“What a woman,” I said.
“Yes,” Joanne agreed. “What a woman.”
Do you want anything?” Joanne asked as we approached Ensenada, having made the journey without incident. “Souvenirs? Water? Another dancing lady?”
“All I want is a bath. A long, hot bath. What about you?”
“I might grab a souvenir if I see one, but I’m with you. A warm shower would be heavenly.”
It’s funny how relative things are based on your life experience. When we first docked in Ensenada and I looked down on the city from the balcony of our cabin, I thought the dirt soccer field and floating scent of burning rubbish was the most uncivilized sight I’d ever seen. Driving through town and watching cars run the yellow lights and make up their own private lanes to drive in, I thought we were in the midst of barbarians.
Reentering Ensenada now after the experiences we’d been through, I felt happy to see the sight of such a big town and so many urban developments, such as the Pemex stations and the huge Mexican flag that waved from a tremendously high pole at the harbor’s entrance. I felt a friendly familiarity with Ensenada and the sound of honking horns.
We had gone through several stoplights in town when I realized that people were looking at us. Yes, the mud-splattered, canary yellow Jeep was a sight to behold along with the driver (Joanne, this time) and the front-seat passenger (me, this time) both decked out in frayed straw sombreros.
But I think the evil eye of our serape-draped hitchhiker was what caught people’s attention. Either that or the dirty gym sock that Joanne had peeled off her sweaty foot halfway here and tied around Mr. Marlin’s extended beak so that we could look like a souped-up desert vehicle.
“I think we’ve aired our dirty laundry long enough,” I told Joanne.
“We’re almost to the car rental place. Let people stare. They won’t see us again for a while. If they don’t like it, let them eat cake!”
“We gave the pastries to Rosa Lupe, remember? We don’t have any cake to offer.”
“Yes, but I’ve been thinking about the dessert cart that will be coming past our table tonight at dinner. If they have coconut cake, I’m having two pieces.”
I thought of our charming dinner guests from the first part of our cruise and regretted that they wouldn’t be on the return portion with us. We would have a tale or two to tell at the dinner table tonight.
When we pulled into the car rental shop, the gold-toothed fellow was nowhere to be seen. A different man was working, and he seemed delighted to try out his English on us as well as arrange a ride for us back to the ship. Fish included for no extra charge.
Joanne kept apologizing for how dirty we got the Jeep, but he wisely said, with his palms open to the front of the vehicle, “Here is a picture of your beautiful trip.”
We knew what he meant, and he was right. Nothing had been dainty or sanitary about our journey, and yet the results had been beautiful and life changing. No “car wash” would take that away from us.
Pulling up to the front of the dock where the cruise ship was calmly moored, our friendly car rental employee was grateful for the large tip we handed him. He carried our luggage and boxes as far as the ship’s crew would let him, which was about ten feet from the gangway. He went back to the car and carried Mr. Marlin for us under one arm. Without his blanket covering, Mr. Marlin wasn’t nearly as intriguing.
The ship’s personnel considered Mr. Marlin to be an unregistered guest and suggested we leave him in his country of birth.
“We can’t do that.” Joanne stood as firm as I would have if I had been the first to speak up. Clearly, we’d had an effect on each other’s personalities during the past week.
“Would you be so kind as to call Sven for us?” Joanne said. “He knows us.”
When Sven appeared, I wished I’d had the camera ready. I could have used one of the last photos to capture his flabbergasted look. All the suave, smooth-sailing lingo seemed to have abandoned him when he saw the three of us. He began to speak to us as if we were a pack of hooligans trying to stow away.
That is, until Joanne and I removed our battered sombreros, and Sven realized it was us, his favorite Platinum Crown cruisers.
With the assistance of Sven and two other stewards, we were quickly taken to our suite along with our dusty luggage. Mr. Marlin was delivered at the same time, wrapped in our now-filthy Mexican blankets.
“I’m sure you must be eager for a shower,” Sven suggested. “I’ll see to it that more towels are brought for you.” He gave a low bow and exited, I suspect, holding his breath.
The instant the door closed, Joanne and I laughed.
“Look at us!” I turned my sister around so she could see her reflection in the mirror above the built-in dresser. We were in the same stateroom, peering into the same mirror we had looked in only five days earlier and complained that our noses were too funny and our mouths too imbalanced.
All those imperfections didn’t matter in the face of what greeted us in the reflection now. No attention was drawn to our noses or mouths. Those two features were about the only things on us that hadn’t radically been altered. Our hair had suffered the most. It stuck out in frightening, wind-blown dreadlocks.
“Who was that mythical woman whose hair turned into snakes?” Joanne asked. “Wasn’t it Methuselah?”
“No, Medusa.”
“Well, we could give Medusa a little competition.”
“Look how dirty we are!” I turned my head and ran a finger down the side of my neck the same way I would run a finger across the top of the refrigerator and make a fuss over how long it had been since I’d cleaned up there.
“My teeth feel so gritty.” Joanne smiled big. “I think I caught half the bugs in Baja in my teeth.”
“That’s what you get for smiling so much,” I teased. Turning halfway around, I noticed a long dark streak down the back of my T-shirt. “How long has that been there?”
