The Floating Feldmans

by Elyssa Friedland

  A week later, there was a Post-it peeking out from under her keyboard. It said, “I like you.” She knew Austin’s handwriting as well as her own, having combed through his notes for the past month, loving the way he never dotted his i’s or crossed his t’s. It was rather irreverent, for a lawyer.

  When they first kissed, Rachel still didn’t think it would lead anywhere serious. Austin was thirty-two. She was nineteen. The specter of her parents’ disapproval appeared to her as waves crashing against the shore, relentless and perpetual. But she did it anyway, started seeing Austin. They met after work at his apartment and, on the weekends, she told her parents she was going to see friends, but really she would pile into his car and they would do day trips to go hiking on the Palomarin Trail and wine tasting in Sonoma. Austin looked painfully uncomfortable when she pulled out her fake ID at the first winery. They needed fewer reminders of how pitifully young she was, and he had to call her Lisa the whole time to match her fake identity. Natasha and Freddy had a good thing going—she had seen that firsthand when she visited them in Aspen. But it was hard to miss the sniggering from her grandparents and her mother about their age gap, like it was this vast gulf that was illegal to cross. She couldn’t even imagine their reaction if they found out she was treading similar ground.

  She told herself that she would keep the relationship light. He was still married, after all, and she was due back in school before Labor Day. It was hard to picture Austin coming to see her on campus, bunking up with her and her roommate, squeezed into an extra-long twin bed with a paper-thin mattress. But try as she did to keep the attachment at bay, Austin had invaded her brain. Her feelings for him were almost like air pollution, if pollution was a good thing, because it was everywhere and couldn’t be cleared. She loved ruminating on him, picturing his prematurely gray hair, hearing the legalese roll off his tongue. Habeas corpus. Certiorari. Lis pendens. It was as good as dirty talk.

  It was proving impossible for her to be around her family, listening to white noise about flaky Dover sole and what time the roller-skating rink converted to bumper cars, when all she wanted to do was replay conversations she’d had with Austin. Thank goodness she’d been smart enough to print out his emails so she could read them over at night. She hid them in her toiletries bag, where Darius would never peek (the disgusted face he made when a tampon once fell out of her backpack!), although he had been awfully put out about how much time she was spending in the bathroom. How many times had she reread the line: You seem so much older than your age . . . I feel like I can really talk to you. Whenever she could, Rachel disappeared on the ship, looking for nooks and crannies of quiet where she could fantasize about her boyfriend. Yes, he was her boyfriend, even if they hadn’t taken the label maker out of the supply closet yet. He said he needed to take things slowly. Not for nothing, he was her superior at the law firm and they couldn’t go public about their relationship until her internship was over. Just as important, if Jenny were to find out that her soon-to-be-ex was dating a college coed, the optics would be brutal. So the whole relationship was shrouded in secrecy two times over, and Rachel felt like a pot about to boil over.

  She knew all too well that Freddy could keep a secret and so she planned to tell him about Austin as soon as she got him alone. Honestly, she just wanted to have a reason to say her boyfriend’s name out loud, over and over. But so far it had been impossible to pin him down. Freddy seemed weirdly interested in Darius, which surprised her, since her little brother was the most one-dimensional, unmotivated character around. The kid couldn’t even compose a simple college essay and Rachel was sick of hearing her mother nag him about it. She was tempted to write the damn thing for him and let him pass the work off as his own. Anything to muzzle their mom.

  Once she scanned herself back onto the boat, Rachel headed toward the adults-only roof deck, where the towel crew, a nimble group of Ghanians, already knew her by name. She liked a particular chair at the end of the mile-long row, where she could quietly imagine her future with Austin without the distraction of the sunscreen-basted pool crowd who were drunk by noon and loved to join any choreographed dance. But, en route, she had an epiphany that necessitated a detour: a pit stop at her parents’ cabin, where the internet was suddenly a magnetic force field pulling at her feet. She would ask any one of the numerous sycophantic crew members to unlock the cabin, claiming she’d misplaced her room key. Then she’d locate the paper with the Wi-Fi password on it—she’d heard her father tell her mother that he’d left it on their night table—and dash off a sweet but not overly desperate email to Austin. It was now or never, because today was the only day she was assured both her parents were off the boat. She’d seen them disembark.

