* * *
I call Lainie early the next morning and she picks up on the first ring, as if she’s been expecting my call.
“Jess? Is everything okay?”
“Well…” I begin.
I hear her pacing about, her feet tapping. Next I hear Mrs. Higgins talking loudly from the kitchen—it hurts my head.
“Pancakes? Bacon? Claire? Jack?” Mrs. Higgins’s voice is strident.
“Hold on. Let me close the door to my studio.” Lainie would be in her studio already. It could be that Matilde is with Claire in her pale pink bedroom with the blue clouds on the ceiling and too many blown-up photos of the family in Cape May on the near wall.
To prove me wrong, Lainie puts the phone on speaker. “Jess, can you wait? Claire is here and every Sunday morning we sing a song together.” Lainie starts playing a YouTube version of Van Morrison singing “Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral.” Claire can be heard saying, “Mommy, Mommy, I like this!”
“Lainie!” I shout over the din. “Please get Matilde for me. Tell her that she didn’t pick up her cell and I decided to reach her through your phone.”
There is a flutter of noise.
“Mom? I haven’t brushed my teeth yet. I haven’t washed my face,” Matilde says, slithering out of our phone call.
“Matilde, I’ve been on the phone with Jess. She wants to talk with you. I will take Claire out of the room.” Lainie is apologetic, which translates into “I hate this shit but I’m the mother.”
“Matilde, what went on last night, my darling girl, that Jess wants to speak with you? It isn’t even eight thirty.”
“Nothing, Mom, nothing, I swear.”
Good, she must lie. I can only clean it up if she is willing to lie to everyone. To the girls who hate her who were in the back room at the Giffs’ to the boys who don’t hate her and hope to use her.
“Why is Jess wanting to speak with you? After she arranged for you to be at the party. I’m asking. I’m your mother.”
“I’m still on speaker, Lainie, Matilde. I’m waiting to speak with Matilde. Maybe she should call me back from her own phone.”
“Would you talk to Jess?” Lainie asks. “Finish up with her, then we’ll swim together before Mrs. Higgins leaves for church. We’ll swim the Raritan River.”
Then I’m not on speaker and I wait on hold as if it’s a department store and there is “the silence” before the connection. My phone goes dead. A moment later it rings and MATILDE MORRIS comes across the screen.
“Hi, Jess.”
“Where are you? Are you alone?”
“I’m in my room. No one’s around.”
“Good.” I click my tongue. “Matilde. Since I know exactly what happened, I’ve decided how to play it. I’ll do you a favor and I’ll back you up on your lie to your mother and what will soon be a lie to your father. Your parents will never know.”
Matilde sighs close to her phone, causing mine to give off heat.
“The deal is that I’ll defend you and make everything go away. Reese, the other boys last night at the Giffs’ home? Whatever they or the girls say, it’s not true and people who hear it and believe it, they’re mistaken. They’ve got it wrong, you did nothing. You were in that back room for one moment and it wasn’t a party for you. You left immediately.”
“Thank you, Jess.”
I pause. “Matilde, there’s a caveat. In exchange, Thanksgiving night, what you saw in my pantry—by the wine closet—is wiped from your memory. It never happened. See no evil, hear no evil. Both of us are spotless. Capisce?”
When I hang up, I have a sense of accomplishment. Matilde and I are connected by our secrets; we are two buoys in deep waters.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Being the wife of the CEO of the hospital has its perks, commands admiration, and fills the day. Then there is the other hat I wear, clandestine, priceless—that of Charles’s lover. As queen bee of Christmas season with interminable invitations and a “show up” policy, the highlight is a plan with Charles. The twist is that I’m entwined with Lainie and her children, his wife and his children, ad nauseam. Although I’ve often considered myself capable of plots and conflicts, this one beats the band. Every time I’m with Lainie I want to ask, How is it with you and Charles? Yet we operate more along the lines of husbands are husbands, placate them as best you can. Children are the glue; cherish them and contort yourself for their benefit. On occasion we get to chat about wardrobe and a luncheon, about the pool being empty or the pool being crowded.
