Sunday, December 6: Name That.......

Lola and Roland, Anne, Rozann and Lee, Kay, Carol Ann and Andy, Fay and Faisel, Laura, Anne Marie and Malcolm – Gwenn Ifill boards the ship in Barbados, where she’s from - Henry, Christy, Elsa, Lorraine, Chris, Linda and Keith, George, Nancy, Donna, Milt and Betty, Pat and Julie – my ten minutes of tan is peeling, even on the top of my head, making it look like I have really bad dandruff - Shirley and Jerry, Eva, Wendy and Bob, Virginia, Pat, Ramona and John – Barbara, the speaker on board (“How to Deal with Stress and Anger”) went to Forrest Park High School - Mel and John, Cal and Giselle, Gail, Monica and Joel – the sea is calm, with fishing shore birds gliding along beside us, dive bombing the sea for their lunch, an oil rig in the distance - Margo (with a T), Gabriele, Rudy, Patrick, Pam and Chuck – Heinz has been offered a new cruise to Hong Kong; he’ll take it and then stay home for the summer – Francesca, Dirk and Melanie, Jean and Morty, Lise, Diane, Ellie missed our Solo cocktail gathering and complained to the management that we were mistreating her - Margaret and Eric, Kyle and Joe, Corsey and Bob, Linda, Caroline and John, Jim, Barbara – two ladies in dance class from Paris, who spoke no English; how do you say “put your weight on that foot” in French?; a la droit, a gauche et un, deux, trios” - Chan and Aranya, Robert and Marty, Carol, Libby, Wanda, Cathy, Maryella, Marissa, Terry, Brenda - Shirley refuses to sit at any table with more than four - Marcy, Charlotte and Jim, Fedj, Chris and Adriana, Jim, Yvonne and Esther, Jackie and David, Barbara, Dr. Ruth.
Ah, Dr. Ruth. Or, to be more precise, Dr. Rita. In order to give Heinz time to dress, which he likes to do at the last minute, I usually shower and dress about five PM. Then he sprints through his routine and rushes to cocktails, where we meet the Solos at 6:30. I was just struggling to get my bow tie around my neck and the top button buttoned on my wing collar shirt, when our phone rang. Elsa wondered if either of us was dressed enough for a little errand. I was. Would I go to suite #827 and ask for Dr. Ruth. She needed to go down to the boutique but was afraid she was too frail to go alone. “Of course,” I said. (I’m working on reviving the term “gallant.”) When I rang her bell, Dr. Ruth or as she corrected me, Dr. Rita, answered her door. She’s a tiny little lady in her late 80’s, slightly stooped from arthritis, with full, dark hair, cut like a boy and blown up around her head like a helmet. The only place on her face that was not wrinkled was at the bridge of her nose. She fixed me with intense black eyes and seemed a little fuddled. She returned my greeting with heavily accented English as I took her arm for the trip down the corridor to the elevator. She was most apologetic – she had expected someone from the crew, not a tall man in a tuxedo – about bothering me but she had forgotten her jewelry in the rush to get away from her home in Los Angeles and wanted to go to the boutique to buy something that would compliment her filmy, orange and yellow, flower-patterned dress. I took her arm and guided her to the boutique on Deck Five, where I turned her over to the saleslady and tried to fade discretely into the background. Dr. Ruth explained her need and asked the lady to find her something “costume.” She didn’t want any of the many pins and bracelets and rings with expensive gems. (While I was waiting for her, I checked out an emerald ring; the price was a little over $5,000.00) Dr. Ruth selected a pretty necklace with stones the same color as her dress and, admiring herself in the mirror the saleslady was holding, asked my opinion. I told her the necklace was perfect for her outfit. The saleslady cut off the tag and in what I think of as a typical female gesture, Dr. Ruth patted her chest where the necklace was hanging as though to say, mission accomplished. It was still only six o’clock so I found Dr. Ruth a comfortable chair outside the theater where the captain’s reception would start at 6:30 and launched into my usual “break the ice” routine.
In the next thirty minutes I enjoyed the most intelligent conversation I’ve had aboard this ship. I learned that Dr. Ruth/Rita was a psychiatrist from Los Angeles who belonged to some organization founded by Albert Einstein to foster better international relations. She had just returned from Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan, where she had been on a field trip for her organization. She was not optimistic about the health of the world. After all, in her native Romania, she had seen what inspiring speeches (such as Obama’s), first from Hitler and then from Stalin, could produce. When the Germans invaded in 1941, a friend who owned a foundry rubbed salt into her hands in order to try to make her seem to be a common laborer. But when the German officer asked to see her hands, he spoke the first part of a quotation from Goethe, which she couldn’t help but finish. As a result, she was labeled an intellectual and spent the period from 1941 to 1945 in a concentration camp. She spoke of the deeply ingrained culture of victim-ism that pervades the Muslim world, especially among the Shiites, and how very old civilizations such as Iran’s have, and will continue to have, important influence on the world’s politics. She shook her head and regarded me intensely, her dark eyes coming youthfully to life in her ancient face as we talked. I felt free, perhaps for the first time on this trip, to speak my own mind, even though as the couples in their tuxedoed and sequined glory gathered around us for the beginning of the reception, I couldn’t help but wonder at their obvious speculation about our relationship: this tall, elderly man, sitting with an old wizened woman.
When the doors to the theater opened, I escorted Dr. Rita through the captain’s reception line, introducing her to Elsa, Lorrain, the captain and the ship’s general manager and then found her a seat with Lise and Margot (with a T). I excused myself then so I could speak to some other Solos and danced a couple of times. Then I went back to Dr. Rita, to check on her – Lise is great but Margot (with the T) has a tendency toward snobbery – and she asked to dance with me. She could manage a safe fox trot – the ship was moving – and we continued our conversation, my right hand trying not to put too much pressure on the arthritic hump on her back. She thought it amusing that such a small lady was dancing with such a tall man and, unlike so many on this cruise, was totally secure in being exactly who she was.
After the reception, I took her to the lounge where the Solos gather before dinner. It was crowded and as I found her a seat next to Patrick, I could see the surprised reaction, immediately suppressed, that swept through the room. Good for you, Dr. Rita, I thought. Good for you. We had fourteen for dinner – two tables of four (to keep Shirley happy) and one table of six. I placed Dr. Rita between Henry and Terry at the table for six. Checking on her from my own seat, where I was desperately trying to smooth over a disagreement between Margo and Libby, I could see that she had captivated both of them. After dinner, I lost track of her but presume that someone – maybe George – escorted her back to her suite and helped her out of her new necklace.
Stay tuned.