The Corrections

Then it was on to the Ibsen Promenade for the scheduled ten o’clock ice cream social. In the elevator it seemed to Enid that the ship was suffering not only from a seesaw motion but also from a yaw, as if its bow were the face of someone experiencing repugnance. Leaving the elevator, she almost fell over a man on his hands and knees like half a two-man prank involving shoving. On the back of his T-shirt was a punch line: THEY JUST LOSE THEIR AIM.

Enid accepted an ice cream soda from a food handler in a toque. Then she initiated an exchange of family data with Sylvia which quickly became an exchange more of questions than of answers. It was Enid’s habit, when she sensed that family was not a person’s favorite topic, to probe the sore relentlessly. She would sooner have died than admit that her own children disappointed her, but hearing of other people’s disappointing children—their squalid divorces, their substance abuse, their foolish investments—made her feel better.

On the surface, Sylvia Roth had nothing to be ashamed of. Her sons were both in California, one in medicine and the other in computers, and both were married. Yet they seemed to be hot conversational sands to be avoided or crossed at a sprint. “Your daughter went to Swarthmore,” she said.

“Yes, briefly,” Enid said. “So, and five grandsons, though. My goodness. How old is the youngest?”

“He was two last month, and what about you?” Sylvia said. “Any grandkids?”

“Our oldest son, Gary, has three sons, but so, that’s interesting, a five-year gap between the youngest and the next youngest?”

“Nearly six, actually, and your son in New York, I want to hear about him, too. Did you stop and see him today?”

“Yes, he made a lovely lunch but we didn’t get down to see his office at the Wall Street Journal where he has a new job because the weather was bad, so, and do you get out much to California? To see your grandsons?”

Some spirit, a willingness to play the game, left Sylvia. She sat peering into her empty soda glass. “Enid, will you do me a favor?” she said finally. “Come upstairs and have a nightcap.”

Enid’s day had begun in St. Jude at five in the morning, but she never declined an attractive invitation. Upstairs in the Lagerkvist Taproom she and Sylvia were served by a dwarf in a horned helmet and leather jerkin who persuaded them to order cloudberry akvavit.

“I want to tell you something,” Sylvia said, “because I have to tell someone on the ship, but you can’t breathe a word of this to anyone. Are you good at keeping secrets?”

“It’s one thing I do well.”

“Then, good,” Sylvia said. “Three days from now there’s going to be an execution in Pennsylvania. So, and two days after that, on Thursday, Ted and I have our fortieth anniversary. And if you ask Ted, he’ll tell you that’s why we’re on this cruise, for the anniversary. He’ll tell you that, but it’s not the truth. Or it’s only a truth about Ted and not me.”

Enid felt afraid.

“The man who’s being executed,” Sylvia Roth said, “killed our daughter.”

“No.”

The blue clarity of Sylvia’s gaze made her seem a beautiful, lovable animal that was not, however, quite human. “Ted and I,” she said, “are on this cruise because we have a problem with this execution. We have a problem with each other.”

“No! What are you telling me?” Enid shuddered. “Oh, I can’t stand to hear this! I can’t stand to hear this!”

Sylvia quietly registered this allergy to her disclosure. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s not fair of me to ambush you. Maybe we should call it a night.”

But Enid quickly regained her composure. She was determined not to miss becoming Sylvia’s confidante. “Tell me everything you need to tell me,” she said. “And I’ll listen.” She folded her hands in her lap like a good listener. “Go ahead. I’m listening.”

“Then the other thing I have to tell you,” Sylvia said, “is that I’m a gun artist. I draw guns. You really want to hear this?”

“Yes.” Enid nodded eagerly and vaguely. The dwarf, she noticed, used a small ladder to fetch down bottles. “Interesting.”

For many years, Sylvia said, she’d been an amateur printmaker. She had a sun-filled studio in her house in Chadds Ford, she had a cream-smooth lithography stone and a twenty-piece set of German woodblock chisels, and she belonged to a Wilmington art guild in whose semi-annual show, while her youngest child, Jordan, grew from a tomboy into an independent young woman, she’d sold decorative prints for prices like forty dollars. Then Jordan was murdered and for five years Sylvia printed, drew, and painted nothing but guns. Year after year only guns.

“Terrible terrible,” Enid said with open disapproval.