Alice on Board Read online

  He looked like a former basketball player—so tall that his head just cleared the doorways. Angular face, with deep lines on either side of his mouth—the sort of person who always played Abraham Lincoln in grade school on Presidents’ Day. Dianne was as short as Quinton was tall, and it was hard not to think of her—with her curly hair and the bouncy way she carried herself—as his puppy.

  “Welcome, everyone!” Quinton said. He had a deep, pleasant voice and the look of a team player, standing there with his shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbows. “Glad to have all the new men and women on board as well as you old salts who have worked with Dianne and me on other cruises.”

  He gave a thumbs-up to two more guys who’d just come in, still in their paint clothes.

  “This will be a first for all of us, though, as the Chesapeake Bay Seascape takes her maiden voyage,” Quinton continued, “the first, we hope, of a long and successful run on the bay. This fall her sister ship, the Spellbound, will be launched. Dianne and I are from Maine, but we’ve both worked and played on the Chesapeake and are familiar with all that the bay and the eastern shore have to offer… .”

  There were lots of handouts—work schedules and tour itineraries, names of officers and crew. There were lists of nautical terms—abaft, bridge, gangway, starboard; another list of emergency procedures—fire, man overboard, abandon ship; and Quinton and Dianne took turns doing the rundown.

  “There are no days off, no vacations,” Dianne reminded us, “though you’ll get two or three hours of downtime in the afternoons and occasionally an evening out at one of our ports of call. You are going to be asked to work harder, perhaps, than you have ever worked before; you will have more rules regarding your appearance and behavior than you’ve ever had to follow… .”

  I thought of all the requirements posted on the wall of women’s quarters—earrings no larger than the earlobe; clear polish on the nails; hair worn back away from the face, especially for servers at mealtime.

  “And for every minute you are in the public eye,” Dianne continued, “you are required to be friendly and professional, even though, at times, you may be faced with the appalling conduct of a guest.”

  We gave each other rueful smiles.

  Quinton did the closing remarks: “Remember that you are in a unique situation. You’ll be living in close quarters, eating and sleeping on odd schedules, and working ridiculous hours at low wages.” General laughter. “But you’ll make some good friends here, have some fun, and will, I hope, look back on this summer with pride and say, ‘I signed on for the maiden voyage of the Seascape.’ And now let’s get to work.”

  * * *

  The stewards were divided into three groups. The first group went off for a tour of the ship with the first mate, a toothy, good-natured young man named Ken McCoy. The second group was to go with Dianne for a demonstration of cleaning the staterooms, as the passenger accommodations were called. The third group consisted of the stewards who’d worked on other ships before, and these went with Quinton to tour the galley.

  To begin, all the inexperienced people were appointed housecleaners in the mornings, dishwashers and busboys at night. After we proved we were reliable and could get along well with the passengers, we would be able to wait tables at breakfast and lunch, pass out the next day’s programs, and turn down beds at night. And after the third or fourth week, we could take turns on the most coveted shift—sleeping in a little in the mornings, going on laundry detail, and serving the evening meal. But even then, Dianne told us, no one would work more than a week at a time in the galley, because with setup before meals and cleanup afterward, it was exhausting.

  The staterooms were about the size of small bedrooms—a dormitory room, maybe: twin beds, with a narrow aisle between them; a dresser with four drawers; a small desk and chair; a closet; a picture window; and a bathroom the size of two phone booths. To bathe, a passenger stood in the small space between sink and toilet, pulled the waterproof curtain in front of the closed bathroom door, and turned on the shower—over himself, the sink, the toilet, the works. That was why the toilet paper was in its own closed container.

  “Wow!” said Natalie. “I hope this isn’t the luxury suite.”

  We laughed, Dianne included.

  “Actually,” Dianne said, “all the staterooms are alike on this ship. The Spellbound is a larger ship with eight suites, but the Chesapeake line is trying to keep costs down to stay competitive.”

  Getting down to the nitty-gritty, we learned about cleaning products. How you always wore latex gloves and never used the same cloth or brush on the sink that you’d used on the toilet. You cleaned all the corners. You vacuumed under the beds. And you never, ever, opened a drawer or a bag or the medicine cupboard. Theft called for immediate dismissal. You’d be dropped off at the next port of call. Find your own way home.

