Signs and Wonders

The Cruise

Because her aunt was both wealthy and caring, because people seemed to believe that divorce required a period of mourning accompanied and defined by homemade ritual, because Laureen (the aunt) was also kind of bossy and wouldn’t take no for an answer, because she (Reena) had been named for Laureen and they were therefore considered by the family and, eventually, themselves to be specially affiliated, because the same people who spoke of post-divorce rituals also said that travel broadened the mind, because the world’s wild creatures were disappearing and it was imperative to see them before it was too late, two women went on a cruise to the Galápagos.

“This is going to cheer you up,” Laureen said as they boarded the flight to Quito. She had for decades been a highly paid executive secretary who wore black cashmere turtlenecks and tasteful gold jewelry. Now, in retirement, she’d ditched all sobriety, in clothes and otherwise. She was wearing fuchsia pants and a pink striped blouse and had already downed two alcoholic smoothies at the airport bar. She squeezed Reena’s hand, and her breath smelled of rum and chips.

Reena’s eyes watered, not from the squeeze or the breath. How long had it been since anyone held her hand? She was touched by it. She was touched by everything these days, not hardened by the divorce so much as scraped raw. This year’s holiday cards, even the generic ones from the bank and the dentist, had brought tears to her eyes. It’s so nice people care, she’d tell herself as she put the cards on the otherwise bare mantel in her new apartment. The cruise hadn’t been her idea, but she was grateful for it. It was two weeks of something to do every day and night, the hours portioned into particulars. Two weeks in which she wouldn’t have to be alone for more than a few minutes, or contend with those terrible, scurrying creatures, her thoughts.

As they settled into first class, Laureen ordered more drinks. She had been widowed young and raised her son, Jasper, by herself. She was briskly competent, always cheerful and independent and brave and Reena didn’t want to be like her, she didn’t ever want to have Laureen’s life. But for now they were cruising, and she was grateful. When the plane lifted off, she felt better already.

The first part of the trip was a blur: two days in Quito of heat, dehydration, bland hotel food, and a dizzying trip up to the Virgen del Panecillo. Sometime after thirty she’d gone from mediocre traveler to complete wimp. Laureen kept after her, cheerleading her through the days. It was infantilizing and Reena liked it. She would have liked to be tucked into bed and read a story at night. She wouldn’t have minded a kiss on the forehead. Her mother would never do such a thing, would never have taken her on a trip to get her mind off her troubles, in fact had told her that the divorce was her fault (a belief Reena shared). Laureen’s curt dismissal of this opinion — saying of her sister, in front of Reena, “she’s very narrow-minded”—typified her general auntly excellence. And now Laureen seemed most intent on getting Reena drunk, which was largely why the first two days passed in such a blur. A brief flirtation with stomach flu or food poisoning, on the day they boarded the cruise ship, came as a relief, giving her some respite from rum.

When she emerged on the second morning of the cruise, the social dynamics of the ship had already been established. And she had been abandoned: Laureen had a boyfriend. His name was Benjamin Moore, like the paint. A sixty-year-old civil engineer from Toronto, he was sensibly dressed in pressed Dockers and a light blue shirt and the equatorial sun had already played havoc with his ruddy face. He and Laureen had had dinner together the first night on board and watched the stars, and were now, her aunt said, “thick as thieves.”

“I know all about you,” Benjamin Moore said when introduced.

Reena’s nervous laugh came out as a squawk. “I’ll have to catch up.”

“You don’t have to do anything at all,” he said kindly, by which Reena understood that he did know everything about her frailty and unfortunate life circumstances, and again her eyes watered, which she knew was pathetic and tried to hide by putting her sunglasses on, muttering something about the light.

Besides Benjamin Moore, her aunt had befriended a Japanese couple who spoke excellent, if slow-paced, English and knew everything there was to know about the wildlife photography opportunities to come. And also a German man, taking the cruise by himself and slightly younger than Reena. “He’s really into movies,” her aunt said. “His name is Hans.”

“Yo, what’s up?” he said, shaking Reena’s hand and smiling broadly. He looked like a younger, pastier, doughier version of Benjamin Moore. She understood that Laureen intended for him to be Reena’s cruise-boyfriend, a distraction to enjoy and practice on for her eventual return to the world, a boyfriend from camp whom you missed terribly the first day back home and then forgot about, remembering only the thrill of kisses in the woods.

