Between the Tides (14 page)

“Oh, Mom?” he says. “Dad wants you to come into the dining room.”

I move quickly before anyone chokes or falls off a stool.

The lights are low and Jess and Charles are immersed in conversation. Jess stands with her thighs pressed against the long dining table. Her upper body is tilted toward Charles, who is across from her, sitting in one of the Queen Anne chairs.

“… in twenty-four hours … forty-eight at most. Pronto,” she says.

“That's impressive, Jess,” Charles says.

“Yeah, good stuff,” Tom agrees.

“Tom?” I say. Tom, who I thought would remain in the kitchen. “Tom, don't you want some dinner? Matilde and I have thrown together—”

“No thanks, Mom. Not yet.”

“That's the point, Lainie,” Jess says. “Tom might not want what you've ‘thrown together'—eggs, I believe, with ketchup for good measure? I can help, I can recommend a fabulous nanny, someone who will change your life.”

I look out the window, although there is nothing visible—mounds of land and suburban homes covered in darkness.

“Lainie,” Charles says. “Listen, we'll have someone else and be right on track. Just make sure that she drives, Jess, please. Confidently. That she's familiar with the area.”

“I would only find someone with those skills. Leave it to me.”

Charles is pleased—I've never known him to be interested in the hiring of a nanny before. I resist any remark that might break the spell, appreciating that I'd be worse off without Jess's input. Without an old friend who knows how to fix things—including the Arts Council—in a town that might as well be Mars. A friend who has the ability not to be bogged down with kids day in, day out, rather to move irreproachably through the morass of drop-offs and pickups. I shudder at the thought of life without Candy, and that enhances Jess's offer. Let Jess put her money where her mouth is.

I nod. “That's brilliant, Jess. Truly brilliant.”

I cede the day to Jess without a fight. She takes over our family's future as flawlessly as if it were her own. Gratitude surpasses rage. For now at least.

 

EIGHTEEN

The next morning I'm slow to resume work. Too aroused and confused from last night's events with Charles, I'm stuck staring at the large unfinished canvases. That's when the landline rings with startling clarity.
Matilde,
I know before I answer hello.

“Mrs. Morris?” A voice I've never heard before. Authoritative, teacher-like.

“Speaking.”

“Ms. Wagner calling. I'm a gym teacher and one of the swim coaches at Elliot Middle School.”

“Is everything all right … is it Matilde?” My heart thrashes against my rib cage, the sound swooshes through my ears.

“Mrs. Morris, would you be able to come to the school now?”

“What has happened? Please…”

“Matilde is okay. Only we cannot get her out of the pool.”

I blame myself when I lay eyes on Matilde doing flips at the edge of the twenty-five-meter-long pool, alone. Mostly since I'm the only one who realizes what she's doing. I myself yearn to stay in the Y pool for hours on end. Vapor is coming from the top layer and it makes it seem as if Matilde is disappearing in the middle. Ms. Wagner, the young and perplexed assistant coach, should be on a schedule except that Matilde is keeping her there. The pool can't be locked up, and Ms. Wagner is beyond agitated; she's pacing and putting her whistle in and out of her mouth with a quick thrust of her tongue. Matilde is swimming like a shark in mid-ocean. What a secret thrill to witness my daughter swimming as if she is a captive of the water. She has never had such velocity.

I'm also dutiful and detect the ramifications of the scene, putting my daughter into Elliot mode. At the moment that I bend down and tap her hand as she cuts through the water, Mr. Flaven, the head gym teacher/coach for the school, appears. Matilde flips again and again and again, fierce and expert; she is spellbinding. I tap her back more forcefully. Either she doesn't feel it or she is deliberately oblivious.

“Mrs. Morris, could you please get your daughter out of the pool?” Mr. Flaven is exasperated. “She's been in for more than an hour and a half. She's missing class, I'm missing class.… I've never seen anything like it before.”

Understandably. How many students at Elliot Middle School believe the water will heal them, make them whole, save the family.

“No, I suspect not.” I lean toward the water and would dive in if not for my clothing: Tahari boots, teal blue pashmina, and jeans. The accoutrements of life in Elliot. Being so close is a tease, the desire runs high.

