by Tara Ison
“I hope you’re getting out to the beach, at least. The kids love it when we visit Nana.”
“I was going for a lot of walks, at first. But it’s so crowded now.” Invaded, she didn’t say, taken over by trespassing kids, and families with kids, kicking gritty sand on her oiled legs, leaving spittled pistachio shells and popsicle sticks and soda cans trickling out to dark blotches in the sand. Even the oyster and clamshells are gone; a tractor plows across the beach every morning, roaring into her bedroom window at six or seven AM, crushing everything down to smooth out the sand for feet and blankets and castles. The few unbroken shells left are quickly snatched up to make mermaid jewelry, to decorate battlements or pave moats. She is irritated by the simultaneous littering and scavenging of her beach by children and their silly sense of treasure. Their screeching. A walk on the beach now means dodging screaming kids with slopping bucketfuls of sea water, boomboxes turned up too loud and people screaming over summer pop tunes. Now, when she isn’t out somewhere with Marty, she mostly stays inside or on Nana’s porch, frustrated and annoyed that she is arranging her time this way. Like a still life with too central a focal point, with no sense of movement.
“Well, you have to. You have to go in swimming, at some point,” Emily said.
“I will. I just haven’t yet. I’ve been so busy. And the water’s probably still pretty cold.” Sarah heard children screaming in the background, suspicious crashing sounds. “What’s going on?”
“The kids are dismantling the living room. I told them we need to clear space for the birthing tub. Hey, Rachel? Sweetie, don’t let Elijah chew on that, okay? It’s icky.”
Sarah envisioned Emily’s two howling kids, Rachel at three and Elijah at fourteen months, running amok in Emily’s renovated eighteenth-century farmhouse, their cupid faces smeared with fresh-picked blueberries, wearing the tie-dye shirts and whimsical fairy wings made at neighbor children’s birthday parties, spilling apple juice and climbing on the Stickley furniture. She pictured Emily, seven months pregnant, varicose, trodding around after them. The thought creeped her, gave her a headache. She and Emily are one month apart in age, and used to get their periods in sync.
“Sorry,” Emily said in her ear. “We just had the sheep shorn, and Elijah likes chewing on the fleece. There’s bags of it by the door, I haven’t had time to get it washed and carded yet.”
“‘Baa baa black sheep, have you any wool?’”
“Don’t, please. Rachel won’t stop with that. I love my child, but I hear that one more time, I will have to kill her.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Tired. Fecund. My parents are coming for the birth, and my Aunt Rose and Susan are bringing Nana, did I tell you?”
“How’s she doing?”
“Amazing. Doing all her physical therapy and zipping around with her walker. She said there’s no way she’s missing it. And I really, really, want you to get here early and be my doula this time, all right? You should come maybe the first week of August.”
“I’m there. I can’t wait. I miss you.”
“I miss you, too. And maybe you can do some work while you’re here. If you can find a quiet and uncluttered spot.”
“Yeah, maybe. So, are you squatting? Are you doing your perineal massage?”
“Yup. And Michael oils my labia every night. This is my life.”
“That’s why this is wonderful. I can experience the whole gruesome miracle through you, and not ever have to do it myself.”
“You’re welcome. Next baby, I’m hiring a surrogate.” She heard Emily sigh. “Then I can run off and hang out with you somewhere. Frolic in the ocean.”
“There aren’t any sharks in the water around here, right?”
“I don’t think so, that far north.”
“What about jellyfish?”
“They’re no big deal.”
“Riptides?”
“Oh my God, listen to you. Don’t worry, they put up a red flag if it’s dangerous. Elijah, honey, come here. You want some nunu?” Sarah heard snaps, the fumbling with a strap.
“You still have milk?” Sarah asked.
“A little. It’s more a comfort thing for him. And every time I nurse, I do Kegels.”
“You’re going to have vaginal walls of steel.”
“Wonderful. Hey, are you still into that guy?”
“What guy?” She was startled, for a moment, thinking of Marty.
“That young guy you were dating. The kid. Dean?”
“David. Did my saying ‘vaginal walls of steel’ make you think of him?”