“Hi,” she said. “I’m Reena.”

“Reena,” said Hans. “We’re going bird-watching today!” He seemed very pleased about it, and punched his fist in the air. “It’s going to be motherfucking awesome, I think.”

Reena looked at Laureen.

“Movies,” her aunt mouthed.

Reena could only imagine that Hans had no idea how little the word motherfucker was generally used by middle-aged people on package vacations.

They were in open water and the sun was brutal. Reena looked around, suddenly disoriented. It was so hot and she was so far from home.

“Well,” Laureen said brightly, “let’s go!”

A young white-clad officer named Stavros led them, obedient as schoolchildren, onto one of the islands, where they would begin their wildlife tour. The Galápagos were bare and brilliant. Back in the distance their ship waited, hulking and white and patient. Reena looked at it longingly. Although seeing the wildlife was the whole point of the trip, she found the ship’s rituals comforting, the constant availability of food, the orchestrated social events, even their tiny cabin. Everything outside was too big, too bright. We’re at the end of the world, she thought, and understood why people used to think the earth was flat. Glancing fearfully at the horizon, she felt as if they might sail right over the edge. She started to cry again and hated herself for it. When would this stop? It wasn’t even localized pain anymore. Her tear ducts were just in the habit. She set off after the tour guide, hot tears coursing freely down her cheeks. Hans sprang to her side, loping energetically, like a dog. Behind her, Laureen’s happy laugh harmonized with Benjamin Moore’s lower, rhythmic music.

“This is the frigate bird,” the guide said. She was a young, pretty biologist with her hair in a long blond braid, her sturdy legs in cargo shorts planted firmly on the ground. “They’re named after a warship and they steal catches from other birds. During mating season, the male’s red air sac inflates like a bullfrog’s neck.”

“What is this air sac?” Hans asked Reena.

She tried to answer him by gesturing, but he still looked confused.

After the frigate bird they spent a long time looking at iguanas, everyone silent as their cameras whirred and clicked. It was as if they were a group of robots, these mechanical sounds their only language. Iguanas, Reena learned, are quite hypoallergenic and would make good pets, if only they were not endangered. Hypothetically good pets. Hans was taken by one that looked like a dinosaur, its neck ringed by sharply pointed, prehistoric skin.

“Motherfucker,” he marveled sweetly, almost under his breath.

She wanted to ask him why he was here, if he was pursuing a lifelong dream or escaping some disappointment. But this question—why are you here? — was too loaded. After all, she wouldn’t want to have to answer it herself.

Laureen and Benjamin were standing next to them, and she hadn’t even noticed. Reena smiled at her and said she was having a good time.

“You don’t have to be so polite,” Laureen said. “You don’t even have to have a good time. Just be, okay?”

At this, without warning or choice, Reena burst into a full-grown sob attack.

Alarmed, the tour guide came over and put her hand on Reena’s shoulder, her blond braid gently brushing her arm. “Is everything all right?”

Suddenly the world was in motion. Everyone was looking at Reena, muttering and whispering. The endangered species scrambled to take flight. Medical emergency personnel were summoned. Before she knew it, Reena was sitting in the incomplete shade of some equatorial tree, drinking water, taking aspirin, and applying sunblock while anxious crew members loitered nearby, scribbling notes on clipboards, conferring about dehydration and liability. How had she become such a spectacle? She knew what her ex-husband would say, if he were here, if they were still speaking. You go to one of nature’s most spectacular places, and you make it all about you. He would say that, and he’d be right.

After insisting she was fine at least a dozen times, Reena was allowed to stand up. Laureen took her arm, as if trying to support an invalid. Smelling powerfully of some floral perfume, she was wearing a black-and-white striped blouse, gauzy and slightly revealing of her bra, and red Capri pants, and gold hoop earrings. She looked fantastic. Reena leaned against her as birds disappeared over the horizon. And then they were gone.

· · ·

Back on the ship, they dressed for dinner. At Laureen’s command, Reena had brought two new outfits, clothing with no past associations. She put on a blue dress, hoping to feel pretty. Her skin felt pleasantly scorched and dry.

In the dining room she and Laureen were seated at separate tables, a procedure designed to encourage further mixing among the guests. Hans, sitting on her right, kept smiling and offering her more wine. He asked what she thought about Martin Scorsese.

