Sugar Time

by Jane Adams

  “Have you?”

  “Of course not, but the aversion is genetic, like Tay Sachs disease.”

  We swam and ate and made love, and everything was perfect until Alex announced that we were going scuba diving. “You don’t have to be certified to try it,” he said. “It’s a resort course: the instructor shows you how to use the equipment and takes you down and stays with you every minute. And I’ll be there, too.”

  “There is stuff in that ocean to whom I look exactly like dinner,” I protested.

  “These are fringe reefs on this island, we’re in very shallow waters, there are no currents to attract big fish of any kind or nutrients in the water that would feed anything larger than a parrotfish,” he replied. “There’s never been a shark sighted within two hundred miles. It’s like a huge coral garden swimming pool down there.”

  “What if the breathing thing doesn’t work? What if I run out of air?”

  “We won’t go below one atmosphere—that’s 33 feet. Even if you had a total equipment failure, which is highly unlikely, you could blow and go—one exhale and you’re up, there’s no excess nitrogen in your bloodstream to worry about, besides we can always buddy breathe, that’s when you share your air with your dive partner—Sugar, don’t give me that look, just try it. If you hate it you never have to do it again.”

  “Do I have to do it at all?”

  “I’ll be real sorry if you don’t. But not as sorry as you will. It’s an amazing world under water—you don’t experience it the same way you do snorkeling. And you know how much you love that.”

  As we’ve already covered, physical bravery is not exactly my strong suit. Once I went rafting with some people I didn’t know very well, and by the time we stopped to eat our lunch on the bank of the river, I’d had it. We weren’t in killer rapids, but even so, I was frightened by the fast-moving white water. Even worse, I’d been stuck without a paddle, literally, in between a couple that fought the whole way down the river. “You promised me this was going to be fun, and it’s not fun!” she whined, and even though I didn’t particularly like her, she was saying what I would have said if I’d thought of it first. I decided I was far enough away from high school not to still have to play “Chicken!” and besides, back then I was practically the sole support of two minor children. After lunch I hiked out to the road and hitched a ride to the take-out spot where we’d left the car. The old man in the truck who picked me up said the river was exceptionally high and fast for that time of year, hadn’t I seen the notices posted at the place we’d put in? Or heard about the raft that had capsized the day before? “They only found one body so far,” he added ominously.

  “Diving’s absolutely the opposite of rafting,” Alex said stubbornly. “You’re not going fast, you’re not out of control—two things I know you hate—and it hardly takes any effort at all. It’s more like meditating than anything except climbing. And I know I’ll never talk you into that.”

  “You’ve got that right,” I replied. But I had to admit I was intrigued. Swimming was the only sport I was good at, the ocean was as warm as the pool, and I trusted Alex not to let anything bad happen to me.

  It was thrilling. Scary, especially once my head was fully underwater and I was breathing through a mouthpiece, but it was so beautiful beneath the surface that my fear floated away with my air bubbles. It was a world Walt Disney might have dreamed up—a magic kingdom crowded with brightly colored fish with silly expressions on their faces and lacy coral fronds waving lazily in the barely noticeable current. Being weightless was amazing, especially when Genevieve, the pretty dive master, held my hands in hers while we did a tandem somersault in the water. She trailed behind Alex and me as we finned slowly along the wall of the reef, taking in the sights. He guided my index finger into the center of a gorgeous white-tipped purple anemone guarded by tiny orange striped clown fish, and I touched its quivering center for a half a second before it closed up, marveling at how soft and throbbing and alive it was; that night, when Alex whispered that I felt the same way, I guided his tongue to my clit and closed its lips around it with my fingers.

  The next day I was eager to dive again—“You might as well get certified, as long as you’re here,” Alex suggested. Every day I felt more relaxed in the water, hovering nearly motionless above the reef while it revealed its secrets—a school of butterfly fish, a tiny sea horse clinging to an antler coral, nudibranks and French angels and a spiffy little fish I nicknamed Armani because it was midnight blue with neat white stripes on its dorsal fins. And just before we left the island, I let Alex talk me into doing a night dive.

