This Side of Water

by Maureen Pilkington

  It was an unspoken rule with the men, and they joked about it every year. If they didn’t grab their own wives at midnight, they’d be in deep shit. And, here was Marie, making sure she would have Dan for the final number.

  They took their places on the wooden dance floor that still felt slippery after the pounding it had taken. The lights started to flicker; Dan figured there was an electrical problem due to the ice storm.

  Shane started his orchestra so gently he looked like he was feeling something round and fragile in the air. The music melted into “My Funny Valentine,” a song that made Marie cry.

  Dan led Marie into the dance, and they found themselves close to Fay and Chick. Fay slid her foot toward Dan for his approval. “Festive,” was all he managed to say, his voice more baritone than usual. Friends danced past, but Dan was not feeling sociable. He chalked it up to the New Year’s blues. Marie’s head felt lifeless in the crook of Dan’s neck as he focused on the picture windows, trying to avoid knocking into the couples swirling around them.

  After Marie stopped coming into the Dig to help out, Dan tried to imagine her days at home. He pictured her with her sugary black coffee and a cigarette, scanning The New York Post and the crossword puzzle, shaving her legs with his razor, arranging a bridge game with her friends. She had a mind for cards and could play for hours on end. Around five o’clock in the afternoons, he would be sure to find her on the couch reading the latest Harold Robbins.

  Throughout the night he heard “Dan-Dan” in melodic bursts. He plastered a half smile on his face, so he would not have to talk to every Blue Tip member who called his name. A woman would grab his hand, press him tenderly in the chest, or lift her knee so that he could see, and approve, her formal shoe.

  The countdown started. Marie clapped hard on each second, the noisemaker shoved into her velvet belt. Shane used a sparkling wand, conducting the last minute of 1969.

  The floor’s vibrations swam up Dan’s legs. The members’ faces reminded him of kid-style pancakes with embedded chocolate chip eyes, cherry noses and fat strips of whipped cream lips. He felt like he was going to fall.

  Marie put her arm around his waist, and her head under his arm. “Danny,” she said. “Gotcha.”

  Shouts of “Happy New Year!” traveled the room. The red-faced members blew their noisemakers and threw confetti.

  Shane’s guys kicked in with “Auld Lange Syne.” Everyone clumped together, hugging and swaying. Marie let go of Dan for a moment, so she could toot her New Year’s horn.

  Dan held his wife close for the midnight dance, using her more as support than a dance partner. He pressed his hand on her back and moved her into the core of him, snug against his dampness. As he stepped into a gentle twirl, letting Marie glide under his heavy arm, he felt the floor rising up to his face.

  “Let’s go,” he whispered in her ear.

  She tilted her head in a “must we” expression, but let Dan lead the way.

  At the coat-check, Dan and Marie waited patiently. They were the first to leave, so the girl made a fuss about finding their coats. Dan noticed the library doors were open; he had an urge to walk in and sit by the fire. The room was so dark you could barely make out the faces on the portraits lining the walls. The library seemed to belong to an estate somewhere in the English countryside, not here at Blue Tip.

  Dan helped Marie with her coat. They seemed to shrink in full cuts that practically swept the floor, even Dan with his large frame.

  The valet took forever to get the car; when he finally came into the lobby, his hair glistening, he warned the Cowleys that “it was an ice skating rink out there.”

  “Let’s wait, Danny. What’s the point?” Marie looped her hand under her husband’s arm.

  “Actually, we’re better off leaving now. The roads will be less crowded.”

  Marie looked up the wide staircase that circled the clubhouse. “Remember?”

  Dan remembered Francesca Barry’s stilettos, but was surprised that Marie had brought it up. Perhaps it was the liquor. Or, she didn’t want to go home and this was how she got back at him. Francesca, a striking but loud guest at a previous New Year’s ball, had led him up those steps, pushed him through the first door they came to, and fell upon him, in a dark room filled with empty cartons and table linens. She had joked about his large body parts before pulling his nose down to where she’d wanted it to be.

  Dan cringed, recalling how “should auld acquaintance be forgot…” had seeped under the doorway that night as he moved over her.

