Joyce Carol Oates Ladies and gentlemen:

Ladies and gentlemen: a belated but heartfelt welcome aboard our cruise ship S.S. Ariel; it's a true honor and a privilege for me, your captain, to greet you all on this lovely sun-warmed January day - as balmy, isn't it, as any June morning back north? I wish I could claim that we of the Ariel arranged personally for such splendid weather, as compensation of sorts for the, shall we say, somewhat rocky weather of the past several days. At any rate, it's a welcome omen indeed and bodes well for the remainder of the cruise and for this morning's excursion, ladies and gentlemen, to the island you see us rapidly approaching, a small but remarkably beautiful island the natives of these waters call the "Island of Tranquillity" — or, as some translators prefer, the "Island of Repose." For those of you who've become virtual sailors with a keen eye for navigating, you'll want to log our longitude at 155 degrees east and our latitude at 5 degrees north, approximately 1,200 miles north and east of New Guinea. Yes, that's right!

We've come so far! And as this is a rather crucial morning, and your island adventure an important event not only on this cruise but in your lives, ladies and gentlemen, I hope you will quiet just a bit — just a bit! — and give me, your captain, your fullest attention. Just for a few minutes — I promise! Then you will disembark.

As to the problems some of you have experienced: Let me take this opportunity, as your captain, ladies and gentlemen, to apologize, or at least to explain. It's true, for instance, that certain of your staterooms are not precisely as the advertising brochures depicted them; the portholes are not quite so large, in some cases the portholes are not in evidence. This is not the fault of any of the Ariel staff; indeed, this has been a sore point with us for some years, a matter of misunderstandings and embarrassments out of our control, yet I, as your captain, ladies and gentlemen, offer my apologies and my profoundest sympathies. Though I am a bit your junior in age, I can well understand the special disappointment, the particular hurt, outrage, and dismay that attend one's sense of having been cheated on what, for some of you, is probably perceived as being the last time you'll be taking so prolonged and exotic a trip. Thus, my profoundest sympathies! As to the toilets that have been reported as malfunctioning, or out of order entirely, and the loud throbbing or "tremors" of the engines that have been keeping some of you awake, and the negligent or even rude service, the over or undercooked food; the high tariffs on mineral water, alcoholic beverages, and cigarettes, the reported sightings of rodents, cockroaches, and other vermin on board ship — perhaps I should explain, ladies and gentlemen, that this is the final voyage of the S.S. Ariel, and it was the owners' decision, and a justifiably pragmatic decision, to cut back on repairs, services, expenses, and the like. Ladies and gentlemen, I am sorry for your incon­venience, but the Ariel is an old ship, bound for dry dock in Manila and the fate of many a veteran seagoing vessel that has outlived her time. God bless her! We'll not see her likes again, ladies and gentlemen!

Ladies and gentlemen, may I have some quiet? Please? Just five minutes more, before the stewards help you prepare for your disembarkment? Thank you.

Yes, the Ariel is bound for Manila next. But have no fear: You won't be aboard.

Ladies and gentlemen, please. This murmuring and muttering begins to annoy. (Yet, as your captain, I'd like to note that, amid the usual whiners and complainers and the just plain bad-tempered, it's gratifying to see a number of warm, friendly, hopeful faces; and to know that there are men and women determined to enjoy life, not quibble and harbor suspicions. Thank you!)

Now to our business at hand: Ladies and gentlemen, do you know what you have in common?

You can't guess?

You can guess?

No? Yes?

Well — yes, sir; it's true that you are all aboard the S.S. Ariel; and yes, sir — excuse me, ma'am — it's certainly true that you are all of "retirement" age. (Though "retire­ment" has come to be a rather vague term in the past decade or so, hasn't it? For the youngest among you are in your late fifties — the result, I would guess, of especially generous early-retirement programs; and the eldest among you are in your mid-nineties. Quite a range of ages!)

Yes, it's true you are all Americans. You have expensive cameras, even, in some cases, video equipment for recording this South Seas adventure; you have all sorts of tropical-cruise paraphernalia, including some extremely attractive bleached-straw hats; some of you have quite a supply of sun-protective lotions; and most of you have a considerable quantity, and variety, of pharmacological supplies. And quite a store of paperbacks, magazines, cards, games, and crossword puzzles. Yet there is one primary thing you have in common, ladies and gentlemen, which has determined your pres­ence here this morning, at longitude 155 degrees east and latitude. 5 degrees north; your fate, as it were. Can't you guess?

Ladies and gentlemen: your children.