  We were each assigned a few cabins in a row of staterooms on the lounge deck, where the rooms opened onto a narrow outer walkway that went around the whole of the ship, as it did on the deck above. Only the main deck, where the dining room was located, had cabins with doors that opened onto an inner hallway—no wraparound walkway down there. Dianne went from room to room watching us work, making suggestions, giving her critique.

  I knew how to clean a bathroom. You don’t grow up in a motherless house with a dad and older brother and not learn how to help with everything there is to do. Even after Dad married again, he and Sylvia and I managed to keep the place clean ourselves, but I had heard Sylvia tell Dad that after I left for college, she was hiring a weekly cleaning service. Fair enough, he said, because she was working full-time too, just like him.

  Dianne’s only complaint about my work was that I was too slow.

  “You’ll have fifteen rooms to clean in about five hours, Alice,” she said. “You can’t take a half hour per room, but your work is excellent.”

  Great, I thought. If I never get hired as a school counselor, I can always clean the building. I wiped one arm across my sweaty face.

  A sandy-haired guy named Mitch was cleaning the room next to mine and gave me a sympathetic look. “It’s even slower when the passengers get here, they tell me. Then you’ve got shoes and bags and shaving stuff in your way.” He was making hospital corners on the sheet he’d placed over the bed. No fitted sheets on the Chesapeake line. The flat sheets had to do double duty.

  “How you making out?” I asked Pamela as we passed on the deck. She gave a soft moan. There was no time to pause and observe the Baltimore skyline or the two guitarists performing on a sidewalk of the Inner Harbor. If any part of my job in housekeeping was supposed to be fun, I hadn’t hit upon it yet. But we were so incredibly lucky to have this job—that all five of us had gotten hired together.

  We cleaned up the last remnants of dust and lint and grout that builders and decorators had left behind, and each stateroom would be inspected carefully, possibly cleaned again, when we were through. As the afternoon wore on, we began to find shortcuts, better ways of doing things. Dianne applauded each completed room and gave us a breather when she went to get more towels.

  Shannon and I rubbed each other’s backs as we leaned over the rail. She was a round-faced girl with blue eyes who reminded me of my friend Molly.

  “Tell me I don’t need a cigarette,” she said as I massaged her shoulders.

  “You’d like one, but you don’t need it,” I said. “How’s that?”

  “I don’t know. I think this might have been a mistake—signing on here. Some people can quit cold turkey, but that’s not me.”

  “Ever tried it before?”

  “No.”

  “Then hold on,” I said.

  It was around six by the time our group finished the few trial rooms we’d been assigned. We knew that the rest of the cabins had to be cleaned the following day—because passengers arrived on Sunday and the Seascape sailed out that evening—but we didn’t see how that was possible. We were already sore, muscles stretched from squeezing oursel
ves into tight places and from twisting to clean behind the toilets. Somehow the promised tour of the ship didn’t seem as wonderful as it had before. All we wanted to do was to sit down.

  But when we exchanged places with the first group and went back down to the dining room for fruit and cheese and crackers, we found ourselves ready to go ten minutes later. We followed Ken McCoy back to crew quarters on the lowest level and checked out the engine room, storeroom, laundry hold, machine shop. No daylight down there.

  Then it was back up to the main deck and a tour of the galley.

  The lounge deck, next flight up, where we’d been working, had a lounge at one end—a huge room with a wraparound couch at the bow, game tables, a bar, and a library along one side.

  The Chesapeake deck above that was all staterooms, including the pilothouse and the captain’s quarters. A row of mops and brushes outside the rooms marked where the first group was now learning the fine art of housekeeping.

  But our favorite level was the observation deck at the very top of the ship, with deck chairs, a few exercise bikes, and a shaded area for quiet reading. I stood at the rail listening to the sound of the ship’s flag flapping, and as I watched the gulls circling and calling, I thought of Patrick and wished he were here.

