Between the Tides

by Susannah Marren

  “Then the man must be rolling in his grave,” I’d said. “I mean, a high-end mall is not exactly at one with nature.”

  “I thought you’d want to know the history of the place,” Charles defended.

  “Charles, it’s okay,” I had said. “I’ll be fine.” I was resigned by then and his hoping to induce me to buy high-end commercial goods made me pray for us both.

  That’s why it took me until early January to agree to go to the mall with Jess.

  “I don’t need anything,” I say.

  “That’s preposterous. I don’t understand.”

  Jess steers me toward the center of the mall. The antiseptic air blows at us on the top tier where the crème de la crème of designer boutiques are aligned. The sounds of footsteps on glass and marble reverberate as more customers file into the complex.

  “Let’s stick with Neiman’s. One-stop shopping, at least to start.” Jess makes an assessment.

  “That’s a good idea, Jess. It will be faster.”

  I follow her into Neiman Marcus. We enter on the makeup counter side of the store, where the scent of perfume is astounding. Jess tromps along with purpose.

  “I don’t have much time to shop either, Lainie, with a meeting for the Elliot Ballet Academy and then the calendar committee at the library this afternoon. Plus PTA council at six.”

  She leads us toward the designer shoes and out of nowhere there is a crowd of women crushing women.

  “What is going on?” I ask.

  “Are you kidding?” Jess is already at the size 7 rack, fingering the right shoe of a pair of leopard stilettos. She examines it in the fluorescent light. “Too racy, right?”

  “For your life as the wife of the CEO of a hospital?”

  She hesitates with her eyes on me and drops the shoe. “Right. A pair that is less feral with the same heel shape and height.”

  I look around. There are women of assorted ages squeezing their feet into these platform pumps and narrow six-inch-heel shoes.

  “Did you tell Charles that we were going shopping?”

  “I did. He loves when I do these suburban outings. He said to look for a dress for the Arts Council and for the Spring Fling opening.”

  Jess drops her purse on the plush lavender couch and collapses beside it.

  She starts forcing her foot into the leopard stiletto as if it’s an important matter. She holds her leg up.

  “Did you tell William?” I ask.

  “Did I … hmmm. I usually do.”

  A short bald man, about fifty, in a baggy suit, comes over to us.

  “Would you need some assistance?” he asks. The question is more directed at Jess. I try to focus on his life, helping the women who pepper the shoe department. I never thought about it in the city; I never considered shopping a consuming activity before, it was more a means to an end. There is no hastening in and out, there is a leaden sense of allegiance.

  Jess holds up the leopard stiletto and a tamer shoe, a black suede platform. “I’ll try these. I’ll need the mates, these are the right size.”

  A woman comes by and pauses in front of Jess, points to the leopard stiletto, and displays her shopping bag.

  “I bought the same ones. Fuck-me pumps.” She nearly elbows Jess and Jess smiles at her as if they are in the same sorority or they belong to the same secret society. I don’t know William well but after the incident in Vermont, I’m confused. Being with William is taxing and sickening. Maybe the purchase is Jess’s only way of appeasing him, maybe she needs to do this. As her friend, I should ask, I should offer support, a shoulder to cry on. Jess is being incredibly good to me, and I don’t comment. I get suctioned into her denial as if the secret were my own.

  The salesman hesitates and looks at me accusatorily. “For you?”

  “Oh, I’m not shopping for shoes,” I answer. I’m getting antsy—it happens more and more. I know the agenda at a mall, and we’ve yet to dress shop. I take my miniature sketchbook out of my purse and draw a moonrise over the ocean with one woman standing alone. On her right ankle, I give her an ankle bracelet that reads Love. Then I look up at the salesman and see his sorrow. I draw it into the woman’s face.

  “What are you doing?” Jess asks. She is watching as if there is no hope for me.

  “Jess, I’m good. I just had an idea and I’m jotting it down.”