For instance, today I arrive at the Y so early that the lifeguard is testing the water, leaning in with small test tubes. I don’t expect that Lainie will have arrived and I’m in no mood to see her. That’s how it is right before my next assignation with Charles and right after. Too close for comfort—best to space out Lainie and the trysts with Charles. What I find are both Lainie and Matilde sharing the third lane, slashing through the water with that combination of velocity and alacrity. They are water dancers doing acrobatic feats—and one has to admit that both Lainie and Matilde have become better swimmers in their four months in Elliot. There is no master swimmer who competes; they flip and turn like big fish. Sailfish or marlins, the ones worth catching to mount on the wall. Matilde, moving through water as salvation, looking more Lainie than the actual Lainie. How extraneous most of life beyond the pool and the canvas must be for them.
The lights are blinding from the interior of the pool and these swimmers appear macabre. One might remark upon how interesting a mother-and-daughter duo they make. Not I. I’m simply relieved that it is a week after the Matilde incident at the Giffs’ party. Hosing down that fire required ingenuity that fortunately I have. Each day that passes lowers the Giffs’ party/Matilde Morris faux pas on the gossip pole of mid-December.
I sit down at the edge and I’m about to put on my flippers—a form of cheating to some swimmers, a shrewd move to others. They are coming at me, in freestyle then backstroke. In synchrony they switch to the butterfly and the breaststroke. The tenets of professional swimming are obvious: technique, fast turns, the high quality of their strokes. I watch them and suddenly I don’t feel like swimming. A nippy day in December isn’t the most enticing. I ought to go to my locker and put on my workout clothes. There will be the early-bird Pilates class in a half hour. To boot, it saves my hair and I’m with Charles in six hours’ time. I jump up from the side of the pool and head for the locker room, passing the wall board that lists the swimmers in the Raritan River competition. I’m not surprised at what I read, only surprised that I wasn’t on top of it sooner. I, Jess, the smartest, dumbest one at the pool. I realize that this is no hobby for either mother or daughter; they are swimming as a means to get through life in Elliot. Lainie has always returned to the water, fought to be the best at it. The top of the roster lists Lainie then Matilde, pitted against each other for first place. Mother and daughter deluded by their mode of flight.
* * *
Having fibbed my way out of Elliot for the day is impressive. Then again, I’m facile enough at whatever I set out to do. What’s so beguiling is Charles, my lover, and how the hours together take on a life of their own. We have it down to a science: the suite at the Gansevoort, my quick gait through the busy lobby with the dim chandeliers and high ceiling, the wood floors dyed almost black, bleeding hipness into the scene. The titillation of Charles’s fictive check-in name, Mr. Ronson, cryptic and exciting texts that lead up to the next afternoon. What we don’t have down to any science is what to do with the feelings, the untenable component. My falling for a man would be complicated enough without our particular narrative. I choose to push it to the back of my mind and Charles, Charles alone, remains in the front lobe. He remains there, where he has landed.
From the moment I’m in the room until we’ve exhausted ourselves there is a yearning that I have never known. We start with kisses that lead us to tear our clothes off, sometimes standing, sometimes on the bed, the couch, the floor. He offers words that are uns
uited to his public image while I hold my breath. “Jess. Jess, I missed you. I crave you.” Words only for me.
“Ditto.” We begin our frenzied, primordial sex, sex that suffuses me with rapture.
That’s why I laugh when he settles down after the lovemaking and puts a pillow behind his head. He is in the center of the king-size bed with the sumptuous Egyptian cotton sheets and duvet cover. Each time I try to crawl into him, a first for me—who ever cared about the after before—I’m awkward. He knows where I should be situated and rearranges me if need be. He’s good, he’s excellent—then maybe, just maybe, he’s seasoned and the women are fungible—and simply up to bat? How unfortunate if I were the one who is hooked. Who would expect it?
