Between the Tides

by Susannah Marren

“Mrs. Morris, could you please get your daughter out of the pool?” Mr. Flaven is exasperated. “She’s been in for more than an hour and a half. She’s missing class, I’m missing class.… I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

  Understandably. How many students at Elliot Middle School believe the water will heal them, make them whole, save the family.

  “No, I suspect not.” I lean toward the water and would dive in if not for my clothing: Tahari boots, teal blue pashmina, and jeans. The accoutrements of life in Elliot. Being so close is a tease, the desire runs high.

  “Matilde! Matilde!” My hand is up to stop her as she slithers past, more frenzied per lap. Both coaches are looking at me, noting that I’m no more efficient than they are, that it was a pointless task bringing me in.

  “You see, she won’t stop. We can’t get to her. That’s why we called you,” Ms. Wagner says.

  “Why didn’t anyone jump in and grab her?” I ask.

  “Are you kidding?” Ms. Wagner says. “We can’t. It might be interpreted as an assault; it’s a lawsuit.”

  I stand up although the pool still beckons me, water whore that I am. What never goes away is the sense that any water will do, anyplace, anytime; I too cannot resist water of any sort.

  “No, I’ve never seen her do this either,” I say. Useless information, yet very true. I take a kickboard from the wire rack against the wall and place it a foot in front of where her right arm stretches as it propels her forward to the other side. I straighten the board horizontally to effect a roadblock.

  “I’ve tried that, Mrs. Morris.” She’s staring at me.

  “Matilde!” I shout as I thrust the kickboard against the wall where her hand reaches before she returns. Confounded and disheartened, she stops. The kinetic energy in the room dissolves within seconds. Matilde, robbed of her goal, takes off her goggles to make certain that I’m standing there.

  “Get out of the pool, Matilde.” I sound severe. I bend down and give Matilde my hand. She alights like a dancer, a trapeze artist. Together we move into the girls’ locker room, where a mixture of sweat and sports awaits us.

  “Mrs. Morris? Can you see your way out and I’ll call you in several hours?” Ms. Wagner asks.

  “That’s fine. I’ll take Matilde home, if you don’t mind. She and I will chat there.” One of the charcoal pencils holding up my hair topples to the floor, my hair falls to my shoulders. Matilde, who is shivering although she is wrapped up in a towel, scoops up the pencil for me.

  Alone at last. Matilde opens her locker and taped to the door is a map of the Raritan River, a small-size replica of the one on the board at the Y, where I have completed two hundred miles. Matilde takes a blue Magic Marker from her knapsack and starts to color in a swath of the river.

  “Look, Mom, at how far I’ve swum. I’m almost as far as you are, after today.”

  “Matilde, what are you doing? What possesses you?”

  “You’re the one who taught me to swim like that. I’m the one who swims away with you, Mom. I was practicing.” Her eyes are solemn.

  “My darling Matilde, I’m not planning to go anywhere.”

  I come close and stroke her face. “There are ways to … to be okay here, in Elliot.”

  “I don’t believe you, Mom, I don’t believe you’ll stay in Elliot. One day you’ll swim away!” She’s shouting and I wipe her tears, salt tears, off her face. I start hunting in my jumbo purse for a tissue. The purse feels false, the locker room a joke. Matilde and I are on shaky ground.

  “No, Matilde, I mean what I say.” My head floods with the waterfront, Cape May, an empty beach in the long stretch of the off season. A nor’easter that blows for three days straight without surcease. Or the view from our apartment that faced the Hudson, those brackish parts of the river, best viewed on a gray day. To the south, the Narrows.

  “I have my children, I don’t intend to swim away.” I put my arms around her; she clings to me, her wet bathing suit soaking through my clothing.

  She begins to cry. “Promise, Mom, okay? Please swear on our lives.”

  “Oh, dear Lord, Matilde. Oh, dear Lord.”

  PART SIX

  Jess

  NINETEEN

  On the Tuesday morning after the nanny incident and what seems months since we danced together at the club, Charles’s cell number comes across my screen once more.

  “Jess?” That voice again. “Have you ever been to the Gansevoort on Twenty-ninth and Park Avenue South?”

