The Floating Feldmans

by Elyssa Friedland

  From the moment she stepped off the elevator, the answer was apparent. The line—which resembled a mosh pit—reached to the place where the elevator doors parted. Boat staffers attempted to corral guests into rows demarcated by velvet ropes (the least glamorous use of velvet ropes imaginable), but it was pointless. Around her, people were shouting about saving spaces and cutting. A rumor had been spread that one of the waffle irons was broken. How would she ever find Mitch in this mess? She couldn’t imagine her parents navigating this well either. It was her father who had instituted the policy at the hospital cafeteria that doctors and nurses in uniform shouldn’t have to wait in line. Annette still chastised Elise for not having enough stations at the smorgasbord at Rachel’s bat mitzvah. Apparently she’d seen four people looking bored while waiting for their Peking duck to get rolled into a pancake.

  “Mom!” She heard Rachel’s voice barreling toward her. “This is insane. Some guy yelled at me for taking the last slice of French toast and a waiter was bringing out a tray with another few hundred stacked.”

  “I know,” Elise said. “I think we might need to camp outside tonight so we can be the first ones through the doors tomorrow.”

  Rachel chuckled and Elise felt her heart swell. She was making a connection with her daughter, the person who had spent the whole summer looking annoyed by her existence. If Elise asked Rachel what she wanted her to pick up from the supermarket, Rachel would take four prompts before responding. And when she did, it was only with a monosyllabic “gum.” And that was when Elise was serving her! What if she ever tried to sit her down for a heart-to-heart? After seeing those stripper shoes last night, it occurred to Elise there might be some space for parenting that needed filling. Sometimes it was hard to remember Rachel needed guidance too, that she couldn’t just raise her on autopilot while tending to Darius like a tree in need of daily pruning. She wondered if she should intervene about the long hours her daughter was putting in at her summer internship, because it took a real adult to see that her days of potential carefreeness were painfully numbered.

  “Rach, what was that you said at dinner about Freddy giving you a gift card?” She had meant to get to the bottom of that last night, but with the flagrant notes of Cumbia music and the flash mob of flamenco dancers, not to mention the amnesiac effect of the margaritas, it had slipped her mind.

  Rachel pulled out a card from her back pocket and showed it to Elise.

  “It’s a hundred-dollar gift card to use in the Game Zone,” Rachel said, growing animated. It was nice to see that childish side of her daughter emerge, the one whose face used to light up at the mere mention of Chuck E. Cheese. “I already checked with Guest Services. I can transfer the money to use at the spa.”

  Elise tried to keep her face from falling, willing gravity to stop doing its job. Whereas a beat earlier she’d seen a glimpse of Rachel in pigtails, now she was imagining her doing keg stands while some horny upperclassmen held up her legs. Why did she have to go there so quickly? Couldn’t she just picture her lovely daughter with cucumbers on her eyes and a mud mask on her face, making chitchat with the aesthetician about her skin care regimen?

  “That was very nice of Freddy,” Elise forced herself to say. “I presume he got one for Darius too?”

  “Yep,” Rachel said. “Of course, he already spent his. I saw him in the arcade last night after dinner with some girl.”

  “Really?” Elise asked. These children never ceased being mysteries. “He looked like he was falling asleep at dinner. And he’s supposed to be working on his essay. Rachel—I need you to help me with this. Darius doesn’t have your natural motivation and he could use your support. By the way, you kids shouldn’t be too impressed with Freddy. He’s obviously just showing off for Natalia.”

  “Natasha,” Rachel said, setting in motion one of her more dramatic eye rolls.

  “Whatever. You get the point. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to find your father, fight my way through the running of the bulls to get a bagel, and then I’m going to lie down before bingo at eleven.”

  “You know there’s a place where you can get a yogurt and there’s no line, right?” Rachel asked. “Only difference is that you have to pay for it.”

  “Even better,” Elise said and spun around on her heels. She’d catch up with Mitch later.

  FIFTEEN

  Annette sat with David on the ship’s Grand Promenade, which was just a fancy name for what was essentially a strip mall with cafés and shops. Both of them were sipping lattes, David’s a decaf because his hematologist said caffeine could impair the effects of his medications. Annette wouldn’t let him have any once she heard that, even clearing out the dark chocolate from their cupboards and the coffee-flavored ice cream from the freezer. She watched him twenty-four/seven, her ally and closest friend, hoping that if she didn’t take her eyes off of him, nothing bad could happen. People didn’t vanish into thin air; ergo, if she never stopped looking after him, David would go nowhere. It was magical thinking, but it was working for her on most days.

  “What’s on tap for today?” David asked her. He looked tired. The dark circles under his eyes and greenish tinge to his skin made Annette feel anxious, but she reminded herself for the millionth time that the doctors had approved this trip. Several had said it would be good for him, not just in raising his spirits but in actually slowing the process of the cancer cells multiplying inside him. Apparently there was cold, hard evidence that time with loved ones could be more powerful than any medicine compounded in a pharmacy. It wasn’t the reason they’d gone on the trip—Annette had decided on it before they’d learned that. Spending time with her children and grandchildren was the goal. Getting to see four Broadway-caliber shows in one week while on board? Another perk. But now she supposedly had another benefit, a far more legitimate one, even though she was dubious about those claims. She was a skeptic, like her husband. It was one of the many reasons they got along so well. They both had a “Don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining” attitude and they never attempted to bullshit the other.