  Why couldn’t we ever do something really fun together—I mean, for more than a day? More than an evening? Why couldn’t he have taken the summer off from his studies—just one lousy summer—and spent it with me?

  We could sit up here after dark and watch the sky as the ship silently plowed the water; visit the ports of call when we had the chance, our arms around each other, my head on his shoulder. I knew I’d probably watch some of the others pair off—the usual summer romances—before the ten weeks were over. But I’d be alone.

  In one more week Patrick would be on his way to Barcelona to help one of his professors finish a book. And he’d be there for the next four quarters, getting in his year of study abroad now instead of later. “After that, I’ll be back to stay,” he’d told me.

  But “back” was the University of Chicago, not Maryland. Meanwhile, he’d be seeing the sights of Barcelona alone. Or not. It wouldn’t be me at his side, in any case. We wouldn’t be watching a sunset together or walking along a beach or taking day trips into the Spanish countryside.

  I was overcome suddenly by a wave of … homesickness? … that immobilized me momentarily—the same kind of sadness or panic you get when you’re on a sleepover for the first time or that sinking stomach-twisting anxiety you feel as a kid when you’ve wandered away from your parents in a department store.

  It lasted only six or seven seconds, then receded, but it left me feeling vulnerable. What was that all about? I wondered. Patrick as parent? As home? Security? My breath was coming back, and I inhaled slowly. Gradually I tuned in to the conversation around me, as other stews were pointing out the aquarium, the baseball stadium, and Federal Hill onshore.

  I gripped the railing and looked straight up, squinting into the late afternoon brightness, watching one solitary gull fly a huge oval above the ship, its wings barely moving, and wondered if it was enjoying its solitude or missing a mate.

  2

  PUSHING OFF

  It didn’t take the five of us long to realize that this wasn’t anything like summer camp. As I lay on my bunk that night, my thighs and shoulders aching, the summer we had been assistant counselors at Camp Overlook seemed like kindergarten compared to this.

  How could we possibly have thought we’d be staying up half the night, joking around with the guys? That somebody would pull out a guitar or even a banjo, and we’d sing and horse around? Two of the guys had appeared half dead when we took a dinner break at eight, and the rest of us lasted till eleven, with the full knowledge that for some of us, alarm clocks would go off at five thirty the next morning—the next morning and the one after that. Were we insane?

  It was Shannon who actually said it: “I was insane to think I could go ten weeks without a cigarette. I’m practically clawing at my skin already.”

  “The first twenty-four hours are the hardest,” Emily told her in the dark. “Hang in there.”

  I was already floating in and out of consciousness. I think I heard Liz say “good night.” I think I heard one of the other girls humming along with her iPod. I definitely heard someone tell Shannon to shut up about cigarettes.

  And then it was morning. Or the middle of the night. I couldn’t tell, because there was no sunlight. Only the sound of our door opening, the glare of the fluorescent light in the hall, and Dianne’s cheerful voice: “Everybody up. We’ve got a lot to do today.” And we all wanted to kill her.

  “Once you get into the routine, it’s easier. Really,” Dianne assured us as we took turns in the communal bathroom and pulled on our clothes. We tied our hair back, washed the sleep from our eyes, brushed our teeth, ran some ChapStick over our lips, and sat down with the guys for breakfast.

  Dianne insisted we eat a big one. “You start work on a near-empty stomach, and halfway through the morning, you’ll eat coffee grounds, you’ll be so hungry,” she told us.

  Liz and I studied the steaming platter of scrambled eggs and sausage that was making the rounds, wanting to opt for half a roll and some orange juice instead. We each took a small spoonful of eggs to make Dianne happy, but she was right: By ten fifteen, I was ravenous. I’d cleaned three more rooms, polished the chrome, brought a load of towels up from the laundry hold, and scraped off a bit of paint that had dried on one of the floors. When Rachel told us there were doughnuts and coffee in the galley if we wanted a break, I felt I needed a doughnut as much as I needed air and headed for the stairs.

  “My God, my hair!” Lauren said as we passed the mirrored wall on the lounge deck and stared at our early-morning selves—no makeup, no mousse… .