  “The reef is different at night,” he told me. “The plants turn into animals and the animals turn into plants—you’ll see.” It was dusk when we got into the water; our headlights and flashlights intensified the colors of the reef’s inhabitants as we sank into the increasing darkness.

  The soft coral was alive with hungry little mouths, even formations that had looked like solid rock when we’d dived them that morning. Parrotfish dozed motionless in filmy, cobwebby cocoons spun out of their body; when larger fish approached, they snapped to attention like soldiers caught napping on parade, but once the danger was past they spun new ones and went back to sleep. A lobster swam out from its hole under a stand of stag horn coral that looked like a Georgia O’Keefe painting with water instead of desert in the background, blinking its beady little red eyes at us. And then an octopus floated in into view: trapped in my headlight, it looked even more startled than I was.

  I took such a huge gulp of air I would have bobbed to the surface like a cork if Alex hadn’t grabbed me and yanked me back down. He gave me the “are you okay?” sign, and when I nodded affirmatively, he looked relieved. The octopus didn’t move at all—it stayed right where it was, regarding me through its slit-shaped eyes while I exhaled and concentrated on regulating my breathing, which sounded in my ears like a jet engine.

  Nietzsche was right, I thought wildly—sometimes the abyss stares back. My heart probably didn’t stop for more than a few seconds, but it wasn’t until the octopus finally drifted away that it seemed to resume its normal rhythm. We hadn’t been down very long, but by now it was fully dark and I was more than ready to get out of the water. I didn’t want Alex to notice how panicky I was so I hugged my arms around my body, the signal for “I’m cold,” and then pointed up. He nodded and we followed our bubbles slowly to the surface, where we struck out for the pier. At the ladder he took my fins and tank: “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “I’m fine,” I assured him. “I just got cold, I was ready to come up.”

  “I still have almost a full tank—would you mind if I went back down for a while?”

  “Go ahead,” I told him. “I’ll see you back in the room.”

  That night I dreamed I was swimming underwater naked, without an air tank or a regulator. It was dark and deep and silent, but then I spied a pod of whales. They looked like Orcas, so transparent I could see right through their enormous bodies, which appeared to be lit from within. They paid no attention to me, even when I swam inside of them, where I floated in a formless void of white nothingness. I lingered there peacefully for what seemed a long time. I swam in, out and around them, trying to get them to notice me, even staring into their dark, lightless eyes, but they didn’t blink. They were the universe, and I was nothing to them, so inconsequential I didn’t matter. And then I woke up and reached for Alex in the darkness of our room.

  We left the island the next day. As the plane rolled to a stop at Kennedy, Alex turned to me and said, “Whatever happens, I’ll remember this trip for the rest of my life.”

  “What’s all that about? Are you planning to scale Mt. Everest or fly into space or jump across the Grand Canyon on a motorcycle? Is there something you’re not telling me?”

  “Nothing like that,” he said. “But you never know.”

  I only half-heard him—I was too busy listening to the messages on my cell phone from Sandro, Nelly an
d Robin. The network loved the pilot and had ordered six more episodes. My vacation was over.

  The studio was fine for short visits but it was too small to live in for an extended period of time. Although the house needed a major overhaul, I settled for securing it against the next rainy season, which meant replacing missing roof tiles, fixing the gutters, and painting the faded stucco exterior.

  Vaguely mission-style, the house had arched windows echoed inside by arched openings between the living room, dining room and kitchen—a mini-hacienda situated on a relatively flat half acre on the east side of the canyon overlooking the valley.