  Jess sighs in annoyance. I suppose that I should be more into the mall-shopping-spree spirit. She pushes her Neiman’s card toward the salesman at the register. Her purchases are rung up straightaway. “C’mon.” She grabs my arm. “There’s a lot of ground to cover. We both need dresses for the spring events in Elliot.”

  Again, a surprising distraction—the luster of the fabrics in winter. Jess is a few steps ahead of me. “These aren’t on sale, Lainie. These are for the next season, I know you get that.” She tips her head and points to the sale section, where I find a teal blue gown.

  “Okay.” Jess snatches it off the rack and holds it up. “Most everybody will be wearing long. At the auction and dinner too.”

  “I know. Charles told me this morning. I’m not sure how he would know, but when I said we had our plan, he said to buy long dresses.”

  “What exactly did he say?” Jess pauses, three sale gowns on her arm and the one I’ve chosen on her other arm.

  “He called you the perfect person to shop with for a splendid dress or two. I never knew him to pay attention, although he always cares about the result.”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean.” Jess leads me toward the dressing room. Along the way I spy a midnight blue dress. “Charles might like it too.” I stop to check the size. “Maybe you can take a picture of me in both dresses and I’ll e-mail them to him. Or better yet, maybe we should send it as a text.”

  A saleswoman appears. “My, my.” She is staring at my face and then back to the two dresses I’m holding. “Won’t either of these be outstanding with your coloring. Those eyes!”

  Jess stomps ahead and finds a double-size dressing room. She is busy zipping herself into the first of her dresses. I look at her in the three-way mirror and race to try on.

  “Nice, Lainie. The color is nice.”

  “That’s it?” I hand her my iPhone.

  She snaps two angles in two seconds and hands it back. I look at her in the long charcoal slinky number.

  “Armani, on sale. I don’t really want anything too showstopping. More subtle, y’know?” Jess smooths the fabric at her waistline.

  “Want me to take a picture for William of the dresses that are top contenders?” I ask.

  “Oh, no. No thanks.”

  I try on the second dress. “Which one, Jess?”

  “Either works.”

  I hand her my iPhone again. “Can you take one more shot for Charles, please?”

  A few seconds later Charles texts back: Buy both.

  I show this to Jess.

  “It seems so … extravagant,” I say.

  Jess shrugs. “Not really, Lainie. I’m taking the black dress. The one that’s not a gown, the one I haven’t put on—I’ll do it at home. Returning is easy.” I detect a slight coldness that reminds me of the wind in late October at the Shore, not yet winter, not yet sharp.

  A half hour later Jess is driving on the highway like she’s a tourist on a Jet Ski.

  “Jess, all okay?”

  “I’m fine. I have to stop at CVS. If you don’t mind.”

  “I have to as well. I think I have a yeast infection.”

  Jess veers the car haphazardly, steps on the gas. “From the pool? From standing around in a wet bathing suit?” she asks.

  “I hardly ever do that,” I say.

  “When you watch Matilde and you’re finished first you do,” Jess says. “That could be it.”

  “I should call my gyno. The new one, who you’ve introduced me to.”

  “You could,” Jess says. “Yeast infections are the worst. Yuck.”

  “I’m pretty sure it’s from Charles,
though. The gyno will recommend no sex for a few days or a week, right? Along with Monistat cream … yogurt…”

  Is Jess tensing up, am I giving too much information? She keeps speeding.

  “I could call now.” I take my phone out of my bag.

  “I didn’t realize that your sex life is so active, Lainie,” Jess says as she pulls up to the CVS and parks, furiously, too close to the curb in front of the store.

  “Lately it has been, Jess. Very active.” She misses my confession, already halfway out of her seat and staring straight ahead.

  THIRTY-THREE

  “What were you doing, Matilde?” Charles is screaming while we sit in a cubicle at the Elliot police station. In the next cubicle are Matilde’s supposed friends, Nick and Stephanie, with their father and mother. Abigail is the friend who is placed across the hall, alone with her mother. According to Jess’s aspersion of the week, Abigail’s father left his wife and family ten days ago for his girlfriend in Philadelphia. Abigail’s mother is crying—painful wails that none of us are able to ignore.