“Passion without longing.” I repeat my own motto, tracing his shoulders with my fingers. Charles feels my nails, long, polished as opposed to Lainie’s, which have always been short and embedded with paint. At this point in our afternoon, my hand is on his heart and my head is cradled in his shoulder. I look up at him. He is more spectacular in confined quarters. Beyond his profile is the weak winter light filtering through the window. We’ve forgotten to pull the shades—something Charles prefers to do—and I’m rather glad about it. Who wants hidden, disguised married sex when you have the chance to witness every line and crevice. Lovers. Charles, lover, lover Charles.
He begins the conversation. “Hey, Jess, what happened with Lainie and Matilde?”
Charles is shifting gears and apparently Lainie is in the ether, in the room, ubiquitous and important to Charles and to me. She is exempt only when we are fucking—then I don’t feel her, then she doesn’t exist. Well, we aren’t fucking at the moment. Welcome to the Charles, Lainie, and Jess Show.
“Well, there was some drama.” I’m speaking softly, hoping we don’t linger on the subject.
“You mean besides when Claire smashed the cake to pieces and Mrs. Higgins made it from scratch again.” He yawns, pulls me closer.
“I sort of missed it but Lainie described the scene.” I place my hands across his chest that is a map, a journey. Christ, I’m becoming sentimental—very unbecoming.
“All redeemable,” Charles says. In his world with myriad limbs and spines that he saves, the patients, men and women, genuflecting afterward and passing along the word, Dr. Charles Morris, best of the best, savior among saviors, a family drama is small potatoes. I inhale him, delving into his neck—I have to inhale since the clock is ticking.
“Lainie was a flake.” He sits up in bed and stiffens. “I’m out of tricks. I’m not sure how to reel Lainie in, wake her up. There’s no excuse for how she acts.”
Does Charles believe that Lainie does things on purpose? We both know it is more complicated than that.
“I know that you would have handled it differently, Jess.”
“A birthday cake—that’s what it was and it worked out fine. The party for Liza was gratifying and everyone was happy. All fine.” I’m in her husband’s arms, falling for him and defending her. Lately I’ve begun to surprise myself. To her rescue again.
Charles is upright and his body tightens. I sit up and face him, drawing the sheet under my arms to be less bare. Not that I want to talk about any of these topics, yet somehow I need to convey that Lainie isn’t a victim. He and I are not thrown together as a diversion for the long-suffering wife.
“Lainie is there, Charles, in her own quiet way. She’s on your arm if you tell her to be. She’ll show up at any event for the children, for your work. You know that.”
“I’m not worried about Lainie, Jess. She has the art show thanks to you; I’m worried about Matilde.”
Do he and I even exist—in a moment, a second, millisecond? The room feels congested, dense. We both belong to Lainie.
Naturally Matilde is next on the docket. Aren’t she and Lainie attached by their mermaid tails?
“She saw us together, is that why?”
“Partly,” says Charles. “But Matilde wants to fit in, her mother doesn’t care. That makes it more difficult.”
I’m in a dicey place. Elliot society is my bailiwick; Charles is my project. I decide to go for broke, that honesty, when possible, is the best policy.
“Matilde is talked about by the girls in her class. She has to act out, has to be an instigator. She might hear the girls at the party tattling about her—how beautiful she’d be if she didn’t dress like a nerd and act like an … outsider. The girls in her class call her swimming scary.”
“Scary?” Charles doesn’t get it.
“Charles, she’s at a tough age in a new town, a fishbowl.…”
“And then she saw us kissing in your pantry.” His guilt. Jesus. For Matilde, not Lainie.
“Right,” I say. I wish I had a cigarette to light up and exhale smoke rings. Accompanied by a glass of wine.
“Do you know my daughter? Really know her?” He is taking an interest in the story because it’s about his daughter. Child supremacy.
“Just a hunch. You don’t have to worry about Matilde. I’ve spoken to her about Thanksgiving. It’s all right. She understands.”
“Understands what we did in your house with your husband and my wife at the dining table?”
I shrug. “Want me to leave?” I pull back and his arms no longer reach me. “The door, Charles? Go, go through it. Have your perfect life, your perfect story.”
“It wasn’t your daughter who saw us.”
“No, it was your daughter. I promise you it is okay. I’ve spoken with her.”