“I did vicariously enjoy those stories of yours.”
“That’s all over, sorry. We ended it when I left.”
“Well, maybe the timing was off.”
“Nah. It was just a fling.”
“So, the big question, now.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“You ready?”
“Go ahead.”
“Are you painting?”
“Yes, of course. I mean, I started a painting,” Sarah said. She glanced at the barely-begun canvas on her easel, at all the other canvases leaning against the walls of her room, still empty and inscrutable. “I started,” she repeated. She lifted her new Isabey brush, inspected to see if it was fully clean, fully dry. “But it’s just sitting there. It’s barely a start, really. Maybe it’s nothing.”
This is flat, Sarah, her professor used to say. Look at the flaw in your composition. The lack of perspective. You need to work on the illusion of depth!
“Well, you just turned your life completely upside down for this. That can be pretty paralyzing. And there’s a lot at stake. But look, you’ve started! That’s the hardest part. Diving in.”
“I know.” She set her brush down. “I have hope. I’m keeping the faith.”
“I can’t wait to see it. I’m so really really glad you’re doing this, finally.”
“Me, too.”
“It’s what you’re supposed to be doing.”
“Well, thanks.”
“It doesn’t have to be perfect, you know. You always do that to yourself.
“I know.”
“Just keep going.”
“I will. I am. Okay?” She hears the edge in her voice, adds a casual chuckle.
“I don’t mean to lecture you, I swear. I know I’ve got zero credibility. I haven’t written a poem in six years.”
“You’ve been busy. You’re busy doing the most important thing in the world.”
“Yeah, right.”
“And you do it so well,” Sarah said. “Really.” Because everything you do, she thought, you do so well. Everything Emily does is important. Is interesting. She published two books of poetry before she was twenty-eight, she won prizes, scholarships, grants, she traveled, she married a rich and handsome man who gave her those exquisite, obnoxious children with her perfect curls and his solemn, Dutch master face. She makes fennel soup and knows what to do with monkfish, knows how to make chunks of tofu taste like heavy cream. At Halloween she carves Picasso and Modigliani pumpkins. She has done so much, already, effortlessly and perfectly and ahead of schedule. Her life is in Golden Section proportion. Sarah could hear Elijah sucking, gulping, pictured him draped across Emily’s lap, and suddenly thought of that crazed guy taking a sledgehammer to the Pietà in Rome, the lunatic who’d gotten past Vatican security and smashed away at Mary’s serene marble head, at Jesus’s death-limp face.
“Rachel’s been painting a lot,” Emily was saying. “Of course, I think she’s a genius. Maybe she takes after you.”
“Ah. You mean she isn’t painting a lot.”
“Oh, Sarah. Maybe that’s really what you’re doing with that Marty guy.”
“What?”
“Not painting.”
“What if I just really don’t want to paint?”
“Come on.”
“Maybe that’s what this summer is really about. Maybe painting isn’t what I’m supposed to be doing. Maybe
there’s some whole other thing I just haven’t figured out yet.” She sat on the edge of her bed, feeling a little breathless.
“Like what?”
“Oh, I don’t know . . .” She flopped back on the bed, considered the ceiling. She reached, brushed away the annoying grains of sand tucked between her toes. “Never mind. I’m just cranky. I’m just tired. Hey, maybe I can hire a surrogate painter.”
“It’s just . . .”
“What?”
“You always find something, you know? Some excuse.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, like grad school. Chicago.”
She sat up. “That wasn’t a choice, Em. My dad had to have the bypass. I had to go home.”
“Exactly. Go home. That’s what it sounded like then, when you told me. Not move home. Not stay home. Then he got through it just completely fine and next thing you’re telling me you got an apartment there, about the art store job, you’re all settled in. And I’m thinking, ‘Wait, what about Chicago?’”
“Because then my mom rear-ended that guy, and my dad still couldn’t drive for months afterward. They needed help.”
“They could have hired someone.”
“They couldn’t afford that. Not everybody can afford that, Em.” She hears her edge again, tries to soften her tone. “They aren’t hire-help people.”
