Elise left a breezy message asking for a call back. She flipped open her laptop again to take a crack at Darius’s essay. She’d never let him submit her words—what a terrible example that would set—but it wouldn’t be cheating if she just drafted an example of an essay for inspiration, right?
She decided to fortify herself with another snack and looked up at the menu printed on a mirror behind the counter. Underneath the specials, written in white chalk, someone had added in bright pink: It’s Satur-Yay . . . Have dessert! Until then Elise hadn’t realized it was even a weekend. Of course Michelle hadn’t picked up the phone. And she certainly wouldn’t be calling her back until Monday. Because of the vacation, Elise was completely losing track of the days of the week. The feeling of being unmoored to a schedule was startling. Was this what it would be like when she no longer had a child living at home? Normally, she could tell the day of the week just by the things Darius had strewn around the house: gym clothes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, electric guitar for practice on Mondays, skateboard in the foyer on weekends. Plus his unzipped backpack, which he always left with crumpled papers spewing all over the couch in their den, meant Monday through Friday. She thought about Dia-Beat. It was pure fantasy that she could start a tech-pharma business at this point in her life, but she’d need to do something regimented once Darius left for college. Otherwise she’d go crazy, living in a world where Mondays felt like Thursdays, which weren’t that much different from Sundays.
She looked back at her computer screen and felt a wave of writer’s block, which triggered a sympathy for Darius she hadn’t yet experienced. Rattled by her inability to come up with even a decent first sentence, she gathered her things and dropped them into her tote bag, wondering if it was too late to perhaps join Mitch on his dolphin adventure. She’d picked up on how disappointed he was when Rachel bailed on him and stupidly hadn’t offered to go in her place. For so long she had prioritized her children and, because her husband was such a mellow, understanding man, she’d relegated him to the bottom of the totem pole, knowing that he’d forgive her if she made Darius’s favorite chicken dish instead of his or skipped the Bee’s holiday party because she was chaperoning Rachel’s high school dance. Now that it was going to be just the two of them soon, she hoped she had been right in her estimation of Mitch. He was a complacent person by nature, never eyeing a neighbor’s new golf clubs with envy or complaining when it rained on his day off. And while life was about to dramatically change for her as the primary caregiver, for Mitch things would roll along at mostly the same clip. Busy as a bee, he’d joke when he walked in the door and she asked him how his day was.
Elise looked out the window of the café and saw a cloud in the shape of a heart. It was positioned over the cruise ship docked next to theirs, an even bigger and flashier boat named Jewel of the Sea, its bow painted with gigantic rubies, emeralds, and sapphires. She shifted her gaze to the portion of sky above the Ocean Queen. It was cloudless, just a wash of blue, and so if Elise was hoping for a sign of encouragement, she was out of luck.
“Can you hear me?” Dr. Margaret shouted. The audio component of FaceTime was working, but the video had yet to connect. Elise was nervous. She and Dr. Margaret had never shared this level of intimacy before. There was a barrier of anonymity that was about to be broken when they saw each other’s faces. Another thing for which she could be judged. She’d fixed up her hair in advance of the call and swapped her white T-shirt for a more vibrant turquoise.
“Yes,” Elise shouted back at her unnecessarily. “I’m here, Dr. Margaret.” Elise had the laptop propped on a pillow in her lap, because despite everything rational she’d learned in medical school, she still couldn’t imagine it was a good thing for a hot battery to sit on her ovaries. She chastised her kids every time she saw them holding the cell phone to their ear instead of using earbuds. Sometimes she awoke in a cold sweat from a dream where she saw Rachel crisscrossing the length of the Stanford campus with the phone to her ear. That’s when she could sleep at all. Since menopause, her uterus had descended on her bladder like a lead balloon, and she barely got through a REM cycle without popping out of bed.
Dr. Margaret’s face appeared suddenly and Elise was startled by her appearance. She looked so normal. Pretty, really. A middle-aged woman with a severe auburn bob and a straight row of bangs, rimless glasses, and shimmery pink lipstick said, in a placid tone, “Hello, Elise.” She had excellent teeth. Elise wondered where her patterned blouse was from. She had no idea where the doctor lived, but she was guessing, based on her smart haircut and fashion choices, it was somewhere coastal and warm. Elise glanced at her own face, a tiny rectangle in the upper-left-hand corner of the screen. Somewhere, wherever Dr. Margaret was, she was seeing the screen in reverse. Elise’s face magnified and her own in miniature.
“Thanks for doing this with me. My computer is on the fritz so I need to use FaceTime for our session,” she continued. Dr. Margaret was seated at a desk, behind which was a full bookcase, the kind that looked scholarly and not just a landing place for objets d’art. Elise removed the air quotes around “doctor” in her mind—Margaret was for real. Looking back, it was insane that just a few months earlier Elise had considered digging out her medical school textbooks and refreshing herself on addiction theory. Just as pediatricians shouldn’t treat their own children, it would have been totally irresponsible for Elise to attempt to cure herself. Besides, as her father was always quick to point out, she had never actually earned her M.D., let alone developed any specialty in psychiatry.
