Margaret scoured her lips with her napkin. It wouldn't do to look like some messy old woman.
"The chicken's delicious," her brother said. "How's the fish?"
"Dry. The food on this cruise isn't what it was on the Great Lakes."
"I'd forgotten you went on that," her brother said. "You're remarkable, Margaret. Two adventures in one year."
She called the waiter over to grind pepper into her salad. "When are we going to see Alaska," she said, "if not now?"
"Exactly. Why did your friend Susan back out? Was it really her trick knee?"
'She grew faint of heart. She loves men, and I thought you might be enough of an attraction, but she says we're too old now to travel."
"She's got a point. How long would we last, splashing around in orange life-jackets?"
"Actually, she thinks I'm losing my mind."
Margaret watched Hugh carefully. His look was penetrating, but he didn't bite.
"In our generation, Marg, we're all more or less losing our minds. I had a hell of a time packing for this trip, forgetting whether I'd put in my razor and having to unearth everything and start over."
"What? Gaga already?" Margaret replied, delighted. "You? You're not even eighty, though you are starting to look like Grandpa Bogert with your white moustache."
"Practically the only hair I have left."
The sunshades in the dining room had been rolled out of the way, and the ship slipped smartly along a dark fir coast under an overcast sky. Being in a new place wasn't much fun this time, for Margaret. She was disappointed in the view. The waiter brought plates of camembert and thin slices of cantaloupe and green melon, dotted with strawberries.
"Where do they get these things in Alaska?" she said.
"We must be coming through the Wrangell Narrows," said her brother. "Now that we're getting among the islands, there's hardly any chop. I think I'll go on deck and have a look."
"Don't forget the lecture at two o'clock," she said.
"It's at three. We get a rest after lunch."
"Not today. The geologist has to get back to Juneau," she said. "Remember?"
"You're thinking of the man yesterday," said Hugh, "the one who talked about fjords."
"No, I'm not," she said. "I know what I'm thinking of."
He wasn't even paying attention, craning at the windows where there was nothing to see but gray rock and driftwood. It looked exactly like Maine, only the wrong scale.
"I seldom make mistakes of that kind, Hugh," she said.
He brought his eyes back and looked at her: Hugh, her little brother, disguised as an irritatingly equable old man.
"All right, Margaret," he said.
He was humoring her. Her whole skin went hot at once, her blue cardigan suddenly unbearable.
"Anyway," she said, "we haven't had the lecture about fjords yet. I've just looked at the program."
Hugh stood and picked up his mystery novel. "Come on," he said. "Let's not argue. The mountains of the mainland are about to come into view. It's one of the places where the glaciers come right down to the sea."
"No," said Margaret. "I've got to get back to the cabin."
"But why?"
The truth was, she had to make everything stop for a minute. Could she have been wrong about the lecture?
"I have a lot of paperwork," she said.
"Paperwork?"
"There's no one but me to do it snce George died."
Might she be failing in some terrible way?
"But what about the glaciers?" said High. ""What about what we came for?"
"I've misplaced the pink slip with the room assignments, and I want to check the lecture schedule again."
"They'll announce the lecture, dear, and you know our cabin, Number 15."
"Why glaciers calve, that's another thing. Do you remember? I have it written down somewhere."
"We'll be able to see the glaciers themselves in half a sec," Hugh said. "Come on, Marg. I thought I might find a deck chair and read a bit. Miss Marple is closing in on her prey."
"No, I'm going back."
"Do you want me to come with you?"
"Of course not."
"I'll be on deck, then." He toasted her with his Agatha Christie, heading for the door. "See you later. We think the butler didn’t do it."
Margaret finished her fruit. Her left shoe slipped as she was getting to her feet, but she caught herself on the table easily enough and waited for her hips to loosen up. They kept the floors too slick. Susan was always telling her to wear running shoes, as if it didn't matter what she looked like. But everything mattered. The lecture schedule, for instance. Hugh was too young to know how devastating it could be to allow these little confusions to develop. You might end up making some awful mistake.
Already, Joe wanted her to give up driving - not Mark, of course, but Joe, the more anxious of her sons - which was ridiculous because she didn't drive on highways and carefully observed every stop sign. A strange man had driven up beside her one day, furious, and claimed she'd forced him off the road, which she didn't believe for a moment, but if Hugh ever got the idea she was gaga, they would gang up and take away her car. The jig would be up.
Now to find the cabin. There was a place where you turned a corner and the wall was gray with a green stripe. But here was a blue stripe. She had been here before, and it wasn't right, but if you kept walking along you came to it. It was all on the same level. Number 22 here on the left wasn't it. It was not the first you came to, and it was on the right.
She turned a corner and there it was. Number 25. That was just it. Exactly. Her key went smoothly in, but wouldn't go left or right. She tried again. It was infuriating when things didn't work, when you couldn't rely on them. She was hot, and how could she go on standing up forever?
She looked at her key. 15. But that was the wrong number. The cabin was 25, it said so right on the door. No wonder the key didn't work. And now she had to go to the bathroom. Damn. She crossed her legs and squeezed. Damn, damn. Count to ten. Where was Hugh? Where was he? There, crisis over. All right. He'd said he would be on deck. She still had the wit to remember that.
She stepped out into the wind. There were mountains up ahead and sun-streaked clouds, rather forbiddingly northern. She had loved the ocean all her life, but now it seemed unpleasantly featureless. The water was written on by the ship and by the wind and by the whales that stirred it into whirlpools each side of their flukes, but then everything disappeared. She didn't like that. She didn't see Hugh. She had to go to the bathroom. She had to get back to the cabin, but she had been given the wrong key.
Making her way along the deck, she now saw Hugh sitting in a chair, a rug wrapped around his legs, reading, looking like Grandpa Bogert with his high, freckled forehead and white moustache.
"Thank goodness I've found you," Margaret cried. "I can't get into the cabin." He turned his head and stared, a worried-looking man, not cheerful Hugh at all, a perfect stranger. The light had been coming from behind him, that must have been why she'd made the mistake. She was practically on top of him, too close to pretend she'd meant someone else. What would he think of her? He would think she had lost her mind.
"Excuse me," she said. "I thought for a moment you were my brother."
"As a matter of fact, Margaret," the man said, I am your brother."

Catherine Bell
Peregrine Volume XXIII
2005