“Is he the one who did The Godfather?” she asked. “Most movies are so violent. I don’t go very much.”

Judging from his expression, this was the wrong answer.

After dinner, the bar stayed open and people milled around, loose and friendly. Reena stepped outside to get some air. She’d spilled some of her dinner on her new dress; it was just that kind of day. A hand touched her arm, and she turned around with a prepared, chipper smile — expecting Laureen — but it was Benjamin Moore.

“Your aunt’s organizing a card game,” he said.

“I’m not big on cards,” Reena said.

“Neither am I. I thought I’d come out and join you. Is that all right?”

“Of course,” Reena said, though it was more confusing than all right.

He inquired in a gentlemanly way about her health, and together they stood looking at the black water and the indecipherable landscape. Darwin, birds, the understanding of our humble origins that science gave us: that was what you were supposed to see. All Reena saw in the dark was water and rocks.

“I have a son who’s twenty-five,” Benjamin said musingly, not looking at her. “He’s gay and he thinks I don’t know it, but I do. It upsets me more than I’d like it to. He’s an actor on a soap opera. It’s on every day at one in the afternoon. He plays what you might call a rake. I have a TV in my office, and every day I sit there eating my lunch and watching my gay son seduce women wearing too much makeup.”

Reena had no idea what to say. Maybe this was part of the cruise-ship experience, along with the dinners and the wildlife tours: you went on board and told strangers the story of your life.

“Sometimes they look like their entire faces are coated in Vaseline,” Benjamin went on. “Why do they do that? Sometimes I think that if I had to look at those women all day and kiss them and such, maybe I’d be gay too.”

“I’m not sure why you’re telling me this, Benjamin,” Reena told him.

“You can call me Ben,” he said affably.

The ensuing silence didn’t appear to make him uncomfortable. It lasted so long that Reena felt compelled to speak.

She took a breath, then said, “I got divorced because I cheated on my husband. Electronically cheated. I started e-mailing my high school boyfriend and we fell in love all over again, and my husband found out, and my high school boyfriend wasn’t interested in leaving his wife, but my husband left me, and I don’t blame him.”

What her mother had said: Reena, you’ve never known how to take care of things. You were always breaking your toys and messing up your clothes. This is the same, only bigger.

What Laureen had said: Well, honey, everything happens for a reason.

What Reena had said: I’m an idiot and a fool.

“This Internet,” Ben said, “it’s changing our lives.”

Reena’s laugh sounded like a bark. “Yeah, it’s definitely the Internet’s fault.”

“That’s not what I said,” he said.

She looked at him. There was no absolution in his voice but no blame, either. She couldn’t figure out what he was doing there with her while her charming, vibrant aunt was off playing cards.

“Everything changes and nothing stays the same,” he said after a while. They stood looking into the darkness as if there were something to see.

By the time Laureen came out to say good night, Reena was by herself; Ben had gone back to his cabin. “You doing okay, kiddo?”

“Better, thanks.”

“I think Hans has a crush on you.”

“Laureen, how old are you?”

“A girl’s never too old for a crush,” she said. This was the kind of statement that made Reena dread the idea of imitating her aunt’s life. Shouldn’t a woman at some point stop being a girl? Shouldn’t there be an end to crushes? It was too terrible to contemplate, all that starting and blushing, over and over again.

“What about Ben, is he your cruise-boyfriend?” she said, trying to shift the focus from herself.

“Maybe,” Laureen said coyly. “He’s awfully cute. But there are a lot of fish in the sea. Or, as we learned in our nature talk, there are many fewer fish than there used to be. But still fish exist and we can fish them.”

“Are you drunk, Aunty Laureen?”

“You bet, honey pie,” her aunt said, and kissed her cheek.

· · ·

Reena woke early, Laureen snoring woozily in the other bed. It wasn’t even five yet. She rose as quietly as she could and went out on deck. The sun was pearly, kind. When she was married, this was the only time of day she’d had completely to herself. Then she’d contaminated that lovely solitude with time spent on the computer and desperate, yearning e-mails she now cringed to think of. The man she’d grown so close to, whose words she’d read so feverishly, she could hardly remember. What she missed was the need of him, how it prickled her skin, how she jonesed and ached, her blood in a kind of fury. She’d ruined her solitude with wanting, and then she was alone in a different way.