  She and David had scrimped and saved so much during their younger years, trusting that they could finally enjoy their coffers in their old age when time would suddenly materialize as a vast resource and responsibilities would shrink. How foolish they were to take their health for granted, assuming that as the years progressed they would remain robust and virile, the very picture of the strapping grandparents shown in life insurance commercials. But instead of their financial obligations winnowing to a predictable stream of monthly payments, David’s medications were costing a bloody fortune and Annette was spending hours on the phone dealing with their insurance company, thrilled if they recouped even just half the cost. She’d spent decades submitting other people’s bills to insurance providers but hadn’t ever really experienced the acute pain of dealing with these faceless conglomerates that were ceaselessly creative in finding reasons for rejecting claims. And now she had the added pleasure of dealing with the large pharmaceutical companies too because David had been accepted into a clinical trial. Not having to sit on the phone asking questions of their pharma rep, Sherri, for a week? That was perhaps the absolute best perk of going away.

  “Ocean Queen passengers, may I have your attention, please? This is Sir Julian, your noble cruise director, speaking. Thank you to all those who danced your hearts out at the salsa competition last night. Family bingo will start in a half hour in the Lobster Lounge on Deck Five. In the meantime, if you’re near the shopping promenade, all fine jewelry at the Golden Nugget will be marked down twenty percent for the next three hours. Time to get your sweetheart a little something special.”

  “I’m getting awfully tired of those announcements,” Annette said to David. They’d already heard from Julian three times that morning. Once at dawn to warn them about rough seas ahead, then at breakfast to advise queuing up early for the illusionist show, and now this latest—like the
y were in a bargain basement and not on what was supposed to be a luxury liner.

  “Think Freddy’s intercom is actually broken?” David asked her.

  Annette shrugged. It was so beside the point.

  “Elise was really put out about it,” she said. “Speaking of, is that her over there? I think I see her trying on a necklace.”

  David squinted to follow her gaze.

  “Looks like it,” he said, doing that thing David always did when he talked about Elise, which was letting just the faintest hint of disappointment—or maybe it was better described as a lack of understanding—creep into his voice. How badly David had wanted to expand his practice with Elise: Feldman & Feldman: Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Endocrinology, the one-stop shop for women from Mill Basin to Syosset. But we don’t always get what we want, Annette thought, wishing her husband could grasp that.

  “She’s happy,” Annette said. “I think so, at least. She certainly never calls me to tell me otherwise.”

  David nodded, with maybe a dash of sympathy, though Annette doubted he felt even a fraction of her emptiness and pain. His parents, humorless Polish immigrants, had faithfully raised four boys in the Bronx until they each reached the age of eighteen, when they were turned out on the stoop. She, on the other hand, had the closest of relationships with her mother, Eleanor, for whom Elise was named. They were more like friends, doing each other’s hair, gossiping about what the neighbors were wearing. When Eleanor died at such a young age—while Annette was pregnant with Elise—she took it as a sign when she birthed a baby girl. This would be the continuation of a beautiful friendship, only now Annette would be the elder of the pair.

  But Elise and she had never really bonded and it was truly impossible to pinpoint the blame. It could be that Annette wasn’t the mother that Eleanor had been, a Jewish whirling dervish who made killer gefilte fish and bargain hunted with sharpshooter precision to put Annette in the finest clothing. Or perhaps it was because Elise was naturally reserved and the distance between them was a product of her daughter’s unique DNA, which might as well have stood for Do Not Approach. Annette thought often of a sign a friend of hers had framed in the guest room of her country house: FRIENDS WELCOME, RELATIVES BY APPOINTMENT.

  Freddy was in fine spirits at dinner the prior evening, which Annette had to assume was thanks to Natasha’s spandex dress rather than on account of family time. Still, he’d accepted the trip, and that wasn’t necessarily a given when she’d called him. They were “estranged” for the most part, a word that stuck in her craw every time she said it out loud. Because it wasn’t really that they were strangers to each other, rather it was the “strange” part of “estranged” that got her. It was strange to Annette how she and her son had got to this place where he never came home to visit and she didn’t really understand what he did for a living or how he spent his time. Oh, he’d hurt her all right. But that was years ago, even though Annette could still feel the pain like a fresh bee sting.

  It was the day she’d driven all the way to Vermont in a snowstorm to pack up Freddy’s things from college. Yes, she was angry as all hell that he’d gotten himself expelled. After everything she and David had done for that kid—the tutors, the exorbitant tuition they paid for a subpar private college—he repaid them by throwing it back in their faces. But still, she hadn’t let go of that optimism, even when she walked up the five flights of stairs to Freddy’s dorm room, dragging the empty suitcases behind her after her last-ditch effort to negotiate with the dean. They would figure out next steps together. Eventually their son would turn around. But what did she hear when she stood outside his room? Her son, speaking to his roommate, not even bothering to lower his voice.

