Blue Autumn Cruise (3 page)

A few days ago, on a Tuesday night, Daddy and Lynn called a family meeting after dinner. We hadn’t ever had a family meeting before, and I didn’t know what to expect. Diana and I finished up the dishes, and then we both came into the family room slowly. Daddy and Lynn were waiting on the couch, and Diana flopped onto the easy chair, propping her riding boots on the coffee table with a big annoyed sigh.

“Diana, no feet on the coffee table, please,” Lynn said.

Diana clomped them on the floor.

“We wanted to have a talk with you girls, now that we’re all living together, about being a family,” Daddy said, taking Lynn’s hand. “I really want us to feel the
love and loyalty for each other that a family feels. I know it’s hard to get used to a new family unit. I have something I’d like us to do together that might help, and that’s start going to church.”

“No!” said Diana. “I’m not going.”

“Wait a minute,” Daddy said. “Last spring Stephanie and I went to church at Eastertime, and it really brought home to me how much God means to me and how much I missed church. We hadn’t really gone since before the divorce. Well, now we’re making a new start, and Stephanie and I have gone a few more times, and now Lynn says she’s willing to go too. I’d like us all to go.”

“Mom?” Diana said accusingly. “You said that?”

Lynn nodded her head, putting her other hand on top of Daddy’s. “I did. I know you and I haven’t gone to church, Diana. But I want us to be a family, and I agree with Norm that one thing that might help us bond is going to church together. I’m willing to try it.”

“I’m not going to make anyone go,” Daddy said. “You girls are old enough to make your own decisions. But Lynn and I are going to go, and we hope you’ll decide to go with us.”

“I’ll go,” I said. I liked church. It was comforting to me to think that there was a God out there who loved me.

“Not me,” said Diana. “Is this family meeting over?”
She held up her fingers and did air quotes to frame “family meeting.”

I had had a sinking feeling then. When we got back home, we’d be going to church and having to leave Diana behind. I wanted to talk to Grammy about what that would be like.

“I’d love for you to come visit and see my balcony, Stephanie,” Grammy said now.

“Great!” I said.

“Look how small and faraway Fort Lauderdale looks already!” Aunt Carol said, leaning on the railing.

And it was true. Lauren had her camera up to her eye now, first focusing on Fort Lauderdale receding into the distance, and then turning the camera on me. I love being on camera.

“Grammy’s birthday cruise has officially started!” I said, throwing my hands above my head. And then I turned a cartwheel right there on deck.

“Yippee!”

I
wished Lauren would quit sticking that camera in everybody’s face. I felt like throwing it in the ocean. How was I going to get along with her for five whole days? And Stephanie obviously thought she hung the moon.

The next thing Lauren did was make us all go over to the station where they were serving the ice-cream sundaes. None of the grown-ups wanted one, except Norm, but all of us kids got one. Some smiling crew
members served them up, and Mom didn’t even say anything about saving room for dinner later. Stephanie loves posing for the camera, so Lauren shot video of her clowning around while she was eating her sundae. Lauren had this annoying habit of acting like a TV narrator when she was taking the video. Luke had a thing where every time Lauren pointed the camera at him, he’d freeze stock-still.

“Luke!” she said the second time he froze with his spoon halfway to his mouth. He stayed frozen, with ice cream starting to drip. I thought it was a pretty good idea and thought maybe I’d try it. That would teach her to try and videotape me. So far she hadn’t.

“Come on,” Norm said as soon as we finished. “Let’s find out where things are on this ship.”

The tour was confusing. There were three elevators on the ship, and seven restaurants, nine bars, three swimming pools, a work-out facility, a casino, and a spa, where we were sending Grammy for her birthday spa day. A whole hall was dedicated to displaying pictures that were going to be taken on the trip. Trying to keep track of what was in the front of the boat (“Forward,” according to Uncle Ted) and what was in the middle (amidships) and what was in the rear (aft) wasn’t easy.

After that, Grammy got tired of walking and said she was going back to her stateroom. Stephanie gave
Grammy a hug, as she headed for the elevator. “I’ll meet you guys at dinner,” Grammy said.

Norm still wanted to find the putt-putt golf course, so we walked to the back of the ship and then took the elevator up to the very top floor. We stepped out of the elevator into a small room where you could pick out any putter and any color ball you wanted for a round of free putt-putt. Opening the door to the outside, we stepped into high winds whistling around our ears. Surrounding us was the putt-putt golf course, covered with this green flannel material, and a basketball court enclosed in netting, with a running track encircling them. We decided not to play, but it was amazing to stand on the track and look back over the shining ocean and the boat’s wake at Fort Lauderdale, now a dot in the distance.

