The Floating Feldmans

by Elyssa Friedland

  “That’s actually a pretty good idea,” he said, meaning it. It was the first essay topic that didn’t make his fingers cramp and his mind block before he even sat down to type.

  “I’ll read it over for you if you want,” Angelica offered.

  “Maybe,” he said. It would depend on what he put on his list. Climbing Kilimanjaro. Learn sweep picking on the guitar. These were things he wasn’t embarrassed about wanting for himself. Others, well, he wasn’t even sure he knew what else he would say. Closeness with his sister. A kiss from Marcy, maybe. At least now, for the first time, when he thought about the blank computer screen, he felt excitement instead of nausea.

  “What’d you write about?” Darius said, uncomfortable with this much attention on him.

  “Nice pivot,” she said. “I chose the question where you write about something difficult you did that you’re very proud of.”

  “Which was . . . ?” Darius asked. Everything Angelica did seemed difficult. Debate team, chess team, cross-country, working after school, keeping straight As, honors everything.

  She tugged at the drawstring of her sweatpants.

  “Not trying to be all depressing or anything, but I wrote about teaching my disabled brother how to use the cash register at the store. My parents really didn’t think he could do it. They were worried he’d give customers the wrong change or not be able to keep the claim tickets in order. And in our business, those tickets are like the holy grail. For whatever reason, I was sure he could do it. Sometimes I would see him doing the craziest math in his head and it was like he only did it when I was around. I felt like I saw something in him everyone else was missing. So I trained him. It took about two months, but he’s the best cashier you’ll ever meet. All the customers love him and he came up with this color-coding system for the rush orders that is a lifesaver. So I wrote about that.”

  “Wow,” Darius said. He hated that after all she’d described, the best he could muster was a monosyllabic response. Sometimes his tongue was as tied as a shoelace and he pictured reaching into his mouth and just giving it a good yank. The right words had to be inside him, lying in wait.

  “Walk me back to my room, okay? I’m getting tired. Screw the ice cream. I don’t want to get fat on this trip, anyway.”

  “You could hardly be fat. You look great.” He immediately reddened and made an effort to look anywhere but at her.

  “Thanks,” she said calmly, but the corners of her mouth were turned up like apostrophes.

  They walked the six flights to her cabin in silence, Darius’s brain already at work compiling a list of things he wanted to say in his college essay. To get to know my grandparents better . . . to fall in love . . . to learn how cell phones work . . .

  “Strange night,” Angelica said when they reached her door.

  “My family ruined the biggest night on the ship. We visited a jail and a morgue. I would say that’s an understatement.”

  “Fun, though. In a weird way,” Angelica added. She took out her key card from her pocket and clicked open the door. “I’ll see ya tomorrow maybe. What are you signed up for?”

  They were arriving in St. Lucia in the early morning. Darius had signed up for a rock-climbing excursion that he was already thinking of skipping.

  “Some climbing thing. Not sure if it’ll be cool or not.” He wanted to leave the door open for Angelica to invite him to join her again. It was so much less boring to have company, and while some sort of wall had broken down between him and Rachel, he couldn’t count on finding the same warmth the next day.

  “I’m going fishing with my dad,” Angelica said. Darius tried not to look disappointed.

  “Have fun. Hope you catch a big one,” he said, perhaps a bit too enthusiastically, like he wanted nothing more than for Angelica to hook a thirty-pound flounder.

  “Well, good night,” she said. “I’m gonna stick in earplugs to drown out Grandma.” She gave him a wistful look and closed the door behind her.

  For a long moment he just stood outside her door, listening to the sounds of her shutting down for the evening. The tap turning on and off, drawers opened and shut. He pictured Angelica, her small frame moving about the room, maybe on tiptoe so as not to wake her grandma. And then the door flung open unexpectedly and Angelica saw that he hadn’t moved from his spot. She was holding his tuxedo jacket.

  “Wanted to give this back to you,” she said, extending her hand. “Were you just coming back for it?” She probably knew he hadn’t budged.

