The Floating Feldmans

by Elyssa Friedland

  “You too,” she said, sad to see him go so quickly. “I really am having a fabulous time. You’re doing a marvelous job.”

  “You’re on with family, aren’t you?” Julian asked.

  “What gave it away?” Elise asked.

  “A sixth sense,” he said. He pulled mirrored sunglasses from his pocket but hesitated briefly. For a moment she thought he would sit back down and continue their conversation. Julian looked like he had something on his mind. But why would he choose to confide in her, a woman he didn’t know, who had chosen to be alone in a random café instead of being with her family? “I like your necklace, by the way,” he added.

  Elise’s hands floated to her collarbone. “Thanks,” she whispered, the shame of her splurge at the Golden Nugget lodging in her throat.

  When Julian was gone, Elise reached for her cell phone and dialed Michelle Shapiro’s office number. After four rings, voice mail took over. Elise left a breezy message asking for a call back. She flipped open her laptop again to take a crack at Darius’s essay. She’d never let him submit her words—what a terrible example that would set—but it wouldn’t be cheating if she just drafted an example of an essay for inspiration, right?

  She decided to fortify herself with another snack and looked up at the menu printed on a mirror behind the counter. Underneath the specials, written in white chalk, someone had added in bright pink: It’s Satur-Yay . . . Have dessert! Until then Elise hadn’t realized it was even a weekend. Of course Michelle hadn’t picked up the phone. And she certainly wouldn’t be calling her back until Monday. Because of the vacation, Elise was completely losing track of the days of the week. The feeling of being unmoored to a schedule was startling. Was this what it would be like when she no longer had a child living at home? Normally, she could tell the day of the week just by the things Darius had strewn around the house: gym clothes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, electric guitar for practice on Mondays, skateboard in the foyer on weekends. Plus his unzipped backpack, which he always left with crumpled papers spewing all over the couch in their den, meant Monday through Friday. She thought about Dia-Beat. It was pure fantasy that she could start a tech-pharma business at this point in her life, but she’d need to do something regimented once Darius left for college. Otherwise she’d go crazy, living in a world where Mondays felt like Thursdays, which weren’t that much different from Sundays.

  She looked back at her computer screen and felt a wave of writer’s block, which triggered a sympathy for Darius she hadn’t yet experienced. Rattled by her inability to come up with even a decent first sentence, she gathered her things and dropped them into her tote bag, wondering if it was too late to perhaps join Mitch on his dolphin adventure. She’d picked up on how disappointed he was when Rachel bailed on him and stupidly hadn’t offered to go in her place. For so long she had prioritized her children and, because her husband was such a mellow, understanding man, she’d relegated him to the bottom of the totem pole, knowing that he’d forgive her if she made Darius’s favorite chicken dish instead of his or skipped the Bee’s holiday party because she was chaperoning Rachel’s high school dance. Now that it was going to be just the two of them soon, she hoped she had been right in her estimation of Mitch. He was a complacent person by nature, never eyeing a neighbor’s new golf clubs with envy or complaining when it rained on his day off. And while life was about to dramatically change for her as the primary caregiver, for Mitch things would roll along at mostly the same clip. Busy as a bee, he’d joke when he walked in the door and she asked him how his day was.

  Elise looked out the window of the café and saw a cloud in the shape of a heart. It was positioned over the cruise ship docked next to theirs, an even bigger and flashier boat named Jewel of the Sea, its bow painted with gigantic rubies, emeralds, and sapphires. She shifted her gaze to the portion of sky above the Ocean Queen. It was cloudless, just a wash of blue, and so if Elise was hoping for a sign of encouragement, she was out of luck.

  * * *

  —

  “Can you hear me?” Dr. Margaret shouted. The audio component of FaceTime was working, but the video had yet to connect. Elise was nervous. She and Dr. Margaret had never shared this level of intimacy before. There was a barrier of anonymity that was about to be broken when they saw each other’s faces. Another thing for which she could be judged. She’d fixed up her hair in advance of the call and swapped her white T-shirt for a more vibrant turquoise.

