The Jetsetters

by Amanda Eyre Ward

  Still, Lee and Regan had been so close once. Lee could remember roller-skating with Regan, staying out until dusk. They would hold hands, whizzing along the streets of their neighborhood, the evening air warm across their faces.

  What could Lee have done differently? For one thing, she could have kept Matt’s words to herself. Many times, she wished she had kept silent in the bathroom of Elizabeth on 37th, just given her sister a hug and whispered congratulations. But that would have felt as if she were hiding things from Regan.

  Matt, in the rain, gripping Lee’s shoulders. I’d stop all this if you want me back. Please?

  * * *

  —

  LEE SWALLOWED, TRYING TO quell a decade-old confusion. She glanced down at her phone. Her post was racking up the hearts and likes already.

  “Regan!” cried Charlotte. “Regan’s here!”

  Lee looked up and saw her sister. Regan looked resplendent—that was the word. She had put on some weight, but in a smart, black pantsuit and jean jacket, rhinestone-studded sunglasses holding back her auburn hair, she was stunning. Jealousy washed over Lee, a bitter wave.

  “Over here!” called Charlotte, standing and waving. “Regan! We’re over here!” Charlotte hugged Regan, and Lee stood awkwardly next to them, unable to speak. There was so much she wanted to say: I’m sorry. I love you. You have everything I wanted. Please look up to me again.

  Lee glanced down at her own tiny miniskirt, suddenly embarrassed by her skimpy attire. Seeing Regan embrace her momhood made Lee’s getup seem tawdry. What was she trying to prove? She closed her eyes and inhaled, summoning strength, remembering the way the Uber driver’s gaze had lingered on her legs as she climbed out of his Honda Pilot. What else did she have to offer, besides her attractiveness?

  “There you are,” said Matt, approaching. To Lee’s surprise, his hair was thinning—he was almost bald. He wore an expensive suit and loafers.

  “Are you wearing loafers?” said Lee. She wasn’t trying to be flirtatious, but it did sound that way.

  Matt’s eyes flashed, pleased. “I am,” he said. “Do you like them?”

  “I’m not the loafer-loving type,” said Lee.

  Matt put his arm around Regan and pulled her close. “Regan bought them for me,” said Matt.

  “Oh,” said Regan. She seemed to flinch in his embrace. “You said you wanted…”

  “They’re fine,” said Matt sharply. Lee blinked. His voice sounded exactly like their father’s. My God, she thought, Matt’s turned into a balding Winston. Was that why she had chosen him a million years ago? Some sick need to be with her father, to make a better ending to that story?

  From the moment she had first seen Matt (walking down the hallway of Savannah Country Day as if he owned the place), Lee had been besotted. Matt—a scholarship kid, a running back, confident and well-spoken and utterly at ease in his own skin—was everything Lee wished she could be. Now, she felt a wash of fear. Regan did look pale. Was Matt unkind to her?

  Regan looked at Lee, her gaze sad.

  “You look beautiful,” said Lee.

  “Oh, please,” said Regan. But she flushed, and as her cheeks reddened, Lee remembered Regan’s evening performances for her family. She would make little tickets to her “song show,” and they would all assemble on the back porch. Regan welcomed them, standing on the lawn in her nightgown. She took their tickets. And then she would sing in a clear and angelic voice. When she was finished, she’d look down, as she was now, growing flustered when they clapped.

  Without thinking, Lee hugged her sister. Regan stiffened in her arms and pulled away. But she smelled the same: baby powder deodorant, strawberry shampoo.

  IN HER FIRST-CLASS SEAT, a plush blanket across her lap, a bowl of warm mixed nuts on the tray table in front of her, Charlotte gazed at her daughters. Lee (who had begun drinking wine and chatting with her seatmate, a young man with a beard, as soon as she boarded) was dead asleep, her mouth open. Regan gazed out the window, lost in thought. What, Charlotte wondered, was Regan dreaming about?

  Charlotte knew it wasn’t fair to feel a keen annoyance whenever she saw Regan in her showy, flowy clothing. Her daughter, wearing muumuus instead of going on a diet! It made Charlotte feel guilty, as if she’d done something wrong.

