Swan Song

by Lisa Alther

  But the first thing she had noticed about Kat was her odd way of walking as she came onstage for her reading. Her toes pointed straight ahead, and she placed one foot directly in front of the other. It gave her narrow hips a fetching sway. Weeks later, once Jessie got up the nerve to ask her about it, Kat laughed and explained about her father’s alleged Cherokee ancestor. As a child, she had read that Cherokees walked like that, almost pigeon-toed, so that they could fit their footprints into one another’s on the warpath in order to conceal from enemies the number of warriors in their party. She had started copying that gait, and now she couldn’t alter it.

  “This pirate stuff is kinda creepy,” said the singer, scooting closer to Jessie while still clutching the railing overhead.

  “Yeah, who knew?”

  “You’ve never cruised this route before?”

  “I’ve never been on a cruise ship before,” admitted Jessie. “This is my maiden voyage.”

  “No kidding? So what brings you on board?” The woman’s New Jersey accent shared little of the rich timbre of her singing voice.

  “I’m second-in-command at the clinic. I just got on in Hong Kong.”

  “Good to know I’ve got a doctor next door now.”

  Jessie laughed. “Just knock on the wall, and I’ll make a house call.”

  “Let’s hope I won’t have to. But I guess norovirus is making the rounds these days?”

  “I think it’s about run its course. All we have to worry about now are pirate attacks.”

  “Can you believe that people pay big bucks to be chased around by pirates?”

  “Nobody bothers to tell them about pirates when they’re signing up. It’s all about balmy sea breezes on your stateroom balcony and opulent souks overflowing with gold.”

  “The crew call the passengers Coneheads,” said the woman, “after that family of aliens on Saturday Night Live. They remove their brains and leave them at home when they go on vacations. We must have all left our brains at home. But don’t worry, they just do these drills to keep their insurance company happy. I’ve never even seen a pirate, and I’m on these ships all the time. It’s how I pay my bills when I can’t get a gig on land.”

  “Where did you get that beautiful silver collar you were wearing the other night?”

  “I bought it at a silversmith’s shop in Provincetown. I sometimes sing at clubs up there when I’m land-based.”

  The collars were a very distinctive design. Kat’s had probably come from the same shop.

  The ship’s horn blasted several times to indicate that the drill had been completed. Jessie and her neighbor got to their feet.

  “Nice talking to you,” said Jessie.

  “Likewise. My name’s Mona, by the way. But I guess you figured that out from the playbill at the theater the other night?”

  Jessie nodded. “I’m Jessie.” They shook hands and returned to their neighboring rooms, Jessie somewhat unnerved. Apart from the auburn hair and the silver collar, Mona was tall and slender, very much like Kat at the same age—though she lacked the pigeon-toed Cherokee stride.

  Chapter 6

  Angel Gowns

  Jessie sat up in bed. It was hopeless. She couldn’t sleep knowing that the ship might be running a gauntlet of mother ships. How sweet it was to know that young pirates rushed home to Mother after a busy day of seaborne depredation.

  One snowy night as she and Kat were lying together on the sofa in their condo living room, watching the havoc on the nightly news, Kat had proposed that an uninhabited island somewhere be set aside for the young men of every nation. At age eighteen they would be sent there. Those who survived would be allowed to rejoin civilization at age twenty-five, once their brains had developed fully functioning prefrontal cortexes and their hearts had developed some compassion.

  The men in their own families and those in the medical profession would, of course, be exempted. Jessie’s grandfather had made house calls for decades in all kinds of awful weather to rescue rural Vermonters. Her father had spent World War II in French field hospitals, salvaging the lives and limbs of Germans and Allies alike. Her brother Stephen had served as a medic in Vietnam and now ran a team of physicians who staffed the huge sporting events in New York City. Her brother Caleb had founded a free clinic in Denver. Jessie had named her own son Anthony, after Susan B. Anthony. He had followed the family métier, like a Flying Wallenda, and was now working in the Burlington ER. Kat’s father had joined the Freedom Riders and bore scars on his scalp to prove it. One of her younger brothers worked for the Southern Poverty Law Center. Her son Malcolm had founded a nonprofit that provided used cars to welfare recipients, and her son Martin ran a restaurant in Burlington that purchased most of its produce from local farmers.

  But interviews with German soldiers after World War II had established that some had savored the destruction and suffering they had wrought. She wondered what factors made certain men healers and others killers. This was the great unanswered question.

  Jessie’s daughter, Cady, had been named after Elizabeth Cady Stanton, whom Jessie’s mother had always claimed as a remote cousin. Cady was a social worker who defended foster children in court. Jessie was proud of both her children. They had sound hearts. They had also had to cope with a mother who had turned gay on them before it was fashionable. They had had to listen in silence as their teenage friends ridiculed dykes and faggots. And they had had to witness their mother behaving like a feckless teenager herself. Because Jessie had always been a dutiful daughter and a conscientious student, she didn’t sow her wild oats until her thirties, when it was no longer appropriate, dashing from woman to woman like a crazed puppy chasing squirrels.

