FIVE
On Saturday morning, not two days later, I find myself in a line of vehicles on the long private drive to the Crawford estate. As I glance in my rearview mirror I realize that Lainie Morris, in a worn, nasty Jeep, is directly behind me.
We’re several miles beyond town for a swim party. Both of us are with our sons; Billy is invited as the best friend of the youngest of the Crawford boys and Lainie’s son must be in ninth grade and one of the guests. I wonder if Lainie understands that the mothers are expected to mingle for the first half hour.
Lainie catches up to me in the center of the wide circular driveway where we are idling, abreast of each other.
“Never mind, we’re here now, Tom,” I hear her say to her son. “Let’s go.” They open the doors to the Jeep when the butler comes running toward them, waving his hands.
“Miss.” The butler points to Lainie. “You’ll have to park behind the guesthouse. You aren’t allowed to leave a car in front. Not that vehicle. The nannies are dropping off, only the mothers are staying and allowed to park.”
“Excuse me? I’m with my son. Aren’t we at the drop-off area?” Lainie’s voice sounds strained, tight.
“Mom! Mom! Stop being embarrassing,” her son is muttering. She motions for him to walk with her and they troop up the stone steps together, disregarding the butler.
There is movement behind us as other mothers pull up with their sons to the front door. I quickly relinquish my Mercedes sedan to the valet and watch as sedans and SUVs are whisked away. The mothers congregate outside the grand front door to greet one another while waiting to step inside. To Lainie they might appear clannish, although I welcome a social morning. What is the point of Elliot if not for these get-togethers? Billy runs ahead and I mark time alongside the mothers who stand at the entrance.
In a surge we move into the anteroom with a throng of mothers and a few straggler sons who haven’t yet gone to the pool. Lainie is behind me, I notice, and I’m torn. Should I be inclusive, welcoming, or should I gravitate toward the center of the crowd and make the most of the hour without the burden of Lainie and her strange ways? Her outfit alone is enough to disgrace me.
That is when my friend Tia, who is walking ahead of me, turns to Audrey, another mother, and says, “Who is that woman, dressing as if she’s in SoHo? The wrong address in SoHo?”
“Well, I don’t know,” says Audrey, taking her in. “It’s refreshing.” She marches up to Lainie, and I stand to the side.
“Excuse me,” says Audrey. “What cute boots. I’ve never seen anything quite like them in mid-August. Although seventy-five degrees does remind one of how imminent autumn is.”
Lainie smiles doubtfully at Audrey. They are incongruous together, Lainie in her garb and Audrey in her purposely understated sheath and sandals, a cardigan casually draped over her shoulders.
“Please come in,” Tia says. “I’m sure that Christie will want to meet you.”
“Christie?” Lainie asks.
“Christie Crawford. You know, the host.” Tia leads Lainie into the center of the anteroom. Lainie stiffens and I remember that she could become awkward in a millisecond, ungainly rather than graceful.
I’m about to make myself known to Lainie and to be sympathetic when a glint of activity catches my eye. Christie’s two golden retrievers are charging her, separating her from the surge of guests. The dogs start pulling at her clothes, chewing at the beaded hem of her Indian-print skirt and the fringe of her purse. They drool on her booties, yapping at her.
“Help! Somebody, please…” No one so much as faces her direction. “Someone, please?”
I watch, frozen, as the first retriever puts his entire mouth around her ankle, his slobbering tongue slipping inside her bootie.
“Please, I’m being attacked.…”
I watch with a perverse fascination as the dog gnaws at the suede and at her flesh at the same time.
“Lainie,” I say. “Move back.”
“Jess! Please … do something.”
Christie Crawford comes after the dogs, putting a hand on each of their collars. “There, there,” she coos. “Down boys. Down!” Christie proffers Lainie an indiscernible smile. “Maybe they like you.”
The dogs withdraw as if the incident never happened. Neither of the retrievers so much as pants or lolls his tongue. Both sit at their mistress’s feet. She is patting their heads.
“Christie, you saved the day,” I say. I hope that Lainie appreciates my going out on a limb for her.
