She winked at him and got up, banging her knuckles softly against Mick’s.
chapter seven
Miriam unpacked her toiletries carefully, trying to keep them from getting mixed up with Isaac’s. Of course Rivka, in her willful ignorance of their divorced state, had put them into a room together, with a double bed no less, when she’d made the arrangements for them. As soon as she realized this, Miriam had marched straight up to a crewmember and demanded a room of her own. The ship was less than half full; surely they could accommodate her. But the boy had disappeared and Miriam hadn’t seen him since. She had had to rush to get to their rehearsal in the chapel, so nothing had been done, and here it was after dinner, and she was exhausted. She’d slept with Isaac endless times before, she supposed she could do it one more night, but tomorrow she was going to raise hell and get herself her own damned private cabin. She didn’t care if they docked her pay, she wasn’t spending two weeks lying awake next to this snoring old man, checking his damned scrotum for him every time he decided he might have cancer.
Isaac was still up in the casino with Larry and Rivka, watching Larry shoot craps and flirting with Rivka, on whom, Miriam suspected, he had a crush. She hoped he’d stay up there all night. But she knew he wouldn’t, and she also knew that she wouldn’t be able to sleep until he came back. She would lie awake, expecting him to come along any minute and rattle the key in the lock and turn the light on and make a racket getting himself into his pajamas and heaving himself down next to her, jostling her and disarranging the covers. Why bother falling asleep if she’d just have to do it all over again?
She climbed into the bed on the side farther from the bathroom, since Isaac had to get up in the night because of prostate issues, and God forbid he should have to go all the way around the bed. She plumped up her pillows, settled herself against them, opened her boring Norwegian crime novel, and began to read. Ten minutes later she was sound asleep with the book open in her lap, the lamp on, and her reading glasses still on her nose.
She awoke with a small gasp and floundered up from the depths of a deep, untroubled sleep to find Isaac, lying on his back next to her, staring up at the ceiling. He looked over at her.
“Good morning,” she said. “You were so quiet, I hardly knew you were there.”
“I lay here awake all night, not moving.”
“You didn’t.”
“Of course I didn’t.”
She sat up slowly, rubbing her eyes with the heel of one hand, bracing her back with the other. Sunlight streamed through the porthole. She got out of bed and stretched her arms skyward, as she did every morning, then bent over and tried to touch her toes. She repeated this ten times, grunting. Isaac heaved himself up out of bed and looked out the porthole. His white hair stood up around his head, sunlit, like a nimbus. He looked to Miriam like a saintly Einstein in pale blue-and-white-striped pajama bottoms and a white undershirt. It was not at all awkward to be sharing a bed with him again. It felt familial, like sleeping with an aunt or a cousin.
“I didn’t hear you come to bed,” she said.
“I tiptoed into the room like a mouse, so terrified was I from years of sleeping with you. You always flew into a rage if I woke you up. And I knew I’d lie there all night, too afraid I’d snore. I’d never sleep in a million years.”
“But you slept.”
“I slept very well,” he said. “Did I snore?”
“If you did, I didn’t hear it.”
“So maybe you’re going deaf.”
“Eccch,” said Miriam. She went into the tiny bathroom and turned on the shower.
In the buffet breakfast room, Christine collected a cup of black coffee and a bowl of yogurt with a scoop of fruit salad on top. Armed with her morning’s requirements, she headed up to yesterday’s nook and lounge chair, which she now thought of as her exclusive spot. Valerie was still asleep; Christine expected her to be out cold until early afternoon.
She arranged her breakfast on the table next to the chair and took from her bag the copy of Evelyn Waugh’s A Handful of Dust that she’d filched yesterday from the ship’s library, a windowless inner room on the sun deck with wingback armchairs and mahogany shelves and tasseled standing lamps. It was well stocked with books, including leather-bound editions of novels by Wodehouse and Cather and Wharton, much better than the schlocky charity-box crap she’d brought from the supermarket in Maine.
Instead of reading, she looked out at the view as she drank her coffee. The water swelled, rising and falling in heavy rhythm. The ocean looked like a miniature mountain range in constant liquid motion, dark fluid granite peaks veined with white, shifting, collapsing, forming new peaks. The dome of air from sea surface to sky-top was shot with bits of quick gold, charged with ions, dancing with refracted sunlight.
Nearby on the deck, there seemed to be a kerfuffle going on between a tall, indignant old man and a baffled crewmember, who looked hapless and very young.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” said someone behind her. “Good luck, Sasha.”
Christine turned and beheld an elderly woman a few lounge chairs over, staring down the deck in consternation. She was small and slender, and she looked simultaneously elegant and fierce in her gray long-sleeved T-shirt and peg-legged white trousers, her chestnut hair pinned up with a sparkling clip. Her small face was swathed in oversized sunglasses.
The woman noticed Christine and politely took off her sunglasses to look her directly in the eyes. “He’s up in arms because they’re making us share rooms. The ship isn’t even half full, but they won’t change it. I have to sleep with my ex-husband, can you imagine?”
The tall man walked off down the deck as the crewmember began straightening deck chairs, looking hangdog.
“Is that him?” Christine pointed to the tall old man’s very straight retreating back.
“No, that’s our first violinist. My ex-husband plays the viola. The cellist is around here somewhere. We’re a string quartet.”
“Oh,” Christine said, recognizing her. “I heard you playing during dinner last night. You were wonderful.”
“Thank you,” said the woman. “We’ve played together for a very long time. I’m Miriam, by the way.”
“Christine,” said Christine.
“Do you mind if I join you?”
“Not at all,” said Christine, hoping her face didn’t betray her hesitation. She had never been particularly fond of talking to strangers first thing in the morning.
Miriam brought her coffee over to the empty deck chair next to hers. “Are you from Los Angeles?”
“Oh no, not at all,” said Christine. “I’m from Maine. I’ve never been on a cruise before.”
“Lucky you. I’ve been on far too many. Well, it’s my job. And it pays well. We usually get our own rooms, though.”
“I’m sharing a room with my friend,” said Christine. “She invited me, so I can’t complain, but I didn’t realize how small they were going to be.”
“They’re usually bigger. But this is an old ship. And at least you don’t have to sleep with your ex-husband.”
Christine laughed. “I’m still on my first, and he’s at home.”
“Good for you. Kids?”
“No. Not yet. Do you have any?”
“I have two,” said Miriam. “A boy and a girl, the lights of my life. Rachel and Avner, their names are. I have grandchildren, too.”
Christine felt an unaccustomed urge to pry, or maybe it was just curiosity. She found herself liking this woman. “Did you always know you were going to be a mother? Or did you decide at some point?”