Do Not Become Alarmed(3)
So now Penny and Marcus were in sixth grade at the same school, and they would grow up together almost as their mothers had. For most of history, the two sets of children would have been betrothed to each other from birth, and Liv would have been happy with that. Sebastian and June adored each other like two puppies, even though June was younger. Sebastian, sweet-tempered and pliable, could grow up and be drawn in by some damaged girl who would blame him for her pain. Liv would have loved to promise him to funny, curious June, and seal it now.
At the buffet table, Nora studied the ship’s schedule. There was an evening movie in the Kids’ Club, one of the Madagascar sequels. The ship started to move, and the children ran out on deck and leaned on the varnished honey-colored rail. The bow thrusters churned the blue water white against the dock. Liv hoped Benjamin was watching from the balcony. It was majestic, the stately movement out of San Pedro, the lacy trail of wake behind them, the tiny boats below.
When they were out to sea and had explored the ship—skirting the clanging casino and gaping at the terrible paintings for sale, of martinis and cars—the kids settled in to watch the movie. The chaperones seemed reasonably sane. A New Zealander named Deb promised to sit near Sebastian in case his monitor went off, and Liv and Nora went to change for a grown-up dinner.
When she got back to the cabin, Benjamin was stretched out on top of the bedcovers, waking up from his nap. “Wait, so we can just shunt them off to the Kids’ Club?” he asked.
“Good, right?”
“And they’re fine with it?”
“They’re watching animated animals. They don’t love us that much.”
“Oh my God,” Benjamin said, rubbing his hands in his hair. “This is amazing.”
“Did you see the bow thrusters as we left?”
“Not if they weren’t on the backs of my eyelids.”
Liv showered and put on a cotton dress, and Benjamin took her place in the bathroom. The panoptic mirrors in the cabin left no secrets, and she wished she were thinner, and then wished she didn’t wish that. Her hair was looking a little straw-like these days. She tucked the short strands behind her ears.
At dinner, Raymond ordered champagne from the Russian wine steward. “To Liv,” he said, “for the best idea since Velcro kids’ shoes.”
Liv made a demurring noise but held her glass up anyway.
“And for generally running my life much better than I do,” Nora said.
Liv smiled. “Not everyone will let me run theirs.”
She had introduced Nora to Raymond. He’d played a marine lieutenant in the first movie Liv ever developed, and was nominated for an Image Award from the NAACP. Liv had invited Nora to the party and loaned her a dress. Nora wore her hair up in a dark sweep, and on her narrow shoulders the neckline of the dress hung fetchingly low. She had a heart-shaped, Quakerish face, and an adorable smallness that made Liv feel like a Norwegian giantess, especially in heels. As the three of them stood at a cocktail table eating passed appetizers, Raymond had turned to Nora with the full light of his dazzling actor handsomeness, and Liv had realized she was superfluous and gone off to get a drink.
The Russian wine steward brought them a bottle of rosé as soon as they finished the champagne. His name tag said YURI. “You were that astronaut in that movie,” he said, pouring the first taste for Raymond.
“He was,” Liv said. The astronaut movie had been hers, too.
“I knew it!” Yuri said. “I watch a lot of movies in my cabin.”
“She made that film happen,” Raymond said, indicating Liv, but the steward wasn’t interested in development, only in stardom.
Caviar and toast arrived, with sour cream and egg and chopped onion in little silver dishes.
“A token of my admiration,” Yuri said with a little bow. “Caviar from my country.”
Liv took a bite, the salty beads bursting on her tongue. There was soup, and fish, and lemon tart. She got slightly, pleasantly drunk, as she and Benjamin never did at a restaurant in LA, where they’d have to drive home.
They collected the children at the Kids’ Club and made their way back to their cabins, the surge of the ship making the carpeted corridor into an uphill walk, then a slightly downhill run. The kids raced down, laughing, then did an exaggerated mountaineering trudge when the corridor ran uphill again. There were congratulatory kisses all around as they said goodnight at the cabin doors, and there was a towel twisted into the shape of a swan on the foot of the bed.
In the morning, Benjamin took Penny and Sebastian off to the Kids’ Club, leaving Liv to luxuriate in the empty cabin, in the wide, soft bed between the pressed, clean sheets. Ironed sheets always reminded her of her grandmother, looping the fabric at the ironing board to keep it off the floor. Pressed sheets seemed like the ultimate in both domestic comfort and domestic drudgery.
At lunch they met an Argentinian family, very glamorous, the father silver-haired, the mother with discreet and expensive-looking work done on her face. She’d left the forehead alone. They had two striking adolescent children, a boy and a girl, and they were all going ashore in Acapulco the next morning. After some private discussion, Liv and Nora decided not to join them. Why go ashore in a country of beheadings and food-borne pathogens? Everything they needed was here.
Marcus studied the chart on a wall near the bridge, where an officer updated the ship’s position every hour. Nora stood with her son and talked through the itinerary, their turnaround in Panama and return back up the coast.