  “Yes,” Elise shouted back at her unnecessarily. “I’m here, Dr. Margaret.” Elise had the laptop propped on a pillow in her lap, because despite everything rational she’d learned in medical school, she still couldn’t imagine it was a good thing for a hot battery to sit on her ovaries. She chastised her kids every time she saw them holding the cell phone to their ear instead of using earbuds. Sometimes she awoke in a cold sweat from a dream where she saw Rachel crisscrossing the length of the Stanford campus with the phone to her ear. That’s when she could sleep at all. Since menopause, her uterus had descended on her bladder like a lead balloon, and she barely got through a REM cycle without popping out of bed.

  Dr. Margaret’s face appeared suddenly and Elise was startled by her appearance. She looked so normal. Pretty, really. A middle-aged woman with a severe auburn bob and a straight row of bangs, rimless glasses, and shimmery pink lipstick said, in a placid tone, “Hello, Elise.” She had excellent teeth. Elise wondered where her patterned blouse was from. She had no idea where the doctor lived, but she was guessing, based on her smart haircut and fashion choices, it was somewhere coastal and warm. Elise glanced at her own face, a tiny rectangle in the upper-left-hand corner of the screen. Somewhere, wherever Dr. Margaret was, she was seeing the screen in reverse. Elise’s face magnified and her own in miniature.

  “Thanks for doing this with me. My computer is on the fritz so I need to use FaceTime for our session,” she continued. Dr. Margaret was seated at a desk, behind which was a full bookcase, the kind that looked scholarly and not just a landing place for objets d’art. Elise removed the air quotes around “doctor” in her mind—Margaret was for real. Looking back, it was insane that just a few months earlier Elise had considered digging out her medical school textbooks and refreshing herself on addiction theory. Just as pediatricians shouldn’t treat their own children, it would have been totally irresponsible for Elise to attempt to cure herself. Besides, as her father was always quick to point out, she had never actually earned her M.D., let alone developed any specialty in psychiatry.

  “How’s it been going on the trip? Have you practiced the breathing we discussed?”

  Elise appreciated that Dr. Margaret didn’t dive right in with the obvious question: Have you shopped? She had a gentle way about her. Elise’s former professor would have given her high marks for bedside manner. She ought to ask Dr. Margaret for advice on how to handle Darius. There had to be a less aggressive way she could badger her son about his essay. After her failed attempt in the coffee shop to put anything decent together, she was committed to being less pushy. It wasn’t so easy to put pen to paper. Hell, it was partially why she’d gone to medical school. The political science and history majors were always writing papers, and there was no question she’d rather be in the lab filling pipettes than scrambling for words. Mitch’s ability to channel his thoughts so eloquently into the written word had been part of his mystique. Come to think of it, why the hell was he not the one managing Darius’s essay?

  “Five counts in, ten counts out,” Elise said, demonstrating now with a deep inhalation.

  “And is it helping?” the doctor asked.

  Elise looped her thumb through the chain of her necklace and angled it toward the camera’s eye.

  “I see,” Dr. Margaret said, but she did a remarkably good job at masking her disappointment. What a skill it was to have the face of an actor, unlike Elise, who found it nearly impossible to smile at the family meals. “Well, you couldn’t imagine
you wouldn’t face setbacks in beating this. Especially considering you are in an unfamiliar setting, surrounded by family, which can be stressful.”

  “My banker won’t extend another line of credit to me. Darius may not be able to go to college next year. I asked my parents for money and they didn’t exactly jump at the chance to give it to me,” Elise said.

  “You were honest with them?” Margaret asked.

  “Not exactly.” Elise decided not to get into the particulars. There was no need to explain the depths of her machination, not when she and Margaret were face-to-face. She’d save Dia-Beat for a typing session.

  The boat foghorn suddenly sounded, the three short blasts used for nonemergency notifications.

