Lost in the Reflecting Pool

by Diane Pomerantz

  I checked my e-mail before we left the house, and, sure enough, there was something from Charles. I hesitated to open it, not wanting his negativity to color the day in any way, but, despite my better judgment, I started reading.

  Di,

  I just got off the phone with Elli, and she told me that you’re planning to drive to the beach for the day tomorrow. Is this really the best use of your time and resources right now? It seems to me that with the financial difficulties we face, having a day at the beach is an unnecessary extravagance. Then again, that has never been something that has been at the forefront of your mind, has it?

  Charles

  Although my chest tightened and my usual feeling of I am doing something bad crossed my mind, I quickly replaced that thought with this is none of his goddamn business and, contrary to my typical habit of saving all of his written communications, impulsively hit the DELETE button and erased the message from both my inbox and the trash, not wanting him questioning any of my decisions on this day.

  The drive to the beach was easy. I had packed breakfast, and we ate as we drove and listened to music and stories on tape. The whole way there, the kids made a list of all the things they wanted to do: ride the waves, go to Joe’s Comic Store, drive bumper cars, play putt-putt golf. It went on and on.

  We arrived at nine thirty. “How about we park the van and ride our bikes around first to see where all the things we want to do are?” I suggested, as we made our way down the main thoroughfare.

  “Great idea, Mom,” Elli shouted out.

  “Yes. It’ll be so cool to ride on the boardwalk,” Sam added.

  It was a long and fun-filled day. I was amazed at how many things we packed in. We swam and went on rides and laughed a lot. It was about seven thirty when we climbed into the van to make our way home. As we drove down the main thoroughfare, we passed a water park and, without skipping a beat, both kids yelled out, “Mom, can we just stop here and just go down that huge waterslide one time, pleeeaase?”

  “Really?” I laughed. “Aren’t you exhausted?”

  “No,” two separate voices chimed in. We were on a roll, and so I made a U-turn and pulled in to the water park.

  “Remember, guys, just one time. We do have to get home, and it’s a long drive.” I was realizing that I no longer had the energy I had before I was sick. It wasn’t only that I was getting older; I hadn’t totally recovered yet.

  “Momma, you come, too.” Sammy started to grab my arm but then realized that he shouldn’t do that, and just hugged me and pleaded, “Pleeeaase, Momma.”

  It did look like fun.

  “Yeah, Mom, come on,” Elli urged.

  And so I did, and it was exhilarating. We went down the slide two more times, then dried off, got back in the van, and started the drive home.

  We had been driving for only about fifteen minutes when Sammy said, “Momma?”

  “Yes, Sam?”

  “Thank you. This was the best day ever.”

  “He’s right, Mom. Thanks,” Elli added.

  “I love you, Momma,” Sam added.

  “Well, I love you guys, too! More than you’ll ever know. I wanted you to have a great day. I had a great time, too!”

  There was silence in the car, and then I realized both of the kids had fallen asleep.

  It was a day well worth the drive.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  I THINK I WAS PRETTY GOOD AT HIDING MY TEARS AND PANIC from the children. Dr. Putman and my friends were not so lucky. My worst times were when they were with their father. Those times, I felt as if I were cloaked in a dark, heavy pall.

  Money still wasn’t coming in; summer was always slow for private practice, and I really had not had the energy to reestablish myself. I’d been selling everything I could think of; I’d taken a load of stuff to Great Finds and Designs, a high-end consignment shop that sold household furnishings, antiques, and paintings. And Charles continued to do what he did best, play head games with me. He loved head games about money. He was cutting back on how much he worked. He had “been through so much.” He needed to “rest and heal.”

  He called one day to tell me that he wanted to make some changes to our health insurance so that it would be entirely in his name. I told him that I would have to discuss that with my attorney. He was incredulous and went on to say, “I really don’t want to do anything fraudulent.”

  It was a good thing he couldn’t see me snickering through the phone, as I thought, Mr. Upstanding Citizen, who’s sleeping with one of his patients, doesn’t want to be fraudulent?

  By the next day, he called again to say that he had thought further about it and had decided there was no real advantage to making any changes. As always, when I really stood up to him, he backed down.

  A couple of days later, he started in about not having money for the bankruptcy payments and began to blame me, but as soon as I said I would call the bankruptcy trustee, his problem seemed to be resolved. It was always the same.

  I retained my own bankruptcy attorney, who was going to separate my bankruptcy case from Charles’s so that I could diminish any further financial tricks that he might try to pull. Charles kept saying to me, “You don’t know who you’re dealing with,” but I guess he didn’t really know who he was dealing with, either.

  Charles had planned on taking the kids on a camping vacation for a couple of weeks, which would give me time to get the house together and put some real legwork into job hunting. About a week before they were to go, he sent an e-mail:

  Di,

  I’m not going to be able to take the kids on vacation next week. It would mean the loss of $6,000–$7,000 weekly pretax income. We really can’t afford the loss of income right now. I may take a few days to go camping by myself, but I won’t be taking the children on vacation this year. It would be a financially irresponsible thing to do.

