The North Shore D-Day



  The North Shore

  D-Day

  By

  J.M. Thomas

  ~~~

  Copyright 2014 The Cosmic Empire Publishing

  The North Shore

  D-Day

  June 5, 2014

  The steadiness residents of the North Shore pride themselves upon is based largely on a misconception. If those who call the North Shore “home” were paying close attention, they would see the change underlying everything within their cities, their homes, and their lives. The movement required of professionals and executives, and so many in the area, meant families and friends were always in flux.

  A certain amount of detachment even while participating in events such as births, bar mitzvahs in the village of Glen Ellyn and confirmations everywhere else, graduations, funerals, holidays, and endless parties helped people cope with the notion that a family who had attended the Christmas Eve Gala at Fair Oaks for four consecutive years might be transferred to a locale across the country before Memorial Day. The unspoken “get close but not too close” rule applied to every acquaintance outside of the very few close bonds that existed.

  “Good to see you,” was a phrase common on the North Shore for “good to meet you,” the latter of which might not be appropriate as the people involved in the greeting could well have met before. So prevalent were the occasions where people got together, it was impossible for even the most gifted to keep everyone straight.

  The lack of intimacy allowed for the perception of permanency.

  The village of River Grove, the largest on the North Shore by area, had the lowest population density of any community in the state. River Grove had the estates, not simple homes or even extravagant homes, but estates measured by the acre. For a time, purchasers of these properties remodeled the homes prior to moving in, but then the trend turned to the bulldozer. A home designed by contemporaries of Frank Lloyd Wright was leveled, and a dreaded “McMansion” would take its place. Scorn would be laid upon those who would perpetrate such a crime until the families met, common friends were identified, and the business of networking started to take place. Even those who were steadfast in keeping River Grove as it would have been in the Roaring Twenties, when the city ordinance prohibiting street lights bright enough for law enforcement to see the bootleggers delivering their wares, were known to spend seven figures on an exterior remodeling.

  With all construction forced to adhere to strict village requirements, even the McMansions did not look too out of place.

  When the world of the North Shore allowed for true permanence, the results could be astounding. There were relationships of incredible intimacy, tremendous strength, compassion, and love, and those bonds helped provide the sea wall beating back the waves of change when they would become too strong. To an outside observer, these relationships might not appear out of the ordinary when viewed in the context of massive gatherings of powerful and wealthy human beings. They existed.

  Anne Glassmaker, Chaz Perkins, and Margot Wallace found in each other some sort of rudder necessary to navigate the impermanent world of the North Shore.

  Each day held for Anne Glassmaker two moments when she would realize the depths to which she had sunk, regardless of the front she presented to others and pushed upon herself. These special torments happened no matter how much or how little she drank, whether she had taken her anti-anxiety medication, or meditated as her vast array of self-help books instructed her to do. These books she hid under the mattress in her bed like a teenage boy’s collection of Playboy or Hustler to keep her husband from seeing them and putting her back into the hospital.

  When she knew her interaction with Chaz or Margot ended for any particular day, the loneliness would be the first sledgehammer; and when the Porsche 911 driven by E.B. Glassmaker pulled into the drive, with its particular hollow rattle that reminded her of the Beetle her grandfather had when she was younger, the rank despair of being subjected to him, alone, would be the second sledgehammer.

  “But she shouldn’t be alone tomorrow,” Anne said.

  As sometimes happened, she was on the phone with Chaz and was into the Grey Goose. It was her drink of choice; she could not hold it, and it would take days for her to realize she had said under the influence things she should have kept to herself. The closeness between the two women provided Chaz with what she assumed was permission to critique Anne’s life after three or four on the rocks with a twist.

  Anne accepted Chaz’s input but often found herself resenting Chaz’s harshness with her assessments.

  Then Chaz was frequently too drunk to know what she was saying.

  “You can’t force that on her. Anne, she has to make her own way through it,” Chaz said.

  Anne could hear the ice cubes against Chaz’s glass.

  “It is a significant day, Chaz. You know it has to hurt.”

  “Do you know that? Because I don’t. She hasn’t talked to me about Michael in at least half a year; I never see her cry or even look sad, and she’s hung paintings on all the walls. There are no more empty spaces. It has to be better,” Chaz said.

  On Anne's husband’s nightstand was a photo of the two of them with their children, taken when they traveled . . . where? The location, non-descript as were so many of the clubs to which they vacationed, was lost to her. No matter how much she tried, regardless of number of times she pondered it, she couldn’t remember where they were.

  She loathed the photo.

  “It’s been seven years, yes, but he was still her husband.”

  “Margot is not you, Anne. Not all of us obsess over the past.”

  Anne did not hear much of the remainder of the phone call. As happened when one was drinking and the other was not, Chaz would say the thing that would cause Anne to retreat from the conversation and get locked away in herself. It hurt to be talked to in such a blunt fashion, and withdrawing was the only thing she could do. Yet, even the noise of Chaz barking something at her was welcome against the empty house and dread of a house not empty.

  Taps wafted through the woods north of her house. The sounds of the naval base, absent during the winter months but audible without the blanket of snow muffling them, reminded her of Frank. They always reminded her of Frank, and while she questioned whether not hearing the sailors and their PT cadence would have quelled her thoughts about him, she knew they did not help her understand why Frank never responded to her many e-mails, texts, letters, or phone messages. When she was able to give it thought—free of delusion—she knew what it meant. Those moments were fleeting.

  She took a quick look at the clock on the bedside table. A feeling of dread overcame her. Soon Edward would be home. She ran through the incident that led to her putting mental quotation marks around the word “marriage.”

  Edward loved playing host to the senior leadership at Beacon Advertising, and it was customary to invite the associates newly promoted to management from the rank-and-file drones the agency worked into the ground. The new managers drank heavily on their first night at the house, and no one ever challenged them or thought it unbecoming, because getting loaded at the Glassmaker house was the right of passage from nothingness to a true path. The senior leadership, Edward included, adored these people, and Edward and his cronies (It bothered her to no end, so she found a way to label those whom she once thought of as friends with such a word.) took advantage of the attention and alcohol-induced frivolity.

  The Thursday before Labor Day seven years earlier was when Anne heard Edward boning the brains out of Shampa Powar.

  Anne led the college boy hired to work the bar down to the wine cellar, an extravagance she felt necessary since they were going to the trouble of building a $5 million home and would be frequent hosts,
when she heard something happening in a closet. She pushed the boy along to retrieve two bottles of merlot, rested her ear on the closet door, and knew from eighteen years of experience the sound of her husband pounding himself into a woman. For the sake of completeness, she waved away the bar tender and waited until she knew Edward had finished. Then she wiped her eyes, went back to the patio, and pretended to give a shit about how the agencies were taking it to the network in the coming year's upfront market.

  Whoever the girl was did not come back to the party with Edward. Anne knew she was Indian, but she never again saw the girl. It was not even “Shampa Powar” as the name always remained a mystery to which Anne. Yet, she affixed “Shampa Powar” to provide some sort of reality to the event. Anne, for the first time in her life, did not make love to Edward with her eyes open