  “What in heaven’s name was that?” Dr. Margaret asked, removing her glasses. She had lovely dark blue eyes and Elise admired the way she’d shaded them in plum tones. In the background Elise saw picture frames scattered throughout the bookcase, pictures of teenage boys skiing and surfing. Margaret was about Elise’s age. Could they, would they, be able to become friends? Elise resisted the urge to ask her where she was based, though she wondered if maybe Margaret had been in California all along, that the website she’d used to find a therapist had actually paired patient and doctor by the proximity of their routers.

  “Hang on, I need to listen to the announcement,” Elise said.

  “Good afternoon, cruisers. For those of you not out on excursion, we have a special treat,” barreled a husky voice through the boat’s intercom. “We are discounting all swimwear at the Beach Hut by twenty percent for one hour only. Who needs a new bikini?”

  “Elise,” Margaret cautioned, having heard the announcement, “you don’t need this. You are in control. Not the salespeople, not the store, not the clothing. You say you’re losing control of everything in your life. That your children don’t listen to you. Take charge now. Have agency for your actions.”

  “It’s hard,” Elise said, starting to weep in front of her new friend. She’d never once cried during a previous session, but somehow seeing Margaret made her situation more tangible. The doctor was becoming another person she felt like she was letting down. “I have to end the session early, Dr. Margaret. I’m not feeling very well.”

  “Elise, stay with me. We still have twenty more minutes to talk. How are the children enjoying the boat?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. They don’t really speak to me. Darius seems to have made a friend. Rachel is distant. Nice to everyone but me, pretty much.”

  “And your parents?”

  “The same, though I suppose I should tell you that my mother is sick. I was in their room—it’s a long story—and I saw all these pill bottles. I’m not supposed to know. At least I know what this cruise is all about.”

  “Well, I think you can forgive yourself the necklace incident. You have a lot on your plate. People say it’s good to switch venues when you’re planning a big change—in your case, returning to a normal relationship with money and shopping—but you’re not at a peaceful rehabilitation facility. You’ve relocated but taken all your daily stresses with you. I think we should revisit our discussion about a stay at an addiction center. There are many in Northern California. With all those wineries . . .”

  “Do you live in Northern California?” Elise asked, a little too excited.

  “It doesn’t matter where I live, Elise. But no, I do not.”

  Elise’s face fell. She was embarrassed, but not as much as she was disappointed.

  “Dr. Margaret, I really don’t feel well. I’m not going to the store, I promise. I just need to reschedule the rest of our call. I’m so sorry.” Elise clicked the red button on the FaceTime icon before Dr. Margaret could protest further, watching the pixels of her face compress until there was nothing to see but Elise’s home screen—a picture of Darius and Rachel at the beach from a lifetime ago. She closed the laptop and curled up in a fetal position. If her parents didn’t come around within the next twenty-four hours, she was going to come clean to Mitch. Maybe he could work something out with his publisher, like an advance on his salary or a loan directly to Darius. She was running out of options and the window in which she could keep her secrets to herself was shrinking.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Rachel learned very quickly that she had terrible balance. One hour into the stand-up paddle lesson and she’d barely been upright for longer than twenty seconds. All the middle-aged women who were in the class with her shot up on their boards, paddling confidently so far toward the horizon that they became tiny blips in Rachel’s view.

  Who knew SUP (stand-up paddleboard) was such a craze among the mommy set? She shuddered at the memory of her mother trying strippercise a while back, the (thankfully) quick-passing fitness fad that swept through Sacramento. The SUP instructor was a hot guy in his twenties with a thick Australian accent named Nick. He took Rachel’s hand so she could plant her knees on the board, which was the starter position, and then pulled her waist up to standing. All she felt under his touch were the pillows of flesh on her hips. Nick didn’t seem to mind. In fact, she thought he might be holding on to her a little more than necessary.

  “Don’t worry, love,” he said encouragingly when she couldn’t move the oar from her right side to her left without falling. “It’s not your fault. A lot of the cruise people can’t keep their balance because their equilibrium is off from the rocking.” Rachel doubted that was true. She had always been clumsy, tripping over tennis balls at practice and unable to jump rope to save her life. Her mother had been a fine athlete once upon a time, but all she’d inherited from her were those damn wide hips.

