A Commodore of Errors (33 page)

“No,” Mitzi said. “I can tell that you have no idea what I'm talking about.”

“What
are
you talking about?”

“Does she look like a Great Neck girl to you?”

Captain Tannenbaume did not respond. He agreed that she didn't look anything like a Great Neck girl but that was precisely what he liked about her.

“She don't even wear makeup for God's sake!”

“Do we . . . have to make her look like a Great Neck girl?”

“The Commodore said it's important she fits in right away,” Mitzi said. “He's really concerned that she look good at the unveiling of that monument he's so excited about.”

“What monument?”

“The monument for that idol of his, what's his name,” Mitzi said. “The cadet who died in World War II.”

“Never heard of him.”

“But, he's, like, the hero of the academy,” Mitzi said.

“I never went to the academy.” Captain Tannenbaume waved his hand dismissively. “They turned me down when I was a kid. I sometimes wonder why I want to be superintendent of that place anyway.”

“But, sonny,” his mother said. “Think about it. What great revenge.”

Captain Tannenbaume sighed. He looked at Sylvia. “You sure you want to go through with all this, sweetie?”

“In my country, the headmaster of a school is a very prestigious position.”

Captain Tannenbaume didn't give a rat's ass about the prestige. All he knew was that he had been on these ships for too damn long and that the thought of never having to see the likes of the chief again was more than enough reason to take the job.

“Oh, what the hell. Let's just go through with it.” He looked at Mitzi. “So what do you propose to do with my wife?”

“Well, actually,” Mitzi said, “we do have a plan.”

“A lesson plan,” Mrs. Tannenbaume said.

“It's a three-step plan,” Mitzi said.

“Sylvia has to
look
the part,
act
the part, and
talk
the part,” Mrs. Tannenbaume said.

“The first thing is to make her look the part,” Mitzi said.

“Hence the beauty parlor.” Captain Tannenbaume's voice dripped with resignation.

“You think this is easy? Look at her.” Mrs. Tannenbaume pointed at Sylvia, sitting primly in the chair.

While Mrs. Tannenbaume and her son continued to talk, Mitzi walked over to the captain's chair, straddled Sylvia's legs, and began to push up Sylvia's hair with her hands. Sylvia's limp hair fell down the second Mitzi let go.

“Hair spray!” Mitzi called out.

Mrs. Tannenbaume jumped into action.

“Hair spray!” Mrs. Tannenbaume thrust the oversized can into Mitzi's hand.

Mitzi worked fast, pushing up Sylvia's hair with one hand while she sprayed with the other. Captain Tannenbaume could only take a step back and marvel at what was unfolding in front of him. Mitzi sprayed with the ferocity of a crop duster. After a minute of nonstop spraying, a cloud of aerosol enveloped Sylvia's head, and she began to gasp for air, trying to fight off the crazy woman with the big can of aerosol. But the slightly built Sylvia was no match for Mitzi, who continued to primp and spray while deftly parrying Sylvia's blows with her forearms and elbows. It was a virtuoso performance.

Captain Tannenbaume naturally felt the impulse to come to the aid of his wife, who was very clearly on the losing end of a hairdresser catfight, but then again, Mitzi's dexterity downright awed him. Captain Tannenbaume did not have a dexterous bone in his body and he felt inferior to the more adroit Mitzi. In the end, it was Mrs. Tannenbaume who hip-checked Mitzi out of the way when she saw Sylvia go limp.

It took a moment for the aerosol cloud to dissipate, and when it did, the others on the bridge gasped at Sylvia's transformation. Her hair stood straight up on her head like a castle with peaks and turrets and gargoyley-looking wisps of hair locked in place by the big can of hairspray.

“Now that's what I'm talking about!” Mitzi said.

Captain Tannenbaume looked at Mitzi in disbelief. “She looks ridiculous.”

“Maybe to you,” Mitzi said. “But not to the women of Great Neck. With that head of hair, she'll be the envy of the
shul
.”

Captain Tannenbaume looked to his mother for confirmation. She nodded.

“The women in Great Neck like to wear their hair high,” she said agreed.

Captain Tannenbaume walked over to his wife. “Do you have any idea what you look like?”

Sylvia shook her head.

“I thought so. Mother, could you hand me the mirror, please?”

When Sylvia looked in the mirror, her entire countenance changed. Just like that. Gone was the teenaged child. In its place was a self-assured young woman. The others noticed the change, as well.

“You see?” Mitzi said. “The higher the hair, the more confidence you have. I don't know why it's true, but it is.”

Captain Tannenbaume could not believe his eyes. “Are you telling me that high hair makes a woman feel more confident?”

Mrs. Tannenbaume nodded. “The women in Great Neck are pretty darn confident.”

“They're more than confident.” Mitzi straddled Sylvia's legs again and pointed her finger right in Sylvia's face. “They're assertive.”

“Damn right,” Sylvia said.

Sylvia's words stunned Captain Tannenbaume. It was true that Sylvia could at times be a difficult teenager, but by and large she was a sweet young lady.
What on earth is happening to my humble wife?

“Nail polish remover!”

Mrs. Tannenbaume handed Mitzi the bottle and Mitzi, still straddling Sylvia's legs, grabbed Sylvia's hand and rubbed the cafe-au-lait colored nail polish off with the palm of her hand. Mrs. Tannenbaume gave Mitzi a rag, and Mitzi removed the last bit of old polish. Captain Tannenbaume had never seen a woman work so fast with her hands.

“Nail polish!”

Mrs. Tannenbaume was right there with the nail polish, a bright, garish, glossy red.

