DOUBLE KNOT (10 page)

“Don’t you have a big enough story of your own, Fantasy?” Mother asked. “Don’t go
courting a bigger one and don’t meddle in other people’s business.”

“Don’t meddle? What is it you’re doing, Mother?”

She turned her hat my way so deliberately it’s a wonder I didn’t hear every bone in
her neck snap. “Is anybody talking to you?” I stuck my nose back in
The Compass
.

“I was talking about that man,” Mother said. “He’s weird.”

“Fantasy, Mother thinks Burnsworth has been in her room.”

“Did you catch him?” she asked.

“No.” Mother shook her magazine. “But that doesn’t mean he’s not a serial killer.”

Fantasy and I made a silent agreement over our sunglasses: Keep two eyes on Burnsworth.
One on Jessica, one on Poppy, two on him.

“Has anyone seen Poppy since breakfast?” I asked.

“That one’s not any bigger than a minute,” Mother said.

“Well, have you seen her, Mother?”

She looked at me from under the brim of her hat. “Somebody’s gotten so big for her
britches, you know it? Don’t start smart mouthing me, Davis.”

“I saw her with a feather duster sticking out of her back pocket,” Fantasy said. “She
said she was on her way to make my bed.”

“She’s not making mine. I made my bed this morning at six.”

Which launched Mother into a speech about bed sheets. No-iron, percale, and thread
count. Then she gave us her opinion of Egyptian cotton sheets. “That’s just a big
rip-off. Do either of you honestly believe the sheet people go to Egypt and buy cotton?
Let’s say they do. Is cotton from Egypt any better than good old American cotton?”
She smacked Fantasy’s leg with a
Family Circle
. “I’m talking to you, Fantasy.”

“What about Egypt?” Fantasy asked.

“You know, Fantasy, this might be a big part of the reason your husband is divorcing
you. You don’t pay attention.”

“Mother!”

“Davis, mind your own business. Read your book.” Back to Fantasy. “Now, where’s your
mother in all this, Fantasy? What does she have to say about this divorce business?”

“My parents retired to Florida ten years ago.”

“Is that your answer? They’re retired?”

“I haven’t told them yet.”

“Oh, boy.” Mother didn’t like this news a bit. “Well, it’s a good thing I’m here.
Now, start at the beginning.”

My mother was having a ball.

I went back to peeking over my big blue book into the salon. Burnsworth was at the
bar mixing the world’s slowest drinks. Poppy had crossed through twice, back and forth.
No SEALS.

Fantasy launched into her life story: six pounds, ten ounces, twenty-two inches long.
So she was tall and skinny from the get-go. She went to a private Catholic preschool
and I turned the page and went to Dining Services. The kitchen on
Probability
was almost as large as the casino and on the same deck, eight, just above us. The
one kitchen serviced all seventeen restaurants and covered room service. I read through
the restaurant descriptions and decided everyone on this ship would gain ten pounds,
which for me, if I weren’t a prisoner, would be forty. I flipped pages back and forth,
trying to determine if we were under the casino or the kitchen. Flip flip. The casino.
We were somewhere below and behind the ice sculptures in the casino. Maybe closer
to the main bar.

“Cotillion Ball.” My mother blew a raspberry. “So your problem is you’re spoiled.”

“I’m spoiled?” Fantasy shot up and her long legs straddled the sun chair. “Have you
taken a peek in Davis’s closet lately? Davis?”

“Yo.”
The Compass
had an entire chapter on the building of the ship. Blueprints, diagrams, and the
timeline, illustrated. First, a hangar was built in a port city in Germany on the
Baltic Sea, and it took more than a year to build the hangar. Then the bones of
Probability
were laid out in the hangar, it went on and on, fascinating, and two years later
here we were. On this half-billion-dollar prison.

“If you had to say how much money you have tied up in handbags, just handbags, what’s
your guess?”

I looked up from
The Compass
. “What does the cost of my purses have to do with anything?”

“Your mother is accusing
me
of being spoiled.”