  “Yeah, thanks.”

  She stepped into the hallway and closed the door behind her gently. Darius reached for the jacket, or for her waist, he didn’t know. Her chin tilted up as his tilted down, their movements mirror opposites, kissing the natural conclusion. Openmouthed, a lot of tongue twisting. It lasted ten seconds, or was it ten minutes, Darius couldn’t guess. He didn’t know who pulled back first. Just that it was over suddenly and they were facing each other. Darius didn’t know what Angelica was thinking, but he knew that he didn’t want to look away or down at the floor. He wanted her to know that he was happy about what just happened.

  “Good night for real now,” she said softly.

  “Hey, one more thing,” he said, and Angelica held the door open. “What did one ocean say to the other?”

  “Nothing. It just waved,” Angelica said and made a little smirk.

  “You really do know everything, don’t you?” he said, cocking his head to the side.

  “I guess I do. Sweet dreams, Darius,” she said and stepped back into the room. He managed to wait until the door was closed for the big, dumb grin to spread across his face.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Mitch couldn’t remember ever feeling so conflicted in his life. The entire walk back to the cabin from the ballroom, he felt himself pulsing with anger toward his wife. How could she be so duplicitous? How could she be so careless? They had worked hard and been cautious since day one so they could provide a proper education for their children, four years at a private college with room and board all taken care of. They wanted Rachel and Darius to graduate and not be ridden with debt and worry, so they could follow their dreams, whether that meant the Peace Corps or Wall Street. Elise had gone and trashed that plan all by herself, going to great lengths to cover her tracks, and he was finding out about it only now that he’d left his job and Darius was less than a year from graduation.

  Another side of him felt sympathy beginning to flood through his veins, pumping blood to his heart in waves of compassion. How broken and lost must his wife have been to have spiraled this low? And how scared must she have been about fixing the mess? It made him want to cradle her and let her have a good cry on his shoulder, not chastise her and make her feel even worse. Besides, she was minus half a head of hair now. It made the notion of yelling at her, at least now, downright cruel. Still. How would he ever trust her again?

  They had barely taken two steps into the room when Elise started speaking.

  “Before you start, I know I’ve created a huge mess. I don’t know how I’m going to fix it. I don’t know if I can. But I’m relieved it’s finally out in the open.” She had walked across the room and sat down in the single armchair in the corner, avoiding looking in any of the mirrors. The curtains had been drawn while they were out and the room was dark except for two small pools of light coming from the night table lamps.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, taking a seat on the edge of the bed. He glanced around the room and saw no shopping bags or extravagant purchases. Nothing that would suggest what had been happening right under his nose.

  “I’m okay. I mean, clinically, I guess I’m not okay. I have an addiction. Gosh, I’ve never really said the A word out loud before. Even to my shrink.”

  “Yeah, what was that Rachel said about a therapist?” For some reason, this wounded Mitch even more than learning about the shopping and the
bonfire of their savings. He was supposed to be the person that Elise could turn to at any time. He pictured them lying next to each other in bed, both of their noses in open books, when the closed book was their story. He was guilty too of keeping secrets. He’d buried his unhappiness at the Bee for too long. And set off on a new path without consulting Elise. But still, her secret was bigger. It was infinitely more destructive. He was steaming all over again. He needed a shrink. Not that they had money for one. How the hell was Elise paying whatever astronomical hourly fee therapy had to be costing in their upscale neighborhood? Was buying a ten-pack of therapy sessions no different from a new pair of sunglasses for her?

  “Yes. Dr. Margaret. It’s an online thing. She’s actually pretty amazing,” Elise said.

  “Well, what does Dr. Margaret say about the fact that you’ve squandered all our money on purses and shoes?” His tone was as calloused as a heel, fitting, since that was what he felt like.

  “Can you just give me a freaking minute?” Elise said, tugging at her hair for sympathy. She was processing a lot of new information quickly, all of it bad. But so was he. Their daughter had been in jail. Freddy had a life they knew nothing about. David had cancer.