  She shifted aside her curtain and looked out her window. It was dark and she couldn’t see a thing, much less a mother ship full of angry young idiots. She removed her pajamas and pulled on jeans and a T-shirt. Surely the requirement that she wear her uniform in public spaces could be waived at 4:00 a.m.?

  She walked to the service elevator and took it down to the fifth deck, where a few intrepid insomniacs were wandering the darkened hallways, frustrated to discover that the all-night buffet had been shuttered. Posted on the door to the walking deck was a notice saying it was closed until 8:00 a.m. Through the porthole in the door Jessie could see a security guard in body armor alongside the railing. His head was slowly swiveling, as though he were watching a beginners’ tennis match. He appeared to be scouring the water for fast-moving motorboats. Beside him on a tripod stood what looked like a satellite dish.

  Just then, Ben appeared in the hallway, dressed in a navy blue tracksuit. His heavy stubble, which used to be black, was now grizzled, frosting his dimples and the cleft in his chin. “You can’t sleep, either?” he asked.

  “It’s too nerve-racking knowing that pirates might scale the side of our ship at any moment.”

  “No kidding. I was just doing the elliptical in the dark at the gym, trying to get too tired to care.”

  “Shall we await the dawn together?”

  “Why not? The coffee machines at the buffet are probably working. Would you like a cup?”

  “Sure. I have no hope of sleep tonight, in any case.”

  They sat on the starboard side at a window table with a drawn shade. Ben was cradling his cup between his hands. “I’ve been trying to imagine what this ship with all its bright lights would look like to a teenage boy in a pirate ship at night. It must be the embodiment of all his wet dreams—twenty-four-hour buffets, women in bikinis, and a bug-free bed. An earthly version of the Islamic paradise. And since he doesn’t have the option of participating, he can at least try to destroy this embodiment of Crusader greed and lust.”

  Jessie nodded. “All these countries on the Gulf of Aden used to be important stops on the spice route from China and India to Egypt. The merchants transited this gulf in dhows packed with barr
els of cinnamon and cardamom, ginger and pepper and turmeric, bales of silk, bundles of ebony and ivory, piles of exotic animal pelts, chests of precious stones and pearls….”

  She realized this panegyric was probably inspired by “Ithaca,” which she had learned by heart for Kat’s memorial service:

  may you stop at Phoenician trading posts

  and there acquire the finest wares:

  mother-of-pearl and coral, amber and ebony,

  and heady perfumes of every kind….

  How Kat would have loved this voyage. They had always discussed taking trips like this once they both retired. They had waited too long.

  “So what happened?” asked Ben. “Why have they regressed to piracy?”

  “Imperialism is what happened. Invasions by Egyptians, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arab Muslims, Ottomans. And most recently, by the Portuguese, French, British, Turks, Italians. They all plundered the natural resources and exploited the cheap labor. They murdered anyone who objected or exported them as slaves. And then they went away, leaving those who survived the carnage to become enraged banditos.”

  “And an ER doc knows this how?

  “I was a history major in college. Like you, I wasn’t absolutely sure I wanted to be a physician.”

  Just then, the lights went on in the buffet area, and a server started opening the blinds. Once the shade covering Jessie and Ben’s window was raised, they could see the rising sun casting its crimson rays across the blackened water. In the distance, lights were winking from a harbor that sat inside what appeared to be the imploded crater of an extinct volcano.

  “That’s Aden,” said Ben. “It used to be a British enclave. The USS Cole was bombed there by al-Qaeda in 2000 when it stopped off to refuel. Seventeen sailors were killed.”

  The barbed black peaks of the collapsed crater wall seemed to be gnawing at the gory red sky. A thick column of black smoke arose from the town center.

  “Why doesn’t the Amphitrite dock there?” asked Jessie.

  “They’re in the middle of a civil war. A Saudi-backed group is fighting an Iranian-backed group. The Saudis are Sunni and the Iranians are Shia, so that probably has something to do with it. But it’s hard to keep track of who’s doing what to whom over here, much less why.”

  He paused. “But I must say that you’re very poetic this morning, Jessie. Exotic animal pelts and chests of precious stones! Danger must inspire poetry, because I wrote you a poem last night.” He reached inside the pocket of his jacket, pulled out a folded sheet of yellow legal paper, and handed it to her.

  Jessie unfolded the paper. She read a poem in his handwriting that appeared to be about the love he and she had shared in their youth, a love that still existed despite all that had intervened, a love that could rescue them both from despair in the present. Jessie was speechless.

  He got up to leave. “I feel like a fool.”

  “Don’t,” she said, looking up. “I had no idea you have such talent, Ben.”

  “Think about it, Jessie.”

  “How could I not?”

  As Ben walked away, Jessie just sat there. Kat had often recited poetry to her, until she had learned to more or less like it. Its vagaries were so different from her urgent tasks all day long at the ER. But she had to confess that it still remained like a foreign language to her. If this was really how Ben felt about their long-dead relationship, how could she refuse at least to consider rekindling it? However, memories of Kat still bound her like a shroud. And besides, she wasn’t attracted to Ben anymore.