  “The restaurant?” What is the name of it … Asellina. “Yes, I have. At a recent business dinner with too many gastroenterologists and their spouses.”

  He laughs one laugh in one breath. “No, Jess, the hotel.”

  “The restaurant is in the hotel.” I’m not only coy, I need evidence.

  “I’m in the city for a meeting … several surgeons … a seminar. The lunch with a few colleagues just imploded.”

  I wait without speaking. I’ve had invitations before—what distinguishes the call is that it is Charles on the line. Fortunately, my entire day is free—I haven’t a committee meeting on the calendar, not a lunch date with any grand dame. The day is designated to desk work and belongs to me alone.

  “Jess? Let’s meet there.”

  “What time?”

  “One o’clock.”

  “One o’clock it is.” Already I’m considering my wardrobe, my lingerie, my hair, whether I should drive, take the train, or book a car service. Calls to other mothers for my children’s pickup have to be placed immediately—the chits called in at any cost. I’m a marathon runner, an opera singer, a rock star; the epinephrine peaks for the performance ahead.

  * * *

  While the world turns in its ordinariness without me, Charles opens the hotel room door. I expect the river view that radiates from the large window behind him. The thought that it is Lainie who loves water enters my mind. It isn’t exactly a pang of compunction, rather an observation. I’m conscious of how the bones break when we fall and what must be kept secret, kept safe.

  Up close Charles’s face takes on another shape—his jaw is longer and his flecked eyes are wider and lit up. His hair is brushed back off his high forehead and his eyes have turned greenish as if the blue in them no longer counts.

  He stands there very fit. I know beneath his shirt he has a washboard stomach and Popeye-style biceps. His chipped front tooth that he should have capped, can afford to cap, looks boyish, rather than a reminder that men don’t take care of themselves and that wives only do so much.

  He pushes me hard against the wall and we begin to kiss teenager kisses, a sword fight—tongue against tongue. Every kiss squeezes my heart; the oxygen swoops in and away from my lungs. He’s an orthopedic surgeon and lifting me to the bed is easy; he’s stronger than men half his age.

  I actually giggle when Charles undresses me, while he frowns, that intent on the journey, the illicit sex that we crave. We could live in this room and it would sustain us. He becomes gentle, although he moves fast; the clock is ticking. My hands are on his forearms and his hands are on my breasts. “What are you thinking, Charles?”

  “I’m not thinking,” he laughs. “I’m lusting.”

  He kisses my eyes shut, his heart is against my heart. An unfathomable thirst, nothing I’ve never known. Eros. He puts his mouth on my neck and I sigh, his mouth is on my breasts, I thread my hands across his back, a surgeon’s back, where the muscles ripple and tighten.

  “Jess? Jess?” He is ready to be inside me.

  I open my eyes. “I would like the passion without the longing.”

  Charles tilts his head. “Passion without longing. What an idea.”

  When we’re spent, I wonder if he will be the type to retract after the act is over, to jump up and flee. Those men who dress in silence, buttoning the starched shirt (less starched and crisp after having crumpled it onto a chair) and tying the limp tie. The deed is done, the man moves on. Not Charles. He turns me on my side, then spoons
me. He passes the test by treating me as if he is my boyfriend, my lover, as if he cares.

  I’m sentimental, gawkish, unaccustomed to myself. I’d like to believe him, to take it on face value—forget that we have six children between us and two spouses. There’s a remedy for the guilt that is about to enter my psyche. Guilt? Isn’t my feeling for him enough to dispel the ghosts? Apparently not; I push Lainie away as best I’m able, then I see her. First in Cape May the summer we were nineteen at Poverty Beach. She’s in a one-piece navy tank suit while the rest of us are in skimpy bikinis. Yet everyone is watching her—the old men, young men, lifeguards, and the boys line up for her every move. She is oblivious, skipping out to beyond the markers to swim those goddamn laps. What about Lainie today? Try when she asked me at the pool last week about cheating wives.

  “Would you ever have an affair?” she asked.

  I professed it to be a profound question. “I’d rather come clean. Get a divorce, start again.”

  “Me too,” Lainie said. “I couldn’t do it to Charles.” Charles? Is she delusional? Am I special, the only one he chooses outside the marriage bed?