  A half hour later, on the ride home, Charles is in his agitated state.

  “Charles, I’ll ask Jess for a lawyer,” I say. “Please just concentrate on the road.”

  He swerves fast into the slow lane, then changes his mind as if the car is too heavy for him, as if we might not make it to our destination.

  “I don’t know what has happened to you, Matilde.”

  He looks at her in the rearview mirror.

  “Dad, do you wish you had another kind of daughter?” Matilde asks sadly. “Are you sick of me?”

  Charles doesn’t reply.

  “Charles! Charles! Say something … please.” It sinks in, what I’ve always found disquieting. That you never know who you’re married to until there is a problem or a crisis.

  The three of us walk into the house through the garage door and stop in the kitchen. I take off my full-length puffy coat to reveal a pale blue sweatshirt and flannel pajama bottoms in a blue plaid that are tucked into my boots.

  Matilde is aghast. “Mom? You’re wearing an Elliot Lady outfit. You wouldn’t have worn that in the city.”

  “You know … I only wear it to tool around before bed … in my studio. At least it’s my favorite color.”

  “Jesus, shit, Lainie! Matilde!” Charles is apoplectic. “Are we talking about pajamas when we just left the police station? Matilde, have you forgotten that you were arrested?”

  Matilde and I stand still without speaking.

  “You deal with her, Lainie,” Charles says in a purposely level, deliberately emotionless voice. He leaves the room part pissed, part disgusted. Your daughter, your creation.

  We are alone, Matilde and I. The night is slipping into morning; elsewhere the sky meets the sea, shells are brought in with the tide.

  “Nothing will ever be okay again. I did it, my fault. I was stupid, Mom,” Matilde says. “I know you always say, Think before you act, think every second of every day or you’ll be sorry, you’ll pay for it.”

  Matilde starts to cry; has my daughter developed a tremor? I place my hands on her face. She is beyond pale and that frightens me. I see my own reflection in the Thermador double-wall oven and we are the same.

  “My darling girl, what happened?”

  Matilde looks away.

  “Matilde? You might be ready to explain. Or … if you wonder who would believe you anyway—well, I would. I’m ready to hear. I’m open to your version of tonight.”

  “My version?”

  “Please … tell me what happened … for everyone’s sake,” I say.

  I climb onto a kitchen stool and motion for Matilde to do the same. “Go on, Matilde.”

  “I have no real friends in Elliot. In the city I would have had a friend who would have said my plan was a mistake. I asked Stephanie and Abigail ’cause they’re best friends and Nick is older, he drives a Honda CR-V. He told Stephanie that I’ll be a ‘ten’ one day. I figured he’d do it if he said that about me. I didn’t think we’d get caught since everyone goes to bed early in Elliot.”

  Matilde takes a breath. I pour water out of a Brita and hand her the glass.

  “Mom? I once saw this TV show about a police state where everybody had a curfew. That’s how it is in Elliot. Plus, everyone is plain miserable.”

  As I listen to my daughter I miss the city too much to let it go. If we still lived there, none of Matilde’s antics of tonight would have happened. The lack of choice in Elliot is rendering us joyless and dispirited; Matilde and I are woeful.

  “While we were driving to the Y, Stephanie talked about how much trouble we could get into, and Nick said we’d go to prison. I was afraid but I was trying to be cool. The reason they said they’d do it was because I promised the girls I could get them into a Justin Bieber concert. I’m not sure why Nick said okay.… His sister bribed him, I think.… Something about drugs and what she saw. He told us to hurry once we pulled up at the Y and we got in fast. I had gotten the second set of keys from the lifeguard, who didn’t notice that they were missing.”

  “Wasn’t there an alarm—a burglar alarm?” I interrupt.

  “No, there wasn’t. I checked. Not even for the double doors to the aquatics center.”

  Matilde puts her forehead against my palm the way she used to when she had a fever. She feels hot. I move away and start to pace up and down. “What were you doing there?”