  Dan was a slow and careful driver. The ride back to their apartment in Larchmont wasn’t long, but it might take an hour in this weather. He could not wait to be back in his own surroundings. He loved their building, a bit of old world in a quiet neighborhood. Dan had had the opportunity to go in as a partner and buy the building before real estate skyrocketed in Westchester, but he’d been afraid to take the chance. He wanted to kick himself in the ass every time he thought of the opportunity he’d let slip by.

  Dan took the main roads with caution. He felt the backend of his Caddy fishtail and wished he’d put sacks of sand in the trunk as he had been accustomed to doing every winter. He imagined he was flying, the tail of his car being held by a boy with a string.

  Marie fiddled with the radio stations, then turned up the volume.

  Guy Lombardo. This was the final, most depressing straw for Dan. He fantasized about sitting in his recliner in the living room that looked out on the balcony—his runway—where he often took off on a carpet ride into the empty, yet promising sky.

  Dan gripped the wheel tightly, wondering how Marie could have fallen asleep between the sound of the radio and the sheer intensity of driving on ice. But then why should she worry, too?

  Dan lightly tapped the gas pedal to keep his wheels rotating. He could see a car in his rearview mirror, the driver keeping his distance; Dan was grateful for his care. He couldn’t make out a person behind the wheel, and thought perhaps it was a Dan-Dan mobile, carrying Dan’s own conscience that would never stop following him around in 1970.

  In fact, Dan felt he was the only one in the world. Dan and Guy Lombardo, together carting Dan’s sleeping wife—his wife who now wore curls. He began to perspire and skillfully opened Marie’s pocketbook with one hand to get a cigarette. He put one in his mouth and let it hang.

  When Dan saw the long green awning of his building he felt a profound relief, as though an outstanding prayer had been answered. He pulled up to the entrance to let Marie out so she wouldn’t have to walk too far.

  “Honey, we’re home,” he said loudly over the music.

  Marie plumped up her hair, half asleep. She unfastened her seat belt and buttoned her coat up to the neck.

  “You go up and get in your cozies—and don’t slip. You’re not wearing your totes.” Dan knew Marie would never be caught dead in totes with his business and all.

  Too sleepy to operate her dry mouth, Marie patted her husband’s hand. She let herself out of the car, slamming the door with all her strength, never noticing the bottom of her coat was caught.

  Dan immediately put his foot on the gas pedal with his usual energy and the car began to swing back and forth like a woman’s backside. He gave it more gas, feeling confident in the nearly empty parking lot, and the car took off in a full tailspin. He was on a joy ride and pressed the lighter on the dashboard so he could smoke his cigarette and ring in the New Year. In the safety of his own backyard, he finally felt in a party mood. It was his turn to have fun. The holiday was over and Dan was going to play a game with himself to celebrate.

  He concentrated, trying to name the unfamiliar number. It was Guy Lombardo all right, but what was the song? Dan took a deep drag off his cigarette, momentarily distracted by a thumping that sounded against the side of the car. He felt cheated. Now he actually felt the vibrations of an impact through his feet, but only fo
r a moment and then it was gone.

  Dan turned up the volume, finally recognizing the song, “Moonlight Becomes You.” Lombardo did such a great job ruining the old standard that it had thrown him off. He parked his car in his assigned space, got out, and walked gingerly on the black ice. For a big man, he was light on his feet. Now he felt delightfully like a feather being pushed around by a brand new 1970 wind, without one resolution to contend with.

  As Dan walked through the lot toward the apartment’s entrance, he noticed a shoe, a woman’s shoe, demure in the heel. He picked it up and brought it to his nose for its scent. It was Marie’s shoe, no doubt about it. Dan’s good nature returned as he realized his mind was playing tricks on him, as it had been all night. He held the shoe in his hand, truly believing it was a figment of his imagination, and flung it into the darkness as he waited for it to fall and slide into the New Year.

