Between the Tides (3 page)

His eyes bore into mine. He begins his mantra, one I have heard for what seems years but with a new spin. “Lainie, we have our chance. The city isn't an ideal place to raise kids, you know that. Remember the pervert on West End Avenue when you were with the twins? Wasn't there that child stalker by Gracie Mansion? Tom has been mugged twice. Matilde sees a rat family right on Broadway and Ninety-first Street almost daily. The children need fresh air, room, nature, pets—a real life. New York isn't real. I have been asked to chair a department.”

I listen to his persuasion, knowing that when Charles speaks to an audience, most heads in the room nod in approval at his words, whatever they are. I've been in the marriage for too many years; I have radar for false promises, I'm not part of his constituency. Besides, what is he talking about and how does he know where the other artists will be?

He tugs at my camisole and pushes my boxer shorts to the floor. He starts stroking my breast. I open my eyes and his face is precariously close to mine. I can't recognize his bone structure in the shadows and I'm confused for a brief second. Has Charles's affection not seen me through the ups and downs of our marriage? Being close to Charles is a sensation that I crave, a method of outlasting the lost hours, the frictions over money, children, his work, my work, in the same order. I settle in. Sex has always worked between us. I surrender to his caress partly because I'm hooked on the sex, partly because I won't win this one. I want to be like other wives, where the passion fades first, not last.

His voice has that raspiness that I know too well in sleep or in the waking hours. “You are beautiful,” he says.

The moonlight is low through the largest window to the right of our bed, facing west. Charles doesn't appear to be in husband mode. He climbs on top of me and I place my hands on his neck and then on his biceps. I move toward him, hoping he means it about being beautiful since yesterday he remarked that I was tired and wan. My body yields to what was; I sell out in the midst of Charles's master plan. I bend into him as best I know how.

After Charles falls asleep and exhales a rhythmic, satisfied breath of a paramour, I have a sense that I'm on a sailboat that is rocked by the winds that blow in an unpredictable direction. I close my eyes and float on my back against the tide.

I decide it's okay to put our apartment on the market, a home that we both love, despite his complaints. Charles wins as if I have no free will. Or too much free will. I hand over the only existence I know, remembering a lesson of my grandmother's is that the future is preordained. Nothing is coincidence, each of us experiences many lives.

 

TWO

“
Elliot, New Jersey?”
Isabelle asks the next afternoon. We are at the Guggenheim to see the Zarina Hashmi exhibit
Paper Like Skin,
a retrospective of her work since the sixties. Having perused the show, we are now sitting in the restaurant, ordering espressos. The group—Isabelle, Cher, Gillian, and I—meet weekly to talk about our art, our lives, and artistic integrity. We usually choose women artists to view and then fantasize that women artists garner more and more authority.

“You aren't pregnant, are you, Lainie?” Cher asks. “You're not moving because you need more room in the city, right?”

“No, no, I'm not,” I say. “It's Charles. He has a new position.”

“Your keeper,” Isabelle says. “Every goddamn year Charles is more and more your keeper.”

“Am I missing something? Lainie is okay … she
is
working.” Gillian defends me since she has three children and is forever trying to finish a project herself.

“You shrunk
because
of Charles. Men are jealous,” Isabelle says. “They want wifey. Charles doesn't care what it costs you. You should have been a rock star.… I've watched the entire landslide—from day one Charles didn't grasp your talent or how close you were to fame.”

Cher turns to me. “Lainie, tell Gillian since she's only been with us for what … a decade? Isabelle and I were there at the Cosmo Gallery eighteen years ago. That's how we met—in a group show. Lainie was the youngest.”

Isabelle scrolls around on her iPhone. “Look, here's what they wrote about you, Lainie—I've googled your first review. ‘Lainie Smith transports water and natural elements in a style that she owns. In her largest work,
Trespassing: Driftwood,
her magical use of sea and shoreline creates an emotionally charged tale. This is shown to us as a hybrid of canvas, collage, and sculpture. We expect more thrills ahead from this vibrant young artist.'”

