Split-Level

by Sande Boritz Berger

  It’s just past six, and the Florida sky is streaked like hot pink crepe paper. I borrow Dad’s car and drive back to the hotel to pick up some clean clothing, but, more important, I need to be alone. It’s so easy to fall into the trap, to become immobile in my parents’ presence—an anxious child, helpless, and as malleable as Play-Doh.

  The clerk, whose name I’ve learned is Pedro, jumps up from the gray swivel chair as soon as he spots me. Two women, their thin voices croaking, are either conversing or arguing. It’s hard to tell the difference. One stops to look at me and says, “There’s the skinny little shiksa.”

  “Not me, ladies. I was once a nice Jewish girl from Brooklyn.” I shrug my shoulders and walk over to Pedro, who appears to be waving me down.

  “I hope it’s all right, Mrs. Pearl,” he whispers. “Your husband arrived about an hour ago. He looked so tired I let him in your room to rest.”

  “My husband?”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry to ruin the big surprise. Mrs. Pearl, are you okay?”

  “Fine, yes, Pedro. I just wasn’t expecting him this early.” I squeeze out a grin and move toward the elevator. This is too weird, I think, dragging my legs down the dingy hallway toward my room—a medieval chamber designed to make anyone sink into the quicksand of self-pity.

  What the hell is Donny up to now, and why am I trembling? I decide to be strong no matter what he has to say, but I can’t help but wonder if this visit has been orchestrated by Ben and Louise—a final grandiose attempt to save our marriage. I am pelted by a new wave of sadness. Though I try hard, I can’t find a single stirring of affection for Donny. Our seven years together is like a vestigial organ, an appendage now surgically removed.

  Skulking outside the door, I think of running away, but as I lean my head closer, I hear what sounds like a baseball game broadcast on TV. Donny couldn’t care less about baseball, even with the World Series just weeks away. Turning the door handle slowly, I peek in and see his bare feet first. The rest of him is blocked by the bathroom partition. The television is on, the volume pumped, and some announcer is screaming about Hernandez’s second home-run. Amazing, I think, my heart flying through the room like some high fly in center field. I don’t want to feel like this anymore, about anyone, especially any man. But there he is … dressed in a Mets T-shirt and khaki shorts, Charlie Bell, sprawled across my disheveled bed, his eyes sealed in sleep. He doesn’t flinch when I crawl from the bottom of the mattress to sandwich myself beside him. He does look terribly tired, and his chin measures more than a few days stubble. I try covering us both with a single top sheet. I lie still, eyes wide open, playing the game I learned to play—matching the rhythms of his deep, cavernous breaths. Though, after a few minutes, I grow impatient.

  “The Mets won,” I say, not quite sure it’s true. Charlie opens his tightly shut eyes. He focuses and grins. There are gritty tears in the corners from sleep. He lifts his legs and tosses off the sheet. We lie side by side staring into each other’s eyes, then he pulls me on top of him, adjusting his torso to mine.

  “I didn’t know you liked baseball,” he says, his thick breath tickling my neck.

  “Me either.”

  There are only strangers beyond these suffering walls of the Betsy Ross Hotel. We are truly alone: far from wives, husbands, and curious neighbors. The knowledge is tempting and more than intoxicating. Welded together, we push deeper and deeper into the sinking bedsprings. Our mouths move furiously; we don’t stop to breathe. Damp clothing tangles around our ankles as sweat mixes into a hot, spicy broth. The one rusty lamp crashes to the floor. Like a dingy that’s drifted from a mooring, I am tugged back to him—he who encircles my space, swallows my air, yet promises to make things better.

  The phones in the Betsy Ross are ancient—black with a rotary dial and so heavy; if it fell, you’d break your foot. I call my mother to tell her I won’t be having a sleepover after all.

  “Ah, I have a surprise visitor.”

  “Oh, so you’re seeing Sophie, that’s good dear,” she says, “I imagine she must be terribly lonely.”

  “No, Mom, not Sophie.”

  “Alex, don’t tell me it’s that fella. What’s his name?” Could she have guessed from the timbre of my voice?

  “Yes, Charlie.” On cue, Charlie yanks a white Lacoste shirt over his head and makes a face like a lizard; he fans out his neck so I see all the veins.

