Between the Tides (25 page)

“What have you been saying to Matilde?” I ask. “You know, to move through the fallout … the awful days that follow an episode?” What I could do with that girl if she were under my tutelage. I have never met a mother/daughter duo more nonsensical, an aiding and abetting more obvious.

“I tell her to move through the halls without looking around. To lay as low as the jellyfish when the tide goes out.”

Honestly, will it never end with the water metaphors? “Hmmm,” I say. “Is she swimming, keeping up with the competition?”

“She is. She swims the Raritan River competition almost as much as I do—she has only twenty-four miles to go.”

“What about you, Lainie? How far are you?”

“I have sixteen miles left.”

Sixteen miles before she notices that Charles and I are an item, that what I do for Matilde is actually for Charles, to protect and preserve Charles. She and her children are the by-product. “I'm glad that Matilde is adjusting,” I say before slinking away without mentioning that I've got to get to the station.

*   *   *

At the Gansevoort Hotel a crude cold blankets the lobby. Snow is in the forecast for the evening and I count my blessings that I have stolen time with Charles this afternoon. Being with him fortifies the day and the three hours ahead will be transformative. I wrap my black pashmina tighter and move with purpose toward the elevators. I'm checking my iPhone for the room number when I read a text that stiffens me with dread.
Meet me at the restaurant. I'm waiting.

I make the left turn away from the elevators and through the atrium to a public place that evokes more risk than a hotel suite. Charles is sitting patiently in the corner. His looks are deceptive; there is nothing about him that is simple or open except his smile. And he's not smiling. The low light puts his face in silhouette. I miss him unless we are beside each other, at the very least.

“Jess.” He won't kiss me in public, not a peck on the cheek. I slide into a chair; I'm waiting for his explanation. A second round of appreciation, beyond the text
thank you at dawn for the female defense attorney with the fire hose
. That would put us on the right footing.

“Jess. Not that I don't want to be in your arms at this moment … it's that we need to talk, we should talk.” He clears his throat. “You know how I feel about you.…”

That he were mine, that I could read his lips and know his every body signal, every twitch of his lips, that the rings around the irises of his eyes would become familiar. That we were a pair, that the children, the hospital, our marriages, didn't trump us. Us.

“My twins are very young, Jess. And Tom and Matilde have a very long way to go. Liza and Billy do too.”

I nod.
Remember that you love me.

“I know how much you've given of yourself to my family.…”

I'd like to wish away the scene. The day is slipping by, the hours I've counted on, my irredeemable, irretrievable, not-to-be-exchanged hours with Charles. The hours that make William endurable are generated from Charles. My defenses are not as strong as one might expect. A server comes to the table and Charles waves him off. “We're not quite ready yet,” he says. He might have said,
Never come back here since I'm in the midst of breaking her heart.
The server prances ahead, indifferent to his chance with Charles. Not so I.

“Charles…”

He holds up his hand and is about to tell me something I don't wish to know.

“I wanted to do this … ‘this' meaning us. Please don't believe otherwise, Jess, for a minute.”

“Then why our conversation?”

“I guess I'm meeting you, Jess, to relay that I can't leave Lainie, not today, not tomorrow. I can't leave my children, I can't break up my family. Lainie is my wife.”

Wife
. The word rattles around in my brain for want of another word, for a reason to fight for the wife. I too am a wife. A thankless task if there ever was one. I might say to him,
Where does it get Lainie, being your wife? Where has William taken me?
And then I shudder at that truth. From where I stand, Lainie has a nice husband, a sexy husband, a husband worth having. A shame that it means so little to her and so much to me. What complicates it is that she and I shared those summers at the Shore and freshman year in the same dorm. Yet Charles is too meaningful for anything else to have weight or consequence. If only the affair were merely physical. If only I didn't care. If only he didn't matter.