“What a view,” said Norm. “Can you believe we just left there?” He pointed to the tiny skyscrapers of Fort Lauderdale on the edge of the horizon.

Birds flew alongside us. Some were pelicans. Some were seagulls. I couldn’t believe I was going to be away from animals for five days. No barn. No horses. No Commanche. I felt a stab of homesickness. I thought about the way he stuck his head over the stall door when I came to the barn in the afternoons. He’d probably wonder where I was.

Since I was on the cross-country team last year, I decided to run around the tiny track a few times. It was so small I’d probably get dizzy going around it! Still, running was something I liked to do when people were getting on my nerves—like Lauren with her video camera—and I thought I might come here again.

When everybody was heading back to the room to get ready to go to dinner, I lagged behind. I let Stephanie and Lauren walk along, nearly arm in arm, giggling together. Once Stephanie looked back and said, “Come walk with us, Diana,” but I just told her to go ahead. Mom noticed that I was walking alone toward the back of the group, and she waited for me, then walked along with me as we went back by the swimming pool.

“So, what do you think? This boat is amazing, huh? We’re going to have a fantastic time, aren’t we? And I thought Grammy was really sweet to you.” She tried to put her arm around me as we walked, but I stepped away. Hanging around with my mom was the last thing I wanted to do when I was feeling left out.

“You know, Stephanie and Lauren have a lot of memories together. Sometimes you’ll feel left out since you weren’t there. Just try to remember they’re enjoying being together, and they’re not leaving you out on purpose, okay?”

Did Mom think I was a moron? Finally Mom got the message and went ahead to walk with Norm. I watched him put his arm around her and speak reassuringly to her. I knew I’d hurt her feelings, and he was trying to make her feel better.

Then Stephanie came back to talk to me. “Hey, Lauren and I are going to make a ‘day in the life of a cruise’ video. We want you and Luke to help us.”

“I don’t like the video camera,” I said. My voice sounds so much higher on the video than it does in my head.

“You don’t have to be in it. You can run the camera if you want. We just thought it would be fun to do something together.”

The ‘rents were probably making them include me.

“What’s Luke going to do?” I said.

“I don’t know. We haven’t figured that out yet.” Stephanie touched my arm, and I looked into her brown eyes as she made an appeal. “C’mon, Diana. I want us all to get to know each other and have fun. Lauren is so much fun if you give her a chance. Will you?”

I walked along a few strides with Stephanie, thinking about how things had been different since she’d moved in with us. I didn’t have to share my room with her, and since she had cheerleading practice every day, she wasn’t home until dinnertime. But when she was
home, she was always having friends over. I never felt like I had Mom to myself. Once I came back from the barn—Josie, the barn manager, had given me a ride home—and Mom, Norm, and Stephanie were sitting in the family room laughing and joking around. It seemed like everyone stopped laughing the minute I walked into the room. Like they all had a great time except when I was around.

But at other times, Stephanie had been nice to me. Whenever she had a friend over, she’d invite me to join them, even though most of the time I wasn’t interested. She sometimes had this girl, Colleen, over. But I didn’t trust her. Stephanie did try to help me with my English homework, though. And whenever she went downstairs to get a cookie, she’d always bring one up for me. That was the thing; she was always nice. Sometimes I wished she’d just lose it and act horrible. It was just so hard to believe that anyone could be that nice all the time.

“Well,” I said slowly. “I’ll try. But if it gets on my nerves, I’m going to quit.”

“Fantastic! You’ll try it!” She grabbed my arm and squeezed. “It’s going to be so fun.” She went back and joined Lauren again.

We passed the buffet and then rode down the elevator and went single file down the long hallway back to our rooms.

“We’ll head over to the restaurant for dinner in about thirty minutes,” Norm said as he and Lynn went into their room. “We’ll come to the room and get you.”

“How about we meet you over at the restaurant?” Lauren said. “We can find our way!” I could tell she was dying to be on her own on the ship.

“No, not just yet,” said Aunt Carol. “The first time we go to this restaurant, we’ll all go together. Once we learn our way around the ship a little bit, we’ll give you kids more freedom. Don’t forget, girls, you have to look nice for dinner. Tonight isn’t dress-up night, but no short shorts or anything like that.”

“Okay,” Stephanie said. “See you in a few.”

I was the last one to walk into our room.

“It’s driving me crazy,” Lauren was saying. “I feel like I have an umbilical cord attached or something. Like we’re little babies. I wish they’d just chill and let us be on our own more.”

“Well, it is a really big boat,” Stephanie said. “I think you need to chill. I don’t mind being with the ‘rents at first, until we learn our way around better.”