“You could’ve gone the next year. You could have. The Institute was going to hold your scholarship.”
She climbed off the bed. She paced.
“Sarah?”
She approached her easel, studied her shell painting.
“They really wanted you,” Emily continued. “You chose not to go.”
A tiny sable hair was stuck in a stroke of black paint, like a wandering eyelash.
“I just worry about you. You’ve been doing this forever. Being so responsible for them. Trying to make up for Aaron. I get worried, I worry you’ve allowed them to—”
“You know, Emily,” and she was aware of the brusque tone again, the hard-hitting Em, but didn’t care, “I’ve been sort of busy, too, you know? I have a lot of stuff to deal with.”
“I know. I didn’t—”
“Maybe it’s not like having a bunch of kids and sheep running around and a big Martha Stewart estate to look after and which organic herbs to grow. But they’re my parents, you know? I’m their daughter. And you’re right, I’m all they have left. So, what do you want me to do, abandon them in some old age home? Warehouse them, so I can go play?”
“That’s not what I’m saying. I’m not talking about logistics.”
“This is real life stuff. Real life problems. It’s probably hard for you to understand, when you get total freedom to make all these great choices.”
There was silence, then a faint, milky baby gasp, then silence again.
“I’m sorry, Em. Really. That was obnoxious. That was my envious evil twin inner-demon talking.”
“It’s okay.”
“I get your point, really. They make me crazy. And I let them. I’m three thousand miles away, and I still totally buy into it.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“It’s like . . .” She started pacing again. “It’s like, I called them the other day, and they really have been supportive, you know, they actually haven’t called even once I’ve been here, and so each day they don’t call I feel even more incredibly guilty. So I call to see how they are, and they ask how much work I’m getting done. Which sounds nice, but what they really mean is, I’m supposed to be getting all this interesting recent work done, because that’s why I’m here and not there, right? This big exhibit, this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. This very legitimate reason for abandoning them. And I don’t even answer, because then they’re telling me my dad can’t program the VCR or the sprinkler system and he can’t find his pills and where do I get those low-fat muffins he can eat, and my mom can’t drive at all after the last DUI, and the doctor’s threatening to take her off the transplant list if she doesn’t quit drinking, and then they bicker and my mom gets weepy and my dad gets pissed off and they say how much they miss me and love me, how proud they are, and how I am the most wonderful daughter in the world. And when am I coming home? And then we all hang up and I feel crazy. Just totally crazy.” She took a breath, forced another little chuckle.
There was another silence, then:
“You know, Sarah,” and she could hear Emily choosing, saying her words very carefully, “taking care of your parents, and doing every little thing for them exactly the way they would like it done, are two different things.”
“I know that.”
“You do take good care of them. You always will. You will always be sure they are warm and safe and comfortable, right?”
“Of course. But that’s not—”
“You haven’t abandoned them. You are a good daughter.”
“Thanks. I guess, sure. But—”
“But they’re not happy people, Sarah. You can’t make them into happy people. There isn’t enough of you in the world to do that.”
There was a faint, fun-filled shriek, a sudden amped-up up blare of pop music. She looked out the open picture window, peered down at the beach. Kids were chasing each other across the sand, screeching and swinging strips of seaweed. A vendor was hawking ice-cold soft drinks from a wheeled cooler. Teenage girls rubbing suntan lotion on each other, mock-squealing, teenage boys zigzagging with surfboards, or kicking around a soccer ball, thwack thwack thwack. No wonder she was feeling a headache, that dull burn looming at her temples, behind her eyes. She swung shut the window, twisted the latch tight.
“You’re not crazy,” Emily was saying. “But forget ‘supposed to.’ Don’t even paint, if you don’t want to. You deserve to just have some complete fun and be totally silly and footloose and irresponsible for now. You really do.”
“Maybe.”
“You know the real truth? I wish I could be doing all that. What you’re doing right now.” Through the phone Sarah heard a girl child wail, scream Mommy! Mommy! She heard a man’s voice, Emily? Honey, can you come here . . . ? and another Emily sigh in her ear. “There you go. Truth is, I am consumed with envy. I hate you.”