“You can't break up your family,” I say. He most likely considers my calm tone a sign that I comprehend that—I'm uber-accepting and in complete agreement with him. That what we do in bed is forgettable and our pillow talk a long-ago dream. He's wrong, that isn't it. I'm simply repeating the message of the afternoon to let it sink in, which it doesn't.

Lainie owes me, Lainie owes me her husband. What else would justify what I do? The good Jess/bad Jess fighting for what is right, what is fair. I'm exhausted from the disarray, from sharing the one man left on Earth with a woman who would go out with the tide in a heartbeat.

“Nor are you in any position to break up your family,” Charles says. “Your children, William…”

“Not today,” I say.

He leans in to hear, expecting that I'll encourage him, that I'll agree, that we are of the same mind-set about spouses and children. That I too view our afternoons in the hay as one thing while a dedication to what we
could
share is another story altogether. That's what he'd like—for me to be a patient person who wouldn't turn the world upside down for him, who wouldn't risk that. A person who doesn't mind doing her best—even when her best has been tested lately—for the crumbs. I do what I do to have Charles, who thanks me profusely, who texts,
You are a genius
. A world I crafted too carefully for any glitch. Except for what happens when you fall for someone. When your pheromones are at a premium and there is no handle on anything—and you toss caution aside. In a world that both parties navigate based on control, containment. The days that are not with Charles become confusing, less defined, rote. He obviously isn't quite in the same space.

“I've been thinking about us very seriously, Jess. Since Matilde's last antic.”

Matilde, ever present although she is absent. A ghost of her mother.

“There is something about that daughter of yours, Charles.”

“Exactly. There is … something.…”

“She can't get in the way, Charles—” I start to fight for us, for me.

“We are, alas, at an impasse, Jess,” Charles interrupts.

It is remarkable heartache. I'm turning into the sort of woman I disdain, where love rules and she'll lie, cheat, and steal for a man outside her marriage, not for the life she has carved with her husband, the father of her children. If Charles might float away from me one day, he isn't actually mine to float away from. I determine we aren't there yet, not for him to drift, not for me to lose him. I want to say,
I know the game, I'll play by the book.
Instead I lament that I care, that I have feelings. I've tried both ways and the psychic rewards of loving a man, any man, husband or not, are many.

“Sometimes I believe that if you put Lainie and me into a milk shake you would have what you want.”

“Except that she is my
wife
.”

“Ah, Charles, the loyalty factor. Tell me that you love her, that you're in love with her, and I'll go.”

Charles's jawline twitches. “I am responsible to her, Jess. A complicated connection.”

An arctic chill through my soul. “I'm not sure what you mean, Charles.”

His jawline twitches once more. We are awkward together; between the sheets is a lifetime ago.

“Charles, I would see you any way that is offered, whenever I can, however I can. However we can manage it. I can simply be Lainie's friend, no more, no less.”

“You and Lainie, William and me. These are unrelated issues, except there is no solution. No resolution.” His head is bowed. Who might have predicted a triangle that makes no sense to anyone beyond us?

I'm consumed with his socks, his boxers, how he tosses me against the door when I arrive in the hotel room.

“It's okay. Charles, I swear it is.” Next I start to unbutton his shirt at his waist, right there in the hotel dining room. I put my fingers against his stomach, familiar and titillating at once. The place is growing busy and people are nosy. I distrust them. My limbs are being torn from me, severed and replaced. This is a fluke, this meeting here today instead of in our hotel suite. Crazy that it ever happened; I cannot divine a word that he has uttered.

 

THIRTY-FIVE

My knocking is frantic. Through the glass trim on the sides of the double front door, I spy Lainie at the top of the stairs. I ring the doorbell several times.

“Charles? Charles?” I hear Lainie. “Charles!”

Next Matilde is beside her. I press the doorbell again.

Charles opens the door. He is holding his iPhone and frowning. “It's Jess. I'll let her in.”

Lainie tenses. “Jess?”

