Storm Tide (42 page)

“No, I’m not angry,” Gordon was saying. “I’ve … lived the life I wanted … I’ve had so much … it would be gluttonous … not to … be satisfied.”

But I’m not satisfied, Judith thought, lurking outside their conversation. I have not had enough of him. I will never have enough of him. How am I going to just keep on after he is gone from me? Suppose I was offered a bargain, you can’t ever touch him but you can talk with him, you can sit with him just one hour every day. Even that would be something. Even that. I would pay for it in blood. But I am going to lose him altogether. Knowing the pain he suffers and the convulsions and the difficulty of simply surviving by now, how can I argue with death? No one wins that argument, not even a crack lawyer.

She came to the doorway but did not disturb them. Gordon lay back on his pillows with Fern sitting beside him in a straight chair, one hand on his. This was one of the moments when her beauty shone out. Judith stood there unseen and thought about how much Gordon had been loved and still was loved, yet that love was weak against the dissolution taking him.

D
AVID

    I was at my new place, what Crystal called the barn, when I heard Judith’s voice on the answering machine. Ceilings, walls and floor: I had painted the whole place white so that it felt vast and clean and pure. And quiet. I fell in love with the quiet, the padding of my footsteps in socks across the floorboards, the chatter of squirrels in the locust branches, the rain on the high-pitched roof above the loft. My bed was a mattress on the floor. “Like your uncle Georgie,” my mother said, when I helped her upstairs. I couldn’t bear furniture clogging the place, blocking the light and my ability to glide across the glossy white floor like a skater. I often lay on that floor to read, to write, to do nothing but stare: at the spiders walking the rafters, at Georgie’s old stereo speakers, at my life, which seemed as full of possibilities as this fresh wide-open room. I was listening to one of my handful of CDs and reading when I lunged for the phone. “Judith, wait!” I said. “I’m here.”

“Oh, David. Good of you to pick up.” This was her lawyer voice. I had sat across her desk and heard it. I had heard her switch it on in bed, when she used the telephone after sex. I had seen her features sharpen as she paced the floor naked, trailing the telephone wire behind her tight little buttocks like the tail of a Siamese cat. I had heard her discuss rape and disfigurement and medical malpractice in the same tone she used with me now.

“You’ll never guess what I was reading,” I said. “Robert’s Rules of Order. Since I’m getting clobbered every week I thought I might as well figure out how they do it.”

She ignored me. “It’s about Rosh Hashanah, David. There’s a problem.”

“About you and me?”

“David, there is no ‘you and me.’”

“Sorry.”

“Rosh Hashanah falls on the new moon, one of the highest tides of the year. It’s scheduled to peak at about eight-thirty that night.”

“Which means trouble getting over the bridge.”

“More complications: I just saw on the Weather Channel that they’re predicting a cold front coming in tomorrow night, preceded by a big storm. Those will be winds from the west that tend to push the water in
early and keep it in. I’m asking everyone to cross the bridge by six at the very latest. So if you’re intending to come—”

“I told you. I’m coming.”

“Then come early. I don’t think the bridge will be passable after six.”

“Judith, can I talk to you about something?”

“I really don’t have time, David. I only caught the weather report two hours ago and I’m still calling relatives from out of town.”

“Judith, I’ve missed you.”

“Tomorrow night, then. Gordon will be happy to see you.”

I told Ralph Petersen I’d be absent from the Monday night meeting. He said Fischel would be out of town too. With just three selectmen—meaning two others who would probably vote against him every time—he’d keep the agenda to a few housekeeping items. But if Judith had a storm to worry about, I still had Hurricane Crystal.

How could I announce I was going to Judith’s? The mention of her name would cause a fight. I was apologizing all the time for insisting on condoms, for sleeping at my place four nights a week. Reading Crystal and Laramie the letter from Terry had only made things worse. Crystal asked if I was going to stay in my ex-wife’s apartment when I went down to Florida. She was now deeply suspicious of Vicki, convincing herself that since Vicki was getting divorced, she would be interested in me. Laramie thought he was being replaced. He sat in the kitchen drawing pictures of houses burning. He slumped on the couch with his knees drawn up staring at the TV, his mouth slightly open. When I turned off the TV, he didn’t move.

Crystal would throw a shit fit if she found out I was going to Squeer Island without her; no less for a Jewish holiday. Everything Jewish was associated with Judith. Crystal didn’t like Laramie to question me about Jewish holidays, or even why I was circumcised when he wasn’t. She got nervous if she heard him asking Holly’s daughters what they learned in Hebrew school, or if they showed him how to write his name in Hebrew letters. My religion was a subject off limits, a battlefield on which she couldn’t compete. It had been easy to avoid the issue over the summer. But I couldn’t tell her I was going to celebrate the Jewish New Year with Gordon and Judith. Without her.

I waited until Sunday night. I told Crystal that after the regular selectmen’s meeting there would be an executive session with the town counsel. I said I wanted to go out for a drink with him afterwards, to pick his brain. I’d sleep at my place Monday because it was going to be a late night.

“And Tuesday?” she said, as if she’d caught me holding something
back. “Were you planning on staying away from us Tuesday too? Because I know what Tuesday is.”

“Tuesday?”

“I’m not stupid, David. I have a calendar. Tuesday is Rosh Hashanah, isn’t it?”

Her calendar was a free gift from the hardware store. It listed the Jewish holidays, but not that they began at sunset the night before. “If that’s what the calendar says.”