  Her parents’ cabin was on the seventh deck of the boat, unlike the one she shared with Darius on the second level, where the roar of the engines could be heard day and night. The moment she stepped off the elevator, Rachel sensed the vomit.

  Since she’d been a child, the stench of throw up had made Rachel retch herself. She’d had numerous embarrassing episodes in grade school throwing up in the cafeteria moments after another kid upchucked. The boat had been off-and-on rocky, but so far she’d been feeling fine, unlike whoever was puking on the seventh floor. She didn’t envy the housekeeping staff. Darius had made some offhand comment to her, like, “What happened to your seasickness?” using finger quotes around “seasickness,” but she had no idea what he was talking about.

  Despite the noxious odor, Rachel was determined to contact Austin, so she soldiered on toward her parents’ room. Unfortunately, this was the first time she didn’t see any crew members passing through the halls who could offer her entry.

  Rachel slumped against the wall opposite her parents’ cabin and pressed her nose against her T-shirt to dull the odor. If the boat wasn’t the size of a small city, she would con her way into getting a room key at Guest Services, but the walk alone to the other end of the boat was daunting. She was tracking something like eighteen thousand steps a day, not that it was helping to whittle down her physique. Austin said he loved her curves, but they’d yet to have sex with the lights on.

  Rachel closed her eyes and tried to summon their last encounter, regrettably in a hotel room. Austin was paranoid that Jenny had eyes on his rental, so he’d booked a modest room at the Hyatt. They’d classed the experience up by ordering champagne from room service and playing some background jazz through Austin’s iPhone.

  Suddenly, her mother’s voice broke through Rachel’s reverie. It was the last thing in the world she wanted to hear while she was picturing herself strewn on a bed with Austin, who was bringing parts of her body to life she hadn’t previously known could have sensation.

  “Yes, I’m here, Dr. Margaret,” Elise was saying, speaking in a deliberate manner, rather loudly.

  Dr. Margaret? Was somebody ill? Rachel wondered. And, if so, what kind of doctor went by their first name besides the pediatrician? The doctor she and Darius went to back home was named Dr. Greg. He was a passionless man, who when they were younger read out a list of questions from a notebook, like, “Can you tie your shoes?” “Do you know your letters?” “Have you made new friends?” before unceremoniously concluding the conversation with, “Now go pee in a cup.”

  Rachel had told Elise recently that she didn’t want to see Dr. Greg anymore. It was embarrassing going into his office with the giant whales painted on the walls and sitting among the crying toddlers duking it out over the toy abacus. Elise had had Rachel’s files moved over to the primary care physician she used, a tiny Indian woman named Dr. Rahal, after an awkward chat about how Rachel should feel comfortable asking Dr. Rahal anything and that it wouldn’t get repeated to her (read: a prescription for birth control pills). Could her mother’s call have to do with Darius? Rachel had a sudden flight of panic that something could be wrong with her little brother. Darius had been dodgy about something he was keeping on their shared night table in the
cabin. Could it have been medication? She had thought it was his gnarly mouth guard. Rachel cursed herself for ever thinking unkind thoughts about him, resenting the attention Freddy was showering on him. Now she wanted to hug him tightly, let him know she’d give him a kidney, a lung, any organ he needed.

  Rachel pressed her ear to the door of the cabin.

  “Have you practiced the breathing we discussed?” Rachel heard Dr. Margaret ask. This wasn’t what Rachel had been expecting. Was her mother about to meditate over the phone? Typically her parents scoffed at the New Agey types back home.