  “We look like inmates of a women’s prison,” Pamela wailed.

  Our only consolation was that we all smelled alike, I told her.

  When we had our two-hour break that afternoon, we were tempted to go back to bed. Shannon, in fact, did—mostly to take her mind off smoking. But the rest of us showered and washed our hair, applied some blush and mascara, and just that little luxury restored our energy. Then we went up on the top deck, where the guys were gathered in the shade area—all but Barry, who loved the sun. Dianne had left a tall pitcher of iced tea for us, and we sprawled on the vinyl lounge chairs, welcoming the late-afternoon breeze.

  It was the first time since we’d come on board that we had a chance to really hang out with the guys, and I found myself studying them one by one. The quiet, broad-shouldered guy who smiled mostly with his eyes was Mitch; the talkative one, Flavian, with his dark good looks, could have been an extra on a movie set; all of us liked Barry, who lay bare-chested, his feet pointed outward, on a chaise longue; Josh, probably a few years older than the others, who had sailed before with Quinton and Dianne and also knew the engineer; and Curtis, who wore a wedding band. They looked great in their black T-shirts and sweat-soaked bandanas, but I couldn’t be sure who were deckhands and who were stewards.

  We sat around discovering a few connections: One of Lauren’s friends was Flavian’s ex-girlfriend; Natalie and one of the deckhands had gone to the same high school and had had some of the same teachers… . Each connection brought out memories and wisecracks, and we were beginning to feel more relaxed. There’s something about letting guys see you at your worst, as we were at breakfast, that makes you feel you can let it all out; you can tell each other anything.

  Barry, in fact, was so relaxed—eyes closed, hands folded over his stomach—that he didn’t see the gulls that were circling overhead. And when one dropped a load on his chest, a wide splatter of white, he thought one of us had pelted him, and he opened his eyes, frowning around the circle. We broke into laughter.

  “What?” Barry kept saying. “What?” His hand went automatically to his chest. Then, “Shit!” as he held his hand out in front of him.

  “Ex
actly,” said Flavian, and we laughed some more.

  Barry’s feet came down on either side of the chaise longue, and he grabbed Flavian’s shirt from the arm of a chair. With one quick swipe and a satisfied grin, he wiped his chest clean.

  “Hey!” Flavian cried. “You moron!”

  But Josh was laughing. “You gotta watch that guy. We only did one cruise together, and he was goofing off the whole time.”

  “Yeah? Who had your back when you went AWOL that time in Savannah?” Barry said, tossing the shirt over to Flavian. “Who got the number of that girl in Martha’s Vineyard for you?”

  “My buddy!” Josh said. “What would I do without you?”

  I wiggled my bare feet and thought how much this reminded me of the banter between Patrick and Mark and Brian back in Silver Spring. Around Mark’s swimming pool in the summertime. Back when Mark was still alive.

  Josh turned to Mitch. “How early did you sign up for this job, Mitch?”

  “Would you believe March?” Mitch said, stretching his long legs out in front of him. “Surprised they were still hiring, but they told me I’d be either a deckhand or a stew, whichever they needed most. Just call me ‘Whichever.’”

  That got a laugh.

  “Man, I applied last November,” said Barry.

  “Yeah, he heard that Steph was going to be cruise director,” Josh told us.

  “Stephanie? Stephanie Bowers?” said Rachel. “I heard she got fired from that cruise line down in Jacksonville a couple of years ago.”

  Josh shrugged. “Just goes to show …”

  Gwen and Yolanda, Liz and Pam and I sat smiling, just listening, though we didn’t really feel left out. Must be nice to be part of the “in crowd,” I thought. Maybe sometime, on some future cruise, Josh and Barry would sit around talking about us. Favorably, of course.

  We worked like dogs the rest of the day. Frank, the middle-aged engineer, was aboard now, checking things out. Those of us who had spent all our time cleaning cabins were given a crash course in working the galley—scraping the plates and stacking the dishwasher. And for those assigned to clean tables, Dianne demonstrated carrying a fully loaded tray of dishes, including a pot of coffee, on the flat of her hand, one edge resting on her shoulder.