I plunge into Lainie's arms, making gulping sounds. Lainie is soundless, a thin paintbrush in her right hand. My children are sad and tentative, huddling together. Charles opens the door as wide as possible, letting the night in and motioning with his hands. His voice is high-pitched. “C'mon, c'mon, Liza … Billy.”

“Oh, Lainie. Do you fucking believe this?” I look at Lainie, not Charles, as I roll up my sleeve to reveal an ugly cut and bruise on my wrist. “William, he…”

Lainie puts her arms around me with her paintbrush held above my shoulder. “Matilde?” Lainie talks in that “Matilde knows younger children” voice. Aren't Liza and Billy too old for that? “Matilde?” She's desperate. “Matilde, please take Liza and Billy to the kitchen for some of Mrs. Higgins's banana bread. Go ahead,” Lainie says. “Jess needs our help tonight.”

Charles flinches. I wish that I could apologize to him for the timing, especially after our afternoon together, for barging in on his surprisingly tranquil home. It's obvious that Lainie and Matilde were as cheery as clams in high water, working side by side before I arrived. Whatever Charles believes about Matilde being sequestered with Lainie, about how she should be with new friends, girls her own age, rather than working on her art, there is the bond they share. How fortunate that Charles is so busy doing those surgeries—“Today I did four knee replacements. Tomorrow will be hip after hip,” he said only this afternoon. Thankfully, because ironically it is Lainie's support that I seek tonight and Matilde's trust—that my secret remains safe with her.

Matilde gives her mother a quizzical look and Lainie is on top of it. “Or to your room … no, not your room … Claire is asleep there.… You could go to Tom's room.”

Tom shows up at this minute next to Charles, and while he is my fan, he senses right away that I've contaminated the house—the whole place feels sick, a plague that I and my children dragged in.

“Jess, let me check on things with Charles.” Lainie flutters about. “Privately, for a moment…”

She and Charles are walking to the den when Charles turns to face me. I know what he is thinking, that I'm everywhere, that the three of us might never end. “There's no need for a private conversation, Lainie. Let's talk among the three of us.”

“I'm worried, Charles,” Lainie says. “I mean, Jess, you should stay at our house with your children for as long as you need to. But the William business is political.”

“Beyond political.” Charles sounds awful. “It's a disaster.”

“I know, I'm sorry.…” I say.

“Whatever you decide, Jess, we have to help. You've been my friend since we were—”

“I know that, Lainie. What I'm talking about has little to do with the length of the friendship.” Charles sounds short-tempered, pissed. He looks at me.

“And remember, William is my boss. We live in Elliot because of your husband.”

“That's why I've kept it so quiet.… That's why I came here when I had nowhere else to go,” I say.

“What can I ever do for all that you have done for us in Elliot?” Lainie says.

She means it, that's the thing. After a while Charles answers, “Jess, what can we do for you tonight? Set you and the children up in the guest room?”

Tonight.
I don't answer. I nod to convey my gratitude for a temporary calm, a fisherman's dock at nightfall.

 

PART
FIFTEEN

Lainie

 

THIRTY-SIX

That's when there is the second knock, again followed by the doorbell. Charles and I know it is William before he comes into view through the pane of glass to our right. Charles opens the door; I stand behind him and Jess is behind me. William pushes through, reminding me of the garbagemen who plow through our comingled newspapers and bottles on Monday mornings, then load their trucks. Their heads go first, bodies second. I'm the queasiest that I've been since we moved to Elliot.

William is in the foyer—his hair is combed, his face is smooth. He wears an L.L.Bean coat in a caramel color. There isn't much that distinguishes him from the other husbands and fathers in the neighborhood.

“Charles, I regret that you are party to the drama,” William says.

Charles doesn't answer. Jess and I are holding hands—Jess's fingers are white.

“I'll need to speak to Jess alone,” William says.

“No, Charles, we won't leave Jess alone,” I say.

Charles and William exchange a glance. “Five minutes of Jess's time,” Charles says. “We'll stay with her, however. Jess?”