Yes, you have in common the fact that this cruise on the S.S. Ariel was originally your children's idea; and that they arranged for it, if you'll recall. (Though you have probably paid for your own passages, which weren't cheap.) Your children, who are "children" only technically, for of course they are fully growns; a good number of them parents themselves (having made you proud grandparents — yes, haven't you been proud!); these sons and daughters, who, if I may speak frankly, are very tired of waiting for their inheritances.

Yes, and very impatient, some of them, very angry, waiting to come into control of what they believe is their due.

Ladies and gentlemen, please! — I'm asking for quiet, and I'm asking for respect. As captain of the Ariel, I am not accustomed to being interrupted.

I believe you did hear me correctly, sir. And you too, sir.

Yes, and you, ma'am. And you. Most of you aren't nearly so deaf as you pretend!

Let me speak candidly. While your children are in many or at least in some cases genuinely fond of you, they are simply impatient with the prospect of waiting for your "natural" deaths. Ten years, fifteen? Twenty? With today's medical technology, who knows, you might outlive them!

Of course it's a surprise to you, ladies and gentlemen. It's a shock. Thus you, sir, are shaking your head in disbelief, and you, sir, are muttering just a little too loudly, "Who does that fool think he is, making such bad jokes!" and you, ladies, are giggling like teenage girls, not knowing what to think. But remember: Your children have been living lives of their own, in a very difficult, very competitive corporate America; they are, on the face of it, "well-to-do," even affluent; yet they want, in some cases desperately need, your estates — not in a dozen years but now.

That is to say, as soon as your wills can be probated, following our "act of God" in these tropical seas.

For, however your sons and daughters appear in the eyes of their neighbors, friends, and business colleagues, even in the eyes of their own offspring, you can be sure that they have not enough money. You can be sure that they suffer keenly certain financial jealousies and yearnings. And who dares calibrate another's suffering? Who dares peer into another's heart? Without betraying anyone's con­fidence, I can say that there are several youngish men, beloved sons of couples in your midst, ladies and gentlemen, who are nearly bankrupt; men of integrity and "success" whose worlds are about to come tumbling about their heads — unless they get money, or find themselves in the position of being able to borrow money against their parents' estates, fast. Investment bankers, lawyers, a college professor or two — some of them already in debt. Thus, they decided to take severe meas­ures.

Ladies and gentlemen, it's pointless to protest. As captain of the Ariel, I merely expedite orders.

And you must know that it's pointless to express disbelief or incredulity; to roll your eyes, as if I of all people were a bit cracked; to call out questions or demands; to shout, weep, sob, beg, rant and rave, and mutter, "If this is a joke it isn't a very funny joke!" "As if my son/daughter would ever do such a thing to me/us!" — in short, it's pointless to express any and all of the reactions you're expressing and also those that have been expressed by other ladies and gentlemen on past Ariel voyages to the South Seas.

Yes, it's the best thing to cooperate. Yes, in an orderly fashion. It's wisest not to provoke the stewards, whose nerves are a bit ragged these days — the crew is only human, after all — into using force.

Ladies and gentlemen, these are lovely azure waters, exactly as the brochures promised! But shark-infested, so take care.

Ah, yes, those dorsal fins slicing the waves, just beyond the surf — observe them closely.

No, we're leaving no picnic baskets with you today. Nor any bottles of mineral water, Perrier water, champagne.

For, why delay what's inevitable? Why cruelly protract anguish?

Ladies and gentlemen, maybe it's a simple thing, maybe it's a self-evident thing, but consider: You are the kind of civilized men and women who brought babies into the world not by crude, primitive, anachronistic chance but by systematic delibera­tion. You planned your futures, you planned, as the expression goes, your parent­hood. You are all of that American economic class called upper-middle; you are educated, you are cultured, you are stable; nearly without exception, you showered love upon your sons and daughters, who knew themselves, practically in the cradle, to be privileged. The very best, the most exclusive nursery schools, private schools, colleges, universities. Expensive toys and gifts of all kinds, closets of clothing, ski equipment, stereo equipment; racing bicycles, tennis lessons, riding lessons, snorkeling lessons, private tutoring, trips to the Caribbean, to Mexico, to Tangier, to Tokyo, to Switzerland, junior years abroad in Paris, in Rome, in London. Yes, and their teeth were perfect, or were made to be; yes, and they had cosmetic surgery if necessary or nearly necessary; yes, and you gladly paid for their abortions or their tuition for law school, medical school, business school; yes, and you paid for their weddings; yes, and you loaned them money "to get started," certainly you helped them with their mortgages, or their second cars, or their children's orthodontist bills. Nothing was too good or too expensive for them, for what, ladies and gentle­men, would it have been?

