Between the Tides

by Susannah Marren

  “Do you, Lainie? Because you are her mother, Lainie; she watches you. We have three other children who need your care. We live in Elliot and each of us will create a new reality because of how it is. New friends, a new rhythm. Perhaps you won’t book countless visits to the city.”

  There is no sound after he speaks. With nothing left to say, Charles walks out, taking his usual meticulous steps. As I’m closing the door behind him, I see Matilde standing in the narrow back hallway, cast in an ultraviolet light.

  “Why are you and Dad together?” she asks.

  “Many reasons, Matilde,” I say.

  “Such as?”

  “Well, he’s a good dancer. Your father can twirl me around to an Al Green song anytime, anywhere, Matilde.”

  Matilde wrinkles her nose. “You mean ‘I’m Still in Love with You’? I’ve seen you and Dad do that in the living room. Gross.”

  “Well, Dad knows the end of a John Grisham novel when he’s only at the beginning of the book … and he’s funny. He knows the best jokes. I mean, your father could write comedy, Matilde.”

  “Well, he won’t, Mom. Maybe he was funny. He’s not funny anymore.”

  I think of other reasons, ones that might convince a twelve-year-old daughter.

  “He knows the galaxies—Bode’s Galaxy, Cartwheel Galaxy, Hoag’s Galaxy, Sunflower Galaxy—on a summer night. A summer night at the Shore, Matilde.”

  “Yeah. Well, on Sunday when Dad and I were at Starbucks, he told me that he married you because you’re pretty. He went into a long thing about how you’re talented but beauty matters the most. How he had to have beautiful children.”

  I am silent. Hasn’t Matilde enough to sort out without details of her father’s priorities?

  TEN

  After what went on in the studio today, I’m wide awake, bordering on insomniac.

  I’m tempted to interrupt Charles’s sleep, a confident sleep. He lies on his back; the moonlight dribbles in despite the blackout shades he has to have. I have the urge to cut right into his snorting/breathing/inhaling gig. I’ve never awakened him out of respect for the number one rule, Thou shalt not disturb the sleeping surgeon between the hours of one A.M. and six A.M. If a child cries, it is my responsibility. The caveat is if a child or two has a fever of over l02 or is projectile vomiting. Fair enough.

  Tonight he is unconscious; perhaps he has sleep apnea. He is so heavily asleep he could be dead. I poke at him, something I would not have done in the city. New place, new rules. I tug at his shoulder.

  “Charles? Charles?” I give it a go.

  “What is it, Lainie?” he mumbles.

  I hesitate.

  “Christ, Lainie, I have four surgeries lined up starting at eight tomorrow, followed by two staff meetings. In by six-thirty. Is this an emergency?”

  He sits up and switches on his bedside light. I’m stricken with conscience.

  “No, no emergency.” A fog of loneliness surrounds me.

  He faces the direction of the bathroom, which is a long way off in our bedroom suite. In a second he is snoring again, maybe dreaming of the lawn and garden as the season fades, bookended by deciduous shrubs and evergreen trees.

  I’m at the end of our bed. I take the pocket flashlight from the night table. Although it’s obvious that Charles won’t awaken, I’m very careful. I tiptoe downstairs. I walk through the kitchen door that leads to the finished basement. While I’m thankful that it’s not too creepy and the owners of the house have gone to great lengths to fix it up, it still feels like too dark a space—a hole in the earth. I hit the light switch on the wall and the steps are illuminated.

  I descend quickly to the adjacent storage space, where three custom cases and eight large boxes hold strips of driftwood and hundreds of shards, cracked bits of my treasured work. There is only a hazy light where Charles’s ransom of me remains. A flawed, sullied ransom. I see well enough to begin tearing open the cardboard boxes stuffed with shells, whole and broken, large and small. I load them into kitchen garbage bags and begin to carry them up the basement stairs and then the front hall stairs and into my studio.

  Next I take the hammer from Charles’s “family” toolbox, which is conveniently sitting to the right of the last crate. In a crazed frenzy I begin to pry open the crates, dismantling the driftwood that is too unwieldy to be dragged into my studio. As if I alone appreciate what it takes to escape a house that suffocates itself. As if my creation has been starved for visibility and the hours are evaporating.