“What did you do, blackmail her? Dangerous stuff, Jess.”
I point to the door. “Go ahead, don’t let me stop you.”
“You know I can’t stay away from you.” His face is against mine and I smell his skin. “We know that anything could go wrong.”
“Yes, a score of possibilities. William, the hospital, Lainie, the children.” I kiss his chest. “Meanwhile, it’s tractable.”
He holds me and before he kisses me, he asks, “What do you want, Jess?”
“To be in your arms,” I answer. To trust him, I would want that too. I do or else he wouldn’t do as he pleases with my body. When it occurs to Charles how our affair is weirdly amorphous and distinct, he will better accept that he is a husband and a lover. That triangles are treacherous and inevitable, that everywhere there is the pull of three. Charles, Lainie, and I. Charles, Matilde, and Lainie. Matilde, Lainie, and I. Charles, Matilde, and I.
Charles is inside me once more. We have an hour left and what is hallowed prevails.
PART ELEVEN
Lainie
TWENTY-EIGHT
I stand alone at the Narrows, wading in the tidal stream that links Staten Island and Brooklyn. The winter sun dances on the pearly water. Only the hard-core devotees enjoy this season. The past two Decembers I came with Isabelle and Cher. The three of us stood under the bridge to sketch and take photographs of the snippet of beach that wasn’t visible to the naked eye. The wind was against our faces, our scarves futile in the winter solstice. If I work here today—knowing I might not get to Cape May anytime soon—I will have what I need to complete the paintings for the March show, including the triptych.
I notice the men today because they are not fishermen but patrolmen, perhaps security guards or policemen. They watch me as I snap pictures first with my iPhone and then with my Olympus. If I look to the west, I imagine how this flows to the Raritan River and finally to the Atlantic. The gulls caw overhead; they might or might not make it into the pictures. Once I’m in the water collecting rocks and seaweed in a large white garbage bag, they come toward me. I decide that any scrap of marine life is worth taking back to Elliot and wade knee high in the water. The two men in their uniforms approach me; the first one is like a movie star and young, anyone would notice.
“Excuse me, miss.” When he takes off his Ray-Ban sunglasses he reminds me of summertime. They will critique me, Her palette has changed, her canvases are mammoth to emphasize how women are only part of the story,
how place becomes a character for Lainie Smith Morris. If I have to write it myself and put it at the top of the press release, I shall.
He is at the edge. “Miss? Can I ask what you’re doing? No one is allowed in the water.”
“I’m collecting shells … flotsam … appreciating the scenery.… I’m an artist.” I keep wading and scooping my hands through the water. The seaweed is slippery; I put a clump of it in my plastic bag.
“Lady, you can’t be in the water,” says the second officer. “You have to get out of the water, now.” He is tedious, he needs to be tuned.
I ignore him.
“Miss, please, you have to get out.” He is still tedious.
Minnows float by and I try to scoop some up.
The second officer is close without getting his shoes wet. It is obvious that he means it. I should do what he says. Instead I stay; the water beckons me.
The first officer tries to rescue me. “She’s an artist,” he explains.
“Well, that may be, and so I’ve heard. She isn’t allowed anyway, McCain.”
The second officer makes a gesture to McCain, pointing to how I have to get out. McCain practically jumps in. I could fall into his arms. I have always been a Blanche DuBois on some level. In times of need a stranger could have your back. A young man in uniform reminds me of how officers get lost in the suburban shuffle, a place where bankers, lawyers, and doctors rule.
“Miss?” The second officer motions to me. “Let’s go. Maybe you don’t understand. We can’t have ya in the water. It’s against the law.”
I reluctantly wade out to the bank. My jeans are soaked since the water is higher than my waders. I peer into my plastic bag and I’ve hit the jackpot.
The second officer nods; he’s pleased too, he’s gotten what he wants.
“C’mon, McCain, let’s get goin’. Nothin’ more to do.” He looks at me. “You should go, miss. No one should be around, like I tole ya.”
“I’ll take it from here, Buzz. You go ahead then,” says the first officer, McCain. “I’ll catch up.”
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