The Floating Feldmans

by Elyssa Friedland

  Elise wanted to spot her mother coming so she could pop out her lipstick for a fresh coat. The color in her bag was a matte pink called Fabulous Fuchsia—Annette had pressed three tubes into her hand the last time they were together, claiming she got them as free samples. Elise was resolved to start this trip off right, to give her mother the fewest possible reasons to criticize. After all, she was planning to ask for a fifty-thousand-dollar loan. A simple gracious overture toward her mother, like paying extra attention to her appearance, was hardly a sacrifice. It was like when Darius would approach her about staying out past curfew or for extra spending money and Elise would wonder why he hadn’t at least pulled up his pants first. Rachel was clever enough to present the best side of herself before making any requests. She’d say something like, “Yum, I love when you make lasagna, Mom!” before broaching the idea of going to Cabo with her friends for senior week. And even though Elise saw through it every time, it still worked. Darius perhaps had a higher IQ than Rachel, but her emotional intelligence smoked him every time.

  “Take those off,” rang a shrill voice through the general pandemonium.

  Elise spun around and came face-to-face with her mother, who, if she had smoke coming out of her mouth, couldn’t have looked more like a dragon.

  “Mom, I didn’t see you coming,” Elise said, flushing. So much for her cosmetic touch-up.

  “That’s because you’re in the wrong place. You told me to meet at the welcome center and this is the photo booth. Your father and I spent the last twenty minutes looking for you. We are exhausted and have been dragging around our luggage. Finally, I spotted Darius and we pushed our way over here. What are these awful sweatshirts you are all wearing? I will not have my age on display. Rachel—did you make these?”

  Rachel looked up from her phone. “Me? No way. I hate them.”

  “Good. You?” Annette addressed Darius, who offered a resounding head shake.

  “You did this?” she asked, turning back to Elise. “Why in the world would you think I would be happy having everyone on this ship know that I’m”—she dropped her voice in the way that people spoke about cancer—“seventy?”

  “This entire boat is full of people your age celebrating milestone birthdays. You’re much younger than that person over there.” Elise pointed out a man confined to a wheelchair who had two giant number balloons attached to his armrest. “He’s eighty-five.”

  “Well, at least when the wind blows he looks fifty-eight,” Annette cleverly retorted.

  “You should be proud of your age, Mom. Plus I thought you’d like having a memento from the trip. Look around at all the matching shirts. It’s a thing.” She pointed toward a group of young Indian women wearing tank tops that said Raja’s Mates of Honor and then to a multigenerational group of black men with hats that said The Baker Buoys.

  “We aren’t those kinds of people,” Annette hissed.

  “Grandma!” Rachel said, snapping to attention.

  “I didn’t mean that. I mean we Feldmans aren’t the kind of people who wear ridiculous matching clothing. With my picture, no less!”

  Elise realized how badly she’d miscalculated. She’d never get that money back. It wasn’t like all the other stuff she bought that she told herself she could, at least theoretically, return. There was no resale market for Annette sweatshirts. Her mother actually looked scary in the picture—the image Elise emailed to the vendor had to be stretched to fill out the backs and so all of Annette’s most striking features were magnified: the tented eyebrows, the streaks of rouge, the witchy, closemouthed smile. Not even the hipsters who dumpster-dived at Andy’s Cheapies would be comfortable wearing it ironically.

  “David—can you believe this?” Annette asked, looking at her husband. He shrugged.

  “Take ’em off, kids,” Elise said.

  “Thank God,” Darius said, slipping out of his and crumpling it into a ball.

  “And by the way, Mom, you went to the wrong place. If you look back at your text messages, you’ll see this is exactly where I said to meet.”

  “Don’t text me, Elise. I can barely see the screen. You know about my floaters.”

  “That’s ridiculous. You text me,” Elise argued. “Besides, we’d already agreed on this spot when we spoke on the phone.”

  “Mom,” Freddy cut in, and Elise suddenly realized he and Annette had yet to greet each other. “Happy birthday.”

  Annette took a noticeable step back to appraise him. An uncomfortable amount of silence passed before she spoke. Elise found she was holding her breath.

  “Thank you,” she said, and Elise heard the stiffness in her mother’s voice as if it were a freshly starched shirt. “This must be Nina?”

  “It’s Natasha,” Freddy’s girlfriend purred sweetly. If she was put out about the name mix-up, it didn’t show. “It’s an honor to meet you, Mrs. Feldman.”

  “An honor?” David chimed in, cocking his head quizzically.

  Elise shuddered. Why would her father need to ridicule Natasha and Annette in one breath, all before he’d even greeted his own grandchildren?

  “It’s just a real pleasure,” Natasha rephrased, straightening her back to its full dancer-like potential. Good girl, thought Elise, sensing suddenly that Natasha was shifting from foil to friend. They could gossip about celebrities poolside, develop inside jokes over martinis, and—Elise chided herself at the thought even as she felt herself getting giddy—shop together. At least she could watch Natasha shop. It would be like viewing performance art, seeing someone with a perfectly proportioned body try on clothes, fastening buttons over sculpted abs and revealing the absolute lack of need for a bra. Maybe, just maybe, someone would confuse them for sisters over the course of the week.