  “I don’t understand. What on earth is he doing in Florida? Shouldn’t he be back in New York with his family?”

  “He’s headed back to DC, and wanted to see me, to check if I’m okay.”

  “Alex, this is terribly confusing. I don’t think we’re doing the right thing by accepting this. Donny is the father of your children.”

  “Yes, Mom, I understand this is strange, but he’s here now, and I’m not sending him away.”

  I think I hear my mother’s deep, accepting exhale. “Well, are you sure you don’t want to bring him over for dinner? I’ve made a nice brisket.”

  “Ah, thanks, Mom. But we’ll probably grab a bite right down the road. He’s leaving for an emergency meeting in the morning.”

  “Suit yourself,” she says, hanging up hard before I say goodbye, leaving me with the distinct impression I’ve done something wrong.

  Stepping outside the hotel, we are slapped with a wall of hot, humid air. The sidewalk appears to be wavering in what must be an optical illusion. Luckily, there are three eateries directly across the street, all with eye-popping signs: Wolfie’s, The Rascal House, and the historical Pumpernicks, where I’d tasted my first onion pocket during a childhood vacation.

  “They make a great Reuben sandwich,” I tell Charlie, whose tongue circles his lips, while one hand moves instinctively to his belly. Charlie told me he had to deal with being overweight as a teenager and, no matter how thin he became, a nagging guilt attached itself to practically every single meal.

  “No argument from me,” he says. “I’m famished.” His arm drapes around my shoulder as we walk, and I become uneasy and self-conscious. Was there something more alluring about locked doors and dank basements, hiding out like moles beneath dirt-filled lawns? I wish I knew why I can’t seem to relax.

  I slide into a tall red booth in the rear of the cool, cheery restaurant and nod at an elderly woman eating solo, hunched over her meal as if deep in prayer. As if the oval white platter before her, which held her towering sandwich, sour pickles, and the drippy serving of coleslaw, was not only sustenance, but offered some mystical clue, which might soothe her desperately fragile self.

  Charlie’s unshaven face is hidden by the encyclopedia-sized menu. But not his hands—hands I now know better than Donny’s. My eyes are riveted to Charlie’s gold wedding band; it presses into his flesh insistently, like a birthmark.

  A young, sweaty busboy slams two water glasses on the table, startling us both. A comical and efficient Borscht Belt–style waiter is on his heels. The man looks as though he hasn’t laughed in forty years, and he never makes eye contact with us, not once. Charlie reveals yet another side of himself. He is a split-hair away from getting the sixty-something old-timer to crack a smile with his persistence but fails when the waiter grabs our menus and darts away. I feel the nervous, vibrating motion of Charlie’s left knee under the table.

  “You almost had him,” I say. “You get his schtick.”

  “Remember, I used to do this once upon a time with my law school pal, Ivan?”

  “Oh right, up in the mountains.”

  “Yeah, that was way before I got involved with all the bullshit, people pretending to do right by the world.” Charlie leans back against the faux leather and rubs his eyes.

  “Sounds like they’ve gotten to you, whoever they are.”

  “It’s a lot more than that,” Charlie says, leaning in, always the cautious and sometimes paranoid attorney. “They lied.” For a second my mind goes to Donny and Paula, reminding me of the small, narrow world I’ve come to inhabit.

 
; “Who, Charlie? Who lied?”

  “My clients, Alex, the very people I’ve spent the entire year defending. Every single hotshot executive from all the utility companies. They swore up and down to the commission that the power plants were absolutely safe—all the time knowing they weren’t. They built these plants, promising nuclear waste would never be problematic. But the truth is they were clueless about the potential dangers to the public.”

  I recall the exact moment when I first learned what Charlie did for a living, how I’d felt a sharp stab of disappointment. We were at the park with all the kids. All I’d seen then was the syrupy warmth in his eyes. I’d made a scowling face just hearing the word nuclear, but he sloughed it off, saying it was only a job. I refused to focus on the serious implications.

  “Are you saying the case you’ve been working on all this time is a sham?”

  “No pun intended, but that’s pretty much the case.”

  “Well, you can’t quit now, right? There’s a lot to consider. You have a family to support, a growing one, at that.” We lock eyes, and, for what seems like eternity, Charlie stares back at me, until I look down at my place mat displaying a happy family of flamingos.