“Charles and George were medical residents at Columbia Presbyterian who came to the show. Roaming around with the serious collectors.” Cher clucks her tongue.

“Right, and Charles asked about my medium, the figures in my work—why the piece was massive.… He cupped his hand in mine and didn't let go. I told him the form encompassed the story—the theme was loneliness for women … women as travelers … boundaries, driftwood as a barrier … the sea, sky.…” I look at my three best friends, who are neither nostalgic nor convinced of Charles's early enthusiasm.

“Love is blind,” Isabelle says.

“You should have known then, right then,” Cher says. “He was just flirting with you.”

“I'm the one who let go of his hand—to meet the Greys. Patrons who launched young artists. I thought for sure they'd buy my work. Then the three of us went to the Odeon after the opening, and Charles and George materialized—they came to our table. Charles announced that he'd bought
Trespassing: Driftwood,
that he'd paid more than anyone else and the gallery owner couldn't refuse. George said that Charles would be piss-poor for the foreseeable future—they were both in their second year of residency,” I say.

“I called Charles a turd that night while Isabelle decided his purchase would
not
benefit Lainie's career,” Cher says.

“So she married him a year later,” says Isabelle. “You know the rest, Gillian. Lainie's masterpiece hangs in her living room, where no one except family members and friends see it.”

“I had my first child.… Somehow it was easier to have fewer accolades, fewer collectors chasing me. The smaller scale—I began my twelve-inch squares with flora and seashell frames, and while not exactly incendiary, they seemed more … manageable. I could do it while Tom was napping when he was a toddler and I was pregnant with Matilde.…”

“Lainie, your compromise is somewhere between a Hallmark greeting card and a lightweight painting,” Cher says. “You were the next Judy Chicago in size and scope.”

“I'm working.… I'm selling the miniatures on Etsy. I'm repped by a quiet gallery that gets the job done.… It's fine. Besides, the children…”

“Etsy? A form of paying for your sins.” Isabelle shakes her head.

“You might as well move to goddamn Elliot,” Cher says. “You'll have tons of clients there.”

“I hope that you'll come back for our group meetings,” Gillian says.

“I'm not so sure. Now I'm never more than a subway or cab ride away. Once it's a commute of over an hour in each direction, especially with the twins in a half day of kindergarten, it won't be easy.”

They are looking at me with pity in their eyes, and an unspoken fear creeps into my soul.

*   *   *

The time until we move to Elliot is like clamming in muck and mud, clams buried under your toes and the crabs nipping at your ankles. Finding a pediatrician and a dentist, moving the children's health records and school records, and giving away clothes and old toys becomes a furious nightmare that infiltrates my waking hours. Within a week of Charles's announcement we are house hunting sans children. A constant humidity trickles into the sterile, purified interior of Charles's vintage BMW those afternoons that we roam the streets of Elliot. His car is much neater than my vehicle—why wouldn't that be, given who drives the children around the city? Elliot is already etched in his mind while I despise looking at houses I never want to rent, let alone buy. I have two paintings due by the first of next month, both for private clients. I should be working.

Instead we arrive at these properties, drive forward, back up, and narrow it down to two minimansions, one Dutch Colonial and one Georgian. My imagination is filled with silhouettes and shadings of backyards for potential purchase. The Elliot broker, Christina, a woman about my age with blond hair, long legs, and stilettos, is extremely peppy and enthusiastic. We travel through the famous horse country. Every few acres produces another perfect house flanked by assorted flower beds, making its own statement. While she and Charles sit in the front of her car to chat endlessly about school systems, barbecues, the beauty of neighboring towns—Bedminster and Far Hills—the easy commute, I try to conjure up what people do in these houses all day. Christina pushes for us to skip the rental house and commit to buying now. At least Charles is sensible enough to reject that plan, to explain that the move is a process.