“Thank you. That’s better.”
“I can’t wait to see you.”
“Me too. Thanks. I’m sorry about before.”
“Oh, please. I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
“Hey, did I tell you we have ducklings now? And we’re going to start keeping bees.”
“You are out of your mind. You are the crazy one.”
“I know. So please, go have some sexy beach-bum fun, for me. Go splash around in the ocean. Go have a meaningless hot fling with that musician. Go play. Report back. I’ll be here.”
THE SATELLITES, THE guys they pick up for the ride to the gig, all in turn exit brick and stone and ivy-covered houses in placid, graceful Brooklyn neighborhoods. They are guys she hasn’t met: Tony, Frankie, Sammy, cramming in the back of Marty’s silver BMW, wearing their black suits and fedoras and Ray Bans. This is Sarah, Marty says to each, she’s coming with. They nod and wink at her as they wedge their way in, then burst into loud buddy-jostling. Hey, Rabbi, Tony yells to Marty, what was the name of that asshole in Atlantic City, that time we opened for Leno? Tell it to the Rabbi, Frankie says to Tony, he’s gonna love this, Hey Rabbi, get off at the BQE, Rabbi lemme sing the lead on that one, huh?
They are all Italian, and sound to her like supporting characters from a Scorsese movie. Like most of Marty’s friends—besides Julius, who is a stockbroker—none of them seem to work, to have jobs. Frankie complains about a flood in his basement garage threatening his Alfa Romeo. Tony spends weeks out on his houseboat. Sammy plays a lot of bridge. They all have state of the art gadgets, expensive shoes, nails manicured to a dull, opalescent shine. She is convinced they are all, peripherally, Mafia. Goodfellas, exactly. Each of them apparently has had one or two brushes with the music industry:
Frankie wrote a hit song in the sixties; Sammy played keyboard on a double album that went platinum; Tony produced one blockbuster tour in the early seventies. She is leery of this day, of this event, nervous of these guys dressed up for their gig in their pitched fedoras and slick, raven-black suits. Their energy is slightly ridiculous, like teenage boys hyped and anxious about their garage band, but the trinkets—the fancy cars and gold watches and quietly costly homes—are reassuring to her: they have something else. Something real. She is disappointed in herself to feel this way, just as she was ashamed at her relief when she finally saw Marty’s house for the first time, not the small brick one she’d thought was his, a better one, beachfront, expansive, probably worth several million, and thought Good, he’s not just some weirdly religious, aging musician bum. She has found herself liking how he smells, but was abashed when she realized it was partly the BMW scent, a fresh leather-and-citrus, air-conditioned tang, a whiff of rich oil. The whole idea of the gig today is ridiculous to her, an Oldies celebration, oh God. She is worried he will look ridiculous, like Bowser from that old Sha Na Na group, or the aging actors in Grease, pathetic and earnestly anachronistic, that there will be slicked-back, thinning hair and silly dance moves. It all seems childish. Better he be a thoroughly grown-up man, established and defined by something else, something maybe artistic but still secure and status’d, like scoring films.
Before they leave Sammy’s house, the last stop, Marty asks her if she wants to go to the bathroom. It’s a long drive. He smiles encouragingly, and she almost expects him to pat her on the head. When she gets back in the car they’re all humming together, testing sound. Tony clears his throat with a loud hack, and Sammy blows his nose. For the first half hour on the road, as they leave the urban and suburban sprawl and head north on the 95 through sweet bedroom communities and increasingly lush countryside along Long Island Sound, Frankie tries teaching her about music. He talks about chords and modulation and the principles of harmonics, No, Rabbi, lemme explain it to her, see, an octave, that’s really thirteen tones but the diatonic scale, Western harmony’s all based on that, it only uses eight of those, that’s our do re mi, look at piano keys, eight white, five black, now those are semitones, half-steps . . . But it snarls up in her head like math, like junior-high equations on the chalkboard. She tries to nod politely at what he is saying, but the truth is, she doesn’t really listen, she doesn’t really care.