Marcia Talley: Dark Passage

I smiled. ‘The hardest thing for me was what to wear for the formal evenings. Since I quit working in Washington, D.C. I don’t dress up much. I was forced, actually forced , to go shopping at Lord and Taylor.’ Paul had been a professor of mathematics at the Naval Academy for more than twenty years, and in the old days there had been frequent formal events at the college, but recently – except for the Ring Dance in May – not so much.

‘So, what did you buy, Aunt Hannah?’ Julie seemed genuinely interested.

‘A pair of swishy black crepe pants and a couple of glittery tops that I can mix and match.’ I was secretly pleased with my selections, and with the fancy sandals I’d bought at Nordstrom that same day.

Ruth tugged on the handle on her suitcase and began dragging it toward the terminal. ‘My formal wardrobe dates back to the mid-seventies,’ she called over her shoulder. ‘It’s so old it’s back in fashion.’

‘Can’t you wear one of your fancy dance costumes, Aunt Ruth?’

Ruth shook her head sadly. ‘Oh, honey, what with all the sequins and glass beads, those things weigh a ton. Wagons ho, ladies! Let’s get this show on the road.’

It took us less than five minutes to cross the parking lot, following the signs into the terminal building where we joined a cast of thousands waiting to pass through the security checkpoints. The last time I’d seen lines that long was at Baltimore-Washington Airport on the day before Thanksgiving. As we snaked our way along the barriers toward the X-ray machines, Julie kept busy with her iPhone, alternating between texting and snapping photos which she uploaded almost immediately to Facebook.

‘For Julie’s sake, I hope there’ll be a reasonable number of young people on board.’ Georgina’s eyes swept the backs and the faces of the people in line around us. ‘What do you think the average age is here? Fifty? Sixty?’

I shrugged. ‘Maybe more. But school’s already let out for the summer, so I imagine there will be plenty of families on the cruise.’ As if to illustrate my remark, a child somewhere began to wail miserably. ‘See?’

‘And, look over there,’ Ruth added, nodding her head toward the entrance.

A boisterous group of young people and adults began streaming into the terminal, wearing identical red T-shirts imprinted in white with a stylized family tree and the words, ‘OMG, I Survived Another Crawford Family Reunion.’

‘Eleven, twelve, thirteen…’ Ruth counted. ‘My God, there must be thirty or forty of them. Haven’t the Crawfords heard about birth control?’

I punched Ruth’s arm. ‘Don’t be mean.’

While we’d been fooling around, a gap had opened in the line in front of us. I eased my bag forward, but it snagged on something. I stooped for a closer look. A rainbow-colored luggage strap embroidered with the name ‘Elizabeth Rowe’ had wrapped itself tightly around two of my wheels. I extricated the strap, then looked around for its likely owner.

Just ahead of me in line was a woman with short-cropped white hair; a pair of sunglasses perched on top of her head. I tapped her on the shoulder. ‘Are you Elizabeth Rowe?’

The woman started, then turned to look at me, her eyebrows raised.

I held out the luggage strap.

‘Oh, thank you!’ she said, taking it from me. ‘Cliff, look. I told you that clasp wasn’t secure.’

The man I took to be Elizabeth’s husband wore a blue-striped short-sleeve shirt that matched the color of the eyes that peered at me through his aviator eyeglasses. ‘What did you say, Liz?’

Liz waved the strap under his nose. ‘The clasp. It’s broken.’

Cliff relieved his wife of the strap, opened and closed the clasp a few times experimentally, then handed it back. ‘Looks fine to me. Maybe you didn’t fasten it securely.’

Liz took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. I could almost read her thoughts. Not wanting to dive headlong into the middle of a family squabble, I smiled and asked, ‘Is this your first cruise?’

‘Oh dear, no. Since we retired, Cliff and I have been fortunate enough to be able to travel fairly extensively.’

‘Do you live in Baltimore?’

‘We spend most of the winter in Florida,’ Cliff chimed in. ‘But, when we get back from this cruise, we’ll be heading back to our home in Maine.’

‘Where in Maine?’ Ruth wanted to know. ‘My husband’s family is from Limington, near Lake Sebago.’

‘We live in Lovell,’ Cliff said. ‘A tiny town near the New Hampshire border.’

‘Kezar Lake’s in Lovell! I know it well,’ Ruth said, surprising me. ‘Hutch and I have stayed at the Lodge.’ She eased around me to ask, ‘Have you ever met Stephen King?’

Stephen King? Had my sister lost her mind? ‘Don’t be silly, Ruth,’ I said. ‘Everybody knows that Stephen King lives in Bangor. In a big, spooky house with a spider web on the gate.’

‘He has a house on the lake in Lovell, too,’ Liz informed me kindly. ‘In fact, Lovell is where King was struck by a van and nearly killed back in 1999.’

Julie’s thumbs paused mid-text. ‘I love Stephen King! He’s so twisted. In a good way.’

Like well-behaved cattle, we’d reached a divide in the rope barrier where a uniformed security guard sent the Rowes in one direction and our party in another. ‘Have a great voyage!’ I called as Liz hoisted her carry-on – still missing its strap – onto the conveyor belt.

Liz waved. ‘Maybe we’ll run into each other again!’

‘I hope so,’ I said, meaning it. ‘Are you early seating or late?’

‘Early!’

Cliff had already disappeared behind the X-ray machine, heading toward the metal detector. Before Liz disappeared, too, I cupped my hands around my mouth and yelled, ‘We are, too!’

Soon we were standing at a long counter in a much shorter line, checking in. We presented our boarding passes along with our passports, had our credit card number verified, then posed, smiling, staring at a little dot above the camera like you do at the Department of Motor Vehicles while our mugshots were being taken. ‘Here’s your sea pass,’ the clerk said a few minutes later, handing me the plastic identification card that would serve as both my room key and a credit card while on board.

‘Let me see your picture,’ Georgina said, snatching the card playfully from between my fingers. Her eyes narrowed. ‘This is supposed to be a vacation, Hannah. You look like you’re going to jail!’

‘If you think that’s bad, you should see my driver’s license,’ I said as I watched our bags being spirited away. The next time we’d see them, they’d be in our staterooms.

Before heading up the gangway, we were accosted by the first of a well-organized team of photographers who would pop up everywhere during the week, like paparazzi, to create lasting (but expensive) memories of our cruise.

‘Why do we always have to pose in birth order?’ I complained as Ruth arranged us in front of a backdrop of the Parthenon: Julie on the end, next to her mother, then manhandled me into the spot between Georgina and herself.

‘Shut up and turn sideways,’ she ordered. ‘It’ll make us look thinner.’

‘Don’t be such a bossyboots,’ I muttered through teeth clenched in the say-cheese position.

Still blinking away the flash, I followed my family as they trooped up the gangway to the entrance on deck two where a crew member ran our sea passes through a scanner. ‘Welcome aboard the Phoenix Islander ,’ she chirped. ‘Your staterooms are not quite ready, but you are welcome to tour the vessel, and the Firebird café is open if you’d like something to eat.’

‘When will the cabins be ready?’ Ruth asked.