  “Let’s make a pact, Jess. Let’s promise that if we ever are tempted to have an affair, we tell each other,” Lainie said. Intense, almost optimistic.

  “Sure, Lainie.”

  Lainie held out her left hand and insisted that we pinkie swear. A pact seemed a good idea, a method of keeping me honest and away from Charles. I squeezed her pinkie in mine. Seven days later my self-deception knows no bounds.

  Charles pulls me closer, naked. I could remain here forever. I knock Lainie out of my brain except the next mind game begins. William. I try to push him aside but he looms in front of me, as he looked on our wedding day at the Plaza Hotel. The party is over and we are alone at last in our wedding suite. I go to the window, believing that he’ll follow me, but instead he starts to cry. I agree this is a sorry occasion; we have taken our vows and have committed to spending the rest of our lives together, faithful until the end, in two-step for a lifetime. A chilling reality for a man of William’s temperament and desires. And terrifying for me, since I have bought into the deal by ignoring his nature. William and I, partners in the public eye.

  Then I see past lovers, those who were playthings and boy toys, trinkets, a method to leave the tyranny of my marriage for a few hours. If the here and now with Charles, Lainie’s husband, is forbidden, it is also irresistible. I know the stirrings of love and war—I know the conflict ahead. I also know that for me it is not a one-time event, the result of a physical attraction, a flirtation. Isn’t this what I’ve been waiting for since the night we were introduced? I sign on—I will go to great lengths for the stolen hours of our future. An addict for her drug, the drinker for her drink, the robber for her heist. That is why I let Lainie go, I let William go, I let the one-night stands and passersby, faces I cannot recall, all go.

  Charles flips onto his back with his arms over his head. We are about to begin the conversational portion of our afternoon. Our appetite momentarily sated, true confessions are about to kick in. I resist the urge to sit up, naked, and pull the sheet up to my chin in order to explain: I don’t want you because you are Lainie’s, I’m not interested in seducing you because she and I were girls on a beach together. We fought over the boys, she had a better body, better profile. She is kind and I am mixed. I want you because of you. It is a misfortune and sheer coincidence that you are Lainie’s husband and that I’m fastened to my own unmerciful mess. Can I take the Charles out of the Charles Morris, husband to Lainie? I wait.

  “Your husband is a very smart man. An excellent administrator, Jess.” Charles speaks first.

  “You like him? I thought that surgeons despise the CEOs.”

  “Despise?”

  The thought never entered his mind, too consumed with the stance of a savior.

  “William is…”

  “William is very dedicated, Jess. I came to Elliot Memorial mostly because of my meetings with him.”

  I burrow my head in the hollow of his shoulder and move my body closer to his body, trying to melt into him, shut out the conversation. Jesus, what is wrong with me?

  “Yes, he’s very dedicated. Plus, Lainie is my friend. My dear friend from when we were kids. Summers. College. You know, right?”

  “Jess … Jess…” He is kissing the back of my neck, his arms around me. “You fill my head.”

  “And you mine, Charles.”

  Together we are over the line.

  “We’ll work it out, Jess. We’ll figure it out.”

  I decide to do my best so that Lainie shall never find out. Then he starts again. There is nothing else in the world except this moment.

  TWENTY

  I’m becoming a soapy sort of person, one who thinks in platitudes and on occasion has a few scruples. A relatively recent occurrence that began when the Morris family became my pet project. Many ways to skin the cat, from charming Tom, the only child of theirs with the good sense to value me, to pleasing Lainie, for myriad reasons. The most obvious being that my discovered compassion makes me aware of Lainie’s need for help. A fish out of water, a woman on the verge every time I see her, especially at the Y pool, I realize how she struggles with the unremarkable: food shopping, school meetings, driving children around. She travels with a map, the kind purchased on the Parkway at a road stop, rather than her GPS. What does one say to someone who doesn’t see the forest for the trees?

  Finally, the Charles factor. Charles, who sends chills up my spine, who lingers where no man has gone. Charles. I end up on the busiest of days as the prissiest, most consequential Elliot wife (the one who weighs in on the shade of the cocktail napkins at the hospital benefit), aching for him. Passion without longing. Too late. I go no further with these thoughts and feelings. I’m as removed from a solution as I’ve ever been, in the moment as I’ve never been in my life.