  I hadn’t inhabited it for more than a decade, and at first it felt like being the only remaining member of the original cast in a TV show that was a big hit in the beginning but ran its course after a few seasons. There were good memories in this house; we’d brought our babies back from the hospital to the sunny nursery, celebrated birthdays and anniversaries and Thanksgivings around the big oak table in the dining room, marked the kids’ heights on the kitchen door as they grew, sat up late at night with friends who camped out in the spare room between jobs or deals or love affairs. But there were bad ones, too, like the night I got down on my knees and clutched Ted’s legs, begging him not to leave, or the morning I found a hundred dollar bill on the hall table, left there by a guy I brought home after he picked me up in the bar at the Beverly Wilshire the night my divorce was final—I’m still not sure which was the greater humiliation, having him believe I was a hooker or not thinking I was worth more than that. One day when I was putting groceries away I flashed on the day Ted got married again, when I sat down at the kitchen table and finished off two SaraLee cheesecakes by the time the kids got back from the wedding. I didn’t stop stuffing my face until I’d gained thirty pounds—then suddenly one day it was over, as inexplicably as the time Paul stopped talking.

  That was when Ted’s father died; it wasn’t until shiva was nearly over that we realized Paul hadn’t said a word since the day his beloved zaidie collapsed on the sixth green at Hillcrest with a massive coronary. Years later, after Paul manifested his strange sensing ability too many times to chalk it up to coincidence, we finally figured it out: when Irv died, Paul, who was only five, probably felt his “thing” for the first time. It must have scared the words right out of him. The doctors were beginning to say that awful A word when he climbed into bed with us one night when I had a killer migraine and said, “Mommy, your head hurts me in mine,” as clear as a piper’s call. We made him say it again, and then sing us the whole alphabet song and recite itsy bitsy spider—when Ted muttered, “I’m going to sue those assholes,” Paul giggled, and he went around saying it for days.

  The house was full of memories like that, and as much as I’d once loved living in it, I knew that even if you could go home again, sometimes it was better not to. It was definitely time to move on. Once the show was on surer footing, I’d find a new place. Not a house, I didn’t need all those empty rooms, but maybe a loft in some revitalized part of town or a condo on the beach where I wasn’t surrounded by my past—at least, not the parts of it I’d just as soon forget.

  Hallie started looking at real estate for me, even though I told her I was too busy to think about it. “I know what you need, I’ll do all the prescreening and all you’ll have to do is sign the check,” she said. “The longer you wait, the more everything’s going to cost.”

  “How much higher can prices get? Besides, I’m not going to see any serious money from the show for a while.”

  “So what? I could move this place tomorrow for close to two mil.”

  “You’re kidding! The house isn’t worth anything near that much.”

  “Maybe not, but the property is. A lot this size in this neighborhood? I’ve got two buyers who’ve been looking for a teardown around here for months. Even with capital gains tax, you could buy a fabulous apartment and have plenty left over.”

  I suddenly felt much more secure. “I’ll think about it,” I promised her. “Just let me get the show on the road first.”

  Making a series is much more difficult than shooting a one-off. Even though we weren’t due to go on air until after the World Series was over, we had to have three episodes in the can by then and be rolling on the others. During the day I sat in endless meetings, saying yes, no and maybe to various requests and pitches. At night I ate takeout at the kitchen table and wrote, rewrote and edited. By the time I fell into bed at night, I was too tired to sleep: Instead, I stayed awake worrying about what I hadn’t accomplished that day and why Alex was being so distant and uncommunicative.

  He didn’t drop off the radar entirely, but his phone calls and letters were brief and perfunctory—when we talked, he seemed preoccupied, although he said he wasn’t, he was just tired. “I was in Houston for a few days,” he said one night. “Went to see Chris.”

  “Really? What brought that on?”

  “Oh, I guess I just figured it was time,” he said. “Met his wife. A nice girl. She was a lot friendlier than he was. Evan came, too. He’s always been easier than his brother.”

  “So you had a whole family reunion.”

  “Yeah, I guess you could say that.”