“Since the ATV yesterday.”
“We went out in the ATV two days ago.”
“Okay, so since the ATV ride two days ago.”
“I didn’t wear this shirt, did I?”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t tell me I had a big splotch on it?”
“It seemed pointless. Who cared? I didn’t care. I usually was looking at the front of you, anyhow. You didn’t know it was there.”
“I’m going to throw away these clothes,” I said. “I’m serious. I don’t think I’ll ever get them clean. Do you want the shower first?”
“You don’t mind?”
“No, I want to take a long bath. You said you wanted a shower. I’m guessing a shower will take less time than a bath.”
“Don’t count on it.” Joanne stepped into the bathroom. “Would you be a honey and hand me that luxurious bathrobe hanging in the closet?”
“Here you go.” I couldn’t wait to soak in the tub and wrap up in the other plush robe. These items were a much greater luxury on the return trip than they had been on the way to Mexico. I kept thinking how much of the world lived like Rosa Lupe did. Only a minuscule percentage of the earth’s population has ever gone on a luxury cruise or been afforded the use of plush bathrobes or even soaked in a hot tub, for that matter.
My understanding of life and of the world in general had expanded so far that I knew it would be difficult to return to my complacent world of suburbia without doing something to organize assistance to those in need.
As I arranged our luggage and found a place for Mr. Marlin behind the drawn-open curtain that covered our sliding glass window, I thought of Joanne’s comments earlier about the need in India and how she didn’t know how to organize support. With a nod and a smile at my frightening reflection as I passed the mirror, I knew I could pitch a couple of ideas at her that we could work on once she relocated to Vancouver.
A knock sounded at the door. Sven stood there with extra towels and an envelope with Joanne’s name on it. “Would you see to it that
your sister receives these?”
“I will. Thank you.” I closed the door, wondering if I should be tipping all these helpful staff personnel.
“You know, we might have enough time,” Joanne said about ten minutes later as she stepped out of the bathroom in her robe, rosy cheeked and smelling divine.
“Enough time for what?”
“We might have enough time for a massage before dinner.”
“We’re still at the six-thirty seating, aren’t we?” I asked.
“I think so. I guess that doesn’t give us enough time.”
“Why don’t you call and order up some pampering specialties for us for tomorrow?”
As soon as I got into the bathroom, I realized a shower was a better idea than a bath. With a shower all the dirt at least had a place to go instead of floating around me in the tub and potentially soaking further into my skin. I stood under the showerhead long enough to soothe my shoulder muscles and to thoroughly rinse off all the lather I’d worked up with the lovely cleansing products provided in our stateroom.
“That was short,” Joanne said when I came out.
“I know. I thought I’d be in there for an hour, but once I was clean, I was done.”
“Same with me. Did you think about Rosa Lupe?”
“I did. I thought about what a luxury all this is.”
“Does it make you feel guilty to be going home in such style?”
“Actually, it makes me feel grateful. I don’t think I appreciated any of this as much on the cruise down here.”
Joanne nodded. “You’re going to appreciate it even more tomorrow. We have deep-conditioning hair treatments scheduled at eleven. I tried to get facials or massages, but they were all booked up.”
“Good thinking on the hair treatments.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“Did you see that envelope Sven brought for you?”
“No, where is it?”
“It’s with the extra towels.”
“Oh, I saw it.”
“What was it?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t open it. It’s on ship stationery, so it’s probably our bill for the extra assistance we had with our rental car. I’m too content to look at any bills. What are you wearing to dinner?”
“Black pants, white blouse; same as I wore the other night. What about you?”
“I overdressed last time. I’ll go for casual this time, too.”
We fluffed up our hair, slipped into our cleanest casual clothes, and didn’t bother with makeup. It felt so good to be clean; we were happy to have freshly scrubbed faces to show off.
As soon as we entered the dining room, we realized it was formal night, and we were way underdressed. Nevertheless, the hostess took us to our table.
“I can’t believe it,” I muttered to Joanne. “We have managed to wear the wrong thing to every single meal so far on this ship, coming and going.”
“Who cares?” Joanne smiled as we paraded past the captain’s table where one woman in a strapless gown with diamonds dripping from her earlobes and circling her neck watched us as we walked to our table and sat down.
“Good evening,” Joanne said cordially to the others already seated at our table. “I’m Joanne. This is my sister, Melanie.”
The three couples at our table were all in their early twenties. All three women were dressed in dazzling, revealing gowns. All of them were drinking heavily, and clearly they hadn’t expected us to break into their private party. When one of the men made an off-color joke, he turned to me and apologized, as if I were his mother.
Joanne tried unsuccessfully to start a conversation. I found out from the woman next to me that none of the three couples were married. They were on a business trip. Two of the young women kept fussing with their gowns as if this were prom night and they hadn’t bought the right size. The third woman had an especially high-pitched laugh, and she kept swatting her “date” on the arm and saying, “Get outta here.”
He didn’t, but we did.
Joanne and I lasted through our waiter’s explanation of our dinner selections before reaching over and tapping each other on the leg under the table. I knew Joanne was thinking what I was thinking. Excusing ourselves, we exited the posh company and took the elevator down to the main lobby.