  Over the years, Charlotte had resolved to be nicer to Regan, who was, after all, the only child who had remained near her. But Regan’s servitude to Matt, her overparenting, and her drawstring pants made Charlotte’s stomach ache. Charlotte had learned some things the hard way, but Regan didn’t want to hear them. Regan thought Charlotte was silly, her opinions useless. Charlotte feared the same about herself, so being around someone who treated her like a child was painful.

  Regan had known Charlotte at her worst—as a single mother, scrimping and saving, pandering to nouveau riche (and regular riche) clients. To Regan, Charlotte must have been a cautionary tale: See what can happen if your husband leaves you. You will end up alone. You will cry in front of your children. You will work hard, so hard, and fail. Now that Charlotte had regained a bit of dignity, she hated imagining what Regan thought of her, all the raw and broken moments Regan had seen.

  And Regan hadn’t even seen the worst thing!

  The truth was that Charlotte envied her own daughter. Dismissing Regan allowed Charlotte not to examine her own shame, guilt, and jealousy.

  Charlotte had not appreciated the sudden addition of Matt to her vacation. But he had paid his way, so how could she argue without causing a scene? It was kind of sweet, Charlotte supposed, but still, she was annoyed. Matt was a surgeon—maybe he would be called home for some orthopedic emergency. Charlotte could only hope (and send a quick prayer skyward). Hadn’t Matt ruined enough already?

  Or maybe her family’s dissolution was Charlotte’s fault—this was possible. She couldn’t pinpoint any one thing she’d done wrong, but somehow her later years had become a mirror of her lonely childhood. How to remedy this—what actions to take or wounds to bandage—she wasn’t sure. She hoped this trip would fill something, bring them together around her again. But on the flight to Athens, all she felt was dislocated.

  Charlotte wished she were a pill popper. She closed her eyes, courting sleep but instead seeing her mother’s face: that pinch in the middle of Louisa’s forehead, the way her lipstick bled into the crevices around her mouth. Her Parliament cigarettes ringed with ruby.

  When her father was transferred to France, eight-year-old Charlotte was left behind in Washington, D.C., with her nanny. At ten, she was sent to boarding school. This was not seen as a punishment: it was the way things worked in their diplomatic circles. Her father, Richard, was twenty-eight years older than her mother. He was like a distant grandfather, and more than anything else, Charlotte ached for him to notice her.

  Charlotte’s mother had been the belle of the ball. Even when Charlotte was home on school holiday, Louisa (who had her own bedroom separate from her husband and breakfasted alone in bed every morning) was at her desk by 8:30 A.M. She worked on her correspondence until it was time to meet with the housekeeper, who supervised a staff of seventeen. The chef met with Louisa for fifteen minutes, and most days there was a luncheon. Louisa shopped and visited the hairdresser in the afternoons, then made absolutely sure to see Charlotte from 5:00 to 6:00 P.M. (Charlotte was usually in the bathtub. Her mother perched on the toilet and drank a sherry, gazing past Charlotte’s pink shoulders and toward the window that opened onto the 8th arrondissement below.)

  In the evenings, Charlotte’s mother and father attended receptions, exhibitions, banquets, and long dinner parties. In her spare time, Louisa brushed up on her seven foreign languages (French, Italian, German, Swedish, Hungarian, Japanese, Chinese) or worked on her historical novel.

  Charlotte tried to sleep alone. Often, when it was so late she was sure her nanny, Aimeé, was asleep, Charlotte would steal dow
n the stairs to Aimeé’s room, where she would curl up near enough to feel her nanny’s warmth. Aimeé, a heavyset woman from a rural village, likely felt more out of place in Paris than Charlotte did. When Charlotte woke, she was tucked in tight, the sheets still smelling of Aimeé.

  In 1960, when Charlotte was sixteen, she flew to Paris for summer holiday to find Aimeé missing. She was not in any of the three kitchens or the manicured gardens. In Charlotte’s room, where her suitcases had been unpacked and her clothes put away, there was a note from her mother informing her that this summer she would be on her own.