  “Shouldn’t we head for the gangway?” Elise said to her mother, unable to watch this introduction unfold for another minute.

  Annette looked at her watch and cast a look of panic.

  “Oh, yes, we’d better. Since you told your father and me to meet in the wrong place, we are way behind schedule. We can forget priority seats for tonight’s cabaret.”

  “Try to ignore it, babe,” Mitch whispered, squeezing Elise’s elbow gently. “It’s almost happy hour.” Connellys coped with each other by knocking back Jameson shots. The Feldmans, it seemed, were still looking for their salvo.

  TEN

  Annette had eyes on her children for a full five minutes before she went over to them. David didn’t see them. He was too busy looking at the ship. Her husband was difficult to impress, but she could see the boat literally took his breath away. They had been married for forty-eight years and so she knew when she saw David’s eyes darting back and forth that he was counting the portholes and the levels, calculating how many rooms the ship had, the amount of gas it required to glide across the ocean, how many pounds of bread sat in the kitchen waiting to be devoured. He was a numbers guy, a chemistry major in college, the perfect candidate for a career in medicine. Her husband prayed at the altar of facts and figures, even when it came to family. For example, Elise had studied for nineteen years straight (assuming the real learning started in kindergarten) and they had expended three hundred and eighteen thousand dollars on her education (a staggering sum, Annette conceded). How many times had she heard David repeat those numbers to her? What could she respond in the face of the cold, hard evidence that their investment had not produced dividends—at least not the kind David anticipated, a child to hang up her shingle next to his?

  From a distance, Annette made out Elise and Freddy hugging. Her heart should have been surging with joy at the sight of her grown children embracing, and yet it made her nervous. What did that embrace mean? Was it commiseration over having to be on this trip? Were they whispering to each other about her? All children seemed to have complaints about Mom and Dad. It was what kept therapists in business. She considered that if her children were united on
the trip, it would be impossible to play one off against the other. Maybe the two of them had come to the same conclusion and they were forging an early alliance. Suddenly, embarking on the cruise felt less like starting a vacation than signing a waiver to compete on Survivor.

  Her grandchildren too loomed in the distance, fuzzy outlines of young adults she ought to know better. She wondered if Rachel and Darius were excited for the trip. They were staring down at their phones, like all the other young people Annette came across, studying their devices while crossing the street or holding up the line at the supermarket. Given their attachment to the internet, she imagined her grandchildren had used at least a few minutes of their nonstop time online to Google the ship and see everything it had to offer for their age group. Discos with DJs they supposedly would have heard of. A teen pool where they wouldn’t have to see flesh that was riper than eighteen years of age. A bouldering excursion specifically for young people.

  That was what those little devices were for, wasn’t it? Looking up information. Finding things out in advance so nothing was left as a surprise anymore. It had been so much easier to buy off Rachel and Freddy when they were sheltered little kids who hadn’t seen and done every last thing on earth. A lollipop was received with a goggle-eyed smile and a pillowy kiss. A twenty-dollar bill for a birthday was treated like precious gold. Now these teenagers were inaccessible. Certainly to her, an old lady, but also probably to Elise and Mitch. She wondered if Mitch’s parents had anything to do with their grandchildren now that they were grown up. How Annette had hated to hear little Darius sing the praises of his other grandmother’s fruitcake when he was a small boy. Couldn’t that woman serve these children anything else besides a Christmas treat? Annette wasn’t even ashamed of her base competitiveness. Grandparents inherently came in rival pairs. To pretend otherwise was just for show.

  Elise and Freddy pulled apart and Annette heard herself exhale, the breath leaving her body in a sharp cloud of anxiety.

  “You okay?” David asked, taking notice of her for the first time since he’d seen the ship.

  “Yes, yes. I should be asking you that,” she said, offering him a bottled water from her bag, which he accepted. “You should be wearing your baseball hat, by the way. The sun is very strong.” She pointed at his bald head to make the point. He wasn’t hairless as a result of his drug therapy. David Feldman and his hair had parted company when he was in his early forties, but Annette never minded. Who needed him walking around the hospital with those gorgeous dark curls when any one of the young nurses, cute and pert in their starchy whites, would gladly take her place?

  “I’m fine,” he said curtly. “Odds are low that I will develop a second form of cancer. Remember, we agreed not to discuss anything on the boat, so I don’t want you fussing over me.”

  “But the children aren’t even around,” Annette protested. “They’re over . . .” She was about to point them out to David but realized she still wasn’t ready to approach. She had so many misgivings about this trip and couldn’t remember what had made her so damn determined to take it just a month ago. There was little room for upside here. Even if miraculously they all got along reasonably well for the week and shared a few laughs, the minute the boat docked upon return they would all retreat to their own lives, like tenants in an apartment building who briefly interact in the elevator. Elise would be sucked back into her life in California, tending to Darius and visiting Rachel at school. They’d have their weekly call, typically on Sundays when Mitch was at the office and the kids were busy with friends. It rarely skidded below the superficial. Elise would update her on the goings-on of the children and Annette would tell Elise about some local intrigue, like a shop owner arrested for tax fraud or a neighbor caught cheating. They both feigned mild interest, and it was obvious to Annette that Elise was always doing something else on the phone. She could hear the click clack of the laptop’s keyboard or the buzz of the laundry machine. She was no better. While Elise told story after story about the progress of Darius’s plantar fasciitis, Annette would be flipping through a magazine or, more recently, rereading articles on drug trials.