  * * *

  When I drive up to the Morrises’, Mrs. Higgins, the find of the century, lets me in and directs me to Lainie’s studio. The original plan was to come at one o’clock because Lainie believes that in mid-November it is best to observe her work in the “purest daylight.” I’m delayed due to Matilde, whom I consider Lainie’s child, not Charles’s. Apparently she has cannonballed everybody’s morning by professing to be an act at Waterworld.

  The door is open and Lainie is looking at a pair of pastels leaning against the wall. The colors are gorgeous and the rawness is uncharacteristic. Not the Lainie I used to know.

  “These are striking.” I startle her.

  “Jess! I’m glad that you’re here.”

  I point toward the pastels. “How unlike anything you’ve ever done before.”

  “Not mine, Matilde’s.”

  Despite my newfound empathy that bubbles over in enough circumstances to believe there is to be a special place in heaven for me one day, I’m green with envy. Someone else’s child did these pictures—Matilde in particular.

  “They’re exquisite,” I say.

  “Well, talent is one thing, but today was wicked at school,” Lainie says.

  As if I haven’t heard already. Nonetheless I sigh for her, with her, and engage. “What do you mean, Lainie?” The sympathetic tone rolls off my tongue.

  Lainie is rueful, hesitant. “I’m worried about her, Jess. She’s not making friends—it could be my fault. She’s trying to be me and she’s not acclimating. Maybe on purpose.”

  “Since you don’t fit in?” There, stated, out in the open.

  A normal person in a normal universe would blush and defend herself. Instead Lainie tilts her head and ponders, as if it is meant as a real question rather than a jab. My goodwill quotient diminishes slightly and I’m my usual self again. I’m in Lainie’s studio to look at her art and to inquire about Mrs. Higgins.

  “How is Mrs. Higgins working out?” I choose the better method of starting off.

  “Mrs. Higgins…” Earth to Lainie.

  “Mrs
. Higgins. You know, the nanny who is more than phenomenal? She may seem drippy after Candy, a popcorn blond bombshell if I ever saw one, but Mrs. Higgins is skillful.”

  “Skillful?”

  Not certain if Lainie is doing her “lost in translation” act or if she should know more. It occurs to me that I only told Charles of Mrs. Higgins’s accolades. “Well, Mrs. Higgins is much more than a nanny. You said that Candy had dropped out of Juilliard, yes?”

  “When she was twenty. She was a part-time babysitter who became our full-time nanny when she couldn’t get any work in music. I kept saying she should go back to school. Every year I would urge her to return or to apply to some kind of college, Hunter or Brooklyn College. Something. She was absolutely devoted to the children, Jess. Really. She wanted to be with our family, that was her choice. I feel awful about what happened.”

  “Eh,” I say. “I’m sure that Candy is fine. For Elliot life, Mrs. Higgins is a better choice. Look at her credentials. She speaks French, spent a year at the Culinary Institute of America, she’s worked with children of every age, babies through teenagers. She’s the Mary Poppins of New Jersey. Let’s face it, Lainie, if you only have one person, not two, Mrs. Higgins is the answer.”

  To say nothing of how she suits Charles’s vision of what should be. That I do not share.

  “Two people,” Lainie says. “In a fantasy life I have a driver.”

  “A driver? Lainie, what kind of mother in Elliot would do that?”

  Lainie is by the window and I realize what she means about the hour and luminosity. Her skin is flawless and her eyes so deep a blue that the light can’t flicker through them. I shouldn’t push the conversation toward motherhood since I already imagine the group e-mails and texts that will be flying all afternoon into evening about Matilde’s peril at the pool this morning. I’d say to her, “Corral your daughter, Lainie,” if I thought she’d comprehend it.

  I take a not-so-subtle look at my iPhone. “Lainie, we should start talking about your new work and plans for a show.” Besides, she must have asked Mrs. Higgins to prepare tea if not lunch—blueberry scones and tea, I would imagine—the table set with silver and fine linen. A reward for my driving to her part of town. We should make our decisions regarding her art first.