“Matilde! Matilde!” My hand is up to stop her as she slithers past, more frenzied per lap. Both coaches are looking at me, noting that I'm no more efficient than they are, that it was a pointless task bringing me in.

“You see, she won't stop. We can't get to her. That's why we called you,” Ms. Wagner says.

“Why didn't anyone jump in and grab her?” I ask.

“Are you kidding?” Ms. Wagner says. “We can't. It might be interpreted as an assault; it's a lawsuit.”

I stand up although the pool still beckons me, water whore that I am. What never goes away is the sense that any water will do, anyplace, anytime; I too cannot resist water of any sort.

“No, I've never seen her do this either,” I say. Useless information, yet very true. I take a kickboard from the wire rack against the wall and place it a foot in front of where her right arm stretches as it propels her forward to the other side. I straighten the board horizontally to effect a roadblock.

“I've tried that, Mrs. Morris.” She's staring at me.

“Matilde!” I shout as I thrust the kickboard against the wall where her hand reaches before she returns. Confounded and disheartened, she stops. The kinetic energy in the room dissolves within seconds. Matilde, robbed of her goal, takes off her goggles to make certain that I'm standing there.

“Get out of the pool, Matilde.” I sound severe. I bend down and give Matilde my hand. She alights like a dancer, a trapeze artist. Together we move into the girls' locker room, where a mixture of sweat and sports awaits us.

“Mrs. Morris? Can you see your way out and I'll call you in several hours?” Ms. Wagner asks.

“That's fine. I'll take Matilde home, if you don't mind. She and I will chat there.” One of the charcoal pencils holding up my hair topples to the floor, my hair falls to my shoulders. Matilde, who is shivering although she is wrapped up in a towel, scoops up the pencil for me.

Alone at last. Matilde opens her locker and taped to the door is a map of the Raritan River, a small-size replica of the one on the board at the Y, where I have completed two hundred miles. Matilde takes a blue Magic Marker from her knapsack and starts to color in a swath of the river.

“Look, Mom, at how far I've swum. I'm almost as far as you are, after today.”

“Matilde, what are you doing? What possesses you?”

“You're the one who taught me to swim like that. I'm the one who swims away with you, Mom. I was practicing.” Her eyes are solemn.

“My darling Matilde, I'm not planning to go anywhere.”

I come close and stroke her face. “There are ways to … to be okay here, in Elliot.”

“I don't believe you, Mom, I don't believe you'll stay in Elliot. One day you'll swim away!” She's shouting and I wipe her tears, salt tears, off her face. I start hunting in my jumbo purse for a tissue. The purse feels false, the locker room a joke. Matilde and I are on shaky ground.

“No, Matilde, I mean what I say.” My head floods with the waterfront, Cape May, an empty beach in the long stretch of the off season. A nor'easter that blows for three days straight without surcease. Or the view from our apartment that faced the Hudson, those brackish parts of the river, best viewed on a gray day. To the south, the Narrows.

“I have my children, I don't intend to swim away.” I put my arms around her; she clings to me, her wet bathing suit soaking through my clothing.

She begins to cry. “Promise, Mom, okay? Please swear on our lives.”

“Oh, dear Lord, Matilde. Oh, dear Lord.”

 

PART
SIX

Jess

 

NINETEEN

On the Tuesday morning after the nanny incident and what seems months since we danced together at the club, Charles's cell number comes across my screen once more.

“Jess?” That voice again. “Have you ever been to the Gansevoort on Twenty-ninth and Park Avenue South?”

“The restaurant?” What is the name of it … Asellina. “Yes, I have. At a recent business dinner with too many gastroenterologists and their spouses.”

He laughs one laugh in one breath. “No, Jess, the hotel.”

“The restaurant is in the hotel.” I'm not only coy, I need evidence.

“I'm in the city for a meeting … several surgeons … a seminar. The lunch with a few colleagues just imploded.”

I wait without speaking. I've had invitations before—what distinguishes the call is that it is Charles on the line. Fortunately, my entire day is free—I haven't a committee meeting on the calendar, not a lunch date with any grand dame. The day is designated to desk work and belongs to me alone.

“Jess? Let's meet there.”

“What time?”

“One o'clock.”