“Yes, thank you so much,” Lainie says. She holds out her hand to Christie, the dog lover. The gracefulness returns—she is ethereal.
“My dogs are being friendly.… Your booties seem a shoe toy. That’s all.…” She leads them away with dog biscuits up her sleeve and they become docile, their tails wagging as they follow her. Her entourage is behind her and the place thins out. I’m the last of the women to leave when Lainie’s son appears, gorgeous boy that he is. He stands against the wall, almost in tears.
“Mom!” he says. “What are you doing?”
Lainie walks over and speaks softly, as if to set an example. “Tom? You should go back to the party.”
“The party? I’ll never be invited anywhere ever again, Mom!”
“You saw what just happened, Tom? I’ve just been attacked by the host’s dogs.”
“My life is over,” Tom says. “I’ll have no friends at school. Thanks to you.”
He clutches his SwissGear backpack as he disappears into the fray.
SIX
Lainie texts me the morning after the machinations at the Crawford estate, to see if I’ll be at the pool. Sure, I text her, 9:30. I’m right on time when I observe her from across the lobby. She’s firmly situated at the snack bar with her twins and older daughter, a clone of Lainie’s for certain, a reminder of our childhood, as if I’m looking backward.
I’m a pro, and since it takes one to know one, the way that she is fortifying her younger children with Luna Bars (is there a child around who eats them?), books, and iPads is familiar. She’s frantic to be in the pool and hardly able to pay attention to them in her quest to be underwater. That’s why those twins are bickering loudly—it’s their chance to show Lainie that they exist.
I come over. “Hi, Lainie. Hello, children.”
“Jess!” She’s utterly enthused. “I’m almost ready.”
“She kicked me,” the little boy says. “Mommy! Claire kicked me!”
“Can you tell me your name?” I say to him.
He scowls.
“Jack?” says the Lainie-carbon-copy daughter. “Can you tell the lady your name?”
I extend my hand. “Let me introduce myself. I’m an old friend of your mother’s; she and I go back decades. I’m Jess Howard.”
The daughter shakes my hand as if she’s had a few lessons, not too firm but no pushover. “Hi. I’m Matilde.”
“Matilde. Lovely.” I smile at her and then at the younger twin sister. “I know that you are Claire because I just heard your brother shouting your name.”
Lainie is riffling through her gym bag, the one with endless creams and hair products. She takes out two lollipops—the freebies from the bank, which should be banned in America.
“Here, Matilde, please distribute these.”
Matilde dutifully hands one to Claire and one to Jack. Jack looks at it and promptly drops it on the floor. Claire begins to rip at the plastic wrapper and Matilde intervenes. Claire misses her mouth and slides it against her cheek. She starts to laugh and Jack laughs too.
“Jess and I are about ready for the pool, Matilde,” Lainie says. “Why don’t you take your sister and brother to the little snack bar and get them something nourishing. They must be hungry.” She reaches into her pocketbook and hands Matilde a small packet of nifty wet wipes and a credit card.
Instinctively I know that Matilde finesses breakfast better than her mother and if there is no brown sugar in the house, it would not be the daughter
’s fault.
“Well, shall we?” Lainie motions for us to follow her toward the pool desk.
Matilde leads the twins and Jack begins to do a jig, then Claire does the same. Lainie ignores them while Matilde is keenly concerned that there are too many people noticing them, including other children. One of the twins drops her mother’s iPhone on the floor.
“Stop, please,” Matilde whispers to Claire. “A few kids from my class have come in. They’re by the food with their little brothers and sisters. Their mothers are about to swim laps. Or yoga. Please?”
A line has formed at the snack bar despite the fact that what they serve is inedible. Have I not force-fed my children their grainy egg salad, tuna fish with coagulated mayo, and packaged chocolate chip cookies? Standing there are a boy and a girl who are most likely Matilde’s classmates. The girl. I know it immediately, a blond, curvy number whose hair swings when she walks. Matilde must want to disappear, must be praying that they don’t notice her. Circumstances would be different had she washed or at least brushed her hair today. Moreover, she is wearing what looks like her older brother’s sweatpants. Lainie owes her daughter a few lessons in public appearance.
