Dream of the Blue Room Read Free Page B

nice.”
    We’re still sitting on deck at five in the morning when the sky begins to lighten. Low hills have given way to mountains whose jagged peaks zigzag across the sky. Graham is dozing finally, his legs stretched out in front of him, his arms dangling over the side of the chair. His shirt is askew, his face marked by sleep.
    I could so easily lean over and touch him, and yet I’m entirely unprepared for whatever might come next. I would like to bring him into the conscious world with a kiss, like the prince in the fairy tale about the girl who sleeps through wars and centuries and famines. Instead, I touch his hand; he doesn’t stir. I leave quietly. A small group of passengers is awkwardly practicing tai chi by the pool, led by the cruise director, a twentysomething Chinese university student named Elvis Paris.
    I walk through the well-lit hallways. There is the rush of water through pipes, the hum of showers. I think of childhood vacations with my family in Alabama, rising while it was still dark out, backing down the driveway with headlights off, engine dead. Escaping, my father called it: his idea of adventure. On those mornings before the neighbors rose, the air damp and cool, the shapes of jasmine and azaleas barely visible in the dark, our small town in Alabama seemed as exotic and lush as China could ever be, a country newly discovered.
    Sometimes we would drive to Amanda Ruth’s, and she would be waiting on the front porch with her mother, her small red suitcase propped on the bottom step. My father would get out of the car, load Amanda Ruth’s luggage into the trunk, and open the door for her like a chauffeur. We rode with our thighs touching, made a tent with picnic blankets suspended over our heads, and in our secret cave Amanda Ruth told me long, made-up stories about her ancestors in China.
    In the cabin, Dave is sprawled across the bed. I undress and lie down. The full-sized bed feels oddly intimate. At home in New York City we have a king-sized mattress that takes up the entire bedroom; our bodies don’t touch all night. Didn’t touch, I correct myself. After twelve years of marriage, it’s difficult to think in past tense. I keep imagining the separation is some joke that Dave will grow tired of, keep hoping that one morning I’ll wake in our apartment at Eighty-fifth and Columbus to find him sleeping heavily beside me, the way he is now. A few hairs around his ears have gone gray. I put my face to his neck and breathe in; his smell is sweet and clean. He doesn’t wear cologne and has always smelled better to me than any other man. I haven’t washed his pillowcase since he moved out. Each night I go to bed with his pillow positioned neatly on the left side of the bed, but in the morning I wake with my arms around it. Each morning, still, I smell him, though the scent grows fainter by the day.
    At 6:15, a female voice booms from the loudspeakers mounted at regular intervals along the hallways: “Please come to Yangtze Room for delicious Chinese breakfast. Today for your pleasure we have many exciting activity.” Dave rolls over and lays an arm across my stomach. His arm is heavy, warm against my skin. I stroke it, feeling the fine hairs beneath my fingers, watching his face, wanting to hold him but not daring to. He opens his eyes, looks confused for a moment. Then recognition crosses his face; he is orienting himself to this ship, this cabin, this bed. He is orienting himself to me.
    “China,” he says, smiling. He raises his arms toward the ceiling, palms up, fingers interlaced, stretching until his knuckles crack. Love kicks in my gut. I know these motions completely, have visualized them every morning during the two months of his absence. It’s like a fingerprint, this waking ritual; no two people wake up in exactly the same way. It is so familiar that I feel, for a moment, as if we have returned to our life, our marriage, as if everything is in its right and proper place, as if my