by Sarah Jio
Whitney swivels my chair around so I’m facing the mirror. “There’s the gorgeous girl we know and love,” she says. I hardly recognize myself. It’s like she’s used her magic wand to banish my dark circles and erase puffiness. Any traces of last night’s tears are expertly hidden under a pint of foundation. I recall my old deputy editor at Real Living giving me advice during my years as an editorial assistant: “Fake it until you make it.” At the time, I rejected this sentiment. It just seemed wrong to me. But now, gazing at my improved reflection in the mirror, I find myself clinging to those words like a codependent lover. I study my face in the mirror, a woman with flawless skin. No hint of the pain that hides deep inside. Yes, I can fake it until I figure out how to live again.
Stacey, the stylist, spends the next ten minutes blowing out my limp hair into sleek locks that hang in perfect submission over my shoulders. A cloud of hair spray completes my transformation.
“You’re on in five,” the producer calls into the room. I barely hear her, but I nod and stand up, walking robotically in my heels to the green room. I scan the note cards that my assistant gave me earlier. The Horseshoe Ranch at Yosemite, with horseback riding for families. The Canyon Lodge in Wyoming, where every child gets her own private ski lesson. And . . . I feel a lump in my throat when I see the words on the next card. How could they? “Just a short jaunt to the coast of Maine, the Waterbrook Inn is nestled beside one of the most magnificent yet lesser known waterfalls in the world.”
The room feels like it’s spinning when the producer waves me into the studio. Matt Lauer is wearing a red tie and sitting on a high stool. “I’m so sorry to hear about your family,” he says. “It’s good to have you back.”
I nod automatically, the way I’ve done a hundred, a thousand times since the accident, then take my seat on the stool beside him.
I hear music in the distance, the scuffling of producers and cameramen, and then the lights brighten, and Matt Lauer sits up higher on his stool. “Welcome back to the Today show,” he says. “We’re joined now by Sunrise magazine’s Ada Santorini, who’s here to share her picks for the top five family vacation destinations this year.”
Pain pulsates in my chest, but I try to ignore it. I answer Matt’s questions and even tell him about the trail that leads up to the waterfall at the Waterbrook Inn. I smile and nod. I get through the interview. I fake it. And then when the segment ends and my mic comes off, I run backstage, down the long hallway to the restrooms in the distance. I can hardly breathe. And when I look into the mirror, I despise the woman who stares back at me.
I wipe away the tears on my cheeks and look out at the overcast Seattle morning. I take a deep breath. I can’t fall apart. Because if I do, I fear I won’t be able to put myself back together. But how do I keep going without a reason to wake up every morning? And then it hits me: I need to give myself an assignment. I think of the memoir I began writing months ago and remember why I came here. I stopped at twenty-five pages because the process was too painful. But now, after Joanie has uttered James’s name—James—I feel the urge to click open the folder again and pull up the document. I feel like writing.
I reach for my laptop and lift it out of my bag and onto my lap. I pull open the untitled memoir. A large boat must have traveled through the lake while I was on the phone, because its wake rocks the little houseboat gently; I feel like a duck bobbing on the water. I stare at the blank cover page, and I type.
Floating
A Memoir by Ada Santorini
Chapter 5
PENNY
Stay here as long as you like, honey,” I say to Jimmy. I want to be sure to offer Collin the muffins when they’re still warm. They’re much better that way. “I have to run over to a neighbor’s house for a sec.” He nods and dips his feet into the lake.
I step back inside and self-consciously check my reflection in the mirror beside the door before stepping out front. The muffins, wrapped in the tea towel, are still warm in my hands. I straighten my pale blue dress and fasten the top button of my blue cardigan before walking ahead. I look up when I hear heels clacking toward me on the dock.
“Look at you,” Naomi croons. “Dressed so pretty for a Tuesday morning.” She gives me a once-over. “Where are you off to? It’s too early for lunch.”