  “I’m not about to do anything stupid, but I’ve already started to make plans,” he says.

  “You don’t have to tell me any of this, really.”

  “No, I want you to know. I’m planning on telling the firm that I’m resigning as soon as this last case is tried. It’s taken over ten years, but what I’ve learned, at least about me and the law, is that I’m better suited to represent people with real problems than institutions run by a bunch of faceless stockholders. But, most of all, I’m done traveling. I want to be home, though home for me is less than rock-solid, more like circling the atmosphere.”

  These last few words ring manipulative. Especially the look in his eyes, a little too: You’ll help me, Alex, won’t you? I find myself resisting an all too familiar pull—the need to service whatever it is that needs servicing. I sit up tall in the booth.

  “I can no longer pivot my life around anyone’s needs,” I blurt out, surprising myself.

  “Hey, of course, I know you’re amazingly strong.”

  “It’s an illusion. I’m like that bowl of Jell-O on the counter over there. You don’t know me, not really, you just think you do. What’s more, I don’t have a grand plan like you. My only plan is to go slow.”

  I turn Charlie’s wrist to check on the time. He grips my hand, lifts it to his lips, and kisses me just as our stoic waiter plops down our food along with the wet check. We hurry up and down our foot-high sandwiches (I eat a quarter of mine), then rush to find a phone booth a few doors down. Charlie plugs in his credit card and hands me the phone. He strolls down the block to give me some privacy. He already knows how anxious I am to talk to Becky and Lana. Every time I’ve called, previously, I was told they weren’t home or were already asleep.

  Gussie picks up on the fourth ring, and hearing my voice, she hesitates in her unique style, which insinuates calamity. There’s a churning inside my stomach; a combo of sour pickles and corned beef struggling to assimilate.

  “They’re okay, Gussie, right? No one’s sick or anything?”

  “No. But they’ve been actin’ up a bit.”

  “What do you mean? That’s not like them at all.”

  “You know … a million excuses before bed … more juice, the potty, and those scary noises they think they’re hearing.”

  “Can’t Donny calm them down?”

  “Truth is I haven’t seen much of that fella since you dropped them off on Thursday. Mrs. P. gave him a piece of her mind on the phone last night. He’d better show up later or she’ll be fit to be tied.”

  It seems my leaving has given Donny an open ticket. No restrictions, rules, or restraints. But who am I to judge? Gussie recaptures my attention. “If I were you, I’d get my hide back to New Jersey a.s.a.p. That way no one can say you’re not capable of caring for your children.”

  “But Louise was the one who suggested I take a few days to rest,” I answer, feeling the need to defend myself.

  “All I’m saying is what I’m hearing. A mama ought to be with her children.”

  “Okay, Gussie, thanks, now please just put them on the telephone,” I say, trying to keep down my last meal.

  “I would but they’re out with the folks seeing some new Disney movie.”

  “Well, that’s nice, Gussie,” I say, while hoping it’s not the latest remake of Bambi.

  “Yeah, they all went out after Lana had an accident on Mrs. P’s bed.”

  “Oh, my poor girl. She was doing so much better.”

  “Lana bawled like the dickens, afraid they won’t let her go to kindergarten next week.”

  “I hope someone told her that isn’t true. Please Gussie, tell her, tell them both, I’ll be home very soon.”

  “The sooner the better,” Gussie says, before hanging up.

  From halfway down the block I think Charlie has noticed my worried expression. His eyes widen while he puffs on a fat cigar he’s purchased from a seedy bodega. He looks ten years older than he did five minutes ago, or maybe I just need him to be older. I am already queasy from the airless, yet odorous, phone booth when he asks me what’s wrong.

  “You’d think with me gone Donny would want to spend some more time alone with the girls.”

  “Where has he been?” Charlie asks, taking a drag on the monster cigar.

  “Hey, now that’s a really good question. Well, Gussie more than hinted that Donny has been spending his vacation time with Paula. Unless he’s managed to find someone else in the day and a half I’ve been away.”

  Though there are no signs of ownership in Charlie’s expression, I remind myself acting is a huge part of his job. “Why are you surprised?” he says. “Though I’m not sure either one of them knows what they want.”

  “Charlie, I can’t worry about them, but I feel like I’m the only one who’s walked out on my job. I should never have left, not now.”

