Going Ashore Read Free Page A

with shared confidences, she wandered out to the first-class bar and sat at her own special stool. Here the sympathetic girl was replaced by Eddy, the Eurasian bartender from Hong Kong. Picking up the thread of her life, Mrs. Ellenger talked to Eddy, describing her childhood and her stepmother. She told him about Emma’s father, and about the time she and Emma went to California. Talking, she tried to pretend she was in New York and that the environment of the ship was perfectly normal and real. She played with her drink, smiling anxiously at herself in the mirror behind the bar.
    Eddy wasn’t much of an audience, because he had other things to do, but after a time Mrs. Ellenger became so engrossed in her own recital, repeating and recounting the errors that had brought her to this impasse, that she scarcely noticed at all.
    “I was a mere child, Eddy,” she said. “A child. What did I know about life?”
    “You can learn a lot about life in a job like mine,” Eddy said. Because he was half Chinese, Eddy’s customers expected him to deliver remarks tinged with Oriental wisdom. As a result, he had got into the habit of saying anything at all as if it were important.
    “Well, I got Emma out of it all.” Mrs. Ellenger never seemed to hear Eddy’s remarks. “I’ve got my Emma. That’s something. She’s a big girl, isn’t she, Eddy? Would you take her for only twelve? Some people take her for fourteen. They take us for sisters.”
    “The Dolly Sisters,” Eddy said, ensconced on a reputation that had him not only a sage but a scream.
    “Well, I never try to pass Emma off as my sister,” Mrs. Ellenger went on. “Oh, it’s not that I couldn’t. I mean enough people have told me. And I was a mere child myself when she was born. But I don’t care if they know she’s my daughter. I’m
proud
of my Emma. She was born during the war. I kept her all in white …”
    Her glass slid away, reminding her that she was not in New York but at sea. It was no use. She thought of the sea, of travel, of being alone; the idea grew so enormous and frightening that, at last, there was nothing to do but go straight to her cabin and get into bed, even if it was the middle of the day. Her head ached and so did her wrists. She took off her heavy jewelry and unpinned her hair. The cabin was gray, chintzed, consolingly neutral; it resembled all or any of the hotel rooms she and Emma had shared in the past. She was surrounded by her own disorder, her own scent. There were yesterday’s clothes on a chair, trailing, smelling faintly of cigarette smoke. There, on the dressing table, was an abandoned glass of brandy, an unstoppered bottle of cologne.
    She rang the service bell and sent someone to look for Emma.
    “Oh, Emma, darling,” she said when Emma, troubled and apprehensive, came in. “Emma, why did we come on this crazy cruise? I’m so unhappy, Emma.”
    “I don’t know,” Emma said. “I don’t know why we came at all.” Sitting on her own bed, she picked up her doll and played with its hair or its little black shoes. She had outgrown dolls as toys years before, but this doll,which had no name, had moved about with her as long as she could remember. She knew that her mother expected something from this winter voyage, some miracle, but the nature of the miracle was beyond her. They had shopped for the cruise all summer – Emma remembered that – but when she thought of those summer weeks, with Uncle Jimmy Salter away, and her mother sulking and upset, she had an impression of heat and vacancy, as if no one had been contained in the summer season but Mrs. Ellenger and herself. Left to themselves, she and her mother had shopped; they had bought dresses and scarves and blouses and bathing suits and shoes of every possible color. They bought hats to match the dresses and bags to match the shoes. The boxes the new clothes had come in piled up in the living room, spilling tissue.
    “Is he coming back?” Emma had asked