* * *
“Where is that charming son of yours?” I ask Lainie as we close our lockers.
“He’s at a father/son Rotary breakfast in town. They’re doing it to meet people. My husband isn’t a member, but he could join.”
“Matilde doesn’t mind being here? I would imagine that some of the girls from her class will be at the football field in about an hour.”
“Oh, she doesn’t mind, Jess.”
“Well, she needs to be with the girls in order to have friends, Lainie.”
“Sure, sure. My nanny left last night for the city until tomorrow. Without a swim I’m useless—I can’t think. Matilde is missing Sunday school for this. So are the twins. Once I’m finished, the day will be Matilde’s.”
“Why didn’t you drop them off first, Lainie?”
“I tried. The twins wouldn’t leave Matilde to go into the class. Besides, if Tom can miss it, why can’t the others?”
It is too early in the game to explain that it doesn’t work in a pristine town, a holier-than-thou suburb, to make your own rules. Should she care to know, my children were both dropped at Sunday school on my way here.
“Let’s swim,” I say.
While I collect my paraphernalia from the side bins—flippers, weights, a kickboard—Lainie jumps in. She’s careening through the water, outswimming the swimmers in the fast lane in a dizzying swim to tomorrow.
I pause at the side of the pool to observe as Claire and Jack run down to the bottom of the bleachers with Matilde at their heels. She plies them with cookies and they become surprisingly docile. Then the lifeguard walks toward her. He is pure machismo—total crush material, although I doubt he ever finished high school. When he smiles at her it is evident that he hasn’t had proper dental care.
“Who ya waitin’ for?” he asks Matilde.
“My mom.” Matilde points to Lainie, who is flipping around like a dolphin. Her muscles ripple more than the water does.
“Wow. Do you swim that fast?”
“Me? No, no. Almost like that.”
He smiles with his crooked teeth and points to a wide chart against the long wall. “Well, maybe she’s swimming the Raritan River.”
“What?” Matilde squints to read the chart. “What is it?”
“For swimmers to get to the other end of the Raritan River. Maybe she’s part of it, one of the ones swimming the river.”
“I don’t know,” Matilde says. “She didn’t tell me and she usually tells me stuff like that.”
“What’s your mom’s name?” He’s holding a black-and-white grainy notebook from the year one, the kind that would date me if I dared to bring it out in public. This one is marked “YWCA” in pink Magic Marker on the front.
“Lainie Morris. Lainie Smith Morris.”
He thumbs through the pages. “Yup,” says the lifeguard. “She’s in it and … hmmm … since she started she’s swum farther than anyone else. Anyone. Farther than the men who are in the competition.” He closes the notebook.
“Yeah, that’s about right. She’ll probably win,” Matilde says.
“The last two years the men swimmers won. The winner and runner-up.”
Matilde watches Lainie’s crazed swimming, then she taps Claire and Jack, who look slobbery, even from a distance. “We have to go. We’ll go back to the snack bar and wait. Mom will be finished soon.”
“Soon?” Claire asks. At the age of five this child knows that it isn’t true. And signing on for the Raritan River swim makes the swim longer and more enthralling. I glance at Lainie and remember her tireless swims, her indefatigable devotion to water. I resist telling Matilde that it’s another forty minutes at least. Matilde leads the twins to the wall and points to Lainie’s name.
“Look, Claire and Jack, Mom has the most filled-in blocks to show how far she’s gone. Thirty miles so far.”
How could I have not known? Would I have not learned it sooner or later since little passes me by when it comes to the stratagem of Elliot life, including what happens at the Y?
Claire starts to cry. “I don’t want her to swim away, Matilde!”
Matilde points to the map and speaks in a soothing, adult way, although she looks distraught herself. “Claire, look. The river is three hundred and thirty miles. Mom has a long while to go. See the parts that haven’t been swum yet?”
“No, Matilde, she’s swimming away!” Claire is too loud; everyone can hear her unless they are underwater. As Lainie’s head is—Lainie, who is absolutely missing her own daughters’ drama. I resist the urge to rush to Matilde and explain that many days will pass, months, a year, for Lainie to get to the red-flagged finish line. Instead I strap on my flippers and within seconds I’m also moving through the water.
