Between the Tides

 

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For my family

 

for we were born by the sea,

knew its rose hedges

to the very water's brink.

—WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
from
Asphodel, That Greeny Flower

 

PART
ONE

Lainie

 

ONE

“The selkies are sea creatures, half woman, half seal. They wiggle out of their seal skins on the rocks to lie in the weak winter sun. One fisherman watched with his binoculars from his fishing boat and waited.”

“He loved the prettiest one!” Claire interrupts.

“That's right, darling girl,” I say.

Jack sticks out his tongue. “Who cares about some stupid sealy lady?” he shouts.

I stop the story. “Jack, please sit down.”

Jack returns to the couch beside Tom, his big brother, who is on his iPad. Jack yawns and props his eyes open wide with his fingers. “Boring, Mom!”

“More! More!” Claire screams. She jumps off the chair and starts dancing around the den, waving her hands like flippers in her crazy water dance on land. “More!” she screeches.

Matilde, my solemn child, interrupts, “Mom, are you a selkie?”

I laugh and look out the den window that faces west. It is too dark to see anything. “No, darling girl, I'm not a selkie.”

“But you love the water and you swim every day. When we go to Cape May you lie on the jetties just like the selkies. You never answer us when you're on the beach … it's like you're not even there.… Remember last February when—”

“Matilde, I am
not
a selkie.”

“Mommy,” Claire cries, “the sealy skin! The fisherman! Finish the story.”

Perhaps Charles is right and I ought to quit this tale. It isn't
Cinderella
or
Snow White
; there is no prince with whom to live happily ever after.

“Mom?” Matilde is waiting.

“Okay … well … the beach is empty in December when the fisherman sees his chance. He sneaks up near the rocks and comes close to the prettiest selkie.”

“He takes her skin, Mommy! The man takes her seal skin!” Claire begins to sob as she always does at this part in the story.

“That's true, Claire darling. The man takes her seal skin while she is in the icy sea. When she comes back to the shoreline, frantic to find her sealy coat, he is holding it in his hands. He tells her she has no choice but to go with him, without her coat she will drown. But he promises to love her forever, that they will marry and have a family. That's the deal.” The “forever” part gets to me.

“And she marries him!” yelps Claire. She begins to dance again. “She marries him and they have babies!” Claire is the cheerful one; she bounces from one side of the room to the other. She passes Tom and Jack, who watch her as if she were an alien creature. I wonder if Jack and Claire will ever share a thought, an interest. Fraternal twins are not a matched pair.

“Until one day…” I look up. “Jack, are you listening?”

Jack covers his ears. “I don't care about seals and babies. It's gross!”

“A dull story for the boys,” says Charles. He is in the doorway, appearing out of nowhere, as usual. He is so stealthy, Charles, more burglar than surgeon.

The children race to him and grab at his arms and hands, his legs, anything that is their father. Except Matilde, who stays close to me.

“Lainie, how about another story? Something more realistic? You could read to them from
Tom Sawyer
.”

Matilde leans in toward my ear. “I know why you like the story. I know you're a selkie. I saw your sealy skin.”

Everyone is waiting.

“What sealy skin? What are you talking about, Matilde?”

“In the hall closet, hanging in a zippered bag. A black, thick coat,” she answers. “Hairy.”

“Oh, that. That's from my grandmother. You're right, it is made of seal, a long-dead seal. I wouldn't wear it. I don't have the guts to ditch it. I guess I'm sentimental.”

No one else speaks. Claire is frozen in mid-dance. Matilde says, “The sealy needs her coat to go back to the sea. She has a land family now but she misses the sea.”

“That's right. That's how it works,” I whisper. “The days become flat for her, days without any sun.”

“Until she finds the coat!” says Claire, twirling around in circles.

Charles enters the room now, fully present, taking up the oxygen. His loafers make a clicking sound on the wood floor.

“Forget the sealy coat,” he says.

He is tall and strong, buff. He lifts weights, runs through Morningside Park in rain or shine. Sometimes he wakes me predawn and invites me to run with him. “C'mon, Lainie,” he'll say, “shake up your schedule and run this morning. Forget the pool every day.”

“Okay, Charles, soon.” Although I don't mean it.