  Charles

  Unbelievable—even what he was bringing in weekly was more than double what I had for the entire month. I was learning quickly what I should have seen for years: he was great with words, but action was not his strong suit.

  Elli was not at all disappointed about not going camping. As for Sam, when he said, “I’m glad we’re not going. I hate camping,” I could see the disappointment behind his long brown lashes.

  “Daddy never wants to do anything fun with us anyway,” he added. “I’d rather be here with Momma and Poppy.”

  Going to Charles’s new house was becoming an issue for the kids. Sometimes it was Sam who didn’t want to go. Sometimes it was Elli. Charles was not handling it well at all. One day, when I wasn’t home, my neighbor saw Charles pulling Sammy out of the house by his arm, and he was screaming. She was going to call the police, but Sam calmed down and she didn’t.

  I’m sure there were lots of reasons the kids didn’t want to go. They complained about his anger, and they complained about the big gong that they had to ring when they entered and left his house, as a greeting and farewell to the gods. They complained that their dad insisted on swinging a crystal pendulum to make even the smallest decision. I think it was scary for them to see their father this way. I also think that they didn’t like the underlying message they got from him that their mother was not doing a good job raising them, and that he had to undo everything and teach them how to live properly. Whether it was about eating the right foods or handling money, their mother had done a lousy job and he was going to “fix” them. So they had lots of rules, which translated into lots of things he expected me to do at my house as well. He set them up with account books to keep track of all of their incoming and outgoing money. They were to carry these books back and forth between houses. I, of course, was to be monitoring them and making sure they did all of the recording. Never was there a discussion about whether I thought his system was developmentally appropriate. I totally ignored the whole thing. He gave up on the account books when he realized that I had no intention of honoring his wishes.

  It was all so strange, becaus
e we had two great, normal kids. They did well in school, they had friends, they had interests, and they never got in trouble. They were kind and polite and generous. Their teachers and their friends’ parents loved them. I couldn’t understand what he wanted from them.

  Yes, I did. I knew it really wasn’t about them at all. Again, I needed to be seen as a bad mother. The only way I could be a bad mother was if my kids needed to be fixed. For a long time, my greatest worry was that he would be able to convince them that in fact I was not a “good mother”—that I was Marcy.

  Chapter Forty

  DAD CONTINUED TO HAVE HIS REGULAR GOLF GAMES A couple of times a week, but he wasn’t looking well. He fell asleep a lot and suddenly seemed very old.

  My college roommate, Susan, whom I hadn’t seen in years, lived in upstate New York. Her house was right on Lake Ontario, close to Niagara Falls. She invited us to come visit, along with my dad and Knaidl.

  Only Knaidl came.

  “You go and have a great time,” Dad said, casually adding that he had made a couple of doctor’s appointments for the two weeks when we would be gone.

  “Well, we don’t have to go; maybe it would be better if I was here when you went to the doctor. I could go with you,” I suggested.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m fine. You and the kids should go. They’ll love seeing Niagara Falls and swimming in Lake Ontario. Doesn’t Larry have a sailboat?” he asked.

  “How do you remember that? You haven’t seen them in years.” I laughed.

  “You think I’m old? I’m a young dude. I don’t forget anything—just remember that, young lady.”

  So, prepared with twenty hours of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire on audiotape, Knaidl in the backseat, and bags of snacks, the kids and I set off on our trip.

  When we started out, I was keeping a tight lid on a kettle of my own shakiness, trying not to jostle the deep crack I felt in the core of my equilibrium. It was early evening when we reached western New York. The sun was hanging low in the sky as we drove along the shoreline of Lake Ontario. The pinks and purples on the horizon looked like watercolors splashed behind the white sailboats that bobbed in the harbor. By the time we arrived at Susan and Larry’s house, I didn’t know if I felt less broken or if I just felt more whole being in the presence of old friends who had known me in another lifetime.

  On our sixth day in New York, we spent the afternoon flying up the Niagara River basin in a jet boat. We sped up the river, plunged headlong into some big waves, and got drenched. Then we headed back to Susan and Larry’s house to help them get ready to have people over for dinner that night. The kids and dogs went out back and threw Frisbees, and I was helping Susan in the kitchen, when I stopped short. “Damn, I forgot. Today is the day my dad was going to see the cardiologist. I’ll be right back. I want to go give him a call and see how it went,” I told her.

  Dad picked up on the first ring. He sounded tired.

  “Hi. I thought you were going to call after you saw the doctor this morning.”

  “Oh, I was going to call later.” I could tell he was being overly casual and not wanting to say what had happened.

  “Dad, what did the doctor say? Tell me.”

  “Well, he did a bunch of tests and said I have a blockage. I have to go in for a procedure on Monday.”

  “Dad, please just tell me what’s going on.”

  “Okay. I just don’t want you to worry. I have to go in to the hospital on Monday for quadruple bypass surgery. The doctor said that if I wasn’t generally as healthy and active as I am, he wouldn’t even consider doing it at my age, but he thought that I could handle it.” He was silent.

  “Well, that’s a real compliment, but do you think you should get a second opinion?” I asked.

