Between the Tides (29 page)

I stand still, immobilized. Not only does she know, but she sees it—the nuanced level of thievery, the idea that Charles is her ultimate prize. Except there's much more to it. “Lainie, Charles and I…”

“Then you fell for him, right, Jess? You're in love with my husband.” What she says sends a shiver through me.

“I suit Charles. We suit each other. We
belong
together, Lainie. I
choose
Charles.”

Lainie begins to cry quietly, and even in a moment of peril I notice how delicately she weeps. The waves crash and the children become smaller as they approach the next beach. We're quiet for a moment. I'm thinking about how we've been these past months. I've resurrected her work by orchestrating the exhibition. She's made me someone who can sniff out talent, and that works in my favor. We give each other credibility. Only Charles stands between us.

“Lainie, none of it was planned. I don't forget for one minute that we're friends … friends in need … friends in Elliot.” I sound tepid to my own ears. “But Charles and I, it's almost another realm.…”

“Friends, sure, Jess. Friends who both know the best of Charles, a sexy, tender man. I wonder, though, if you really get the good guy once he's cheated
for
you.”

Charles, her husband; Charles, my lover. Husbands and lovers—apples and oranges.

“I'm leaving him. I am, Jess.” That's when she stops crying. “I'll tell him on Sunday night, after the weekend, when we're back in Elliot. After
our
Cape May weekend.”

“Cape May weekend,” I repeat. She means what she says, both the idea of leaving Charles and the promise that the weekend remains intact.

“Then you can step in, Jess. You can have what I leave behind.”

It's as if we are saying good-bye after a summer at the Shore; we're twenty years old and smitten with our defective friendship. Yet her stupefying present-day decision pounds in my head and reminds me of how high the stakes have become. The sun capers across the ocean and both of us blink to adjust to such radiance.

 

PART
SEVENTEEN

Lainie

 

THIRTY-NINE

In the entranceway I take my iPhone out of my bag, having missed the entire morning of praise and accolades. Could the art show have only been sixteen, seventeen hours ago? I skim the hundred-some e-mails and more than eighty texts. Mostly about my work described as filled with sorrow, the randomness of the sea, the marvel of water and sky. Four New York galleries are interested, and a
HuffPo
blog from a guest whom I never met writes that my triptych “conveys what lurks beneath.”

The recent texts are from Charles and from the Elliot Y and are minutes old. Charles writes,
Rounds to finish. Will arrive by late evening
. I would tell Jess except that makes it old news. Charles's plan, a surprise to me, was most likely hatched when we collected the children for the journey. That he's coming down completes our Cape May sojourn, the latest chapter in our shared history. On these beaches where I first fell for him, missing the signs of what might go wrong and catching only the drift of love ever after.
Jess.
I close my eyes to annihilate their tryst, a penetrating ache, similar to stepping on several men-of-war.

The latest e-mail is from the Y and reads,
“Dear Ms. Smith Morris, We are pleased to inform you that you have achieved first place in the Y competition to swim the Raritan River.”
I reread it and am reassured that they are naming me the winner.
The swimmer of the year.

“Matilde! Matilde!” I go hurtling through the house. “Matilde!” I shout her name.

Mrs. Higgins appears, wearing an apron that has clamshells and oyster shells painted on it. While we were on the dunes she has finished dusting off the house and ushered out the must and mold of winter.

“I'm looking for Matilde!” I've never been so loud in my life.

She adjusts her glasses in order to control my decibel level.

“Whatever is it, Mrs. Morris?” She is concerned, confused. “Shhh.”

“Where is Matilde, Mrs. Higgins?” My shouting continues.

“The children are on the sundeck on the garden side.” She has adapted quickly.

I take the stairs two at a time and Jess finds me halfway up.

“Lainie? What's going on?” She sounds anxious, or perhaps I'm imagining it after our denouement.

“I'm looking for Matilde!” I insist. “Matilde!”

“Mom!” Matilde appears at the top of the stairway. The door to the roof garden is open and frames her. Today her eyes are the color of the ocean when the breeze flows from the east. “Mom, what is it?”

