Between the Tides (23 page)

Lainie and I lock glances. I try to stop Lainie by putting my hand on her arm. “Lainie, let me do the sauce.”

“I made it, Jess, let's finish this dish and move on.”

What I needed to have whispered in her ear earlier—an hour ago—is that she
mustn't
pour all of the tomato sauce into the bowl.

Lainie, unaware of her foible, is folding the entire bowl of sauce into the pasta. William is stomping the floor six inches from where she stands. She looks at him, perplexed but not as afraid as she ought to be.

“Don't you
know
that you never put the sauce over the entire bowl of noodles?” William's voice is cruel.
“Never?”
He lifts the pot, which has been mostly emptied, and slings what remains over Lainie's cream-colored crocheted sweater.

Neither Lainie nor I move. The truth is out, there is no place to hide. Years ago I married William and bore him these two precious children. Once he loved me enough to hold me until I was fast asleep; once we went to Berlin and stayed up the entire night going to clubs with transvestites and funky music. We danced, we drank, we went back to the hotel and made love. Ages back that happened. Was he barbaric then? He has always had this ugliness that is well guarded and buried within. Mostly within.

“You are
ruining
the pasta!” William is shrieking.
“Ruining it!”

Asshole William.

Charles has come to the scene of the crime. “Hey, William, it's a dish of spaghetti. A goddamn pasta side dish.”

William says to Charles, “Yes and no.” William takes Lainie's wrists and yanks them sharply. Lainie cries out, another mistake. He begins to twist her arms painfully. I know it too well—how my husband tightens his piercing grip. How next he might start shaking her shoulders. Back and forth. Back and forth. How he will bruise her and how long it takes for the bruises to turn from deep blue to that yellow that means one is healed.
Not.

Any minute one of the children or several of the children will come through the swinging doors. There must be an alternate domain where I am not sick inside.

“William, please!” Charles comes over and puts his hands firmly on William's forearms and William drops Lainie's wrists. Charles holds Lainie to him; her heart is next to his. Lainie is crying and in shock. I needed to warn her, to keep her from that goddamn sauce.

The football game drones on while the rest of us fall into an empty shock, a shock that has no end, no place to go. After a minute or five minutes or eternity, I speak up.

“Does anybody know how I can get the fuck out of here tonight?” I ask. “Does anybody have a clue?”

*   *   *

Charles wins for restoring order and a semblance of decency. I am nothing tonight but an abused wife, battered physically and emotionally. One of the stats you read in women's magazines and online, in the newspapers and in posthumous articles about Nicole Simpson. You swear to yourself,
not me,
yet it's you, it's you and you sweat that your daughter cannot know nor your friends nor your family. Lainie witnesses the depths of my despair and she is forced to come through, to stoke the fire in the great room and check that the children are fed. An inch away from fetal position and a bottle of vodka, my heart hurts. Mostly because Charles was there, mostly it is the shame and remorse. I should have explained it, I should have warned him. Not that tragic, I self-soothe, it's my life through lies and secrets.

Mrs. Higgins reappears at Lainie's insistence and helps out with the dinner. William is taciturn but unrelenting; the children collapse at various hours through the night. The twins in a heap on my favorite cashmere throws by the coffee table, the older children in fits and starts in the adjacent smaller den, counting down the minutes until the ball descends.

Per usual, we are together, the damaged foursome. Lainie is cuddled up with Charles, her head against his left shoulder on the green leather couch. I don't wish to knock her out of position, only to lie against Charles's right shoulder.
Let's share him, share him while we watch the Milky Way this winter night
. Charles looks at me and I look back. Lainie's eyes are half closed; William is feigning sleep from where he sits on the wing chair. Only Mrs. Higgins is moving about. She gathers the dirty glasses and dessert plates, catches the furtive glimpses, absorbs the narrative, and pads out of the room with her heavy tray. I am too sick to cry, too sick to follow her into the kitchen, the scene of the crime, and make some wretched excuse. Instead I consider the consequence of tonight and the risks of a slow fade.

