Laura Furman - The O. Henry Prize Stories 2011

The captain’s cocktail party is held in the saloon-or, as Maud refers to it, Emergency Station 2. She is dressed in her best slacks and a red cashmere sweater, and Peter wears his blue blazer and a tie. The saloon is packed tight with passengers who are all talking at once. Right away, Maud orders a vodka martini at the bar while Peter has a beer.

“Take it easy,” Peter says, handing her the martini.

The ship’s motion is more pronounced. Maud hangs on to the edge of the bar with one hand and holds her martini glass in the other. Sometimes Maud drinks too much. She blames her age and the fact that she is thin and cannot hold her liquor the way she used to-not the actual amount she drinks. Standing in the center of the room, Captain Halvorsen is a tall man with thinning red hair; he smiles politely as he talks to the passengers. Maud guesses that he must dread this evening and the enforced sociability. Looking around the room, she does not see the darkly handsome first officer. A woman holding a golf club-which, at first, Maud thought was a cane-walks over to them and, standing next to Peter at the bar, orders a glass of white wine.

“If I am not mistaken, that’s a five-iron you have in your hand,” Peter says to her in his nasal voice.

“Yes, it is,” the woman answers. She is dark and trim and does not smile.

“Do you always travel with a golf club?” Peter, when he wants, can be charming and act completely entranced by what the other person is saying. If that person happens to be a woman, Maud tends to resent it even though she knows that Peter’s attention may not be entirely genuine. Peter continues, “By the way, my name is Peter and this is my wife, Maud.”

“I’m Barbara,” the woman says. “And, yes, I always travel with my golf club.”

“As protection?” Maud manages to ask.

“No,” Barbara frowns. “My goal is to drive a golf ball in every country of the world.”

“Oh.”

“And have you?” Peter asks. He does a little imitation golf swing, holding his bottle of beer in both hands. When, in the past, Maud has accused Peter of toying with people, Peter has accused Maud of misreading him.

“As a matter of fact, I have. Or nearly. Except for Antarctica, which of course is not a country but a continent, and a few African nations which are too dangerous. I began twenty years ago-”

Why? Maud is tempted to ask.

“After my husband died,” Barbara says as if to answer Maud.

“Can you get me another martini?” Maud asks Peter.

That night, Maud cannot sleep. Every time she closes her eyes, she feels dizzy and nauseated and she has to open her eyes again; she tries sitting up in bed. To make matters worse, the Caledonia Star creaks and shudders as all night it pitches and lurches through a heavy sea. Once, after a particularly violent lurch, Maud calls out to Peter, but either he is asleep and does not hear her or, perverse, he does not answer her. To herself, Maud vows that she will never have another drink.

In the morning, at seven according to the clock that is on the floor-Maud has finally managed to sleep for a few hours-Maud and Peter are awoken by the now-familiar voice on the public-address speaker.

“Good morning, folks! It’s Michael! I hope you folks were not still sleeping! For those of you who are on the starboard side of the ship-that means the right side for the landlubbers-if you look out your porthole real quick, you’ll see a couple of minke whales.”

When Maud looks outside, the sea is calm and it is raining.

“Do you see them?” Peter asks from his bed.

“No,” Maud says. “I don’t see any minke whales.”

“Michael is lying to us,” Peter says, rolling over on to his other side. “Be a good girl and give me a back rub. This mattress is for the birds.”

In the rubber Zodiac, Maud starts to feel better. The cold air clears her head and she is looking forward to walking on land. Behind her, the Caledonia Star rests solidly at anchor as they make their way across to Livingston Island. The passengers in the boat are all wearing orange life jackets as well as identical red parkas-when Maud inquired about the parkas, she was told that red was easy to see and made it easier for the crew to tell whether any passenger was left behind on shore. And had a passenger ever been left behind? Maud continued. Yes, once. A woman had tried to hide. Hide? Why? Maud had asked again, but she got no reply.

Holding her golf club between her legs, Barbara sits across from them in the Zodiac. Instead of a cap, she wears a visor that has GOLFERS MAKE BETTER LOVERS printed on it. Michael, the naturalist, is young, blond, and bearded, and he drives the Zodiac with smooth expertise. Once he lands the boat, he gives each passenger a hand, cautioning them: “Careful where you walk, the ground may be slippery. And steer clear of those seals,” he also says, pointing. “Especially the big fur seal, he’s not friendly.”

Looking like giant rubber erasers, about a dozen seals are lying close together along the shore; their beige and gray hides are mottled and scarred. Except for one seal who raises his head to look at them as they walk past-the fur seal no doubt-none of the seals moves. Maud gives them a wide berth and makes no eye contact; Peter, on the other hand, deliberately walks up closer to the seals and takes several photos of them.

A few yards inland, Maud sees Barbara lean over to tee up a golf ball. She watches as Barbara takes up her stance and takes a few practice swings. Several of the other passengers are watching her as well. One man calls out, “Make it a hole-in-one, Barbara!” The golf ball sails straight toward the brown cliffs that rise from the shore; a few people applaud. Barbara tees up and hits another golf ball, then another. Each time, the sound is a sharp crack, like ice breaking.

Michael is right-it is slippery. Wet shale and bits of snow litter the ground; also there are hundreds-no, perhaps thousands-of penguins on Livingston Island. Maud has to watch where she steps. It would not do, she thinks, to break a leg in Antarctica or to crush a penguin. Like the seals, the penguins appear oblivious to people. They are small and everywhere underfoot and Maud feels as if she is walking among dwarves.

When Peter catches up to her, he says, “You think one of these penguins is going to try to brood on a golf ball?”

“Incubate, you mean,” Maud says. “You brood on a chick.”

“Whatever,” Peter answers, turning away from her. He does not like being corrected, and although Maud should know better by now, old habits die hard.

In the Zodiac, on the way back to the Caledonia Star , the wind has picked up and the sea is rougher. In spite of Michael’s efforts, waves slap at the boat’s sides and cold spray wets the back of the passengers’ red parkas.

“Tomorrow, we will see icebergs,” Captain Halvorsen promises during dinner. Maud and Peter are sitting at his table along with another couple, Philip and Janet. Philip claims to have been in the same college class with Peter and to remember him well (he alludes to an incident involving the misuse of cafeteria trays, but Peter has no recollection of it and shakes his head). Janet, a tall brunette with smooth olive skin and dark full eyebrows, is much younger; she never attended college, she tells Maud, giggling. She took up modeling instead.

“If the ice were to melt,” Captain Halvorsen tells Peter, “the water would rise sixty-six meters.”

“Isn’t a meter like a yard?” Janet asks. “I was never any good at math.”

Sitting next to Maud, Philip, who is in real estate, is describing the booming building industry in Florida, where he lives.

“The grounding line is where the ice mass begins to float,” Maud overhears Captain Halvorsen say. “In Antarctica, icebergs form when ice breaks away from large flat plates called ice shelves.”