Free Between the Tides by Susannah Marren Page A

lives.”
    â€œAh, yes, she would say that. He’s her son.” I kick off my booties and put on a smock. “Matilde, people are in line for your father to do their surgeries.” I find my flip-flops by the closet. “I don’t have to call Grandma, do I?”
    â€œI don’t know, Mom,” Matilde says. “She didn’t ask about you.”
    â€œWe’ll take advantage of the quiet in the house,” I suggest.
    I look at the size and the breathtaking emptiness of the canvas. I haven’t worked on such a scale for years. “Let’s finish the ocean first, Matilde.”
    Matilde keeps on painting the jetty that she’s started. We should talk about the hue of sunsets. Instead I reconsider what Charles said. “Matilde, wouldn’t you prefer to be with girls from school today, wouldn’t it be more fun?”
    â€œNo, I want to paint, Mom. We’ve never had a big space before.… We can put mothers and their children in our picture. Cape May families.”
    â€œYeah. Mothers who are lucky enough to not get sentenced to life in Elliot.” I sigh. “I don’t know what I’d do without the studio to come back to … the retreat that it is for me … the only good thing about the house except for the space and the fact that there aren’t cockroaches. Or water bugs. They only inhabit the city, where the fun is.…”
    â€œMom … please don’t be … this way.…” Matilde stops working and is about to console me when I censor myself.
    â€œYou’re right, Matilde, women at the shoreline—with their children. That’s what we should have.”
    *   *   *
    Candy and the twins come back from children’s hour at the library by midafternoon, race up the stairs, and crash into the quiet. Within a matter of seconds, my studio feels crowded and the questions are fired at me.
    â€œWhere’s Daddy?” Jack asks. “Where’s Tom?” His hands are grubby and I don’t want him to graze anything in the room.
    â€œGolf,” Matilde answers. She’s preoccupied with the angle of the jetty and has changed it twice already. “Tom’s out with his friends. He’s got lots of new friends.…”
    â€œTom is out! Tom is out!” Jack starts to stomp around. “Mommy! I don’t like this room.”
    In my dreams my younger children are occasionally muffled, toned down, silent. Or better yet, I take a break at a faraway seaside resort. My family doesn’t notice, doesn’t care, and the shoreline resembles the isolated resort in The Thorn Birds where Meggie meets Father Ralph and they have their secret tryst. The best part about it, since Father Ralph turns out not to love Meggie enough to forfeit his love of God and the glamour of priesthood, is the place itself. I want to skip along that very beach at daybreak and twilight, without any children in sight. Obviously, I keep my thoughts to myself.
    Then we hear Charles’s voice. Candy and I look at each other since his return is earlier than expected and not what I have in mind. There are footsteps up the stairs, Charles’s first and then Tom’s, both home too soon and ready to invade.
    Charles knocks as he opens the door. Tom is beside him.
    â€œWhy, Dr. Chuck! What a quick game it must have been,” Candy says.
    The room becomes gloomy. Charles puts his arms around Jack and reaches for Claire, who half slithers away, half comes toward him. Matilde and I stop painting. At any second Charles will dismiss the twins and Candy while Tom will remain in the room. We are a family of gender divides and gender sidekicks. Tom’s face is lit up—it’s going to be them against me.
    â€œDad!” Matilde runs to Charles. “Look at what Mom and I are working on together!” Matilde the politician, attempting to win Charles’s favor with our work. She