  “I’ve got to do this,” Rachel said, determined to keep up with the old ladies spreading white foam in their wake. She squeezed her abs for better control. Her spin teacher said the core was the nerve center of the body, but maybe it was time to stop taking the bulk of her advice from a woman whose sole goal in life was to consistently maintain eighty rotations per minute while doing arm curls. “I’m good now,” she said, paddling hard three times on the right.

  “All right, darling, you got it,” Nick said, and he swam off to help a ten-year-old kid.

  But Rachel didn’t have it. When she tried to switch to paddling on the left, her body refused to play along and she fell sideways off the board and crashed into a rocky part of the ocean floor, scraping her left thigh badly. I’m outta here, she thought, tugging her board by its handle to shore and leaving it in a pile for Nick to load onto the van. Cold, wet, and freckled with sand, she walked into a hotel on the beach and pretended to be a guest. She figured the bellman would get her a cab and prayed it wouldn’t cost more than she had in her wallet.

  She missed Austin terribly, especially in that moment. Unlike the boy-men on campus who took her for pizza and then insisted on going dutch, Austin was a real grown-up who made reservations and had a bank account. They had only been dating for a month at this point, but she felt differently about him than anyone else she’d ever been with. He was so much wiser than her past boyfriends, who belched their way through Sunday night football and thought they were cool as hell because they vaped. Austin was the kind of guy who read The New Yorker for fun. He watched foreign films and seemed to genuinely like them. On the weekends, he wore skinny jeans and soft T-shirts, though at work he never deviated from classic gray trousers and an array of finely made button-down shirts, usually with a subtle check pattern.

  She and Austin hadn’t communicated since she’d boarded the boat and it was killing her. Her parents had been clear that they were not to sign up for the forty-dollar-per-day internet package. Rachel knew it wasn’t just about the money. If their devices worked, both she and Darius would be largely checked out. Her parents’ desperation to connect with them was palpable. Her father nearly cried when she announced she didn’t want to see the dolphins! As if they weren’t spending enough time together already.

 
Rachel had rather erroneously thought not speaking to Austin for a few days wouldn’t be that big of a deal. The relationship was in its nascent stage and she had believed it could be a good thing for Austin to miss her a little bit. After all, they were both spoiled, seeing each other at the law firm every day. But as the days at sea dragged on, Rachel was finding the lack of communication excruciating. Austin had been on a similar boat and he had told her she would be so occupied with the meals, shows, and nonstop activities that he would barely cross her mind. Apparently on his cruise, Austin had come in second place in a Jeopardy!-like game show. Rachel loved all the random knowledge he had tucked under that thick head of hair. She didn’t like to think about him taking one of these trips, though. Austin had done the cruise thing only once before, with his wife.

  It wasn’t as bad as it sounded. Austin was still technically married, but he was in the (very) early stages of a divorce. Jenny, his wife (oh, how Rachel hated that word and wanted desperately to plant an e and an x in front of it), was not making things easy. While Austin made a good living as a seventh-year associate at the law firm where Rachel was interning, there wasn’t much to fight over. Still, to hear Austin tell it, Jenny wouldn’t be satisfied until she possessed all of his belongings, right down to his underwear. Thank goodness there were no children.

  Rachel wasn’t the cause of their split. Austin was already living in a rented apartment above a bicycle shop when Rachel started her internship. She was assigned to paralegal on a case he was working on and was utterly clueless, which led to a lot of her knocking on his door, feeling foolish and asking for help. One night she stayed at the office very late, well past the time when the evening janitors plowed through the halls with their industrial-strength Lysol, to help Austin sort through a sky-high pile of documents that needed sticky notes. A large part of her job, it turned out, involved Post-its. When they finally finished and walked outside together, she blurted out that she was hungry. They walked to a diner and ordered eggs and fries and tuna sandwiches, comfort foods that didn’t spell romance in the slightest. But something was there. Even though it was nearly midnight when they finished their dinner, when the waitress asked if they wanted dessert, they both said yes simultaneously.