  “Fine. Take all the time you need. Better yet, call Dr. Margaret,” he snapped.

  “She listens to me, Mitch. She tries to figure out how this happened. She doesn’t think I’m a vapid person who all of a sudden developed a burning desire for designer labels.” Elise hit the “she” hard, as though this Dr. Margaret was his foil. They were supposed to be each other’s voices of reason, confidants, and best friends. He wondered when that had stopped for them, if it was as recently as the start of Elise’s shopping spree or if their splintering had deeper roots.

  “Well, sounds like she’s not helping too much, considering you announced that we’re bankrupt tonight,” Mitch retorted.

  “You’re not blameless either, Mitch. What was that bull about you wanting to tell my family at the same time as me because they used to buy us fancy dinners? You waited to tell us all at once in case I was going to stop you. You figured by telling my parents at the same time as me then I couldn’t derail your plans.”

  It was true-ish. He had been a coward.

  “I wouldn’t have stopped you from changing lanes, Mitch. Why would you think that about me?” Elise looked genuinely hurt.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, which was true, but wasn’t much of an explanation. It occurred to him suddenly that his marriage had hit some kind of fork in the road—a subtle one—and he and Elise had gone in different directions. The roads were so closely parallel that neither of them seemed to have realized they weren’t in the same car anymore. Something shifted in the room. The awareness and acceptance that both of them had crossed lines was cooling the tension.

  “I can’t believe I hit your dad.” Mitch actually found himself smiling and pretty soon Elise was chuckling.

  “Yeah, I never really pictured our family coming to blows. I thought we Feldmans preferred a more passive-aggressive form of combat. I still can’t believe I just assumed it was my mom that was sick, not my dad. Goes to show what I know. I just don’t understand people. Not my parents, not Freddy, definitely not the kids. I feel like I speak family as a second language. Do you ever feel that way?” Elise asked him.

  “All the time. That should be a mandatory part of the school curriculum: FSL. It’s not like my side is any better. Don’t you remember last year when my sister wouldn’t hang any ornaments on the tree that my mother gave her because she was pissed my mom said her gravy was lumpy at Thanksgiving?”

  “Yes, but this is different. That’s petty stuff. With my family I just constantly feel that there’s this elephant in the room. There’s so much we’re not saying and so much we’re not sharing. Like we can have all these meals together for days and not actually have a clue what’s going on in anyone’s actual life. Honestly, what have we even talked about at the meals? Whether the croissants were being recycled day to day. If anyone was going to participate in ‘Cupcake Wars.’ Meanwhile, Freddy was calculating his pot money, my dad was hiding an illness, Rachel was thinking about her secret boyfriend, and Darius—who even knows with that kid what is going on?”

  Mitch hopped up from the bed, energy springing to his extremities.

  “That’s it! Elise, you just did it. My journal! I’m going to call it The Elephant. All these observations about life and the weird interactions we have every day—it can all boil down to there being an elephant in the room. Something we’re not saying. An awkwardness we all feel but choose to ignore.”

  “Glad my family’s craziness and pain have inspired you,” Elise said, but she didn’t sound angry. In fact, she was grinning.

  “It is a silver lining.” He squeezed Elise’s shoulders. “On a grimmer note, what are we going to do about Rachel? I don’t know if I’m more upset that she is running around wearing a balloon skirt, has a married boyfriend, or has been keeping her relationship with Freddy from us.”

  “How did you know about Freddy and the whole pot thing? Don’t tell me you’ve also been taking trips to Aspen without my knowledge.”

  “Elise, don’t start with me about secrets. I came across an article about him,” Mitch said truthfully. There was no more space for lies at this point. “It was just yesterday.”

  “Show me,” Elise said. She fished reading glasses from her purse.

  Mitch took a deep breath and pulled up the article on his laptop, because what choice did he have? The headline remained the same. In fact, it almost seemed like they had increased the font size. And Mitch didn’t remember having seen the money sacks that had been Photoshopped into Freddy’s hands.