  “So what are you gonna do now?” the kid asked. He was another privileged underachiever like Freddy, a bratty boy named Jay they all called Jack-O for some reason.

  “My mom is taking me home today,” Freddy said. His voice, normally muffled like he was speaking into a paper bag, came barreling toward her loud and clear. “She’s such a fucking bitch I don’t know how I’m going to stand moving back in with her. My dad’s a total dick too.”

  Annette had dropped the bags she was carrying, the two empty vessels thudding against the linoleum of the landing. Freddy must have heard the noise because he opened the door right away.

  “Hey, Mom,” he said, though it was obvious he didn’t suspect she’d overheard a thing.

  She could barely make eye contact with him the rest of the day, feeling so nauseated that she clutched her gut like it had an open wound. Mentally, she made a list of all the things she’d done for Freddy: the choo-choo trains of meat she spiraled into his toddler mouth, the waiting in line for hours to get him Air Jordans, the testing him on his Spanish vocab instead of relaxing in front of the television. Tocar—to touch. Nadar—to swim. Bailar—to dance. She was still certain she could pass a high school–level Spanish exam. If that’s what a bitch does—give so much of herself to a child that there is barely a sliver left for her husband and other child—then Annette would be damned. Still, he was just a kid when he said it. Maybe it was to impress his roommate. Or because he was nineteen and had shit for brains, like all teenagers whose parents have coddled them.

  “Do you think I ignored Elise because I was too focused on Freddy?” Annette now asked David, who looked like he’d perked up a bit since they sat down. She wondered if he’d secretly swapped his decaf for regular when she was dropping in her Splenda packets. She’d have to watch him even more carefully.

  “I think we did the best we could,” David said. “You were an excellent mother to both of our children.”

  Were? Were! He’d used the past tense, corroborating what she’d suspected. That her role as mother was done, finito, kaput. She was dead weight, the appendix of organs, the VCR of home electronics.

  “Look over there,” David said, pointing toward the Golden Nugget. “Looks like Elise found a lot of things she liked.”

  Annette glanced over and saw her daughter carrying at least four small shopping bags with gold ribbons dangling from the handles.

  “Huh. Mitch must be doing better than we thought,” she said.

  David put down his coffee cup and took Annette’s hand in his own. She felt the tremor but pretended it was his heartbeat. It had a similar rhythm.

  “By the way, I think it’s daddy issues,” David said.

  “What?”

  “Natasha and Freddy,” he said.

  “Oh.” Annette sipped her coffee, which was already cold. “I assumed green card.”

  SIXTEEN

  Freddy crossed the living room of his suite and stood next to where Natasha was sitting at the dining table, munching on a platter of fruit that had been delivered moments earlier. Platinum-status guests were entitled to three daily amenities and so far they’d received a bottle of champagne with a plate of chocolate-covered strawberries; a tower of French macaroons; and now this, a decadent fruit platter where trios of honeydew, watermelon, and cantaloupe slices were arranged into the shape of sailboats. Based on the conversation last night at the fiesta dinner, Freddy was fairly certain his and Natasha’s accommodations were more than a cut above everyone else’s. Rachel showed everyone a bruise on her thigh from banging into the knob on the bathroom door. David said he and Annette had to walk around the room single file. Meanwhile, Freddy and Natasha’s suite was spread on two levels with a spiral staircase and an outdoor balcony large enough to hold a small cocktail party.

  “What do you mean, she seemed weird?” Freddy asked Natasha, who had recently returned to the room after a visit to the Grand Promenade, where she’d hoped to find a new bathing suit. After meeting the Feldman clan, she was apparently rethinking the swimwear that she’d packed, bikinis with less material than the inside pocket of Freddy’s jeans.

  “I mean, I saw your sister at some jewelry store and I was about to say hi, but
she just had this really furtive look. For some reason, I stood there watching her shop, and she must have given over ten different cards to pay. She bought a bunch of stuff and was given a different shopping bag for each one, but I saw her sit down at Fifty-Five Flavors—the frozen yogurt place—and consolidate everything into one bag. She was, like, cramming it all in.”

  Freddy sat down next to Natasha and plucked off the sail from one of the fruit boats.

  “Is that so strange? Don’t a lot of people try to carry everything in one bag?” He really didn’t know, considering the last time he’d gone shopping was for Natasha’s fancy bracelet. Everything else he bought on Amazon, even though the cardboard box waste troubled him, though not enough to make him willing to browse actual stores.

  Natasha propped her feet up on the chair and wrapped her arms around her shins. She looked like a little ball when she did that, an accordion in its closed position. He wanted to expand her, show her range to his family, so they left the boat knowing she was fluent in three languages and visited sick children in the hospital once a month.

  “Just trust me, it was weird,” Natasha said. “You said yourself that you barely know Elise anymore, so why are you so surprised?”

  “I’m not. Or I guess I am. I don’t know.” He replaced the triangular piece of cantaloupe in its original spot on the platter, feeling his appetite waning. “She seemed normal at bingo.”

  “Yes, but I asked her what she did in the morning after breakfast and she said she read a book on the sundeck. Didn’t say a word about the jewelry store.”