  TURQUOISE WATER BEHIND HIM

  It was October, but Margo was still wearing short summer skirts. After letting herself in the front door, she walked through the sprawling horseshoe-shaped ranch house and down the curved hallway toward Paul’s bedroom. She passed the dining room on the right, loaded with snakeskin pocketbooks, belts, leather pants and sweaters with studs. Pages ripped from Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar were taped to the perimeter of the floor-length mirror. Boxes of chocolates, opened and tested, lay all over the dining room table.

  On the buffet, under an oil painting of cypress trees, was a collection of elephants made of marble or glass, every trunk turned up in the same tight curl. The largest one in the middle of the herd was made of minty green wax, the kind of substance that glowed in the dark. Every time Margo snuck by the figures, she had to remind herself they were fake. Later, she learned that elephants with their trunks up like that were a sign of good luck.

  Margo could smell the Desitin ointment and the menthol in the humidifier before she got to Paul’s bedroom. Twisting her engagement ring to the inside of her hand, she walked in, and took a seat in the straight-backed chair at the foot of the bed. She swiftly kissed Paul on the cheek, knowing all too well that he was inhaling the smell of her as fast as he could.

  “Look who’s here,” Richard, Paul’s nurse, recited in an Old Mother Hubbard way. He sat in the only chair in the room that could hold a man of his size. He had stopped reading aloud but left the granny-type glasses on the rounded tip of his nose. His uniform shirt was stiff with starch and stretched across his vast chest like a white tablecloth. You wouldn’t dare call him ‘Rich’ or ‘Richie.’ When Paul’s friends were brave enough to visit—some of them had kids in high school by now, which gave them a good excuse to scoot in and scoot out—they called him ‘Richie’ just to piss him off. His immense feet, in their perfectly clean white sneakers, rested on an ottoman shaped like an elephant.

  “Richard, doesn’t that thing belong in the other room?” Margo asked. “It gives me the creeps.” She looked at Paul and laughed good-naturedly while Paul looked at Richard and laughed his own silent laugh. Richard went back to The New York Times.

  Margo sat, not quite face to face with Paul. She felt aware of herself, the rise and fall of her chest taking in the air with all its additives, the zipper on her skirt digging into her skin, and, as always, a craving for a tall glass of water. She moved the chair closer to the bed.

  She crossed and uncrossed her legs, listening to the pull and stick of her moist skin on the leather seat and feeling the glare of the clay statue of Padre Pio on the night table. It was cloaked in a swatch of brown velvet with kitchen string tied around its middle for a belt. These things, Margo knew, had been placed around the room by Paul’s mom, Gabriella, who was more superstitious than Catholic.

  Margo was wearing one of the sweaters Gabriella sold from her dining room table. The women who bought from her, the cha-chas with all the cash, were often in the dining room trying to squeeze their asses into buttery leather. The sweater Margo had on was a thin, purple cashmere with one strip of suede like half an “X” from the shoulder to the waist. The last time Margo visited, Gabriella had stuck it under her arm on her way out.

  Paul started right up with the word game. It was as if the cork popped, but nothing came out except a rush of air. They had the game down to a science. Paul would shut his eyes for ‘no,’ blink for ‘yes,’ or just roll them around for frustration. He could stick out his tongue, and often did. When he smacked his lips together, over and over, it simply meant ‘Margo.’

  Margo was ready. “B—is it a B?”

  Paul rolled his eyes.

  “Give me a break,” Margo joked, pressing her fingers to her temples, closing her eyes. “I need to get warmed up.” She noticed how tightly the sheets were tucked in, hotel style, to keep Paul’s body in place.

  “C?” Margo guessed. “Hey, you be quiet over there. I can get this myself.” Part of their fun when she was visiting was bossing Richard around.

  Richard pretended to ignore them and picked up Paul’s foot lotion, smearing it into his hands.

  Behind Richard was a picture window—the kind that could not be opened— overlooking the mosaic-tiled pool in the backyard. Dead leaves all floated in the same direction, covering one end. Sometimes, the three would watch Gabriella in her leopard capris, skimming up the dead leaves, the way you would watch an exotic bird through glass in its own environment at the zoo. Margo admired Gabriella, doing the things she did at her age. Once, she had seen her up on a ladder, cleaning out the gutters on the south side of the roof. Gabriella bought the one-level house in Scarsdale after Paul’s divorce, when he still had some movement in his legs. Pool therapy was recommended to build muscle.