Mitzi had the nail polish on Sylvia's finger nails so fast it was as if she'd dipped them in the bottle. When Mitzi was finished, she pushed Sylvia's hands up over her head so that the heat guns could dry the wet polish. To Captain Tannenbaume, Sylvia looked like a poodle standing on her hind legs with her paws in the air. Mitzi swung her leg over Sylvia's legs and stood with her hands on her hips, panting from the exertion. After a moment, she shook her head.

“The bracelets have to go,” she said, more to herself than to anyone else.

On each wrist, Sylvia wore the cotton woven bracelets that were popular in Thailand. Mitzi called out for scissors and quickly snipped the bracelets off. And, ominously, Sylvia did not try to stop Mitzi from removing them. Mitzi took off her own gaudy gold bangles and slipped them on Sylvia's wrists. Mrs. Tannenbaume added a few of her own fake gold bracelets and Sylvia rotated her wrists so that they clanged. She seemed to like the sound of that.

While Sylvia played with her bangles, Mitzi applied makeup to her face. First came thick layers of dark foundation, then gobs of ghoulish rouge. Black eyeliner followed blue eye shadow. Mitzi finished Sylvia off with black lip liner and glossy, blood-red lipstick. When she was done, she ordered Sylvia to stand up. Sylvia got out of the captain's chair and stood before Mitzi with perfect youthful posture.

“Posture's gotta go,” Mitzi said. “You look like a cadet on parade. Push out your butt.”

Sylvia did.

“Now push out your chest.”

Again Sylvia did as she was told.

“Now walk.”

Sylvia walked to the other side of the bridge and back. Gone was the graceful glide that Captain Tannenbaume so admired, and in its place was the gait of a goose.

What had they done to his sweetie? He, of course, knew that he had only himself to blame. Mitzi would have been happy to play the femme fatale for the entire voyage, but it was he who insisted that she get to work on her “seaproject.” He only did that because he knew from experience the havoc to be wreaked by an idle crew member, especially when the idle crew member happened to be female and put together the way Mitzi was. And since he had agreed to this crazy plan of having his mother and Mitzi join the ship in the first place, he figured it was wiser to keep them both occupied.

He, however, had never imagined that the two of them would transform his wife into such a creature. Captain Tannenbaume thought back to the memo he received from Commodore what's-his-name. The Commodore wrote that he had Sylvia's interests in mind—and only Sylvia's interests—when he conceived of the
plan to have Mitzi and Mrs. Tannenbaume join the ship, as he put it, “To prepare Sylvia for life under the microscope.” Sylvia would feel so much more at ease, the Commodore wrote, if she “fit in” with the other wives. Captain Tannenbaume didn't know the Commodore, but from the tone of his memo, he seemed like a man who put others before himself. And maybe he was right—maybe Sylvia
would
feel more confident if she fit in with the other wives. Captain Tannenbaume could see that Sylvia already looked more confident and this after a change of hairdo and makeup. What else did Mitzi and his mother have in store for his young bride?

After several forays around the bridge, Mitzi told Sylvia to sit down in the captain's chair again.

“Swifty,” she said, “fetch Sylvia here a cup of coffee. Milk, two sugars.”

“I don't really want—”

Mitzi put up her hand to silence Sylvia. The moment Swifty placed the coffee in Sylvia's hands, Mitzi whispered something in her ear. Sylvia took a moment to compose herself, and then she handed the coffee back to Swifty. “It needs more milk.”

Swifty took the cup from Sylvia's hands and looked at Captain Tannenbaume, as if to say, “Do I have to be your wife's coffee boy?” Captain Tannenbaume thought he understood what Mitzi was doing. He recognized it as something that he first took notice of as a kid growing up in Great Neck. Whenever he ate in restaurants in Great Neck, he noticed that the women always sent stuff back to the kitchen—the soup was too cold, the coffee too hot—something was always wrong with their order.

Captain Tannenbaume could not bring himself to look Swifty in the eye. He just waved his arm at the coffee station. He knew what Mitzi was up to, and there was no sense in trying to prevent her from doing what she was on a mission to accomplish.

All Captain Tannenbaume could do was let out a long, tired sigh.
Good God, what have I wrought?

On his way down to his cabin, Captain Tannenbaume stopped in on Sparks and gave him a good ass chewing for being kept out of the loop on the pirate thing.
Sparks told him if he'd seen one pirate warning, he'd seen a thousand. Besides, Sparks said, the reports just mentioned pirate sightings—they said nothing about an actual pirate attack.

Captain Tannenbaume agreed that the reports looked pretty cookie-cutter but he told Sparks to keep him better informed in the future.

“The last thing I need is the chief sniffing around the radio shack checking up on us,” Captain Tannenbaume said. “The more he stays down below, the better off we'll all be.”

SEND IT BACK

A
t breakfast in the officers' mess the next morning, Sylvia practiced sending stuff back. She sent back the scrambled eggs because they were too runny, the grits because they were too watery, and the toast because it wasn't dark enough.

Mitzi was there to coach her along. “Tell the messman you just want the cook to tighten up the eggs a little bit. And tell him the grits are looking a little soupy.”

Sylvia was a fast learner. She sent back the oatmeal on her own, telling the messman that it was too oaty.

“Is that a word?” Sylvia asked Mitzi. “Oaty?”

“Doesn't matter. Send them back if you think they're too oaty,” Mitzi said. “Don't let them take advantage of you.”

The “oaty” bit, evidently, was too much for the steward. He stormed into the officers' mess wanting to know what the hell “too oaty” meant.