 

PART
THIRTEEN

Lainie

 

THIRTY-TWO

The children are asleep after a full day at school and Charles has conked out on the sofa in the family room. His head is back too far and his legs are deployed across the coffee table. I open the back door and stand against the side of the house and view a starless night. The bitter wind blows through the trees without the quasi-romance of Vermont, and the extinguished sky is blackness.

When I come back inside Charles has gone upstairs and has already turned out the lights. The past two nights have been surprisingly amorous and I've followed my instinct to be beside him in bed. In a fresh new year, I must do more that is wifelike—beyond the sex—and be more grateful to Charles. Once the paintings are completed for the show, I'll be that person, I'll view Elliot in a better light. I'll not only appreciate Charles, I'll consult Jess. Jess could be Matilde's mentor. A qualm of conscience washes over me. Matilde, who mothers the twins, Matilde, who suffers the curse of being set apart. Again that nagging knowledge that fitting in is a gift—for example, Jess, who embodies every nuance of conformity. Not that Jess isn't tough or dogmatic, that she prevails. She wouldn't jeopardize her social position, she always knows right from wrong in the social swirl.

The night is before me. I use the hours in my studio to paint sections of my triptych—first the sandpipers, then the gulls, who engulf and devour whole creatures. The shoreline is riddled with debris while the atmosphere above is contoured. I end up there until morning.

*   *   *

“There will be plenty of sales clothes, designer mostly, to choose from,” Jess tells me the next morning when after swimming we drive to the Mall at Short Hills. Although I've never been to this center before, it was one of Charles's selling points of moving to Elliot. He had shown me a Wikipedia synopsis of the mall when we were living in the city. “You see, Lainie,” he had said, “Short Hills, not twenty miles from Elliot, was founded by a man described as a nature lover. The mall has chic stores—as chic as any in the city, they
rival
the city. Look at this, there is an Herm
è
s, Chanel, Gucci, Van Cleef.”

“Then the man must be rolling in his grave,” I'd said. “I mean, a high-end mall is not exactly at one with nature.”

“I thought you'd want to know the history of the place,” Charles defended.

“Charles, it's okay,” I had said. “I'll be fine.” I was resigned by then and his hoping to induce me to buy high-end commercial goods made me pray for us both.

That's why it took me until early January to agree to go to the mall with Jess.

“I don't need anything,” I say.

“That's preposterous. I don't understand.”

Jess steers me toward the center of the mall. The antiseptic air blows at us on the top tier where the cr
è
me de la cr
è
me of designer boutiques are aligned. The sounds of footsteps on glass and marble reverberate as more customers file into the complex.

“Let's stick with Neiman's. One-stop shopping, at least to start.” Jess makes an assessment.

“That's a good idea, Jess. It will be faster.”

I follow her into Neiman Marcus. We enter on the makeup counter side of the store, where the scent of perfume is astounding. Jess tromps along with purpose.

“I don't have much time to shop either, Lainie, with a meeting for the Elliot Ballet Academy and then the calendar committee at the library this afternoon. Plus PTA council at six.”

She leads us toward the designer shoes and out of nowhere there is a crowd of women crushing women.

“What is going on?” I ask.

“Are you kidding?” Jess is already at the size 7 rack, fingering the right shoe of a pair of leopard stilettos. She examines it in the fluorescent light. “Too racy, right?”

“For your life as the wife of the CEO of a hospital?”

She hesitates with her eyes on me and drops the shoe. “Right. A pair that is less feral with the same heel shape and height.”

I look around. There are women of assorted ages squeezing their feet into these platform pumps and narrow six-inch-heel shoes.

“Did you tell Charles that we were going shopping?”

“I did. He loves when I do these suburban outings. He said to look for a dress for the Arts Council and for the Spring Fling opening.”

Jess drops her purse on the plush lavender couch and collapses beside it.

She starts forcing her foot into the leopard stiletto as if it's an important matter. She holds her leg up.

“Did you tell William?” I ask.

“Did I … hmmm. I usually do.”

A short bald man, about fifty, in a baggy suit, comes over to us.

