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head.
    â€œAnd now that you and she—”
    â€œWhat?” I demanded. “Vera and I what?”
    â€œShe invited you to call her Vera. That’s certainly progress.”
    â€œThat’s because I asked her, when she was in jail, if she wanted me to call her Mother Blue.”
    â€œYou didn’t!” Jason started to laugh.
    â€œThis isn’t funny, Jason. The only time that I can remember your mother being half civil to me was at that women’s center party in San Francisco. Ten minutes of civility does not constitute a close relationship. She was probably just happy to be cleared of the murder charges and out of jail.”
    â€œAnd you cleared her,” Jason pointed out.
    I tried not to glare at him. He hadn’t been all that happy about my running around San Francisco, trying to find the real murderer. Not when it was happening.
    â€œI’m sure she’s still grateful,” said my husband.
    I took a big gulp of wine, but it didn’t help, so I dropped my head into my hands and wondered what I was going to do. Luz had already agreed to the trip. “Don’t you think you should have told me before you invited her on my Mother’s Day cruise?”
    â€œIt didn’t occur to me that you’d object,” said Jason stiffly. “I thought you’d appreciate the company, and after all, she has had health problems. A cruise will be just the thing for her. Her doctor agreed. She can take walks around the decks and that sort of thing. She hates the gym so much, she quit.”
    So if I continued to object, I would be endangering Vera’s health? That’s what my husband was saying? And what about Luz? I really wanted to take the cruise with Luz. If the other passengers were snobbish, Luz would be the perfect antidote. And her reaction to cruise luxury and entertainment would be a source of entertainment in itself. Whereas Vera would probably try to talk the female crew into going on strike or wonder loudly why cruise captains were never women and organize a gender-discrimination campaign against the cruise line.
    My mother-in-law caused all sorts of trouble in the women’s section of the San Francisco jail before I found the real murderer and got her released. Feminism and female convicts, not to mention female guards, were not all that compatible. When I’d gone to visit her on family visiting day, something her son hadn’t found time for, Vera had infuriated people on both sides of the glass visiting window and couldn’t be bothered to give me information that might have made my familial duty to exonerate her easier.
    â€œIf you don’t want to take her with you, you’ll have to call and tell her yourself,” said Jason, looking grim as he forked creamy, oniony potatoes au gratin from the crispy potato skin I’d put on his plate.
    Wasn’t that just like a man? He got me into an embarrassing, hopeless situation and then refused to accept responsibility for his actions. And what was I to do? Refuse to take his mother along because of my invitation to Luz, whom he didn’t even like? Choose one of my prospective roommates to disinvite? That’s obviously what I had to do.
    Or did I ?

4
    All Aboard

Carolyn
    When our plane landed at the Lisbon airport, it was a beautiful May day, sun shining, with puffy, cotton-candy clouds bouncing across a baby blue sky. By contrast, we were bedraggled, exhausted, and cranky. A limping, cursing Luz had planted her cane on the toe of a man who made the serious mistake of trying to get in front of her in the passport line.
    He, in turn, demanded that the handsomely uniformed Portuguese immigration officer arrest Luz for assault. I attempted to defuse the situation by telling the officer that any man who shoved a woman with a cane was no gentleman. Then Luz said something in Spanish, and the two got into a conversation characterized by smiling, misunderstanding, laughter, and