This morning she was not alone, as it turned out. Ben was there too. She smiled when she saw him, unexpectedly pleased. He looked as if he had been up for hours, and without speaking he offered her a cup of coffee from the leather-encased thermos by his side. She nodded and sipped. In front of them were islands, behind them were islands. Ancient, inhospitable places. It should have soothed her, seeing them, should have reinforced her smallness in the world. If it didn’t, then it was not the islands’ fault.

Though the day began on a magical note, later it began to unravel. First there were complications with the scheduled activities and logistical delays that went unexplained, and the crew members smiled tight-lipped as they attempted to behave as if nothing was wrong. Then came rain in great torrents, trapping them on the ship and moving them beyond the awkward pleasantries of early acquaintance into the annoyances of familiarity. You could notice the strain in people’s voices, hear previously affectionate couples now snapping and bickering. Everybody agreed that lunch was substandard.

In the afternoon the weather cleared and moods lifted. Scuba diving had for some reason fallen through, and the replacement activity was to visit a beach where sea lions lay napping. Though people complained about the insufficiency of this program—“It’s not like we can look at animals all day,” Reena heard one woman tell Stavros angrily — they all filed onto the beach, because what else could they do?

Laureen was wearing a white swimsuit bedecked with gold jewelry and a red sarong and she looked like some aging goddess, sensual and distended. In her striped blue T-shirt Reena felt sexless and uptight. They embarked in their small clique — Hans, Ben, and Reiko and Tomo, the Japanese couple. Hans was acting peculiar. Deeply flushed, he kept slapping his hand against the side of his leg; as he was wearing long swim trunks, the nylon made a swishing sound each time. Everyone kept looking at him, but he was too agitated or preoccupied to notice.

Laureen nudged Reena. “I think he’s jealous of you and Ben,” she said happily.

“What do you mean?” Reena said, startled.

“I heard about you two up drinking coffee with the birds. Oh, don’t worry about me. I’ve got lots of opportunities. You play the field, honey. I deed him over to you.”

“You deed him?” Reena said. Tears clustered once again in her eyes, though this time they were tears of anger, or maybe anguish, she wasn’t sure; certainly it felt adolescent and hormonal. “Laureen, could you just stop, please, acting like this is high school? I know you mean well but I don’t need to go back to high school.”

Laureen put her hands on her hips. “It wouldn’t kill you,” she said, “to have a little fun. You act like having fun would actually hurt, like you’re allergic to it or something. Men like women who like fun. I’m sure Jason and Bobby would have liked a little fun, too.”

It was the first time on the trip that either of them had spoken those names. Reena felt sick. She’d never get away from it, how much everything was her own fault.

“Oh, honey,” Laureen said. “Forget I said that.”

Reena shook her head. She felt as if her arms, her neck, her ears were on fire. If she could have, she would’ve jumped into the water and swum to the ship, gotten into bed and pulled the covers over her head.

“Hey,” Laureen said. “The sea lions.”

They lay in a line on the beach, flopped down like cushions, vulnerable and dopey, like overweight puppies. They were almost preposterously cute. Reena immediately wanted to touch them, even knowing that she couldn’t, that they weren’t pets, wouldn’t even be good hypothetical pets. But how could anyone resist them? The fight she and Laureen were having disintegrated, shelved until there was less-pressing cuteness in front of them. Ben took Hans by the arm and walked him down the beach, pointing out some feature of the landscape, a soothing, fatherly gesture. The Japanese couple crouched and bent calisthenically, their telephoto lenses zooming.

Laureen and Reena stood quietly, not too close and not too far, listening to the occasional thwapping of the sea lions’ glistening tails. Two raised their heads, but overall they didn’t seem disturbed.

Maybe they were used to tourists. Or maybe this invasion was so far down their list of sea lion priorities — fish, swim, bask on the beach — that they had no concept of it.

The biologist guide had joined them, and was talking about threats to the sea lions, from skin infections due to polluted waters to plastics that could strangle or choke. She talked about how their mothers nursed younger and older pups at the same time; if the younger one was too much weaker than its sibling, then it would die. She droned on relentlessly, reciting these terrible things so matter-of-factly, without emphasis. Without tears.

Reena’s heart squeezed. She reached out and took her aunt’s hand in hers.

“Look,” she kept saying, even though she knew Laureen already saw. “Just look.”