“I’m making a holiday dinner. Don’t look so glum.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because we both remember Shabbat. But I’ve got a cookbook now and I’ll do it right.” She pulled out an old yellowing paperback,
The Art of Jewish Cooking
by Jennie Grossinger.

“Where’d you get that?”

“I found it at the thrift store. And you’d better be here. Tomorrow I’m seeing Mom and I’m going to invite her.”

“Crystal, it’s a weekday night. We have to get up so early. Let’s put it off till the weekend. Maybe Friday? Mom won’t mind. I’d enjoy it more.”

She just smiled. “Just leave it up to me. I won’t fuck up.”

J
UDITH

    Judith had her lists. She had lists of foods to be purchased, food to be cooked ahead of time on Sunday. Food to be cooked on Monday. Lists of where each of the thirty guests would be lodged, for almost everyone at the dinner must sleep on the island. The September new moon brought very high tides, and the bridge would be underwater by the time the meal started. Most of Gordon’s children had their own accustomed places in the compound, but Sarah had stopped visiting when her father married Judith. In fact, Sarah’s old shack had been renovated into Judith’s home office, so in recompense, Judith put Sarah and her daughter in her own bedroom in the big house. She would sleep in her office.

She had lists of what her lieutenants were each to do: Natasha, her right arm, her comfort and joy; Jana Baer, who would come back for the dinner. The Baers, like the Squeers, had lived on the island for generations. Mattie, her secretary, would be helping all day Monday but would leave before the tide rose.

Sunday had been a reasonably paced day. People were arriving and must be greeted and escorted to their housing, unless it was where they always stayed. A couple of tents were set up as a boys and a girls dormitory, one on the beach and one on the dune. Judith had the keys to the Bechaud house, where she could put two whole families of Gordon’s friends. Then Judith discovered a storm was predicted for tomorrow. She cursed.

Monday began at dawn. Judith went flat out all day. Aside from eating her brief meals in his room, she scarcely saw Gordon. The nurse, Mrs. Stranahan, was with him, as was his oldest son, Ben. Others dropped by until sent on their way by Mrs. Stranahan, protective of Gordon’s waning energy. This crowd was what he had wanted: she was providing him with a last gathering of those he cared for. She set Ben and Larry to taking down the tents before the wind did it for them; she figured she would put the kids in sleeping bags on the living room floor once the tables were removed. Ben was forty-nine, taller than his father and much broader. He was an academic, a family man, a little stolid, almost professionally dependable and easy to like. She hated pairing him off for chores with Larry, who at thirty-two was still boyish and liable to sulk.

In the afternoon they cleared the furniture from the living room (except for the baby grand they could only push aside) and set up a square of tables. Most were from the various structures in the compound, but she had also borrowed a big table from the Bechaud house and a card table from Stumpy. They were all covered in tablecloths of various colors. Sarah had gotten involved in creating pleasing color contrasts and choosing the napkins; she regarded herself as artistic. Every dish in the cupboards went out, plates dating all the way back to the first Mrs. Stone and each wife since. The Bechaud house was raided for cutlery. Mattie lent her more glasses. There was a kids’ table for the five- to eleven-year-olds and an adolescents’ table. By three-thirty it was all set up.

Larry was trying to be sardonic. “It’s the funeral feast before the fact,” he said in her ear. “So macabre. Like a Buñuel flick.”

“This is the time of year to reconsider your faults and failures with other people, Larry. Don’t you have something to reconsider?” She bared her teeth at him. But nothing could really touch her. She was efficient, she was busy, she was numb. She must hold it all together. There was no time for pain and the anticipation of worse pain. “Your mother and her husband should be here any moment. Why don’t you go wait for them?” The sky was gray and low but the storm had not yet hit. The wind was curiously soft and vague, the bay almost glassy, the air heavy as a damp plush curtain.

At four she sent Natasha with two of the more reliable kids to round up all the animals. At 4:45 the dogs were fed and penned up for the evening. At five all the cats were overfed and then distributed where they would be safe and out of the way, all except Portnoy, the big gray who had spent the last six years never more than two feet from Gordon. She left Portnoy on Gordon’s bed. She brought lo, Pretty Boy Floyd and Principessa to her shack. They could amuse themselves throwing her briefs around. They all got along and could sleep with her tonight. The two recovering birds in their cages Natasha moved into the garage. The wind had risen sharply. Now the surf was pounding the beach. When she climbed the dune for a moment’s respite from the kitchen, the wind had whipped the surf into a lather the color and consistency of steamed milk. She could see the rain coming across the bay toward them. As she walked back into the house, the first drops stung her neck and back. The day was still sickly warm, but the wind felt chilly. Two of Ben’s sons and Mark’s stepson were shooting baskets in the rain. Sarah’s seven-year-old daughter and Ben’s youngest were playing fish on the porch, but the wind was beginning to tear the cards away. As she passed, Sarah and Mark were arguing in the living room.
They could not keep away from each other. Nothing had healed in six years of divorce.

First course, gefilte fish. That she had bought along with white and red horseradish. She did not relish making gefilte fish, although Yirina had done so every year. Judith hated the smell and the mess. Then came chopped chicken livers and newly baked round challah. Three enormous bowls of salad. Apples, being sliced by Jana and Mattie. She checked the clock. Mattie had to leave now. She kissed her and took over. Lemon juice to preserve color.