  Elise took the computer onto her lap and started reading. Her jaw went slack and it looked like she wasn’t breathing. Mitch read over her shoulder, shuddering. When she got to the middle of the article, having clicked through to the second page, Mitch let out a massive sigh of relief. It was gone! His buddy had come through for him. There was no mention of Freddy’s upbringing at all! No Feldman family references whatsoever.

  “Wow. This is really insane,” Elise said. “Freddy really made something of himself. I mean, he’s selling drugs, but I guess it’s legal. It’s kind of fitting actually. He was always good at making money when we were little. I did the dishes and took out the trash and got three dollars a week. Freddy arbitraged Garbage Pail Kids and sold candy bars that our mom bought in bulk before Halloween and made at least five times what I did. He’s clever. I never really gave him credit for it. None of us did.”

  “So you’re okay with it?” Mitch asked in disbelief.

  “Honestly, it’s a lot to take in. The brother I thought was living hand to mouth, scraping together a living working as a part-time barista or something, could buy and sell us a hundred times over. Explains Natasha, at least. I’m happy for him, though. Better that than both Feldman children are broke, right?” Elise put the laptop down and walked over to the mirror. Mitch watched her reflection as she took in the state of her hair. The left side of her shoulder-length waves was singed up to the ear. The other side was still nicely coiffed and fell in smooth ripples. It looked, like it sometimes did under dimmed lighting, like it was on fire. He thought not to make that observation to Elise. Perhaps she noticed it too. It was an elephant.

  “I’m hideous,” his wife observed. “I’m going to have to cut the other side to match and I need the longer-length hair to minimize my double chin. That’s what Paulo told me.” Paulo had been Elise’s hairdresser for as long as Mitch could remember. Like the shrink, Paulo was another person in Elise’s orbit whom she could apparently confide in.

  “You’re beautiful, Elise.” Mitch went to stand beside her and they looked at each other’s reflections thoughtfully. He cupped her chin, an intimate, tender gesture that he wouldn’t have done if he was facing her. She put her head on his shoulder and th
ey continued to stay like that, side by side, shoulder to shoulder.

  He put an arm around her waist and twisted her into him. They were kissing in a way they hadn’t done in years, almost like the mirror was magic and wiped away the decades. Elise was light in his arms, as though he could feel her emptiness. It was something he wanted to fill. He led her to the bed. She seemed open in this moment, cut at the seams, and he seized his chance to enter. They could fight tomorrow.

  When they were done, Elise didn’t jump out of bed to wash off her makeup or brush her teeth. She lay curled with her head on his chest, which rose and fell with his breathing.

  “Was that better than shopping?” he asked, lightly tracing her ear with his index finger. She didn’t answer, just gave him a gentle swat. “Too soon?” he asked.

  “Too soon. But you are funny. And your journal, The Elephant, is going to be wonderful. We may be back eating canned soup for a while and homeschooling Darius for college, but at least we’ll have something entertaining to read.”

  “We’re going to figure things out, Elise. We’ll go work for Freddy.”

  “Still too soon, Mitch.”

  They both laughed, harder than was called for, but it gave them another release they desperately needed.

  THIRTY

  David had avoided taking the Valium prescribed by his primary physician. He toted the pills with him wherever he went because Annette insisted, but he had yet to break the seal on the bottle. Sometimes, when he failed to mask his anxiety, Annette would urge him to take a pill and he’d lie and say he’d done so. He’d heard too many stories of patients getting hooked on narcotics over the years. What would often start as a valid prescription for back pain written for the most responsible patient could turn into a life-threatening heroin addiction. When he reluctantly gave new mothers Percocet after a cesarean, he would urge them to take it only if absolutely necessary and to flush any remaining pills down the toilet or dispose of them safely. For regular deliveries, he would prescribe narcotics only if the patient had a level-three laceration or higher. That was how strongly David felt about avoiding opioids, painkillers, narcotics, and the like. But after tonight’s fiasco, he went straight to his cabin, secreted himself in the bathroom, and went for a single ten-milligram Valium.