She speaks to me as if I’m a child, the way most of Dex’s friends do. It’s true, I’m twenty-two, and she’s at least ten years my senior and a practicing psychiatrist with an MD, when I didn’t even officially graduate from Miss Higgins Academy.
I glance down at the muffins and feel a pang of guilt. “I was just going to offer—”
“For me?” She reaches out and takes the muffins from my hands. “How kind. You know I don’t have time to bake with my crazy schedule.” She’s wearing white pants and a blue sweater with a belt cinched tight to show off her narrow waist. She’s beautiful in a sophisticated, literary sort of way. Her long, manicured fingers are rarely without a cigarette, stuffed into a long, jewel-studded holder. She opens up the tea towel and smiles, amused. “Oh look, muffins.”
I think of Collin, then nod. “Dex never eats them. I don’t know why I bake.”
Naomi rewraps the muffins. “Well, he does like French pastries,” she says. “You ought to take a class at the culinary school. I bet he’d love that.”
I want to ask her how she knows that my husband likes French pastries. I want to tell her that muffins are just as nice as any fussy croissant, but I don’t. I smile, and I thank her for the suggestion. Naomi is the only psychiatrist I’ve ever known, and she frightens me a little with that sharp gaze and that perfect dark hair cut to a blunt bob and angled down across her face, every strand obedient. I once tried to emulate her hairstyle, spending two hours hovering over an ironing board, burning my thumb in the process. But it looked wrong on me. Dex came home that night and said, “What happened to your hair?”
“I haven’t seen Dex home in a while,” Naomi says. I hear the curiosity in her voice. “I suppose he’s staying at his studio these days?”
I don’t like that she calls him Dex. That’s what I call him. But I smile and nod, thinking of my husband in his studio in Pioneer Square. He rented it shortly after New Year’s, and it seemed like a good idea at the time, especially since his canvases and easels were threatening to take over the living room. But I didn’t anticipate how much time he’d be spending away and how lonely I’d feel. “Yes,” I say, feigning confidence, “he’s getting so much work done there. I hate to disturb him, you know.”
Naomi makes a face and points to the potted flowers near the front door of her houseboat. “Just look at that,” she says, as if something upsetting has happened.
She reaches into one of the pots and pulls out a green vine, a few feet long, with several bell-shaped white flowers. “There,” she says with a vindicated look in her eye, as if this vine has wronged her in some way.
“What is it?” I ask.
She flashes a patronizing smile. “An invasive weed,” she says, tossing the vine into the lake. I watch the little white flowers flutter in the water. I want to kneel down and rescue them from drowning. “Morning glory,” Naomi continues, shaking her head. “It’ll take over if you let it.”
I watch as the vine drifts away on the lake. The little flowers bob up and down as if gasping for air. I consider that the vine might find its way to shore and wash up on a patch of soil, where it will start a new existence, maybe sink its roots and thrive. Maybe Naomi has set it free.
I think of the bluebells that grew in my mother’s garden when I was a child. Weeds, really. But I’d pick them by the handful, and when bunched together they looked stunning.
“Weeds can be so pretty sometimes,” I say.
“Pretty?” Naomi snorts. She blows a strand of her dark hair out of her eyes and smirks. “Weeds aren’t pretty, my dear.”
“Right,” I say as Naomi’s husband, Gene, peers out the door. They’re an unlikely match. He’s quiet; she’s outspoken. He�
�s warm; she’s not. And yet, it’s clear by the way he looks at her that he is deeply in love with this woman, for reasons I may never be able to understand. “Sweetheart,” he says, “I was just making an omelet. Care for one?” He notices me and waves. “Oh, hello, Penny. I can put one on for you if you like.”
Naomi’s cold gaze isn’t exactly welcoming, so I shake my head. “Thank you, Gene; I already ate.” He’s easy to like, with his receding hairline and unpretentious ways. He teaches English literature at the University of Washington and often leaves novels on my doorstep.
“Did you read the last one?” he asks. Naomi acts disinterested, the way she always does when she’s not directing the conversation.
