Between the Tides (4 page)

“Mom! Your work …
Trespassing: Driftwood
 … Mom!” Matilde slips and slides on the baby shells, fish bones, and smallest particles of sea glass. She is on the floor frantically collecting the pieces. She stands up and starts to skid, then steadies herself.

“Matilde, don't,” I say. “Please. I'll do it. I'll pick it up. Please don't, you'll get hurt.”

Candy starts to pick up the larger pieces with her free hand. Then Claire jumps around, missing the sharpest wood slats by an inch. Nails protrude—rusty nails.

“Claire, my darling girl. Go with Candy. Jack, you go too … into the kitchen. Candy will play a song, won't you, Candy?”

Candy stands up and steadies the fiddle on her left shoulder and lifts the bow to begin. “‘Ready to Run'?” She starts to play as if she is part of the Dixie Chicks. Claire and Jack hop up and down, mesmerized, and follow her away from my work of art, which keeps fracturing before my eyes. Matilde drops back to the floor and starts accumulating the shells and algae.

“Matilde, wait,” Tom says.

“Why, Tom? We have to help Mom.” The movers place it carefully on the floor while it keeps imploding. The largest part of driftwood on the bottom falls off and breaks into more withered wood chips.

“What do you want, Mrs. Morris?” asks Derrick. “At this rate, we won't be out of here until noon, and then to drive the truck to New Jersey…”

“I want to collect every bit, every sliver of wood and chipped paint and every shell … and put them in these boxes wrapped up in Bubble Wrap. The frame, although it has broken apart, can go in a big crate, Bubble Wrapped too. The bigger pieces can go in moving blankets. That was our original plan.”

“Mrs. Morris, I'm so sorry … your collage … is more or less ruined. I've never moved something that's in a state of disrepair,” Derrick says.

“No,” I say. “Not exactly ruined, not totally in disrepair.”

He holds up the large parts that have crumbled. “Mrs. Morris…” Minute seashells fall to the floor. Some of the shells are no bigger than a thumbtack. Larger shells have fallen into mounds. Then the paint turns to dust where Derrick places his rubber-gloved hand. A mermaid's face is eradicated.

“Pack it up, everything—all of it—whole or broken, please.”

With her hands Matilde has swept a high pile of debris. I point to it. “For example, what my daughter has collected could be put in a box marked ‘fragile.' I'll know what it is.”

An hour later they have finished packing up the shards of
Trespassing: Driftwood.
Our other possessions have been packed and ready for what seems days. I stand next to the fireplace and survey an apartment as empty and impersonal as it gets between former and future inhabitants. What has graced the mantel above is a pair of bronzed baby shoes for each child: Tom, Matilde, Jack, and Claire. Days ago they were packed along with my grandmother's candlesticks, the Lalique crystal flowers, the entwined Baccarat crystal hearts. The latter had been wedding gifts, the kind that make you wince once you are deep into the marriage.

Charles comes in from making early rounds at the hospital, an unannounced gesture on our moving day.

“Charles, you missed what happened.”

“I heard. I saw the other movers in front of the building. They're hanging around, waiting for the art movers to finish.”

“You heard.
That's it?
Charles … it's shattered … ruined.…”

“I'm sorry, Lainie. I find it very disturbing.” Charles is using his best “doctor delivers the news” voice. “Maybe, Lainie, the nature of the piece, the pounds of driftwood and the ornate frame…”

I don't respond. Charles takes his iPhone out of his pocket.

“Lainie, we have to go.” A foot on my soul. Has he forgotten that he bought my painting another life ago? How he had to have it, had to have me?

“I can't leave, not quite yet, Charles.”

I pat at the wall where the art was hanging. There is the bottom rim that has formed, about a foot wide, where the frame was. How hollow the room is without it. I move to the mantel and hold it so tightly that my fingers turn white. When I let go my life as I know it will be over and unredeemable. I should never have agreed to leave the city, to move to Elliot. What a grave error. A knowledge fills my being, a kind of slow drowning. Charles could have commuted instead of uprooting our entire family.