  “I ran up to the big board with the list of swimmers who swim the Raritan River. My name was third and yours was second. I took the eraser and climbed the ladder. I wrote Lainie Smith Morris as number one and Matilde Smith Morris as number two. I took the name Larry Spence that was number one and move it to number three.

  “Stephanie said what I’d done wouldn’t help—everyone would know it had been changed. I said you had the most points and only twenty miles to go.… You had to be ahead with me right behind, and the guy shouldn’t be first.”

  Matilde is crying again. “That’s when we heard a siren and two cops came into the pool … with handcuffs. Everything is my fault. I just wanted you to beat everyone, to win the Raritan River race,” Matilde says. “To like it here.”

  “I believe you,” I say.

  Matilde stares at me as I take a step toward the Sub-Zero. She nods, she waits. The Sub-Zero starts making a noise; perhaps it is the freezer churning new ice.

  “Jess called and she’s found an attorney, a local lawyer who will make the mess—breaking and entering, a misdemeanor at the very least—go away. For you, the girls, the brother. Dad will take care of the legal bills. Do you understand, Matilde?”

  “I understand, Mom.”

  “I’m worried about you, Matilde. First what you do and then the wisdom of my making it go away. I am of two minds. These things happen, of course. I want you to be excused, exonerated. What I wish is that you would not do what you do. That you would be responsible.”

  Matilde is crying harder. “Mom, do you remember the salt marsh safari in Cape May last spring? When you took the four of us to look at the wildlife on a skimmer and we saw the plants on the water floor?”

  “I remember. There were the fish who live deep down, almost under the sea. Remember the crabs and the gray seals and sea turtles?”

  “The sea turtles were my favorite,” Matilde says.

  “Really? I’m surprised. The seals were unreal.”

  “You’re right, Mom … the seals were unreal that day.”

  I look at her and I remember the day that we brought her home from the hospital. Charles thanked me for making his dreams come true; he said we had a complete family, a boy and a girl. When the twins were born, he said that we were doubly lucky, doubly blessed.

  “Mom, tonight I’ve ruined everything.”

  I shake my head. “I know it’s frightening … but not everything is ruined.”

  “Can we still go to the beach house, will it be the same after what I’ve done in Elliot?”

  “Well, yes, w
e can, Matilde. But we should talk about how breaking into a building is wrong … about how we have to live with the consequences of our actions. We have to have a moral center, even if life isn’t always fair. So while Jess is a good mediator and she’s really worried about what happened and will be a good fixer, at some point, you have to figure out why you do what you do. I have to figure out why Dad and I race to cover for you. Every time.”

  Charles comes back into the kitchen—in a rush and quite unfriendly. He doesn’t look at Matilde. “Lainie?”

  I don’t answer. Instead I go back to Matilde and stroke her hair.

  “You can stop babying her, Lainie. You know it’s gotten her nowhere except into piles of shit,” Charles says.

  “Mom? I thought you said that Dad will cover for me?”

  “Oh, he will. He always will,” I say. “Piles of shit? Piles of shit? That it were so simple, Charles.”

  Charles faces Matilde. “What has come over you, Matilde?” He speaks normally, a ghastly sound in our ears. I grip Matilde’s shoulders.

  “I’m finding out, Charles. I’ll speak further with Matilde. You must be exhausted. Maybe try to sleep?”

  “Sleep? I have two surgeries before ten. Two fucking surgeries, Lainie. Matilde, I won’t allow you to be a spoiler.”

  “A spoiler, Charles?” He knows what I mean: Whatever my daughter has done, she is forever on my side.

  Charles looks at Matilde before he storms out of the room. I lead her to the couch in the corner and we sit down together. We are by the window that faces east; the sun is rising, the morning is moving in.

  “I miss Cape May. I miss the city,” Matilde says.

  “I know. I know.” I sigh. “Matilde, tell me why you really did what you did tonight? Why you thought it was okay—why it needed to be accomplished?”

  “I wanted you to win, Mom. I wanted you to win the Raritan River contest, to get there first, before any other swimmer.”