“Would you need some assistance?” he asks. The question is more directed at Jess. I try to focus on his life, helping the women who pepper the shoe department. I never thought about it in the city; I never considered shopping a consuming activity before, it was more a means to an end. There is no hastening in and out, there is a leaden sense of allegiance.

Jess holds up the leopard stiletto and a tamer shoe, a black suede platform. “I'll try these. I'll need the mates, these are the right size.”

A woman comes by and pauses in front of Jess, points to the leopard stiletto, and displays her shopping bag.

“I bought the same ones. Fuck-me pumps.” She nearly elbows Jess and Jess smiles at her as if they are in the same sorority or they belong to the same secret society. I don't know William well but after the incident in Vermont, I'm confused. Being with William is taxing and sickening. Maybe the purchase is Jess's only way of appeasing him, maybe she needs to do this. As her friend, I should ask, I should offer support, a shoulder to cry on. Jess is being incredibly good to me, and I don't comment. I get suctioned into her denial as if the secret were my own.

The salesman hesitates and looks at me accusatorily. “For you?”

“Oh, I'm not shopping for shoes,” I answer. I'm getting antsy—it happens more and more. I know the agenda at a mall, and we've yet to dress shop. I take my miniature sketchbook out of my purse and draw a moonrise over the ocean with one woman standing alone. On her right ankle, I give her an ankle bracelet that reads
Love
. Then I look up at the salesman and see his sorrow. I draw it into the woman's face.

“What are you doing?” Jess asks. She is watching as if there is no hope for me.

“Jess, I'm good. I just had an idea and I'm jotting it down.”

Jess sighs in annoyance. I suppose that I should be more into the mall-shopping-spree spirit. She pushes her Neiman's card toward the salesman at the register. Her purchases are rung up straightaway. “C'mon.” She grabs my arm. “There's a lot of ground to cover. We both need dresses for the spring events in Elliot.”

Again, a surprising distraction—the luster of the fabrics in winter. Jess is a few steps ahead of me. “These aren't on sale, Lainie. These are for the next season, I know you get that.” She tips her head and points to the sale section, where I find a teal blue gown.

“Okay.” Jess snatches it off the rack and holds it up. “Most everybody will be wearing long. At the auction and dinner too.”

“I know. Charles told me this morning. I'm not sure how he would know, but when I said we had our plan, he said to buy long dresses.”

“What exactly did he say?” Jess pauses, three sale gowns on her arm and the one I've chosen on her other arm.

“He called you the perfect person to shop with for a splendid dress or two. I never knew him to pay attention, although he always cares about the result.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean.” Jess leads me toward the dressing room. Along the way I spy a midnight blue dress. “Charles might like it too.” I stop to check the size. “Maybe you can take a picture of me in both dresses and I'll e-mail them to him. Or better yet, maybe we should send it as a text.”

A saleswoman appears. “My, my.” She is staring at my face and then back to the two dresses I'm holding. “Won't either of these be outstanding with your coloring. Those eyes!”

Jess stomps ahead and finds a double-size dressing room. She is busy zipping herself into the first of her dresses. I look at her in the three-way mirror and race to try on.

“Nice, Lainie. The color is nice.”

“That's it?” I hand her my iPhone.

She snaps two angles in two seconds and hands it back. I look at her in the long charcoal slinky number.

“Armani, on sale. I don't really want anything too showstopping. More subtle, y'know?” Jess smooths the fabric at her waistline.

“Want me to take a picture for William of the dresses that are top contenders?” I ask.

“Oh, no. No thanks.”

I try on the second dress. “Which one, Jess?”

“Either works.”

I hand her my iPhone again. “Can you take one more shot for Charles, please?”

A few seconds later Charles texts back:
Buy both
.

I show this to Jess.

“It seems so … extravagant,” I say.

Jess shrugs. “Not really, Lainie. I'm taking the black dress. The one that's not a gown, the one I haven't put on—I'll do it at home. Returning is easy.” I detect a slight coldness that reminds me of the wind in late October at the Shore, not yet winter, not yet sharp.