  “How come? Not that it’s not a good thing, it is, but why now?” I asked.

  “Why not?” he said, and changed the subject.

  “Maybe he went to tell them about you,” suggested Carrie.

  “Then why wouldn’t he have taken me along?”

  “He could just be preparing them.”

  “For what? It’s not like I’m moving in with them. Or him, either. Not yet, anyway.”

  That, like the M word, had never come up between us, which had been fine by me until now, when he was showing all the signs of a man backing away from a relationship.

  “Or maybe he’s just busy. You don’t sell a big company in a few weeks, Sugar. Cut him some slack.”

  “I think he’s losing interest,” I told Suzanne a few days later. “I can always tell when a man’s getting ready to dump me.”

  “No you can’t,” she said. “Remember that guy you were so sure was blowing you off when he stood you up the weekend we all went to New Orleans for the jazz festival? And then you found out he got run over on Madison Avenue?”

  “He still could have called,” I said. “They have phones in the emergency room.”

  “I wonder what I did wrong this time?” I asked Peggy.

  “Why do you always think it was something you did?”

  “Because it usually is and I usually do.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” she said. “Stop jumping to the wrong conclusions like you always do.”

  “Maybe I should get caveat emptor tattooed on my forehead. Or abandon hope, all ye who enter here on my snatch,” I said glumly.

  “Is that shtick or self pity?” she said. “It’s entirely possible that there’s something going on with him you know nothing about.”

  “Or someone,” I said glumly.

  “You don’t have any reason to think that about him.”

  “I don’t have any reason not to, either.”

  I could hear her sigh. “You’re doing it again, aren’t you?”

  “Doing what?”

  “Feeling like nobody could possibly love you, and then acting that way.” Since Peggy got to be a life coach instead of a psychoanalyst, she’s a lot more direct. “Welcome to managed care and skyrocketing malpractice,” she said when she tossed out her couch. “I can’t make a living doing analysis anymore. Besides, I hate waiting for my patients to get those moments of insight—they take so long and they’re so infrequent. Coaching is much more efficient—you see what the problem is and tell them how to fix it.”

  “Just like that, huh?”

  “Almost. Nobody’s got time or money to relive their entire childhood any more. They just want to stop making the same mistakes over and over.”

  “And that’s where you come in, huh?”

  “Right-o-m
undo.”

  Peggy doesn’t try to shrink me, she just loves me—“Unworthy though you are,” she says dryly—but when I’m stuck in my own mishegas, she does what she can to yank me out of the quicksand. “You always do the same thing when you think a man’s planning to break up with you,” she said that day “Premature evacuation.”

  “That’s my line, get your own.”

  “Although I know it’s hard for you to believe, much less consider, maybe it’s not about you. Maybe you’re the last thing on his mind right now.”

  “Is that supposed to be the good news? Because if it is, it doesn’t make me feel any better.”

  It wasn’t just that I was an emotional basket case—I wasn’t feeling all that great either. You know how it is when the car develops a strange noise and you don’t know what it is so you ignore it, and then there’s another one, and you ignore that, too, but you get nervous every time you take it on the freeway, what if it just stopped or blew up during rush hour on the 405? That’s what was happening to me. I fainted on the set once, and sometimes I asked Robin to take over because I had to go lie down in my office. There were a couple of mornings when I jut couldn’t drag myself out of bed and make it to work. And more than once when I got to Jessie and Zach’s house I couldn’t summon up the strength to make it up the stairs, so I backed out of the driveway and went home.

  I was pretty sure whatever was wrong could be cured by doing what Kaplan told me to: eat regular, well balanced meals, not hot dogs from Pink’s on the way home or a couple of Krispy Kremes and a triple espresso before I got to the office; exercise every day, even though I left Laurel Canyon too early and when I got home it was too late and I was too tired to swim. And of course, best of all as far as Kaplan as concerned, quit my job.