And, always, the more you gave your sons and daughters the more you seemed to be holding in reserve; the more generous you displayed yourself the more generous you were hinting you might be, in the future. But so far into the future — when your wills might be probated, after your deaths!

Ladies and gentlemen, you rarely stopped to consider your children as other than your children — as men and women growing into maturity, distinct from you. Rarely did you pause to see how patiently they were waiting to inherit their due — and then, by degrees, how impatiently. What anxieties besieged them, what nightmare specula­tions? For what if you squandered your money on medical bills? Nursing-home bills? The melancholic impedimenta of age in America? What if — worse yet! — addle-brained, suffering from Alzheimer's disease (about which they'd been reading suddenly, it seemed, everywhere), you turned against them? Disinherited them? Re­married someone younger, healthier, more cunning than they? Rewrote your wills, as elderly fools are always doing?

Ladies and gentlemen, your children declare that they want only what's theirs.

They say, laughingly, they aren't going to live forever.

(Well, yes: I'll confide in you, off-the-cuff, in several instances it was an in-law who looked into the possibility of a cruise on the S.S. Ariel; your own son or daughter merely cooperated, after the fact, as it were. Of course, that isn't the same thing!)

Ladies and gentlemen, as your captain, about to bid you farewell, let me say: I am sympathetic with your plight.

Your stunned expressions, your staggering-swaying gait, your damp eyes, working mouths — "This is a bad joke!" "This is intolerable!" "This is a nightmare!" "No child of mine could be so cruel, inhuman, monstrous," etc. — all this is touching, wrenching to the heart, altogether natural. One might almost say traditional. Countless others, whose bones you may discover, should you have the energy and spirit to explore the "Island of Tranquillity" (or "Repose"), reacted in more or less the same way.

Thus, do not despair, ladies and gentlemen, for your emotions, however painful, are time-honored; but do not squander the few precious remaining hours of your life, for such emotions are futile.

Ladies and gentlemen: The "Island of Tranquillity" upon which you now stand shivering in the steamy morning heat is approximately six kilometers in circumfer­ence, ovoid in shape, with a curious archipelago of giant metamorphic rocks trailing off to the north, a pounding hallucinatory surf, and horizon, vague, dreamy, and distant, on all sides. Its soil is an admixture of volcanic ash, sand, rock, and peat; its jungle interior is pocked with treacherous bogs of quicksand.

It is a truly exotic island! But most of you will quickly become habituated to the ceaseless winds that ease across the island from several directions simultaneously, air as intimate and warmly stale as exhaled breaths, caressing, narcotic. You'll become habituated to the ubiquitous sand fleas, the glittering dragonflies with their eighteen-inch iridescent wings, the numerous species of snakes (the small quicksil­ver orange-speckled baja snake is the most venomous, you'll want to know); the red-beaked carnivorous macaw and its ear-piercing shriek; bullfrogs the size of North American jackrabbits; 200-pound tortoises with pouched, thoughtful eyes; spider monkeys as playful as children; tapir; tarantulas; most colorful of all, the comical cassowary birds with their bony heads, gaily hued wattles, stunted wings — these ungainly birds whom millions of years of evolution, on an island lacking mammal-predators, have rendered flightless.

And orchids: Some of you have already noticed the lovely, bountiful orchids growing everywhere, dozens of species, every imaginable color, some the size of grapes and others the size of a man's head, unfortunately inedible.

And the island's smells — are they fragrances or odors? Is it rampant fresh-budding life or jungle-rancid decay? Is there a difference?

By night (and the hardiest among you should survive numerous nights, if past history prevails) you'll contemplate the tropical moon, so different from our North American moon, hanging heavy and luminous in the sky like an overripe fruit; you'll be moved to smile at the sport of fiery-phosphorescent fish frolicking in the waves; you'll be lulled to sleep by the din of insects, the cries of nocturnal birds, your own prayers perhaps.

Some of you will cling together, like terrified herd animals; some of you will wander off alone, dazed, refusing to be touched, even comforted by a spouse of fifty years.

Ladies and gentlemen, I, your captain, speaking for the crew of the S.S. Ariel, bid you farewell.

Ladies and gentlemen, your children have asked me to assure you that they do love you — but circumstances have intervened.

Ladies and gentlemen, your children have asked me to recall to you those years when they were, in fact, children — wholly innocent as you imagined them, adoring you as gods.

Ladies and gentlemen, I now bid farewell to you as children do, waving good-bye not once but numerous times, solemn, reverential — good-bye, good-bye, good-bye.