“I won!” I shout. “I won the Raritan River swim at the Y, and it's the day after the art show!” Everything is changing—my voice feels light enough to be on angels' wings.

“That's incredible, Mom!” Matilde says. Claire comes into her orbit and then Liza flanks her other side.

“Is there a runner-up? Maybe two runner-ups?”

“I don't know, Matilde. I honestly don't know.”

Matilde takes her iPhone from her jeans pocket and checks. “Mom! Mom!” she shouts. “I won too! I'm the second runner-up!
Whoo-whoo!
”

Jess is behind me on the stairs. “Girls, come down and ask your brothers to come. We should have lunch and celebrate the news.”

Matilde and I are motionless. Then that mothering instinct kicks in. “Yes, lunch is probably a good idea. Jess packed up lots of food and Mrs. Higgins is at work.”

“Let's go, everyone.” Jess turns.

A brightness travels with Matilde as she descends. She comes near, we hug, we squeeze each other. “Mom, we did it! We did it!”

Claire is beside us, at our thighs and kneecaps. “Mommy, Mommy, did you and Matilde swim to the other side?”

“Of course we did, my darling girl.” I pick up Claire in my arms and she is heavier than the last time, than she felt only yesterday. I am amphibious and suffused with thoughts of water … tempera paint, the breaststroke … daylight to the onset of night.

*   *   *

At sunrise I wake up and stand at the windowsill, staring at the pink and orange streaks across the morning sky. I turn back to face the bed, where Charles's arm is sluggishly stretched out in search of me; his surgeon's hands lay across my empty place. I could say to him,
Charles, I saw you and Jess. How could you?
Yet there is no longer the need. Instead I open every blind and look at the water, mythical and telling. Next I wake him up. He squints, perplexed, and watches me carry my iPad back into bed. I start scrolling through for Cape May marinas.

“Charles, listen, I think we should go on a boat. Let's rent a boat. The marinas should be open today.”

“I don't want to rent a boat, Lainie. In March on the open water? It's plenty cold enough in our house. Doesn't the heat work?”

He has taken the covers and pulls me to him without knowing what I know. I shudder at how the air is too thin for the three of us—Charles, Jess, and me
—but no worries now.
I say nothing except, “Please, Charles, we could do a sailboat with a motor. Or a fishing boat. A fishing boat might be easier to find. They're used the year long, they're already in the water.”

“I opt to stay at the house and clean up hundreds of e-mails.” Charles props himself up on his elbows and takes his iPhone from the night table. “Jesus, Lainie, it's six o'clock. I didn't get down until almost midnight.”

As I watch him fall back to sleep, I reel off the pluses of the morning, beginning with the fact that I'm in Cape May, a place that is a love affair for me. There is no deadline today, no art show pending. There is no need to get to the Y pool, I've won the competition. I only need to find a boat for us, one large enough for our fleet of children and three adults.

 

FORTY

Mrs. Higgins has opened the blinds and the bay water dips and swells while she mixes batter for blueberry pancakes. I'm the only one who is awake and I'm on the landline when Matilde comes into the kitchen. I put the person on mute and smile at her. “Hello, my darling girl. Runner-up and fellow water maiden! I'm trying to get us a sailboat for today. As I suspected, they're all goddamn dry-docked since it's not season yet.”

I unmute the phone and say, “One sailboat for nine people. There will be two small children, five-year-olds, and two medium-size children and two teenage children.” I wink at Matilde. To my own ears my voice is singsong, chatty. I'm euphoric that we are at the Shore, near the rocks and real water, not feeder canals and rivers.

“Okay, sure.” I put the phone on speaker. The third time I've been placed on hold. “Cowgirl in the Sand” plays during the wait. “I love Neil Young,” I say to Matilde, who has no reaction. “Matilde, do you remember my father's marina from when you were small? I might call the new owners next—although they tore down the original building and I've never liked them. I don't know how else to get a boat going.”

Matilde sits at the corian counter in the middle of the room and Mrs. Higgins places a plate of blueberry pancakes in front of her. “That's more like it. Sitting down for a meal is the rule.” Matilde pours the maple syrup in a circle, around and around.