  A short man with a curlicue mustache and dressed in uniform appeared, barreling down the hall with a stack of Deep Blue Digests that he was slipping under cabin doors. Seeing Rachel with her ear up against the door, he asked her if she needed assistance. Rachel put her fingers to her lips to quiet him and he moved past her with a simple shrug of his shoulders.

  She must have been standing at her parents’ door for nearly fifteen minutes before her mother ended the call. Rachel got enough of the broad strokes, though. Dr. Margaret wasn’t a pediatrician. She was a shrink . . . her mother’s shrink. And Rachel was not the only one on board with a secret, and suddenly hers didn’t seem quite so terrible. Instead of feeling relieved, though, she felt worse, an ugly anxiety working its way from the top of her head down to her toes.

  By the time she reached the elevators, Rachel had made a list of everything she’d gleaned from the call and that was now wrong with her life:

  1. Her mother had a shopping addiction.

  2. Her brother wasn’t going to be able to go to college.

  3. Her grandmother was sick.

  4. Her mother thought she was a bitch.

  5. She never got to email Austin.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The Feldmans cleaned up nicely. After a day of being scattered to the winds, they reunited promptly at six thirty in their finest attire, gowns for the ladies, penguin suits for the men.

  Darius’s bow tie was choking him and his cummerbund kept riding up, but Angelica told him he looked super fine. They had had a great day together snorkeling. Neither of them could keep their masks on properly, and so they ended up laughing through most of the session while everyone else was oohing and aahing about the spectacular yellowtail damselfish and the glasseye snappers. When they were stripping out of their wetsuits, Darius mentioned to Angelica that he had no idea how to tie his bow tie for the party that evening and she offered to help him out.

  “Come by my room on the way to dinner,” she said. “I’ll tie it in two seconds.”

  “You know how to do that?” Darius said, a bit in awe. She had a 1600 chess rating (that was even higher than Sacramento High School’s own Miss Perfect, Caroline Shapiro), she was a competitive volleyball player, and now he was learning she could tie a bow tie in seconds.

  “I work at a dry cleaner, silly,” she said, laughing. “You should see me sew a button. I bet I hold a record time.”

  “I’d like to see that,” he said, watching as Angelica tossed her wetsuit to the side and slipped a white, gauzy summer dress over her bathing suit. She was still wet and it clung to her body, translucent in choice places.

  “Maybe tomorrow. If we’re too bored at the teen scrapbooking class I’ll give you a full demonstration of my tailoring skills.”

  “It’s a date,” Darius said, and Angelica didn’t blanch. He still couldn’t fathom why this girl wanted to spend time with him. Either she was utterly bored or she was experimenting with a bad-boy phase, considering Darius had been pretty up-front with her about the myriad ways in which his high school performance differed from hers.

  When he was back on the boat later in the day, he found Rachel in their room looking agitated and chewing her nails feverishly.

  “What’s wrong? Stand-up paddle not all it’s cracked up to be?” he asked.

  “Shut up,” she said, which was a standard response for Rachel, but somehow this time it sounded more sad than cruel.

  “Never mind.” Lying down on his bed, he pulled out a worn copy of On the Road and pretended to read.

  Rachel rose suddenly and sat down at the combination desk-vanity under the television. He saw her reflection in the tabletop mirror, worried eyes that were unaware they were being watched.

  “So living home with Mom and Dad kinda sucks, right?” Rachel said in a cautious tone. Darius felt himself tense up. This was the longest sentence his sister had said to him in months besides “Could you please pass the salt?”

  “I guess,” Darius said. “I don’t really have much of a choice. Next summer you could probably stay on campus.”

  “Yeah, maybe. But they’re weird, right? Mom and Dad. Mom especially, I think.”

  Darius watched her closely in the mirror. Did she know about the attic? He couldn’t figure out where this was coming from. Maybe Rachel was testing him, sussing out what he knew. He’d never been good under pressure and had no idea how to proceed. He wished his sister would just open the door if she knew something and he’d gladly walk through it.