“How’s it been going on the trip? Have you practiced the breathing we discussed?”
Elise appreciated that Dr. Margaret didn’t dive right in with the obvious question: Have you shopped? She had a gentle way about her. Elise’s former professor would have given her high marks for bedside manner. She ought to ask Dr. Margaret for advice on how to handle Darius. There had to be a less aggressive way she could badger her son about his essay. After her failed attempt in the coffee shop to put anything decent together, she was committed to being less pushy. It wasn’t so easy to put pen to paper. Hell, it was partially why she’d gone to medical school. The political science and history majors were always writing papers, and there was no question she’d rather be in the lab filling pipettes than scrambling for words. Mitch’s ability to channel his thoughts so eloquently into the written word had been part of his mystique. Come to think of it, why the hell was he not the one managing Darius’s essay?
“Five counts in, ten counts out,” Elise said, demonstrating now with a deep inhalation.
“And is it helping?” the doctor asked.
Elise looped her thumb through the chain of her necklace and angled it toward the camera’s eye.
“I see,” Dr. Margaret said, but she did a remarkably good job at masking her disappointment. What a skill it was to have the face of an actor, unlike Elise, who found it nearly impossible to smile at the family meals. “Well, you couldn’t imagine you wouldn’t face setbacks in beating this. Especially considering you are in an unfamiliar setting, surrounded by family, which can be stressful.”
“My banker won’t extend another line of credit to me. Darius may not be able to go to college next year. I asked my parents for money and they didn’t exactly jump at the chance to give it to me,” Elise said.
“You were honest with them?” Margaret asked.
“Not exactly.” Elise decided not to get into the particulars. There was no need to explain the depths of her machination, not when she and Margaret were face-to-face. She’d save Dia-Beat for a typing session.
The boat foghorn suddenly sounded, the three short blasts used for nonemergency notifications.
“What in heaven’s name was that?” Dr. Margaret asked, removing her glasses. She had lovely dark blue eyes and Elise admired the way she’d shaded them in plum tones. In the background Elise saw picture frames scattered throughout the bookcase, pictures of teenage boys skiing and surfing. Margaret was about Elise’s age. Could they, would they, be able to become friends? Elise resisted the urge to ask her where she was based, though she wondered if maybe Margaret had been in California all along, that the website she’d used to find a therapist had actually paired patient and doctor by the proximity of their routers.
“Hang on, I need to listen to the announcement,” Elise said.
“Good afternoon, cruisers. For those of you not out on excursion, we have a special treat,” barreled a husky voice through the boat’s intercom. “We are discounting all swimwear at the Beach Hut by twenty percent for one hour only. Who needs a new bikini?”
“Elise,” Margaret cautioned, having heard the announcement, “you don’t need this. You are in control. Not the salespeople, not the store, not the clothing. You say you’re losing control of everything in your life. That your children don’t listen to you. Take charge now. Have agency for your actions.”
“It’s hard,” Elise said, starting to weep in front of her new friend. She’d never once cried during a previous session, but somehow seeing Margaret made her situation more tangible. The doctor was becoming another person she felt like she was letting down. “I have to end the session early, Dr. Margaret. I’m not feeling very well.”
“Elise, stay with me. We still have twenty more minutes to talk. How are the children enjoying the boat?”
“Oh, I don’t know. They don’t really speak to me. Darius seems to have made a friend. Rachel is distant. Nice to everyone but me, pretty much.”
“And your parents?”
“The same, though I suppose I should tell you that my mother is sick. I was in their room—it’s a long story—and I saw all these pill bottles. I’m not supposed to know. At least I know what this cruise is all about.”
“Well, I think you can forgive yourself the necklace incident. You have a lot on your plate. People say it’s good to switch venues when you’re planning a big change—in your case, returning to a normal relationship with money and shopping—but you’re not at a peaceful rehabilitation facility. You’ve relocated but taken all your daily stresses with you. I think we should revisit our discussion about a stay at an addiction center. There are many in Northern California. With all those wineries . . .”
“Do you live in Northern California?” Elise asked, a little too excited.
“It doesn’t matter where I live, Elise. But no, I do not.”
Elise’s face fell. She was embarrassed, but not as much as she was disappointed.
“Dr. Margaret, I really don’t feel well. I’m not going to the store, I promise. I just need to reschedule the rest of our call. I’m so sorry.” Elise clicked the red button on the FaceTime icon before Dr. Margaret could protest further, watching the pixels of her face compress until there was nothing to see but Elise’s home screen—a picture of Darius and Rachel at the beach from a lifetime ago. She closed the laptop and curled up in a fetal position. If her parents didn’t come around within the next twenty-four hours, she was going to come clean to Mitch. Maybe he could work something out with his publisher, like an advance on his salary or a loan directly to Darius. She was running out of options and the window in which she could keep her secrets to herself was shrinking.