“Lainie?” I hold on more tightly. My fingers are peeled off the mantel and Charles's hand is on my arm. Not strong, only forceful. Not a guiding hand, just a male hand. Still I agree to go to the country, a pseudo-suburb, a place filled with greenery and ersatz lakes and fish ponds. A town that is rife with women who opt out of the workplace and are left to their own devices. I might succumb to life in an antiseptic hamlet if I paint my way to freedom while adoring my four children. Although my only hope is in making this gesture, I am abandoning my own skin.

 

THREE

After I slam down the trunk door of our Grand Cherokee in the sultry August heat, I weave down Columbus Avenue toward the Lincoln Tunnel. I stare longingly at every storefront instead of concentrating on the road. The city is being crushed behind me. I'm leaving my entire life without a compass for where I'm going or a guarantee that I can ever get back. My devastated
Trespassing: Driftwood
is a sign—a warning. No wonder I don't consider my marriage en route to a glistening town across the river to begin what Charles calls our new chapter.

Candy, bow in hand, is playing “It's Your Love” on her fiddle while I hand out gummy bears and small lemonade cartons. Each child settles in with an electronic babysitter—my iPad, a DVD, Tom's smartphone—in order to get through the hour-long trip. Matilde is in the front passenger seat. I resist talking to her about how the future is obscure, how regret is an awful emotion. We're too crammed in for it, the four children and Candy, who is squeezed into that third seat, which faces backward.

“Jesus, Lainie, I might be a martyr, but you're taking it too far,” Candy says. “My legs are going numb.”

“Candy, I'm sorry.… It's been quite an ordeal, in case you didn't notice.”

“I noticed all right,” she sighs. “Like there's nothing ahead for you. Or for me.”

I should say,
Let's not talk about it in the car;
instead I agree. “Right. Like everything has been taken away from us.”

“I'll say, Lainie,” Candy agrees. “I can't imagine how it's going to be.”

“Mom, if you pull over, I'll switch with Candy,” Matilde offers.

I decide. “Let's keep going since the traffic isn't heavy.”

“Yup, we're avoiding traffic on the way to nirvana,” Candy says.

Candy twists her head around. Her eyes meet mine in the rearview mirror.

“Let's not be negative, Candy.”

“Oh, sure, Lainie. Whatever you say.”

The rain starts, first a drizzle and then a downpour. The proof that the city dwellers are at the Shore is how I hurtle through the tunnel. Although I'm only going sixty-five, it feels like I'm speeding. The Jeep bumps along, the GPS guides us through the labyrinth of highways, the New Jersey Turnpike to I-78 West until finally we are on I-287 and near Elliot, “a grass-laden jewel of a town,” according to Charles. The rain becomes a deluge as we turn onto our street. “Maybe the rain counts as a car wash,” I say as we pull up under the portico. Then we face the house. “A Colonial, children. We'll see how we like it; it's a rental.” None of my children speaks.

As I start looking around for what might keep me from falling apart and weeping, I notice Charles walking down the garden path. How has he arrived ahead of us—was there a better, quicker road to Elliot, one that only true believers know about? I'm relieved that he's here to do what I won't and can't do—boss the movers around and get serious about how the furniture should be arranged. That's when he announces he has to get back to the city for one last day.

“Why bother to come, Charles?” I ask. Tom and Matilde wait for the answer too, knowing it has to be a good one.

“For you, Lainie. I mean, you were so unnerved about your work collapsing. I thought I'd come for moral support, if only for a few minutes.”

“Do you remember, Charles, when we first bought our apartment? You said that you'd oversee the hanging of
Trespassing.
And you did, and it stayed intact.… We only had two small children then and were only moving from downtown to uptown … not as dramatic as today.… It was gallant of you.…”

Charles is kicking at the dead shrubs and looking away. I'm not sure what he sees beyond except more shrubs, a slightly overgrown garden, and a property line. I know that he will tell me in a matter of minutes that it needs to be pruned since the last tenants paid no attention, particularly around the sides of the house.

“Dad, everywhere is so … grassy,” Matilde says.

“Yes, Matilde, plenty of grass. With plenty of charm. Give it a chance. Your mother is planning to, right, Lainie?” Charles is moving in my direction as he speaks.