“One o'clock it is.” Already I'm considering my wardrobe, my lingerie, my hair, whether I should drive, take the train, or book a car service. Calls to other mothers for my children's pickup have to be placed immediately—the chits called in at any cost. I'm a marathon runner, an opera singer, a rock star; the epinephrine peaks for the performance ahead.

*   *   *

While the world turns in its ordinariness without me, Charles opens the hotel room door. I expect the river view that radiates from the large window behind him. The thought that it is Lainie who loves water enters my mind. It isn't exactly a pang of compunction, rather an observation. I'm conscious of how the bones break when we fall and what must be kept secret, kept safe.

Up close Charles's face takes on another shape—his jaw is longer and his flecked eyes are wider and lit up. His hair is brushed back off his high forehead and his eyes have turned greenish as if the blue in them no longer counts.

He stands there very fit. I know beneath his shirt he has a washboard stomach and Popeye-style biceps. His chipped front tooth that he should have capped, can afford to cap, looks boyish, rather than a reminder that men don't take care of themselves and that wives only do so much.

He pushes me hard against the wall and we begin to kiss teenager kisses, a sword fight—tongue against tongue. Every kiss squeezes my heart; the oxygen swoops in and away from my lungs. He's an orthopedic surgeon and lifting me to the bed is easy; he's stronger than men half his age.

I actually giggle when Charles undresses me, while he frowns, that intent on the journey, the illicit sex that we crave. We could live in this room and it would sustain us. He becomes gentle, although he moves fast; the clock is ticking. My hands are on his forearms and his hands are on my breasts. “What are you thinking, Charles?”

“I'm not thinking,” he laughs. “I'm lusting.”

He kisses my eyes shut, his heart is against my heart. An unfathomable thirst, nothing I've never known.
Eros.
He puts his mouth on my neck and I sigh, his mouth is on my breasts, I thread my hands across his back, a surgeon's back, where the muscles ripple and tighten.

“Jess? Jess?” He is ready to be inside me.

I open my eyes. “I would like the passion without the longing.”

Charles tilts his head. “Passion without longing. What an idea.”

When we're spent, I wonder if he will be the type to retract after the act is over, to jump up and flee. Those men who dress in silence, buttoning the starched shirt (less starched and crisp after having crumpled it onto a chair) and tying the limp tie. The deed is done, the man moves on. Not Charles. He turns me on my side, then spoons me. He passes the test by treating me as if he is my boyfriend, my lover, as if he cares.

I'm sentimental, gawkish, unaccustomed to myself. I'd like to believe him, to take it on face value—forget that we have six children between us and two spouses. There's a remedy for the guilt that is about to enter my psyche. Guilt? Isn't my feeling for him enough to dispel the ghosts? Apparently not; I push Lainie away as best I'm able, then I see her. First in Cape May the summer we were nineteen at Poverty Beach. She's in a one-piece navy tank suit while the rest of us are in skimpy bikinis. Yet everyone is watching her—the old men, young men, lifeguards, and the boys line up for her every move. She is oblivious, skipping out to beyond the markers to swim those goddamn laps. What about Lainie today? Try when she asked me at the pool last week about cheating wives.

“Would you ever have an affair?” she asked.

I professed it to be a profound question. “I'd rather come clean. Get a divorce, start again.”

“Me too,” Lainie said. “I couldn't do it to Charles.”
Charles?
Is she delusional? Am I special, the only one he chooses outside the marriage bed?

“Let's make a pact, Jess. Let's promise that if we ever are tempted to have an affair, we tell each other,” Lainie said. Intense, almost optimistic.

“Sure, Lainie.”

Lainie held out her left hand and insisted that we pinkie swear. A pact seemed a good idea, a method of keeping me honest and away from Charles. I squeezed her pinkie in mine. Seven days later my self-deception knows no bounds.

Charles pulls me closer, naked. I could remain here forever. I knock Lainie out of my brain except the next mind game begins.
William.
I try to push him aside but he looms in front of me, as he looked on our wedding day at the Plaza Hotel. The party is over and we are alone at last in our wedding suite. I go to the window, believing that he'll follow me, but instead he starts to cry. I agree this is a sorry occasion; we have taken our vows and have committed to spending the rest of our lives together, faithful until the end, in two-step for a lifetime. A chilling reality for a man of William's temperament and desires. And terrifying for me, since I have bought into the deal by ignoring his nature. William and I, partners in the public eye.