I nod. “Yes, Hemingway. It was good. I’d like to go to Paris someday. I’ll bring it back later this afternoon—”
“It’s yours to keep,” Gene says with a smile. “Everyone needs Hemingway on their bookshelf. In fact, I have another of his I think you’ll also like. I’ll drop it by sometime.”
“Thanks,” I say.
Naomi walks toward him and straightens his tie. “Gene, you mustn’t wear plaid shirts. They look so hodgepodge.”
He kisses her on the forehead and smiles obediently. “Yes, dear.” Then he asks, “Did you find Jimmy?”
“No,” she says, rolling her eyes. “That child.”
Gene frowns. “I worry we’re being too hard on him.”
Naomi rolls her eyes. “You realize he’s flunking the second grade, don’t you?”
“Well, I’d better be going,” I say, feeling awkward to be overhearing a parental disagreement.
Gene waves and turns back to the house.
“Wait,” Naomi says, following me. “I must speak to you about Jimmy.”
I think of him huddled in a ball behind my home. I should tell her he’s there, but I don’t. I decide to give him a little more time.
“We’re going to be keeping him in on the weekends,” she says with a stern expression that reminds me of my fifth-grade teacher, the one who spanked my bottom so severely, I developed a bruise the size of a saucer. “Gene and I think it’s best that he spends less time with . . . well, less time near your houseboat.”
“Oh,” I say, a little wounded. “I’m sorry, I didn’t—”
Naomi’s smile returns, but it looks stiff and plastered on. “It’s nothing you’ve done, dear,” she says. “It’s just that we think he needs more supervision. We’ve hired a tutor, and he’ll be seeing a new psychiatrist to address some of his issues.”
We both look up when we notice Collin, hard at work on his boat in the distance. He’s using a hand tool to hone the wood on the hull. I can almost see the boat in its finished form, with its glistening teak and mast with puffy white sails. How I’d love to sail away. To feel the wind on my face. To be free. But Dex would never leave his beloved Seattle; I know that. The city is his muse.
I watch Collin work. His muscles flex and ripple as his arms move up and down the hull with expert precision. He’s taken off his shirt now, and his tan skin glistens in the morning sun. For a moment I forget that Naomi is standing beside me, but then I feel her eyes on me.
“So I take it you’ve met our new neighbor,” she says.
“No,” I say quickly. My cheeks are flushed; I know it. “But I’ve been admiring the boat he’s working on. I’d love to own one just like that someday.”
“Wouldn’t we all,” Naomi says, her voice trailing off. “Well, I should be going. My first patient arrives in a half hour, and I need to get Jimmy to school, then somehow make it to my office downtown. That is, if I can find him.”
“Good-bye,” I say, returning my gaze to Collin. He looks up, and our eyes meet momentarily. He smiles, and I smile back.
“I’m sorry I’ve been such an absent husband these days, Penn,” Dex says over dinner that night. He came home at seven, after I’d already put away the pot roast. After being rewarmed in the oven, it’s tough, but Dex doesn’t complain, and I’m grateful. “I’ve been working on a big commission.”
I nod. “I know,” I say, weaving my fingers through his. “I just wish you’d come home more, that’s all.”
There are dark shadows under his eyes, and the lines across his forehead look deeper. The twenty-year age difference between us seems more apparent than ever.
“You haven’t been sleeping, have you?” When Dex is working on a painting, he doesn’t sleep.
“Not much,” he says, rubbing his brow.
I move my chair beside his and kiss him, but he turns away.
“What is it, Dex?”
“It’s nothing,” he says. “I already told you, dear, I’m tired.”
I feel a lump in the back of my throat. “Are you unhappy? Have I made you terribly unhappy?”
He turns to face me. “No,” he says quickly. “Penny, of course not.” He looks down at the table. “It’s just that . . . listen, I asked Naomi for a referral to see a psychiatrist. The thing is . . . I’ve been suffering from depression.”
“A psychiatrist? Depression?” I shake my head. “Dex, I don’t understand.”
