I Did Not Kill Maree by Carla Damron

I did not kill Maree. This is important. As tempting as it might have been, Maree is alive and well, a cheerful smile plastered on her overly tanned face, on a cruise boat somewhere along the Rhine.

            I am an overly opinionated woman. I know that about myself, but hey, everyone has their growing edge. Somehow, from the first time Maree spoke, I hated her.

This was my first cruise. I’ve been mentioning this particular European river cruise line to my husband for five years, hoping to subliminally implant the idea somewhere in his brain that maybe, just maybe, we could go for our twentieth anniversary. It worked. On June sixteenth, we boarded a fancy river boat in Amsterdam to sail down the Rhine.

Heidelberg, Germany

Strasbourg, Germany

And Maree welcomed us. Was it her voice that grated on me? The breathy inflections? The way she approached us like we were kindergarteners? Was it her cheerful—her endlessly cheerful—attitude about everything? “Here we are! Ready to board our coaches!” “Wasn’t that view of the castle spectacular?” “Isn’t our captain doing a fabulous job?” “It’s not rain! It’s liquid sunshine!” Seriously, this woman probably celebrates colonoscopies: “Wasn’t that a spectacular polyp?”

            Even her appearance bugged me. Yeah, I know I’m being petty but bear with me. She had very bleached hair and noticeable knobby cheek implants. Whenever I looked at her face, I tried to imagine what the plastic surgeon used to get those perfectly symmetrical spheres on each cheekbone. Ping pong balls? Walnuts? She was older than me, and maybe that’s unusual for a cruise director, so the dye job and new cheeks were an effort to reclaim youth. (I’d like to reclaim mine, too, but probably without the extra parts.)

            Every morning, her voice beckoned to us over the intercom: “Good morning lovely guests! In fifteen minutes, join me for our first outing!” Evenings, she directed the entertainment. Trivia games. Music presentations. Lectures. These Maree bookends to our day made her inescapable.

Colmar, France

            One evening, she pushed me over my limit. “They’ll never find her body,” I whispered to my husband.

            “You need more wine,” he said in reply.

            Around day five, I noticed lines of fatigue around Maree’s overly mascaraed eyes, but the perkiness, the relentless perkiness, remained. We visited a castle high on a hill, Maree leading us up this long, winding path, dragging her wheeled suitcase that contained all the necessary cruise director stuff she might need, like extra earphones for us and directional placards. I saw her looking down, taking a deep breath. I realized she was tired. Very, very tired.

            If she got us up every morning, took us on tours all day, and entertained us every night after dinner, she was working sixteen-to-seventeen hour shifts. EVERY DAY. And these cruises are booked back-to-back for several months. No rest for the weary.

            How did she do it? If I worked at that pace, I wouldn’t be able to remember my name. I wouldn’t be cheerful to the tourists in my charge, I’d be muttering the f-word.

            I came to have new respect for her upbeat attitude. Maybe the cheek implants were to hold her smile up when she was too tired to do it. Maybe her breathy way of speaking helped her save her voice.

            Maybe I should temper my tendency to be all judgey.

Top pic: from Mt. Pilatus in Lucerne, Switzerland. Bottom: Lake Lucerne

            We finished our Rhine vacation, which was absolutely amazing, by the way, and said goodbye to the fabulous crew that took care of us. I looked for Maree and offered a heartfelt “thank you.”

            I picture her today, greeting yet another new group of passengers, that perky smile on her face as she says, “Welcome, wonderful guests. We are so glad you are here.”

            And yes, Maree will likely end up in a project of mine! What characters have you met on your travels?

Oland, Sweden (after the Rhine trip!!)