  Freddy would go back to doing whatever the hell it was he was doing in Colorado. She feared pressing him for the specifics, only noting with relief that he hadn’t asked her and David for money even once in six years—this after years of cash mysteriously walking off from her wallet when he was still under their roof. Which meant he’d somehow landed on his feet. Sometimes he described himself as a financier. Other times he mentioned the farming industry. It made little sense and Google was of no use. The latest theory she and David had devised was that he was leasing farm equipment and they just hoped he hadn’t gotten sucked into another pyramid scheme. About a decade ago, Freddy had been selling juicers door to door which were supposed to retain the vitamin content of the produce during the blending process. He took payment for a few hundred orders, which he turned over to his boss, and then the equipment and his cut of the sales never arrived. Who had to cover the losses? You guessed it. If there was a harebrained scheme around, Freddy Feldman had a nose for it. For what it was worth, no matter what either of her children were doing to occupy their time in California and Colorado, it didn’t involve her.

  Elise had never needed Annette, even from day one. She’d tried in earnest to breastfeed her, but no matter what, Elise would simply not latch. After a week of this, Elise sucking for a moment or two before spitting out the nipple as if it was rotten, Annette moved to formula. And then anyone could give the bottle to Elise—the nanny, David, any friends who came over to visit—and so Annette became simply part of a cycle, no more important than the next cog in the wheel. In fact, David seemed to have a more natural touch with the placement of the rubber nipple in Elise’s mouth. Nothing changed as Elise grew. She was content to be left with any babysitter, poured her own cereal from the time most children were first forming syllables, and never once asked for help with homework. It was like raising a ticking time bomb, Annette dreadfully waiting for that final dose of self-sufficiency to kick in before being put out to pasture.

  But Freddy? He was needier than a week-old puppy as a child, which made Elise’s independence all the more startling. He’d come first and so Annette expected all her babies to be wailing, colicky messes demanding to be held at all hours of the night. As he grew, he required her help with everything. His meat had to be cut into infinitesimal bites or he’d reject them. She had to read to him for hours in the evening or he couldn’t fall asleep, and by middle school she was color-coding his folders so he wouldn’t misplace his homework (though he still often did). It was only in high school that Annette felt herself getting eclipsed by the increasing role of friends in her son’s life. And what friends they were! He didn’t seek out the varsity letter wearers or the brainiacs like his little sister. No, Freddy gravitated to the misfits, the ones with the blue hair that made people wonder, Where are the parents? I’m right here, she wanted to shout when she felt someone judging her son. This is not my fault. Do you know how many times I had to read Harold and the Purple Crayon each night? After he had sailed long enough, Harold made land without much trouble. She could still recite the entire book by heart.

  What did it matter, though, how much these children had needed her back then? Now they both found her useless, an extra piece of baggage. If they thought of her at all. She asked herself for what had to be the hundredth time why she had planned this trip. To prove that she was still a mother as she steeled her way into a new decade and her ovaries hadn’t released eggs in twenty years? To know that the Feldmans were still a unit, even if only for a week, like a piece of Ikea furniture that you know won’t last forever, though you still screw in the last bolt with optimism? Her mind was operating like a runaway train since David’s diagnosis. And what do you do with a runaway train? Apparently, redirect it to a slow-moving boat.

  “Let’s go,” she said to David, pretzeling an arm through his
and guiding him toward the children. For her marriage she was eternally grateful, but also painfully afraid as she knew now more than ever how precious their time together was. When she had found herself drowning in a pity bath thinking about the distance between herself and her grown children over the years, Annette took solace in the partnership she had with David. And while she loved her children more than her husband—in that fierce, nature over nurture, primal kind of way—she had to admit the volume of hours she spent with her husband far exceeded the time with her children. Nobody she knew—and she did comb through her mental Rolodex in consideration of the issue—seemed to have equally close and fulfilling relationships with both their spouse and their children. So if she had to choose with whom to have a more natural and comfortable rapport, it wasn’t so terrible it was the person she was growing old with. Or rather hoping to grow older with. She pictured the rows of pill bottles that now lined their vanity, the dull amber slapped with all those extra warnings in pastels making her nauseated within seconds. But she shouldn’t complain. She wasn’t the one swallowing a dozen horse pills three times a day, feeling her body ravaged from the inside out.

  As they inched closer to the throngs of passengers amidst which stood her children, Annette stopped dead in her tracks. She was suddenly confronted with a grouping of funhouse mirrors and in them she saw her face, prismatically distorted, with comically big hair and stripes of rouge on her cheeks. But it wasn’t a mirror. Her face, a caricature-like version of it, was staring at her from the backs of a half dozen sweatshirts. Annette squinted to make out the writing. Happy Birthday, Annette . . . 70 Years Young!