“Thank you, Mrs. Higgins. Civility is a goal, my darling girl.” Matilde and I laugh, knowing that I'm half serious.

“Mom! You're laughing like you did in the city. Like the summers before Elliot.”

Through the windows, the water is lucid and feverish. “If we were in wet suits, we could swim in the bay,” Matilde says.

“Except it's very icy. That's why I'm trying to rent a boat instead, to be on the water.… For everyone. Well, obviously
not
William. But Dad and Jess … Tom, the twins, Liza … Billy.”

I hang up with almost a whack. “Jesus shit, why can't I find a sailboat? I suppose there's one last shot.” I scroll down on my iPhone. “Okay, I've got it.”

A moment later I'm speaking with Dougie, a local who has a few fishing boats. Dougie was in my class from nursery school through high school.

“Dougie, let's catch up on the last two and a half decades of our lives!” I say.

Matilde frowns at me.

“Nine. In total.” I cover the phone. “Matilde, Dougie says that's too many people. Maybe I'll leave the twins at home with Mrs. Higgins. That will bring us down to seven.”

“Claire will cry if—” Matilde says.

“He's not buying it, he is insisting on no more than five passengers. The boat is a thirty-one-foot commercial fishing boat. My old pal Dougie is a deep-sea fisherman, he's the captain.”

At the window I squint at the slippery shoreline, the gulls gliding on their wings rather than flapping them in the strong gusts.

Matilde keeps pouring maple syrup and watching how the whitecaps have come up on the bay. “I want to go, Mom, but isn't it kind of rough today? And what about Billy and Liza?”

“Dougie is adamant. Five passengers at the most. Don't you think that Billy and Liza will be okay without the ride, Matilde? Maybe we'll do the beach with them afterward, like yesterday.” I take a breath.

“Well … that might work.…” She pauses.

“Thank you, Matilde,” I say. “Thank you for understanding how happy I am today, finally.… Who wouldn't welcome our plan, darling girl.… It is in triptych! First my paintings at the art show, then the Raritan River win, and now we're in Cape May … sorting life out … about to be on a boat! A boat—the third part of it…”

That's when Claire springs in with her face puffy from sleep. “Mommy! Mommy! We're here and I found a secret beach in my room upstairs.”

“A secret beach?” I ask, already worried that I haven't yet awakened Charles about our excursion.

“Yeah, up in the corner. It's the Sealy Mommy's house. The selkie.” Claire speaks softly. Matilde bends down to listen, more devoted to Claire this morning than I am.

My iPhone rings and I walk to the window, my finger in my other ear. The girls are watching as I start to jump up and down. When I hang up, I say, “That was a dealer. He has a client for my triptych. Someone who will pay quite a sum. I'm stunned.”

“Is the triptych for sale, Mom?” asks Matilde.

“It's for sale. That's why it was shown at the Arts Council. The triptych is my first large work in almost twenty years, Matilde!”

“We'll celebrate.” Matilde smiles. “It's super news.”

I realize that I haven't asked Matilde the entire week about her sketches.

“Forgive me—between mounting the show and our frantic trip to Cape May, I haven't asked you about your work. How are your sketches coming, Matilde?”

“I brought my sketchbook to show you. I'm almost finished with them.”

“And from that sketchbook, anything is possible: large canvases, your own triptych, a picture book,” I say. “Truly, Matilde, your pictures have their own narrative.”

“I can show you, I'll bring the sketchbook on the boat.”

“Yes, my darling girl, I would love that. We'll do it on the boat ride.”

 

PART
EIGHTEEN

Jess

 

FORTY-ONE

The marina is crummy, although Lainie is oblivious, running ahead of us down the old crooked dock to Dougie. She calls Dougie the savior of the day. I haven't any recollection of him from my time spent in Cape May and today he is a waterlogged man who appears twice her age. His white shadow beard and torn flannel shirt over his big stomach are repellent. He walrus-walks to Lainie to give her the kind of hug that she avoids assiduously. He has tobacco in his mouth that he spits into the bay.