  I stay up most of the night dragging the sections of driftwood and carrying the loads of shells and dried sea animals, bones of birds, and fish scales in shopping bags. I feel that I’m one of those people who saves someone’s life through an unprecedented act of strength in a crisis. I keep going up and down the stairs, from the inner room of the basement to the floor of my studio and back. The heavier the parts, the happier I am.

  In my hushed studio I open the cupboard and pile in the bags full of my broken work. I carefully lean the driftwood against the wall where Matilde and I are painting our large canvas. More dust falls. I snap pictures on my iPhone of everything that has been transported. Before closing up, I fill four letter-size envelopes with a handful of clamshells, baby turtle shells, sea glass, broken crab claws, and dried seahorses. I take the crushed conch shells and small sticks of wood, which are almost powdery, and add them. Then I roam the house and tiptoe into my children’s rooms. The children sleep as if being uprooted and miles from any body of water is insignificant. I place an envelope under each of their pillows.

  Afterward I go back to Charles, whose snoring hasn’t ceased. I climb in beside him. Yet I no longer mull over the rooms in a house that is not quite a home. If these rooms have seemed cavernous, an impossibility in the city, where families live in the largest box they can afford and call it an apartment, it no longer matters. If the playroom can’t be kept neat with the large orange rubber ball that gravitates to the center and pleases Jack, so be it. If there is a huge kitchen with the promise of ambitious meals and a computer center that no one in the family cares about—except Charles—let it rot. If I find Claire and Matilde sometimes sitting there together, staring into the abyss, that’s how life is in the suburbs. If I fear it’s ennui, I might be wrong. Perhaps the girls are planning their future on our state-of-the-art couch that faces the swivel chairs, anticipating at what angle their future boyfriends will kiss them ardently. These boys of tomorrow who will try for second and third base while watching the latest equivalent of Twilight Part Three. These boys will hold my daughters’ hands and statistically and ultimately they will break their hearts. I close my eyes and imagine Trespassing: Driftwood as it sits in my studio.

  Last week on the news I learned that wives, more than husbands, have worrisome dreams about their marriages, about what they do right and what they do wrong. While that has not happened to me, I think about it as I fall into a deep sleep. I dream that I’m doing flips at the edge of a pool. Next I’m at a window and there are stars on the horizon. The room looks to the sea and beckons me. Charles’s snoring begins to subside. The only sound is the water rushing against the Shore.

  ELEVEN

  I walk into the kitchen, where Jack has his shells and crushed wood chips in his fists and is throwing them on the floor. He starts unloading the dried-out jellyfish. “Listen to the sound they make!” He laughs.

  Matilde looks up from her iPad. “That tiny crunch, the way it sounds when you step on ants.”

  Candy sweeps them up. The more she sweeps, the more Jack has in his pockets to scatter around. “You see how busy I am, Jack,” she says.

  “Candy, how come you don’t laugh when things happen anymore?” asks Matilde.

  “Right,” Tom says, showing up with his book bag strapped through his finger and then across his back. “Candy, you used to wink at us and wiggle your nose so we’d laugh. Does anybody remember?”

  Tom glances in my direction. “Mom, what are these duds?”
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br />   “She’s just in some black cape and jeggings,” Matilde says.

  “Children, we have to go.” I speak in a commanding tone. I try out the Elliot drunk or drugged mother smile that I’ve recently learned. “We need to get into the Jeep.”

  I push back my sunglasses that Charles calls my “Jackie O specials.” Definitely not good form for Elliot school drop-offs. “Okay, everybody. Ready?”

  “I have a ride,” Tom announces and is out the door too swiftly for me to ask questions.

  “The morning is really strange, Lainie.…” Candy shakes her head. “You’re so chirpy.… What’s that about … these broken clamshells and other shit? You know Tom will complain that the wood is under his skin, that he has splinters. Wait until Dr. Chuck learns about it.… Your ruined work … parceled out to your kids.”

  Jack comes toward me, holding a seahorse in his hand, which he gleefully cracks in half. “Ha!” he shouts.

  “See what I mean?” Candy says.

  “Candy, where is Jack’s knapsack? Matilde, are you ready?”