I walk the reservoir, around the track slowly, only to be by a body of water. I want water, any kind, like a vampire wants blood. Matilde is the one in the family who understands. She is only twelve but she realizes that if I didn't paint pictures of water, I wouldn't exist. If we didn't live by the Hudson River or go to the ocean every summer, to my hometown, I'd wither and die.

Charles sits down in “his” green leather chair next to the fireplace and faces my largest and best-known work of art,
Trespassing: Driftwood
. The six-by-eight-foot painting has overwhelmed the living room these years, making me proud, sad, regretful, and attached to Charles. His eyes are on the piece as he speaks. “I have big news. Might as well talk now, while we're together.”

I tilt my head and Matilde sits next to me on the couch. “Claire,” I say, “come here.” Claire pushes between us and I put my lips to her damp and clammy forehead.

“Tom?” says Charles. “Can you settle down with Jack?” Jack slides out of Tom's reach and runs to Charles's lap, clapping and yowling. Charles gives me one of his “Can't you control these children?” looks while he tousles Jack's hair and hugs him. Who can blame Charles for choosing order; he is a famous surgeon, skilled, popular, a perennial Best of the Best in
New York
magazine. When he dons his scrubs, patients and nurses swoon. He is booked years in advance.
Dr. Morris, Dr. Morris, Dr. Charles Morris
. At home with his children, he softens—the only place and only time that he is soft.

“I've got a surprise for you,” says Charles. “A big surprise.”

“You know how I hate surprises, Charles,” I say.

“Finish the sealy coat story,” Claire says. “Mommy, please?”

Charles glances at Claire and then turns to me. “Lainie, you must stop with these stories before—”

“What is the surprise, Dad?” Tom asks.

“Before what?” Am I missing something here?

“Surprise! Surprise!” Jack jumps up from Charles's lap. They have the exact same eyes, neither the color of water nor the color of the sky. Instead, they are dark blue, the color of dusk.

“Hush,” says Charles, and I become very still to set an example. I put my fingers to my lips and stare at each of my four children. The only sound is of Candy out in the kitchen, opening cupboards to start the children's dinner.

“What is the surprise, Dad?” Tom asks again.

“Well, I wonder if you see anything different about me?” His voice becomes light and self-satisfied at the same moment that my heart starts to race.

“You have on blue!” Jack shouts. “A blue jacket, Daddy!”

Charles is wearing a navy blazer, and he usually wears a suit to work. A darkish one or grayish or striped, the same as the other surgeons.

“Yes, Jack, I'm in a blue sport coat.”

“You're home early, a half hour earlier,” Tom says.

I nudge Matilde and then Claire but neither attempts to guess what is different.

Charles keeps it going. “What else? What is different about me today?”

I close my eyes and wrap my arms around myself as if a wind is coming through.

“I don't understand,” I say. “What are you telling us?”

“Lainie, you and the children are looking at the new head of orthopedic surgery at the Elliot Memorial Hospital. The chief of the goddamn department!”

I don't think I've ever seen Charles so euphoric, his bottom teeth show when he smiles. The children and I stare at him.

“Elliot Memorial in Elliot, New Jersey? How will you commute with your schedule?” I ask. “You get to the hospital now by six in the morning most days and it's twenty blocks from our apartment.”

“Well”—Charles clears his throat—“that's the other part of the surprise. Remember a while back when we were in Rye to look at houses and then went to Playland? How Jack loved the Ferris wheel? Then we went to New Jersey and went to a McDonalds drive-through?”

I stare at my work and admire how it is illuminated by the changing hours of the day and the slant of light through the windows, especially at twilight.

“That was more than a year ago, Charles, and we nixed it. We nixed the entire idea of moving out of the city,” I say.

It was a troubling time when Charles had a yen to look at houses. Those car trips were revolting and slow. Claire was always carsick. Matilde was sullen because she was missing entire Saturdays with her friends, with whom she was no doubt sneaking cigarettes and having makeout parties at a terrifyingly early age. Charles and I would speak in the front seat, assuming that the children couldn't hear, evaluating each town and community, the pros and cons of life beyond the city. Charles's many laments about New York cluttered my head.

“Let's not move,” I told Charles after Jack fell in love with a tree house in some unknown suburb. “I have a feeling it isn't right for our family.”

“Tree house! Tree house!” Jack screamed on the ride home. “Climb the tree house.”

Charles let go, one of the only skirmishes he's ever lost in his lifetime of wins. “No tree house, Jack. I'll build you a tree house someday, don't worry.”