  Dearest Charlotte,

  I didn’t want to tell you via post, but Aimeé has not been well and passed on last winter. She loved you very much, as you well know, and would want you to remember her with fondness and make her proud in your every thought and action. Daddy and I have a dinner we cannot miss this evening, but we are so very happy to have you home and I will see you tomorrow afternoon!

  With affection,

  Mother

  As usual, there was no discussion, no room for despair, no hope for comfort. In Charlotte’s home, emotions were unsavory and unacknowledged. Strength, she had been taught, was found by relying on yourself, your steely ability to ignore complications. Louisa’s favorite expression was “and furthermore.” It meant: it is what it is. Move on. Don’t speak of this again.

  The view from Charlotte’s childhood bedroom encompassed the wide Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré—pale, stately buildings with square windows and awnings like politely smoothed skirts. Cars moved slowly past expensive stores. Charlotte was too old to cry, so she stood motionless, watching. Waiting for something to happen. The shops closed and the night went quiet, light from window displays casting geometric shapes on the street. The sky turned scarlet, then black.

  She unlatched her window quietly, pushed it open, and let the hot night touch her skin. Charlotte stepped from her room, moved across the roof to where it almost touched a tree, and leapt.

  Could she have crashed, breaking her legs? Certainly. But she did not. Instead, she grabbed on to the tree and uneasily made her way down, maneuvering with effort from one branch to another until she reached the ground. There was a guard at the front gate, so she used the back. Within moments, she was on the street, and could go anywhere.

  Charlotte strode along the Rue de Rivoli. She had no real plan, and ended up walking for almost an hour along the Seine, past the Pont Neuf—lit up and glowing, making the river sparkle—all the way to le Marais.

  By this time, she was hungry and tired. She followed the sounds of laughter to Le Zinc, a café on the Avenue Ledru-Rollin. Through the window, she saw a table of people a few years older than she. Some of the men had beards; all of the women had long, messy hair. Everyone was smoking cigarettes, mouths stained with red wine. This was the moment. Would she run back home, climb into her bed, and wait for morning? Or did Charlotte have the courage to enter the café and approach a table?

  She touched the door. A handsome man looked up and saw her. Had she ever been seen before? The man (the boy, really—he was so young then!) made his way toward Charlotte. His longish brown hair touched his collar. He had a wispy mustache.

  Charlotte could still turn and run.

  Through the glass, Charlotte watched Winston. He came closer. When he opened the door, she could smell cigarette smoke and a musky sour-booze fragrance—the scent (Charlotte thought) of a grown-up.

  His lips were thin and chapped. He leaned so near that she thought he was going to kiss her. She felt stirred up almost to the point of hysteria. Terror rose in her chest, a sense that now, finally, her life was going to begin. Her face filled with blood. Winston opened his mouth, and was about to speak into the twinkling night when someone began shaking Charlotte, bringing her across time to the present.

  “Mom,” said Regan, her voice childlike with excitement. “Mom! We’re here.”

  “What?” said Charlotte.

  “We’re in Athens!” said Regan. “We’re here, Mom! In Athens, Greece!”

  AS CHARLOTTE’S GRECIAN TAXI rounded a corner, the Splendido Marveloso came into view. The ship was massive: thirteen stories high, over a thousand feet long, bone-white, wearing a waterslide like a gaudy hat. Charlotte squinted: it seemed that people wearing harnesses were bicycling around the perimeter of the ship. On a lower level, orange lifeboats awaited disaster.

  “Wow,” said Lee, who was sharing Charlotte’s taxi to the Port of Piraeus while Matt took a nap in the hotel “day room” his travel agent had booked for him, and Regan and Cord went to find some food.

  “It’s jaw-dropping,” said Charlotte.

  “I just got an email from my agent,” said Lee. “You are looking at Corpse Number Two, Episode Seven Hundred Fourteen, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.”

  “Wonderful, darling!” cried Charlotte. “Congratulations!” She was fairly sure Lee was lying, but decided to ignore this troublesome fact.