  Matilde nods and holds out her arms to help Claire off the kitchen stool.

  “Claire, where are your shells, the ones that were under your pillow?” she asks her.

  “I put them back. Back in Mommy’s drawer.”

  “Mommy’s drawer?”

  “Back where Mommy wants them, Matilde. By her bed.”

  * * *

  Tonight Charles is already home when I pull in, having picked up Matilde from Latin Club. Charles and Tom are on the couch in the kitchen, eating potato chips. Jack sits between them watching SpongeBob, as usual. His mouth is half open and he’s hypnotized.

  I walk to where Charles and the boys sit. Charles says, “Lainie, we can’t be late tonight.”

  I rush upstairs to my bedroom to find Claire sitting on Candy’s lap at the built-in makeup table. Matilde is behind me.

  “The mothers in the city would love an area to do makeup and get dressed, right, Mom?”

  “I know. What a space to try on dresses and high-heeled boots. The walk-in closet could be a playroom for Claire,” I agree.

  “That’s it for me, then,” Candy says. She lifts Claire and stands up. “I’ll go start the chicken fingers.”

  “You like it a little, right, Mom?” asks Matilde. “Having this.”

  “Well, tonight it works.” I sit on the corner of the upholstered bench.

  I pile my hair on top of my head and twist it into a donut shape. “Up or down, Matilde?”

  I reach into the vanity drawer and take out an envelope and start doling out the shells and starfish.

  “Mommy, that’s mine,” Claire says.

  “No, Claire baby, it’s mine. I gave an envelope filled with the same sea treasures from a sea garden to each of you.”

  “I gave mine to you! I told you so!” Claire slides off the seat and runs to the night table stand on my side of the bed. “See! See!” She pulls an envelope from the drawer and everything flies out.

  “Look!” Claire catches two starfish.

  “Thank you, Claire darling. May I please borrow your two starfish?”

  Claire water dances back with the dried-up starfish in her right hand.

  “Matilde … I’ll need more sea life,” I say. Matilde hesitates, then reaches into Claire’s envelope and hands me a small conch shell and a seahorse. I add two starfish and one seahorse from my own envelope. “Matilde, what do you think will make the shells hold in my hair?”

  “Mom … you know it might be too much for tonight.… Aren’t you going to a dinner with other doctors and their wives? I mean … I’m not sure that…”

  “Well, let’s see the full effect first.” I stand in front of the three-way mirror in a drapey blue dress that is a bit too neon and blouson. I place the shells next to the starfish.

  “I know!” I walk back to the vanity. A wide velvet hairband, one that I use to keep my hair off my face when I’m painting, is there. “Let’s put the bitsiest shells on this with Krazy Glue!”

  “Mom…” Matilde says.

  “Krazy Glue … I must have some, Matilde. Do you know where it could be? I don’t quite have my bearings in the house yet.…”

  “Are you sure that you want to add more to your hair, Mom?” Matilde asks.

  “I do, I most certainly do.” I try to fix the starfish by lining them up behind each other in my donut-shaped bun.

  “The Krazy Glue is in the studio,” I say. “We have it for the ordered miniature from the lady on Long Island. The one with the triplet daughters. Could you please get it, darling girl?”

  A minute later Matilde has the Krazy Glue and I hurriedly start squeezing it along the hairband to set the smallest clamshells in a single line, alternating them with slits of wood. “What do you think, girls?”

  “You look perfect, Mom, just not for the night.”

  “What the hell is going on?” Charles is in the doorway. “Lainie?”

  “I’m ready, Charles.” I pat down the hairband. “All set.”

  Charles is quiet for a second and then he starts to scream, “What the fuck is in your hair, Lainie? What the fuck are you wearing? We are going to a business dinner! I’ve told you already. We are invited to a country club by the CEO of the hospital. Tonight matters. Look at you!”

  The girls and I freeze. I hear Matilde breathing. “Dad, you can’t talk to Mom like that. Stop it!”

  “Matilde, it’s okay,” I say. She should know that Charles’s words don’t hurt me, that I’ll sign on for the night—for his sake. I wait for him to continue.

  “Get that crap out of your hair, Lainie. God knows you have the ability, the wardrobe.… Why can’t you do it the right way?”