  “Yeah. So weird. I wish she’d leave me alone about my essay. I’d write it if she’d just back off.”

  Rachel swiveled around and he lost his window into her feelings.

  “What are you going to write about?”

  “Maybe this trip,” Darius said, mostly kidding.

  “Dysfunctional family reunites on cruise ship,” Rachel said with a hearty laugh. “I fear that may not be enough to get you into college, little bro. We might not be loving this trip, but I’m afraid people have it far worse than us.”

  Rachel’s demeanor was relaxing. She walked over to the closet and pulled out a silver dress.

  “Last time I wore this dress was to prom with Michael Sedgwick. Remember him? I heard he sued UCLA because his fraternity hazed him so badly.” She went into the bathroom before Darius could respond and exited with the dress hanging on her loosely. “Wherever and whenever you end up in college, don’t do anything stupid like that, okay?”

  Wherever and whenever? He didn’t even bother answering.

  “Zip me up, ’kay? I’m going to try to sneak into the casino before the dinner starts.”

  Darius obliged, finding the act of zipping his sister’s dress a welcome invitation into her personal space. They were back together: ketchup and mustard. True, she didn’t ask him to join her in the casino, but this was the most natural conversation the two of them had had in ages and he could enjoy it without looking for more. He even managed to put his mother’s issues out of his mind while he fumbled his way into the tuxedo. How he would like to put this very outfit on and drive by Marcy’s house to pick her up before prom. She would probably wear something tight, definitely black, with a high slit up the leg. He’d give her a corsage that she’d roll her eyes at but still slip on her wrist, secretly happy that he hadn’t broken with tradition.

  Darius went into the bathroom to give himself a once-over before heading to Angelica’s room. He remembered seeing a sample of cologne next to the Q-tips and lotions. The boat was all about samples. Of course everything was for sale in larger scale on the shopping concourse. Lord only knew how many bottles of Sun-Fun Body Cream and Beach Bod Perfume Spray his mother had already purchased. He picked up the tiny spray bottle and was fiddling with the nozzle when it dropped into Rachel’s makeup bag. Darius reached inside to fish it out and touched what felt like a stack of paper folded many times over. He knew he shouldn’t, but he pulled it out, telling himself that he just wanted to make sure his sister was okay. She had been acting awfully strange moments earlier and this could be a clue.

  Darius unfolded the papers carefully, trying to remember the way the creases went so Rachel wouldn’t know he’d snooped. He sat down on the toilet and started with the one on top.

  You’re so beautiful . . . I can’t get you out of my mind . . . Jenny
never made me this happy . . . Once the divorce is . . . Careful at work . . . You seem so much older than . . .

  Oh, shit. He read on, sifting through the papers quickly.

  Rachel was dating someone at work. Someone married. Someone older. Named Austin. What a douche name. Darius shuddered. He wanted to unknow this information. He wanted to unknow so many things, actually. It would feel so good to take an eraser to his mind and wipe it clean like a blackboard. At least he knew why his sister had acted so evasive all summer and why she was putting in such long hours at the office.

  Darius put the papers back where he’d found them and headed for Angelica’s room, palming his bow tie with sweaty hands. He considered bringing along Kerouac as a prop, to pretend he planned to read it at dinner if he was bored. But it was silly to carry it around all night and Angelica, with all her brainpower, would probably quiz him on it. She was sharing a room with her grandmother in a cabin located four decks above Darius’s room. He thudded his way down the hallway in his dress shoes and took the stairs two at a time, his bow tie now crumpled into a ball.

  He knocked rhythmically on her door with a dun-dun-dun-dun-dun . . . dun-dun! Angelica answered and Darius nearly fell backward when he saw her. He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, maybe another debate or chess team T-shirt tucked into a skirt, but Angelica had transformed herself for the evening completely. She was wearing a strapless shiny purple dress and heels that brought her to Darius’s chin. He was used to her barely reaching his shoulder.