  “No. He’s an excellent doctor. If I don’t do the surgery, my heart will give out. If I do the surgery and it works, that’s great. If not, I’ve had a full life.” He sounded so sure of what he was saying. “I don’t want to cut your vacation short. I want you and the kids to stay and enjoy yourselves.” He paused.

  “Dad, we will be coming home tomorrow. You are not going to be having major surgery with us off on a vacation. I will take you to the hospital on Monday morning.”

  We had had a wonderful time. Although Susan and I hadn’t spent this kind of intense time together for many years, there were some things that hadn’t changed. I had arrived for the visit with a profound sense that my memory of the past was wrong, especially as it related to Charles. If that was true, then perhaps it was true about all of my memories. And if my memory of the past was wrong, then I had truly lost my footing in the world. If my memory was wrong, then I had lost the meaning that had been the underpinning of my life as I had known it. But our recent talks, late into the night, on the dark shores of the lake, had not been so different than those we’d had as two frightened college freshmen sitting in the dorm, sharing our deepest secrets. We still laughed the same way.

  The next morning, feeling somewhat less broken by having had this time away here with a dear old friend, we packed up the van, said long good-byes, loaded the next audiotape of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and pulled out of the driveway. We got home just as the story ended.

  “That’s amazing, Mom. What timing!” Elli shook her head in astonishment.

  Chapter Forty-One

  “POPPY’S HOME, MOMMA,” SAMMY CALLED TO ME AS HE ran into the house, Elli following.

  My dad and Lydia were sitting at the kitchen table, eating bagels, cream cheese, and lox. We were all hungry, so we sat down and joined them.

  “Poppy, are you sick?” Sammy leaned over and whispered to his grandfather. The whole table became silent.

  “Is that what you heard?” My father put his arm around his shoulder. “You know, I’m getting older. Like an old car, sometimes you need a tune-up. The doctor says my heart needs a tune-up, and so on Monday I’m going into the hospital and getting it done!”

  “What hospital, Poppy?” Elli wanted to know.

  “Sinai. It’s a good hospital, Elli.” He was looking closely at her, clearly seeing she was upset.

  “I hate that hospital!” she said.

  “Why? They have good doctors there. That’s where Grandma was. They took good care of her.”

  Dad tried to continue, but Elli cut him off. “And she died there! I hate that place! I don’t want you to go there!” Her eyes were welling up with tears, and her face was getting the red blotches she got when she became upset.

  My dad looked over to me, wanting help. I stepped in. “Elli, Grandma was very sick. They really tried to help her and make her comfortable, but by the time she came to live with us and then went to Sinai, she was already very, very sick and we knew she was going to die. We didn’t want her to suffer anymore. It really wasn’t the hospital’s fault. I know you don’t like hospitals. A lot of scary stuff has happened there. But it wasn’t Sinai’s fault. And Poppy has a very good doctor.”

  “Well, Poppy, it scares me to go to hospitals. Can I talk to you on the phone while you’re there? ’Cause I don’t think I can come visit. It scares me too much. It makes me think about my mom being in the hospital, too.” Elli looked pleadingly at her grandfather.

  “Of course, sweetie! None of you should come visit. I’m not even going to be there that long. We can talk on the phone, and I’ll be home in a few days.”

  She looked relieved. Somewhere in the dark recesses of my mind, my own worries about my dad’s health were lurking, but I couldn’t bear to allow the weight of those troubles to surface on top of everything else.

  Dad had to be at the hospital at five o’clock Monday morning. I would drop him off, and then I would have to work out my schedule and childcare for the rest of the week. I realized that I would have to let Charles know what was going on. He would be picking up the kids on Wednesday evening and would have them through the next weekend. I decided I would send him an e-mail after I got the kids off to their playdates later in the morni
ng.

  It was still dark when Dad and I started out the front door.

  “Poppy?” We both turned. There stood Sam in his camouflage pajamas, in the hallway, a few feet behind us.

  “What are you doin’ up, champ?” My father walked over and put his arms around him.

  “I wanted to give you this to take with you.” Sam held out a pale blue rock with the word believe etched onto its smooth surface. It was scotch-taped to a photo of Dad, Sam, and Elli. “This is so you know we’re thinking of you and you can think of us.”

  “I will keep these with me every minute, champ!” They hugged, and then I walked Sam back up to his bedroom and Dad and I drove to the hospital.

  The doctor was right: Dad came through the surgery well. By the second day, he was sitting up, had good color, and was eating. Wednesday, he continued to make gains. So when the children went to Charles’s house Wednesday night, they went knowing that Poppy was okay.

  Then things changed very quickly. Dad was doing well, and then, suddenly, he wasn’t. He was rushed back to the cardiac intensive care unit.

  On Saturday evening, the lights in the waiting room were low and I was alone. The medical fellow was working hard to do everything he could for my father; this young, Orthodox Jewish doctor had been with him continuously for twenty-four hours. Every half hour, I went in to see Dad for five minutes. The photo that Sammy had given him was taped to the IV pole next to the bed. In his hand, Dad held the rock Sam had given him.

  Finally, I said, “Daddy, I’m so sorry that I’ve taken out so much of my frustration over all of this stuff with Charles on you. I’ve been a horrible daughter.” I held his hand, tears falling.