  Margo kept crossing and uncrossing her legs, shifting in her chair. She was fully infused with the hospital smells of the room, the taste of menthol in her mouth, the rest of her life temporarily gone. Sometimes, she just sat there, saying nothing, looking at Paul, Paul looking at her. How could this be? She often thought to herself as she smiled at him. She knew of other people who had multiple sclerosis, and they could move, or talk—say something—or roll themselves around in a wheel chair. Paul couldn’t swat a fly off his nose.

  Margo remembered meeting Paul for the first time, a couple of years ago, when shopping at Gabriella’s. While her mother and Gabriella had chatted in the dining room, Margo, needing to use the phone, had pushed through the kitchen door. She found Paul sitting at the kitchen table in a wheel chair, riveted by a college football game on a small television, a bib tied around his neck. Richard was feeding him, scraping his chin with a spoon. When she’d said, Hello, she realized Paul couldn’t answer. When Paul tried to communicate, she couldn’t understand. Richard could and acted like the great translator. Let me try, she’d said, mostly to Richard. Now, however, she was a pro.

  After meeting Paul that day, Margot had walked into the foyer, stunned. She recalled her mother mentioning Gabriella’s heartbreak, and now that she had had a glimpse of it, she, too, felt she had fallen into a deep hole. She had noticed a photo of a young, healthy Paul in his bathing suit, with turquoise water behind him. He was leaning against a palm tree and looked as sculpted as the billboard models she saw in Times Square on her way to work. Gabriella had wanted her guests to see how her son used to be. Margot had folded her arms across her chest to make sure she was in control of her own body, instantly grateful.

  Margo’s father disapproved of her decision to visit Paul, convinced that she was torturing him in some way. What pissed Margo off more was her father’s surprise at her kindness, his suspicion. Why should a young woman like you go there and see that? And, you’re engaged now for God sakes.

  Now, Paul stuck his tongue out at her.

  “OK. Ready, sir.” Margo straightened up.

  Paul began his facial antics, tapping his tongue on his front teeth.

  “Got it. L.”

  They were out of the gates and off. Richard let them play the
ir game, probably knowing all along what Paul was trying to tell her. Paul blinked and blinked.

  “I.”

  He made a fuff sound.

  “F.” Margo felt smug now.

  Another reliable sound came from his mouth.

  “T. The word is lift.”

  Margo took a break from the sentence. She wanted to rest on her laurels, having picked up the first word in record time. She wasn’t about to make a guess now, gambling on the whole sentence. It was too early in the game.

  “Where’s Gabriella?” They both looked at Richard. He knew everything.

  “She’s in the city and going to stop at the A & P on the way home—she’s making lasagna tonight.”

  Gabriella cooked easy-to-swallow meals, getting nutrition into her forty-four-year-old boy. Margo pictured Gabriella with her dangling earrings, driving to the train station in her Monte Carlo, an overflowing tote bag on the seat beside her.

  As they sat there, the game well underway, Margo could feel something between Paul and Richard, some sort of secret. Sometimes, Margo and Paul left Richard out, and Richard didn’t like that.

  “All right, let’s go.” She called their attention, getting into position. “No, wait, I need something to drink. Paul? Anything?”

  Paul was falling to the side, and Richard was already propping him up with more pillows. Once, he had been so tall and solid and broad shouldered, now he was a ladder falling. As Paul was being maneuvered, he looked at Margo as though she were abandoning him for a soda.

  Margo wanted to let the air clear from whatever it was that hung between the two men. She got up slowly, her long blonde hair falling forward. She stood for several moments so Paul could look at her. He seemed to be studying her, filing away all the minute details of her image into his photographic memory.

  Leaving the bedroom, Margo walked down the hall, through the dining room, and kicked off her shoes, taking note of a new shipment of leather jackets, before pushing through the swinging door into the kitchen. She felt a warm breeze, as if the herd of elephants were blowing their own noisy breath at her.