We ignore our children for the briefest moment. Charles gathers me into his arms and lifts me to the front door. Claire starts clapping. “Pick me up next, Daddy, pick me up!”

Charles's mouth is on my ear. I'd like to wipe out the day and the place except for an exquisite piece of time with him.

“Lainie, do you have the key handy?”

The carrying continues. I laugh and he kisses me. The rain has stopped and the sun is shining. For a second we're in some black-and-white movie that Charles loves and I've never seen. Charles puts me back on the ground and takes a few steps toward the children. He hugs each of them quickly and moves in liquid motion toward his BMW. He disappears quickly, the mirage of Charles—husband, father, surgeon—is gone. I start fumbling for the key in my purse, which is a patent-leather bucket. Charles once announced there was an animal who died in my bag from food poisoning. He said that the amount of old Polly-O string cheese and opened bags of peanuts in the lining could kill our enemies.

We stand outside looking in and then I turn the key in the lock. Surreal how it seems that I've done it a thousand times before—that we live here.

“At last!” My voice sounds metallic. I open the door and we face a gigantic box, with trees and earth around it. No doormen, no elevator, a vast open space that's ours to fill.

“Where are the movers, Lainie?” Candy asks. “You know, the regular movers … Furniture, flat-screens…”

“I don't know. The whole day is confusing,” I say.

“They're jerks, those movers,” Tom says. One never knows whose side he's on.

“You're doing well, Mom,” Matilde says. She turns to Tom. “Elliot is very far away from water for her.”

Tom rolls his eyes. Then Jack runs through the empty front hallway in his sneakers and makes an echo.

“Tom?” I say. “Could you please go after Jack?”

Tom runs into the house and disappears, shouting, “Jack? Jack, come back.”

Candy picks up her bow and starts playing “Fisherman's Blues” and sings.

“Candy! Please!” I say.

She stops. “Matilde? Are you ready? You're next. Kind of like the haunted house at the rides down the Shore. C'mon.”

Matilde shakes her head and remains outside the door.

“All right then, I'll leave this open slightly.” Candy clicks the dead bolt and the heavy glossy wood door is left ajar as she walks into the unknown.

Matilde sits down next to Claire on the brick steps.

The rain starts again, a late summer rain, more stickiness. Sometimes I believe that Matilde would like to scream,
Shut up,
but that has never happened. Claire begins to cry, holding a small sketchbook that I've made for her. She opens it up to the last page.

“Who is that man? Who is that lady?” She begins to wind her “blankie” around her right thumb.

“Claire,” Matilde says patiently. “You and your stinky blankie. Maybe in Elliot you can start fresh, put away your blankie on a shelf.…”

“Won't.” Claire sucks harder on her blankie and looks at more sketches. She finds one with the ocean at sunset. Then she flips the page back to a portrait in charcoal, a portrait of a couple.

“Who is this, Matilde?” she asks.

“Let's see, Claire. Hold it up so I can see.” Claire pushes the sketchbook to Matilde.

“Claire, that's Mommy and Daddy in front of the new house. Our house. Mommy drew it for you and Jack last night, remember?”

Claire traces her right forefinger along the lines of the rendering, over and over in a circle. Then she falls asleep on the doorstep.

*   *   *

The first day at the house that we rented without understanding anything about living outside the city, I pay attention to the art movers, who are carrying what's left of my precious work of art into the basement. The other movers are being bossed around by Candy or left on their own. I care little about the rest of the belongings—clothes, coats, books, coffee cups.

“Please be careful, Derrick, please make sure nothing more happens. Please beware the boxes. The parts of the frame that you wrapped—can those please be brought to the living room?” I almost beg.

Candy and Matilde are in charge of the twins, who are sitting on the floor eating Twinkies—my concession for the afternoon.

“Matilde, please begin with the book boxes in the family room,” I say.

Matilde begins unpacking, almost an automaton.

“Candy? The plasma televisions? Can we get them up and running?” I ask.

Candy keeps playing any song that comes into her head, including “#41” by Dave Matthews. The youngest, cutest mover holds up the plasma on the wall to the right.