  Matilde grabs Claire by the shoulders. “C’mon, Claire, let’s go. Let’s go help Mom.”

  “Hurry up, girls,” Charles says.

  “Claire, c’mon.” Matilde carries her toward my closet. “We’ll find Mom a plain black dress.”

  Charles stations himself on the settee and frowns.

  “We have twenty minutes, Lainie. Matilde, twenty minutes to help your mother.”

  “Don’t worry about me, Charles. I’ll be ready.” I’m almost floating toward my girls.

  * * *

  Matilde holds up a choice of sheer stockings or black tights. Next she finds my pearl stud earrings and matching pearl necklace in the bottom of the jewelry box. She favors the first black dress that she finds, a sheath that I used to wear in the city for back-to-school night. Matilde hands me a pair of black stilettos.

  “These are the kind every cool mother wears,” she says.

  “Not those,” I say. “If I’m doing safe, let’s go all the way.” I point to a two-inch heel. Matilde nods—I slip on the second pair of shoes and she zips my dress.

  Claire puts her hands on my legs and hides her face there while Matilde holds up an evening bag with a whalebone handle, a “find” at the fair in Cape May last summer. “You could use it,” she says.

  “Too funky.” I have completely converted. Matilde hands me the plainest black suede clutch. Then she hands me a gray-blue pashmina. “What about your hair, Mom?”

  “My hair. That’s the real problem, right?” I take off the hairband and pull out the starfish. As my hair falls down some of the shells that weren’t glued well enough clatter on the floor.

  “Maybe a ponytail or a knot. To make Dad happy?” Matilde hands me the hairbrush.

  Claire opens the suede purse and finds a pinkish lipstick and a kohl eyeliner pencil.

  “Give it to Mom, Claire.”

  I use the lipstick and ignore the eyeliner, dropping them both back inside. Then I brush my hair for a second before tugging it into a thick coated rubber band. In the three-way mirror I am as wife/mother as possible.

  “Okay, Charles, I’ll let Candy know that we are off.” I sail past him and notice that he’s pleased. For tonight.

  PART FOUR

  Jess

  TWELVE

/>   By the way that William’s office has assembled the dinner at the Wintergreen Country Club, a Thursday Rock ’n’ Roll Night, I get the picture. Two new chairs of divisions and two other longtime chairs are mixed together to make a table for ten. William and I are pros at these evenings and we don’t discuss the guest list until we arrive at the club forty minutes early.

  “I know one of the wives, William.”

  “What wife, Jess? What are you talking about?”

  “The wife of your recent hire—chief of orthopedic surgery.”

  Wives are fungible for William and rarely count, let alone have jobs as heads of departments at Elliot Memorial. They appear for hospital dinners and act relevant for the evening, that’s the deal. He yawns.

  “We were together when we were young,” I say. “In Cape May. Later on in college too—we overlapped for one year.”

  William takes out his iPhone and moves his forefinger around the screen, then he holds it up to me. “Here he is, Charles Morris.”

  I take the phone and angle it away from the light or else it reflects too much to see his face or read about him. He is alluring, fine-featured with brownish hair and a square jaw. That Dr. Charles Morris is quite accomplished I already know since William wouldn’t have it otherwise. Without warning I’m slightly anxious and slightly intrigued, wondering if Lainie has him in a vase on the table as she had the lifeguards years ago or if her knockout husband takes the lead. I would bet buckets that Dr. Morris hopes to join Wintergreen. I’m sure that he’s been told that the golf course is excellent and should he become a member by spring, his wife will be taking tennis lessons as will their children on the grass courts. Dream on, unknown husband—are you aware of your phantom wife? It’s not likely that she’ll be quite as eager. Yet it is a fine club or else William wouldn’t belong. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Lainie.

  Lainie and her husband are punctual, the first to arrive. I lean against the carved wood bar of the cavernous grill room as they sashay toward us. Four children, unending glue, yet the space between them is more than two feet wide. What an observation, a reminder of how time passes and the seismic shifts that become plausible. Lainie, who has been immune to how other women feel. Had she made an effort, tried to win us over those summers, we might not have hated her for her beauty and popularity.