The Corrections

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’tunderstand 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.
    Here was a torture that the Greek inventors of the Feast and the Stone had omitted from their Hades: the Blanket of Self-Deception. A lovely warm blanket as far as it covered the soul in torment, but it never quite covered everything . And the nights were getting cold now.
    She considered returning to Sylvia’s room and fully unburdening herself.
    But then, through her tears, she saw a sweet thing beneath the bench beside her.
    It was a ten-dollar bill. Folded once. Very sweet.
    With a glance up the corridor, she reached down. The texture of engraving was delicious.
    Feeling restored, she descended to the “B” Deck.Background music whispered in the lounge, something perky with accordions. She imagined she heard her name bleated, distantly, as she fitted her key card in the lock and pushed on her door.
    She encountered resistance and pushed harder.
    “Enid,” Alfred bleated from the other side.
    “Shh, Al, what on earth?”
    Life as she knew it ended with her squeeze through the half-open door. Diurnality yielded to a raw continuum of hours. She found Alfred naked with his back to the door on a layer of bedsheets spread on sections of morning paper from St. Jude. Pants and a sport coat and a tie were laid out on his bed, which he’d stripped to the mattress. The excess bedding he’d piled on the other bed. He continued to call her name even after she’d turned on a light and occupied his field of vision. Her immediate aim was to quiet him and get some pajamas on him, but this took time, for he was terribly agitated and not finishing his sentences, not even making his verbs and nouns agree in number and person. He believed that it was morning and he had to bathe and dress, and that the floor by the door was a bathtub, and that the handle was a faucet, and that nothing worked. Still he insisted on doing everything his way, which led to a pushing and pulling, an actual blow to her shoulder. He raged and she wept and abused him. He managed with his madly flopping hands to unbutton his pajama top as fast she could button it. She’d never heard him use the words “t ** d” or “c ** p,” and the fluency with which he used them now illuminated years of prior silent usage in his head. He unmade her bed while she tried to remake his. She begged him to sit still. He cried that it was very late and he was very confused. Even now she couldn’t help loving him. Maybe especially now. Maybe she’d known all along, for fifty years, that there