“I don’t expect you to understand,” he says, before forcing a smile. “Listen, I told you only because, well—let’s not dwell on this, OK? What we both could use is a little fun.” He kisses my hand lightly. “Why don’t we invite the neighbors over, throw a cocktail party, the way we used to do?”
I nod mechanically. “If it would make you happy.”
Happy. Dexter and I used to be happy. I close my eyes, and try to think back to the last time I felt he was mine, wholly mine, without secrets, sadness, or this heavy fog of depression that I cannot understand and that I can only blame myself for. My mind sorts through disheveled memories of distant expressions and broken promises, until it stops and homes in on the night of the Seattle Charitable Foundation’s annual ball last summer. I remember how people buzzed around Dexter, especially women. And yet, he saw only me that night. I remember the way he took my hand in his and kissed my wrist lightly before we walked out to the dance floor together. He held me tight as the band played, and his eyes sparkled as bright as the crystal chandelier overhead. “You’re the most beautiful woman here,” he said proudly. “And you’re mine.”
I loved how he took pride in me. And why? I had no artistic abilities, no special skills or training. I tried my best to fit into his world, to match the intelligent remarks of his contemporaries with witty banter, but I felt as if they saw right through me.
I looked up at Dex that night on the dance floor, with his arms draped lovingly around me. I’d often wondered about the place I occupied in his heart, and that night, I asked him, “Why? Why me?” And he told me.
“Because you’re lovely,” he said. “Lovelier than any woman I’ve ever met.” He kissed my forehead, then continued. “It’s every boy’s fantasy to grow up and find a wife like you.”
I thought about Dex’s childhood, what little I knew of it. His mother was strict and rigid, so unlike mine. There was no warmth in her embrace. Dex had been raised by nannies and kept at arm’s length. I looked up at him then, and saw that he longed for the type of maternal love he’d never had, and I realized that he had found it in me. It was an honor and a challenge. Could I be the woman he needed me to be? That night I felt I could. I vowed to show Dexter so much love, enough love to fill the deep and painful void in his heart. But now? Now, I stood in the face of the stark, brutal realization that I was not enough. Dexter’s demons were bigger than me, perhaps even unsolvable by me.
The houseboat sways, and I look out to the lake and the sparkling lights of the city above. He tucks his hand in mine, briefly, before reaching for the newspaper. We are right next to each other, and yet, I have the overwhelming sensation that my husband is slipping away from me.
Chapter 6
ADA
By two, I’m starved, so I decide to visit the little market Jim told me about. Pete’s, I think. I walk up the dock, which is when I notice a pretty
houseboat on the left, with white siding and window boxes that look as if they once held beautiful flowers. The place is clearly empty, because mail spills out of the weathered copper mailbox near the door. I kneel down to retrieve a letter that’s fallen to the ground and eye the address label: Esther Johnson. I tuck it back into the mailbox, and wonder who Esther is and whether she’s coming back to collect her mail.
The short walk to the market affords me a look at the docks that comprise the floating enclave, and I look curiously down the wooden moorings. Each seems to have its own personality. Some are quirky and artsy, with houses painted bright colors and wind chimes clanging in the light breeze; others are lined with expensive-looking modern homes, where Sub-Zero refrigerators and Viking ranges undoubtedly appear inside the gourmet kitchens. Regardless, however, the houseboat community, as a whole, feels like an ecosystem all its own. Rich, and brimming with a variety of life.
I cross the street when I see Pete’s Market ahead. Inside the little store, I grab a cart and wander from one aisle to the next. A half hour later, a clerk with a gray beard bags up a carton of milk, apples, bananas, bread, a block of cheddar cheese, eggs, carrots, five frozen meals, two chicken breasts, a container of basil, a head of garlic, a box of pasta, and a bottle of white wine. I notice he’s grinning at me as I swipe my credit card.
“New here?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say, wondering if I have a sign on my back that reads, I’M FROM OUT OF TOWN, OBVIOUSLY!
“Staying on a houseboat?”
I nod.
“Which dock?”
“Boat Street,” I say.