“I want to go see where the crew stays. I saw some online videos of cruise-ship crews, and they have their own mess hall and their own bar and everything. I want to take my video camera down there.”

“I can’t wait till dress-up night,” Stephanie said,
looking at herself in the full-length mirror beside the door. “What does your dress look like, Lauren?”

“I brought two. One’s short and blue and off one shoulder. Dad said I look at least seventeen in it,” Lauren said.

“Big deal,” I said. “Why do you want to look older?”

“I just do,” Lauren said, giving me a funny look. “Why not?”

“Diana’s on the cross-country team at our school,” Stephanie said, suddenly changing the subject. “She’s really good. So you guys are both good runners. Maybe you could run on the track together while we’re on the boat.”

“That track was so teeny,” Lauren said.

“I know. I ran around it a couple of times, but I was afraid I’d get dizzy,” I said, laughing.

“I know, right?”

“But you guys could still run together one day,” Stephanie insisted.

“Sure, maybe,” I said noncommittally. If I went up there to run, it would be to get away from Lauren, not be with her. I climbed up on my bunk and lay on my elbow, looking down. This sure was a little room.

“Anybody want me to French-braid their hair for dinner?” Stephanie asked.

“Oh, me!” said Lauren.

I lay on my bunk and watched as Lauren settled on the bunk in front of Stephanie, and then Stephanie separated Lauren’s shiny dark hair into sections and started to braid it.

One time at home, Stephanie had talked me into letting her braid my hair. She’d come in my room and sat on my bed, and I had to admit it had felt good for her to smooth and comb my hair. At dinner that night, Mom and Norm had complimented me on how nice it looked.

“That would be a good way to wear your hair when you ride,” Stephanie had said when I checked out myself in the mirror. “It will fit better under your riding helmet than a ponytail.”

Now Stephanie and Lauren talked and laughed as Stephanie worked. I didn’t want to watch them but I couldn’t help myself.

“My dad has a new saying,” Lauren said.

“Ha-ha, a new one?” Stephanie said. “What?”

“What he says all the time now is ‘At the end of the day.’ He picked it up from the news, I think. I just want to crack up. He says it about everything.”

“What does it mean?” Stephanie said.

“I guess it means when all the evidence is evaluated, or when everything is all over. ‘At the end of the day,’” she said in a reporter’s voice, “we will all be
paying higher prices. Now if he says it tonight, you can’t laugh!”

“At the end of the day, I promise I won’t laugh at your dad saying ‘at the end of the day,’” said Stephanie, giggling.

“I hope that, at the end of the day, you won’t,” said Lauren.

“Remember last time we visited you guys, his saying was ‘It is what it is’?”

Stephanie laughed. “Oh yeah, and we were at dinner at your house, and he said it about ten times, and we were, like, rolling in the floor. Every topic …”

“It is what it is,” Lauren said in a dadlike voice. “And before that it was, ‘Been there, done that.’ And before that it was ‘I went ballistic.’ He always picks up whatever sayings are cool or popular.”

Stephanie giggled. I turned over. I told myself they had known each other their whole lives. I told myself they weren’t trying to make me feel left out. I told myself they were just remembering stuff they’d done in the past. I told myself I didn’t care.

“Okay, done!”

Stephanie straightened and smoothed the braid a few times. Lauren went over to the mirror on the wall and held up a hand mirror so she could see the back of her head.

“Oh, excellent, girl,” Lauren said. “Thanks.”

“Diana, you want me to do yours?” Stephanie said. “It looked so nice the time I did it at home.”

I shouldn’t have said yes, but I did. And so Stephanie braided my hair, and then Lauren braided Stephanie’s, and we all had braided hair for going to dinner the first night. And of course Lauren wanted to videotape us. And I agreed. I don’t know why I did it.

So Lauren videotaped Stephanie and me smiling at the camera and then turning our heads around so the camera could see the braids. And for some reason, we started singing this song on the video. It was called “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” It’s an old song, but everybody knows the words. There is one part where you sing “In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight,” and then you sing, “Aweemaway, aweemaway, aweemaway, aweemaway,” and it sounds really funny.

So first Stephanie went skipping across the room singing, “Aweemaway, aweemaway,” and when she got to the side of the room I was on, we put our heads together and sang, “A-we-um-um-away.”

And then Stephanie said, “You do it, Diana!” And so I did. I skipped across the room and back singing “Aweemaway, aweemaway,” and then met up with her, and together we sang, “A-we-um-um-away.” Lauren about dropped the camera, we were laughing so hard. I couldn’t believe I did that. Stephanie made me do it.

And I was kind of having fun, I have to admit it.