He is drawn to the elitism of Elliot, like a moth to a flame. It deludes him and eludes him—the high ground and sprawling if understated homes—and he believes that he has arrived. The many acres between houses—a breath of fresh air after apartment dwelling. The brew of doctors, nurses, administrators in a pristine hospital, saluting his surgeries.

“I don't want to live here,” I divulge to no one who could hear me or could change the course. “I love the city.”

Elliot has a small but real artistic community. On our second visit there, Charles and I walk an open field where local artists are showing. We check out the stalls together—the work is high quality and varied—portraits, landscapes, oils, watercolors.

“One day, I hope, Lainie, you have a one-woman show in Elliot. It could be a big deal,” he suggests as we walk around. I briefly wonder how it would be to live in a place that is tame enough to have your art count.

The windshield wipers make a soothing swish/swipe sound as we drive back from Elliot. I'm considering that Charles's thoughts today about big fish, small pond might be prophetic. Talent in the town, unlike the city, where it is cutthroat and competitive, where artist friends might or might not be enamored of your success. Is it possible that Charles is right? That in Elliot one stops pushing for a gallery and embraces the purity of painting without tension? Is it of another order than merely papering an art opening with faces you know? Charles surely wants me to believe it is so.

He who earns the gold rules, my grandmother always said. Although he has cornered me, Charles continues to cheerlead and cajole. He stirs the pot to get me to concede, to forget my favorite haunts, those that can't be replicated in the middle of New Jersey.

*   *   *

The last morning, when the movers come, I imagine being carried with my mouth taped shut, kicking and screaming, into their large, overstuffed truck. I imagine that I'll be craning my head for my final views of the river from the fourteenth floor of our apartment. Views that are soon to be forever erased.

I have purposely saved
Trespassing: Driftwood
to be packed last in order to avoid any problems or obstacles. I have asked repeatedly if the movers are assured about packing it up. Custom art movers who handle only paintings and sculpture and come highly recommended. “Make sure that Derrick, the head mover, is personally responsible for your work,” Isabelle said. “Use
only
Derrick,” Gillian recommended. “No one else at the company is as good or as careful.”

Weeks before the move, Derrick himself, freckled, strong, and tattooed, came up to the apartment with his foreman to measure the piece. He came back a second time with two assistants to measure and re-measure the angles. “What a singular shape, Mrs. Morris,” he said. “What a rare form. We'll design a custom container for it.”

Today Derrick and his crew are carrying several moving blankets. Two men climb up on ladders to carefully, expertly place them over the outer corners and top ledge of wood before they dislodge it. Two more movers set up two more ladders. The four men heave and sigh as they carefully remove the work, and as they do the driftwood, canvas, shells, and sea glass catch the sunlight. On the faded wall where Charles has showcased my work a dirty rim is left behind. A shrine to the career I might have had, the one that got away.

Then the piece is completely lifted and the heavy wooden frame begins to shatter. The wood continues to splinter, as if it cannot hold together if it isn't affixed to the living room wall, where it has hung facing the Hudson River these last nineteen years. The more that Derrick and his crew try to steady the unwieldy piece, the more it fractures and breaks. The shellacked algae fall on the floor and burst; the canvas appears too taut and then tears in the middle. Derrick and one other mover attempt to stop the motion when what is left of my work begins to disintegrate crazily. Huge slabs of the frame crash to the floor.

“Oh my God! Please! Stop!” I scream. “What are you doing? Stop walking like drunken sailors!”

The movers fall side to side against the walls, thumping into a door. Long jagged wood turns to a white mix that covers the entire floor. Derrick holds his hands up for his men—capable, strong, muscle builders—to halt. They make an attempt, then keep rocking with wedges of my once famous work in their arms, unable to halt the cycle.

“Stop! Stop!” I scream again. “Please!” I fall to my knees and start clutching my heart. “Oh my God, it's falling apart!”

“Mrs. Morris?” Derrick says. “We're doin' the best we can.”

Candy comes into the living room carrying her fiddle with Claire and Jack behind her. Tom and Matilde are in the bedroom wing and come in from the opposite door.