  She picked up the poem and reread it. But what a poem! Could this be Kat’s message to her from the other side, urging her to get on with her life? That would be just like Kat, to wish a man on her next, so that Kat’s shade, if it existed, wouldn’t have to feel jealous of a new woman.

  * * *

  —

  At the clinic later that morning, Jessie found a note in her box from Iris Pendragon, the woman whose crown she had reglued. She invited Jessie to lunch in one of the guest dining rooms. Jessie phoned her, and they arranged to meet when Jessie’s lunch hour began. Jessie was curious to hear more about living full-time on a ship. The concept had a certain appeal. This ship would arrive in Brooklyn in less than a month. Should she get off and go home to Vermont to refight battles she had already fought in her youth for birth control, abortion, environmental regulation, and world peace? Or was it the younger generation’s job to defend these rights their parents had worked so hard to attain? Shouldn’t they sign off Snapchat and get out in the streets? It would serve them right, all those young women who had sneered at feminists, if they lost access to birth control and abortion.

  Should she sign another contract and keep working on the Amphitrite until she keeled over from exhaustion and they buried her at sea? Or rent a cabin and join Mrs. Pendragon as a permanent passenger? Moving constantly from place to place and person to person would be like practice for dying, when you had to leave everyone and everything familiar behind.

  Alternatively, she and Kat used to talk about buying a yacht with their aging friends and putting it on automatic pilot out into the Indian Ocean east of South Africa, where Air Malaysia Flight 370 had vanished. They could socialize until they ran out of booze and then overdose on sleeping pills while the yacht crept like a Viking funerary ship along the blazing tangerine pathway laid down by the rising sun.

  * * *

  —

  Mrs. Pendragon was dressed in boot-cut jeans, cowboy boots, and a plaid cotton shirt with mother-of-pearl snaps. She welcomed Jessie to her table by a window on the port side of the vast dining room that spanned the width of the ship. Jessie had removed her ship’s physician badge so patients would leave her alone, but she still wore her whites, with medical epaulets that featured three gold stripes on a red background and a gold caduceus. It was like trying to camouflage a snow goose in a herd of Angus steers.

  “Thank you so much for inviting me,” said Jessie as she sat down.

  “Thank you for accepting. I always enjoy getting to know the interesting people on board.”

  “I’m honored to be included in that category.”

  “But of course!”

  “Is your crown okay?”

  “Yes, it’s been fine, thanks to you.”

  “What have you been up to since I saw you at the clinic?”

  “Hiding from pirates in my hallway.” Mrs. Pendragon laughed.

  “Does this happen every time the ship transits this gulf?”

  “Oh yes. From Muscat to the Red Sea is usually like this.”

  “Has this ship ever been attacked?”

  “No, but they’re smart to take precautions.”

  “Does it frighten you?”

  “Not at all. The Lord is my shield and my cutlass!” She laughed merrily. “But how are you liking shipboard life?”

  “I like it. But I’m looking forward to experiencing it without Safe Haven drills.”

  “Things will become much calmer once we reach the Red Sea, and we’re almost there.”

  The tuxedoed waiter brought their salads.

  “Do you mind if I say grace?”

  Jessie shook her head, accustomed to these intimate mealtime chats with Jesus from her visits to Kat’s family in North Carolina. According to the obituaries in the local newspaper down there, people in the South never died, they just went to be with the Lord. During grace, Kat’s father had always referred to Jessie as “Kat’s little friend.” Afterward, he often announced that sending Kat north to college had been the biggest mistake of his life, since she had come back home a hippie. Jessie was pretty sure hippie was his code word for lesbian. Her mother had always assigned them separate bedrooms and had rattled on about which of Kat’s high school boyfriends were still in town and still available. Jessie had been fascinated to watch Kat, que
en of the barricades, meekly endure her parents’ homophobic abuse. It no doubt explained why she had fled her homeland and rarely returned. It was strange that her father, so fierce in condemning racism, didn’t hesitate to mock his daughter’s choice of whom to love.

  Mrs. Pendragon had lowered her head, closed her eyes, and was saying, “Lord, please accept my thanks for this delicious food, for this beautiful sunny day at sea, and for this wonderful new friend You have brought on board.”

  “Amen,” Jessie said, to be amiable. “How are your line-dancing classes going?”

  “I haven’t been able to dance much the past few days. It seems every time I learn a new routine, I pull a new muscle.”

  “That’s one of the joys of aging that no one ever warns you about,” agreed Jessie. “But you said you have a sewing project to keep you busy?”

  “Yes, evangelical women send me their old wedding dresses. My children bring them on board when they visit. I use the fabrics and the decorative lace and beads to make what I call my ‘angel gowns.’ ”

  “Angel gowns?”

  “Yes, gowns for aborted fetuses and stillborn babies.”

  “Really?”

  “I miscarried a baby myself sixty years ago. She was just dumped into a biohazard bag, and I never got a chance to say good-bye to her, much less to bury her.”

  “I’m sorry. How far along were you?”