“You’re missing my point, Fantasy,” Mother said. “What I’m trying to say is this seemingly
perfect childhood of yours didn’t prepare you for adulthood. You’re spoiled. You think
your life should be like a Cotillion Ball. It doesn’t sound to me like you ever had
to tough it out. Davis didn’t get a brand-new car when she turned sixteen, and she
didn’t go to a fancy college like you did, and Samuel and I certainly didn’t buy Davis
her first home or any other home.”

I tried to sit up. “Why are you telling her all this, Fantasy? She’s just going to
use it against you for the rest of your life.”

“You zip it, young lady.”

I opened my mouth.

“Zip it.”

Probability
had a diving center full of water sports equipment. Somewhere near the submarine,
far from the helicopter pad, and for whatever reason, on a ship built out for VIPs,
there was a separate and invitation-only VIP deck. How very important were the people
invited there? The ship was powered by twin 4000hp Yanmar diesel engines and held
four hundred and fifty thousand gallons of diesel fuel. So not only was No Hair hidden
somewhere on this huge ship, so were four hundred and fifty thousand gallons of potential
inferno. Terrifying.

Mother had a finger going very close to Fantasy’s nose. “Stepping out in a marriage
happens, Fantasy. I’m not saying I go along with it. I am saying couples survive it
every day. Now it’s usually the man stepping out, and you have to learn to look the
other way—”

“What, Mother?
What
?”

She ignored me completely.

“—but with
you
being the cheater and all, what you’ve done is taken away his manhood. You need to
apologize to him and really mean it, and I’m not saying you’re not going to spend
the rest of your life giving him his manhood back, but if you’ll take my advice and
just tell the man you’re truly sorry, maybe he will forgive you.”

Dead air.

“And you may have to make it up to him in ways you’ve never dreamed of. Acts against
God and nature.”

“Mother!
Stop
!”

She turned to me. “I’m talking about the oral sex, Davis, and I don’t mean discussing
it. Your generation didn’t invent it and I wasn’t born yesterday.”

I might drop dead today.

She turned back to Fantasy, whose head was hanging off the other side of her sun chair;
her shoulders were shaking and she was slapping her own leg. “What are you snorting
about? You think this is funny? You slipped up, young lady. That’s all there is to
it. You need to get over yourself and make it up to him for the sake of your children.”

Burnsworth scared us to death again when he appeared with his silver tray of refreshments
we’d totally forgotten, and for the first time since the day I passed the pregnancy
test, I wanted a drink. Mother took a sip and wanted several.

“What is this?”

“It’s a Vodka Fizz, Madame.”

“Well, keep ’em coming, Mister.”

I took a sip of mine and it was more straight pineapple juice than it was antifreeze.
Or rat poison. Or arsenic.

I made it to the chapter describing the fifty staterooms on
Probability
and found the two pages dedicated to 704 just as Mother geared up to talk to Fantasy
about the birds and the bees, a talk she’d never bothered having with me when it could
have done some good.

“Mother, Fantasy has three children. I think she knows all about the stork.”

After slamming her magazine down she turned to me and said, “When you start a story,
Davis, you start at the beginning. I’m trying to make a point here, if you don’t mind.”
Back to Fantasy. “Do you know what my mother said to me ten minutes before I married
Samuel? She said, ‘Men are nasty, but it’s your duty. The way you get through it is
by thinking about your garden.’ Which is where I believe the cabbage patch business
started. All those women lying there stiff as boards thinking about canning the cabbage,
cabbage soup, cabbage slaw, cabbage casserole, and stuffed cabbage rolls. Now I found
out quick my mother was wrong. It wasn’t that way in my marriage bed.”

I slapped my hands over my ears.

Fantasy caught Burnsworth’s eye as he crossed the deck and toggled a finger between
herself and Mother for another round. I watched over the top of my sunglasses as Jess
dove into the bottle of Petron tequila she’d ordered for her mid-morning poolside
refreshment. Mother finished explaining how fulfilling marital relations could be,
not a bit worried about me slowly dying beside her, and moved on to her second Fizz
and more timely matters. “You tell me what happened, Fantasy. How you met him and
what was so special about this total stranger. And particularly I want to know if
you had him take the AIDS test beforehand or if you used protective prophylactics.
Because I can see your husband calling it quits if something was rotten in Demark.”