  “You haven’t, Alex. Becky and Lana are terrific girls, and you’re a wonderful mom. They’ll be fine.”

  “How can you be sure? Aren’t you the one who said your parents’ breakup nearly destroyed you?”

  For once Charlie can’t find a sufficient answer. My guess is his thoughts have drifted to Ricki and Ross, who, before long, will be sharing their parents with another sibling. Charlie snubs out his cigar on the bottom of his loafer and grabs my hand. We walk back to the hotel in total silence, but his eyes keep checking to see if I’m okay.

  As soon as we enter the lobby, Pedro leaps up from his desk and smiles. I spot a couple, who must be in their nineties, sitting on a sunken couch and holding hands. They are watching a rerun of The Fugitive. I want to crawl between them and rest my head on the cool, chintz sleeve of her housedress.

  “Have a good evening, Mr. Pearl,” Pedro says, beaming, then he winks at me as if the good part was up to me.

  “Thank you,” Charlie answers, taking the key. “Funny, I don’t feel like a Pearl. Do I look like a Pearl?” He tries to make me smile to no avail. “Come on, Alex, I promise everything will be fine.”

  “I wish there was a flight out right now,” I answer.

  When the elevator door opens, I step in and pivot to look at Charlie. I see how much he wants me at this moment and know that it would be such a final pronouncement to let him go—to say: Please go away, Charlie Bell. Who needed you and this whole damn mess?

  I head toward our room. It’s become our room. Charlie’s dark, damp arm scoops my waist as I fumble with the key. Like a butterfly, I fold and fall backward, topple into the soft mesh of his body. His hot cheek presses the back of my neck; his lips push through the fabric of my top. But no, no! I don’t want him wanting me now. All I want is solace and kind affection. Someone’s hacking cough from down the hall makes us scramble inside, locking the door like runaway thieves.

  “I can’t. Not here,
not now.” I pull from his arms and prop myself on one meager, musty pillow.

  “Of course, I understand.” Charlie glances toward the window. He’s quiet for no more than five seconds, but I’ve already given up on him, on all men, on hope. “Come here,” he says, “let me rub your back, it’ll help you fall asleep.”

  “Sleep, ha, you must be joking. What exactly is sleep?”

  The clock radio I’d set for five reads 3:00 a.m. I slip out of bed and decide not to use the shower, afraid that he’ll hear me. My hair is a twisted mass of curls from the humidity, and I pull it back with a black headband. Scampering through the room, I collect discarded clothes, stuffing them in the duffel bag I never unpacked. Charlie stirs, and I halt my breathing. I wait like I did when the girls were babies, and I tiptoed into their room, checking if they’d awakened from their long afternoon nap. He turns facedown in his pillow, one arm gorillalike, grazing the carpet. I crouch down in a painful knee bend to open his lit bag and find a stack of legal pads and a box of ballpoint pens. I throw a few in my bag—souvenirs to remember Charlie Bell. The orange glow from the streetlight barely illuminates the sheet of paper, but I write anyway, letting the words come, jumbled in my fog of sleep.

  Dear Charlie,

  Thank you for seeing me through to the end of this—I wonder will there ever be an ending, or are we bound by all our crazy mistakes? You know how anxious I was to get to the airport, to get home—I didn’t want you to worry about me, or feel you had to see me off. If only I’d been a counselor at the Coral Club when you were their lifeguard, things might have turned out differently. I know you will do well in whatever it is you choose. I will miss you.

  Yours,

  Alex

  I tear the sheet from the legal pad and place the pad between stacks of others. My hand touches something smooth and slick—I slide it up from the bag and bring it into the light, now brightening through the shade. It is a picture of us that was taken at Cousin George’s home in May. The lake shimmers like green glass behind us; we are smiling, but I distinctly remember holding back, afraid to have Donny, the photographer, see how happy I was the moment he snapped the picture, the instant he commanded: “Say cheese.” I am touched that Charlie’s hidden this picture amongst important legal papers. Yet, I wonder what he’d say if it appeared on a conference table by accident. I imagine him using his wide hands, sweeping the picture away before he would have to explain who I am. Hey, so who’s the smiling chick with the shaggy hair? I don’t want to be explained or hidden away ever again. I prop the picture against Charlie’s watch on the nightstand and tiptoe out the door.