The Corrections

“And you know, I’m not supposed to let myself think magical or religious thoughts, but one thought I can’t escape is that this crazy thirst for revenge I’ve had for all these years isn’t really my own. It’s Ted’s. He won’t deal with it himself, and somebody’s got to deal with it, so I do, like I’m a surrogate mother except I’m not carrying a baby, I’m carrying emotions. Maybe if Ted had taken more responsibility for his feelings, and been less in a hurry to go back to work at Du Pont, I would have stayed just like I always was, and sold my woodcuts at the guild every Christmas. Maybe it was Ted’s being so rational and businesslike that pushed me over the edge. And so maybe the moral of this long story which you’ve been a total dear to listen to, Enid, is that I can’t stop finding a moral to the story no matter how hard I try not to.”

To Enid at this moment came a vision of rain. She saw herself in a house with no walls; to keep the weather out, all she had was tissue. And here came the rain from the east, and she tacked up a tissue version of Chip and his exciting new job as a reporter. Here it came from the west, and the tissue was how handsome and intelligent Gary’s boys were and how much she loved them. Then the wind shifted, and she ran to the north side of the house with such shreds of tissue as Denise afforded: how she’d married too young but was older and wiser now and enjoying great success as a restaurateur and hoping to meet the right young man! And then the rain came blasting up from the south, the tissue disintegrating even as she insisted that Al’s impairments were very mild and he’d be fine if he’d just work on his attitude and get his drugs adjusted, and it rained harder and harder, and she was so tired, and all she had was tissue—

“Sylvia?” she said.

“Yes?”

“I need to tell you something. It’s about my husband.”

Eager, perhaps, to repay the favor of listening, Sylvia nodded with encouragement. But suddenly she reminded Enid of Katharine Hepburn. In Hepburn’s eyes there had been a blank unconsciousness of privilege that made a once-poor woman like Enid want to kick her patrician shins with the hardest-toed pumps at her disposal. It would be a mistake, she felt, to confess anything to this woman.

“Yes?” Sylvia prompted.

“Nothing. I’m sorry.”

“No, say.”

“Nothing, really, just that I must get to bed. There’s certainly lots to do tomorrow!”

She rose unsteadily and let Sylvia sign for the drinks. They rode an elevator in silence. Too-precipitous intimacy had left in its wake a kind of dirty awkwardness. When Sylvia stepped out at the Upper Deck level, however, Enid followed. She couldn’t bear to be seen by Sylvia as a “B” Deck sort of person.

Sylvia stopped by the door of a large outside stateroom. “Where’s your room?”

“Just down the hall here,” Enid said. But this pretense, she saw, was unsustainable. Tomorrow she would have to pretend she’d been confused.

“Good night, then,” Sylvia said. “Thanks again for listening.”

She waited with a gentle smile for Enid to move on. But Enid didn’t move on. She looked around uncertainly. “I’m sorry. What deck is this?”

“This is the Upper.”

“Oh dear, I’m on the wrong deck. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. Do you want me to walk you down?”

“No, I got confused, I see now, this is the Upper Deck and I’m supposed to be on a lower deck. A much lower deck. So, I’m sorry.”

She turned away but still she didn’t leave. “My husband. . .” She shook her head. “No, our son, actually. We didn’t have lunch with him today. That’s what I wanted to tell you. He met us at the airport and we were supposed to have lunch with him and his friend, but they just—left, I don’t understand it, and he never came back, and we still don’t know where he went. So, anyway.”

“That is peculiar,” Sylvia agreed.

“So, I don’t want to bore you—”

“No no no, Enid, shame on you.”

“I just wanted to straighten that out, and now I’m off to bed, so, and I’m so glad we met! There’s a lot to do tomorrow. So. We’ll see you at breakfast!”

Before Sylvia could stop her, Enid sidled up the corridor (she needed surgery on her hip but imagine leaving Al at home alone while she was in the hospital, just imagine) castigating herself for blundering down a hall she didn’t belong on and blurting out shameful nonsense about her son. She veered to a cushioned bench and slumped and did, now, burst into tears. God had given her the imagination to weep for the sad strivers who booked the most el-cheapo “B” Deck inside staterooms on a luxury cruise ship; but a childhood without money had left her unable to stomach, herself, the $300 per person it cost to jump one category up; and so she wept for herself. She felt that she and Al were the only intelligent people of her generation who had managed not to become rich.