I might be hallucinating. I was certainly hearing things, because surely to goodness
my mother didn’t just say what I think she did.

“Even then, Fantasy,” Mother said, “you could still clean up that mess. So to speak.
I believe if you try hard enough you can talk your husband out of this divorce business.
All he has to do is call his lawyer and take it back.”

I turned the page and almost fell out of my sun chair. Page sixteen.
Onboard Communications
. There were two subtopics, the first V2. (Pfffffft.) The second entry was email.
Channel seven on the interactive television located in the library. I’d been in every
room looking for an emergency exit, including the library, and I hadn’t seen an interactive
television in the library or anywhere else. But according to
The Compass
, I could send and receive email from the library. Relief flooded me. Email. If I
could get just one email out of 704 this would all be over. I was on my way there,
but before I could get halfway up, Fantasy beat me to it. She swung her brown legs
over the side of her sun chair to face me and Mother. Her bare feet slapped down and
her long shadow fell over me. She pulled off her sunglasses. “He didn’t call a lawyer,
Mrs. Way. I’m the one who filed for the divorce.”

I dropped
The Compass
and it landed on the deck with a thud.

“Wait,” my mother said. “I thought—”

“I filed. I’m divorcing Reggie.”

“
What
?” I scrambled up in as much of a hurry as I could. I sat on the side of my sun chair
facing Fantasy, Mother’s big sun hat swinging back and forth between us. “Why, Fantasy?
Why
?”

“I’m giving him his freedom, Davis. I want him to move on with his life.”

“But you
love
Reggie.”

“I do. With all my heart, ’til death do us part. Which is why I’m letting him go.”

Mother’s hat sliced back and forth.

“Try it, Davis. Break Bradley’s heart, then try to pick up the pieces. Sit across
from him at breakfast every morning and get a good look at what you’ve done. Wait
for him to walk through the door all day hoping it will be the day you’ve been pardoned.
Climb into the bed every night with a man you’ve wrecked.”

“Fantasy.” My breath was coming in short bursts. “These things take time. Wait it
out. Don’t be a martyr. Don’t nail yourself to some righteousness cross.”

“It’s done, Davis. I can’t spend the rest of my life waiting for him to forgive me.
I want Reggie to move on with his life. He won’t until I’m gone.”

My hands were all over my children, protecting them from this. “What about the boys?
What about your innocent little
boys
?”

“Do you think I want them to grow up thinking this is how it works? Davis, if I don’t
get out of their faces they’ll
never
trust a woman. Ever. I’m not going to turn my back on my boys. I will always love
them and take care of them, but not under the same roof with Reggie. Because someone
has to pay for what I did. And that someone is
me
.”

“Fantasy,
no
!”

“This isn’t your call, Davis. This is
my
life.
My
marriage.”

“And you’re throwing it away!”

Mother’s arms spread slowly and she landed a bony hand on one of my knees and the
other bony hand on one of Fantasy’s. “Both of you pipe down and listen up.” She pulled
off her ginormous sunhat and a shock of bright Caribbean sun hit my mother’s head
and I could see her bleached scalp through her whisper-thin hair. I grabbed for my
heart, lodged somewhere near my throat, because I thought it might burst.

“Marriage is a two-way street.” Mother’s voice was even and steady. “And it takes
two to tango. If you’ll take a harder look at what happened, Fantasy, you might discover
it wasn’t all your fault and there’s no need to walk out on your husband for something
that might have been just as much his fault as it was yours. These things don’t happen
by accident. You didn’t just fall into that other man’s bed. Dig a little deeper and
you might find out you had a little push. There isn’t a divorce out there that’s all
one person’s fault, and you taking all the blame on yourself might be the worst example
you could ever set for your boys. The problem isn’t that your husband hasn’t forgiven
you. The problem is you haven’t forgiven yourself. And all your cockamamie ‘the greater
good’ isn’t serving anyone but you. He can forgive you all day long, Fantasy, but
until you forgive yourself you’re going to be no good to anyone.”