SEVEN
With the unseasonably warm October weather, I stand on the front step of my gray stone and green-shuttered home, sneaking a cigarette. Lainie pulls up in her Jeep, and while nothing could be more unlike the beachy summers in Cape May that Lainie and I shared, she is blasting Bruce Springsteen’s “Rosalita.” As she claims her parking place in our driveway, she backs up and lurches forward, one of the worst parking jobs I’ve seen in ages. How could she possibly parallel park in the city? At the same time, she pumps up the volume and sings along, unaware that no one in Elliot drives with the windows down.
Tom is in the passenger seat looking bored out of his mind. Matilde is sitting in the back between Claire and Jack.
“Mom!” Tom says. “The song. Stop!” He switches it off.
“C’mon, everyone out of the car.” Lainie turns off the engine and waves at me. She adjusts her rearview mirror and applies liner and lipstick so quickly it has to be uneven. I’m more conscious than usual of my glamour—had they wanted to cast a refined version of The Real Housewives of New Jersey, friends tell me I’d have been chosen.
There is the possibility that the Morris clan is on good behavior. Lainie has Claire and Jack dressed in twin outfits, the kind most people would save for Easter and family birthday dinners that include grandparents.
She turns to me. “Hello, Jess. How nice of you to invite us all tonight.”
I give Lainie a hug and kiss and a lukewarm hug to each of her limp children.
Tom disarms me with a smile. “Hi, Jess. We meet again. Cool house. And guesthouse. I noticed your striped awnings. Dad loves those, right, Mom?”
I lead the way into the kitchen. My own children, Billy and Liza, are hovering beside me. I do the introductions as if I’m entertaining long-lost cousins from out of state. Lainie’s blandness today in those tan jeggings and cream cardigan looks incomplete. I’m managing to move around the kitchen in my stilettos, a cream lace T-shirt, and the tightest jeans that I own. The message being that I’m not rushed, I’m stylish, a mother who balances her life skillfully. I put
out the food that’s been prepared by Therese, our cook, while our nanny, Norine, engages the twins with packets of Silly Putty.
Therese hops between the kitchen, where she shapes hamburgers, lines up the hot dogs, and slices the marinated chicken into breasts and thighs, and the gas grill on the back porch. Tom’s and Jack’s eyes light up at the blazing red coals.
“Mom?” says Matilde. “Is that carving board made of wood? We’re not allowed to use wood carving boards and plastic bowls for raw meats. Right? Won’t we catch some kind of bacteria?”
“Matilde, it’s fine. Don’t worry, darling girl.” Lainie laughs a tinny laugh. “Jess, your outdoor table is wonderful … very wide and long. It would be perfect for our family. Whenever we sit down to eat we become a dinner party.”
“Another perk of Elliot life—large spaces, large tables. Do you like the sloping hills, Lainie? How about you, Tom, what do you think?” I ask.
“Since I don’t care about a water view, it’s good. My mother and Matilde like creeks and rivers … at least creeks and rivers … the sea…” Tom says.
“Mrs. Howard?” Therese calls from the porch.
I walk gingerly in my stilettos toward the screen door. “Yes?”
“Are we ready?” Therese asks. “If not I’ll be transporting food the night long.”
I’m about to remind her of what her job entails when Norine comes to her rescue, dragging the platters outside.
“That will do, Norine.” I point to the side table. “Right there.”
I do my best at charming drill sergeant, smiling as if I’m in an ad for Whitestrips, the two-hour application. “Everyone, sit down.” I point to Lainie’s children and then to my own.
“Lainie, you and I will sit at the head together—there’s room. Claire is next.” I snap my fingers. “Matilde, you’re with Claire and then Jack is across.… Tom, I’m certain my children would appreciate your company. Perhaps you can squeeze in between Liza and Billy.”
Liza is excited, she does a young-girl flirt look and Tom is ridiculously pleased.
“Perfect, Jess,” says Lainie.
Between the Tides Page 5