“What a depressing setup,” I said.
“You were thinking the same thing I was. What is that verse in Proverbs? Something about how it’s better to eat crumbs served with love than a slab of prime rib in the presence of hatred.”
“Exactly. I was comparing that bunch to what it was like eating dinner at Rosa Lupe’s.”
“No comparison. Let’s see if we can come up with some other place to eat.” Joanne headed for the front desk.
The desk clerk informed us that a full buffet dinner was offered to guests on the top deck behind the sushi bar. And, if we didn’t get enough at the open buffet, the midnight buffet would be in full swing at eleven-thirty after the last show.
Taking the stairs instead of the elevator, Joanne and I prepared to eat heartily this evening. We knew we would be dining where love was served because we were dining with our new best friends.
I started out slowly at the salad bar, intending to leave lots of room for the fish and beef. But what filled my plate wasn’t the salads but the potatoes. The selection included scalloped, garlic mashed, and twice-baked potatoes. I think I could have eaten only potatoes for dinner and been content.
Joanne was thrilled with the three different selections of fish and the chicken Kiev as well as the end cut of prime rib. We selected a table by the window. Even though the sun had set and all was darkness on the ocean, we could spot an occasional star flickering in the distance that made us both nostalgic for our simple fireside dinner of camarones on the beach.
“I need a walk on deck before I visit the dessert counter,” Joanne said. “Are you with me?”
“All the way.”
We strolled in the brisk night air and breathed in deeply.
“I have to confess something to you,” Joanne said, as we rounded the back of the ship and headed down the less windy side.
“What’s that?”
“I’ve been thinking about Matthew.”
I smiled, but I don’t think she could see my face.
“I’ve been thinking about him a lot, and I know that’s crazy because I barely know him. The thing is, I’ve had so many disappointments with men over the years that I don’t dare to dream anymore. I wish I’d turned toward him when you told me to, Mel. He has no way of knowing that my heart is toward him, and that makes me sad. Everything you said was true. God’s timing was precise. I just didn’t respond the way I should have when I had the chance. So that’s my confession. You were right. I was too proud to even wave good-bye, and it’s breaking my heart.”
She cried softly. I wrapped my arms around her, and in true Joanne fashion, she sniveled for about a minute and a half and was done. Bucking up, she straightened her posture. “I’m okay. I had to tell you, though. Next time you tell me to turn around, I promise I’ll do it.”
I paused a moment and then said, “Joanne, turn around.”
She did. No one was behind us. She turned to me with a quizzical look.
“I was testing you.” I grinned widely.
“You brat!”
“What? Did you think Matthew would be standing there or something?”
“No.”
“Joanne, listen, at the risk of sounding a lot like you sounded to me on our first night on the cruise, I now happen to believe that God is a big dreamer, like you said. He doesn’t give up. I have no idea what’s going to happen, but I know you’re in good hands.”
“I know,” Joanne said. “I really am content. More content than I’ve ever been before. I thought it would be a good idea if I confessed to you what I was feeling about Matthew instead of holding it in.”
“I’m glad you told me.”
We continued our stroll, and I brave
ly did something I had never done. I prayed aloud as we walked. It was short and simple, but it seemed like a good idea. Something Joanne would do. I asked God that, if He had any dreams for Joanne and Matthew, He would make them come true.
I considered adding a P.S. along the lines of, “And please make my sister smart enough to respond the right way next time, if you do set up a next time with Matthew.” I didn’t add it, though. Joanne probably had prayed a few of those P.S.’s for me along the way. She had been eager for me to respond wholeheartedly to Christ, and yet she patiently had kept her private prayers for me to herself.
Having completed one loop of the deck, Joanne and I returned to the dessert counter of the upper-deck buffet and treated ourselves to three desserts each. Mine were all chocolate. Small pieces. Joanne found a coconut macaroon, and that satisfied her urge for coconut cake at least for the time being.
All the food in our bellies put us in a strange sort of stupor we hadn’t experienced during the past few days in Mexico. We meandered through some of the onboard shops, trying on jewelry we knew we’d never buy and admiring the craftsmanship of the Mexican silver. The shopping wasn’t particularly special, but it did make up for our not having strolled through the shops in Ensenada.
At ten o’clock we wandered into the theater and landed terrific balcony seats for the second performance of “Broadway’s Best.” A waiter came by asking if we wanted to order something to drink before the show began. We both ordered ginger ale to settle our full stomachs. He looked a little disappointed, as if he knew he could make a larger tip on the more exotic drinks.
I noticed when he delivered the ginger ales they came with a bendable straw and a whole maraschino cherry. In other words, a child’s nonalcoholic beverage.
For the next hour we sipped our Shirley Temples and tapped our feet while a cast of energetic quick-change artists performed portions of more than twenty Broadway shows. We decided we would have been even more impressed with their abilities if we’d ever seen one of the twenty Broadway shows. But the music was familiar and the presentation entertaining.
“Almost eleven-thirty,” Joanne said, as we followed the crowd out of the theater. “Ready for the midnight buffet?”