  “We done,” said the taxi driver. He heaved himself out of the cab, unlatched the trunk, and left Charlotte, Lee, and all the Perkinses’ bags in the middle of a vast parking lot. The pavement literally steamed. Two men in orange shirts and black pants rushed over with carts. Lee snatched the boarding pass from Charlotte, who felt faint. The Greek sun was really something! Was this the sun Agamemnon had felt as he rushed into battle? Charlotte figured so. And like Agamemnon, Charlotte was ready to move forward into the unknown….

  Lee seemed to be flirting with the baggage handlers. Charlotte staggered toward a gray building labeled CRUISE TERMINAL B: THEMISTOCLES.

  “Lee,” said Charlotte, turning back to interrupt her daughter’s latest tryst-in-progress. “Who was Themistocles? Do you remember?”

  “Is the terminal,” said one of the men in orange shirts.

  “Terminal B,” noted the other.

  “Is that right?” said Lee, stroking her neck. Charlotte watched her with concern.

  “Themistocles was a politician and general in ancient Greece,” said a man with a clipboard, who seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. He was a tall drink of water. “His name means ‘Glory of the Law.’ He died in 459 B.C. at Magnesia on the Maeander,” said the man.

  Charlotte, Lee, and the baggage handlers mulled that over.

  “I’m Bryson,” said the man, putting his shoulders back. Charlotte peered at his clipboard. She saw a bulleted list, with the title Possible Passenger Questions: GREECE. Bryson’s teeth were huge, so white they almost glowed. He wore a well-tailored shirt that gave just a hint of his muscled torso and then dropped straight down, unhampered by a beer belly, toward a beautiful bulge in his snug pants. She smiled at Bryson, thinking, Oh my, before turning to look at Lee, and thinking, Oh no. Lee’s face was an open book—it always had been. And the book at this moment was titled Hungry Eyes.

  “I’m your cruise director,” said Bryson, holding out a big, glamorous hand, his nails perfectly oval-shaped, perhaps even buffed or covered with clear polish.

  “I’m Lee,” breathed Lee. And then—could it be true?—she licked her lips.

  “Hello. I’m Charlotte,” said Charlotte, attempting uselessly to tamp down the lust igniting between Lee and the cruise director. “I won the Become a Jetsetter contest. That’s me.”

  Bryson turned to Charlotte and smiled as if he had no idea what she was talking about. The man had to be six-five. He was gorgeous, even better-looking than Lee’s paramour (or former paramour?), Jason, who was now a bona fide TV star, though Charlotte couldn’t fathom why anyone would want to watch a show about a grown-up with a pet robot.

  Charlotte felt dizzy. As Lee and Bryson chatted away, Lee’s face lit up with Greek sun and the possibility of new love. Charlotte sighed. Why was she never the one filled with joie de vivre?

  “I feel a bit faint,” said Charlotte.

  “Do you need some wat
er?” said Lee.

  Charlotte lifted her chin. “What I need,” she said, “is a cold glass of Chardonnay!”

  AS THEY WANDERED AROUND Athens, Regan’s face grew pink, and Cord felt a weird, fatherly impulse to buy her some sunscreen, to rub it on her freckled cheeks the way he’d done when they were kids at the pool. Regan would insist Cord ride the waterslide with her, and despite his friends’ teasing, he’d always agree, holding her hand on the ladder to the top, putting his arms around her as they hurtled down, trying to hit the water before her, so he could lift her up and she could breathe.

  Cord swallowed, wanting to ignore the call he’d just received from his sister’s best friend, Zoë. How could he tell his baby sister her husband was a monster?

  “Are you okay?” said Regan.

  “We should sit down,” said Cord. He spotted a sign in Greek with a translation below: TAVERNA OPERATES IN TO THE GARDEN. “Oh, look!” he said. “A restaurant. That’s what taverna means—I read that somewhere. Let’s grab a bite.”

  “I should get back to the hotel,” said Regan. “Matt booked us a room for the day.”

  “Please,” said Cord. “I’m really hungry.”

  Regan paused, then shrugged her acquiescence. They followed the arrow on the sign through a narrow passageway. A hidden garden was filled with empty wooden tables covered with sheets of white paper anchored by centerpieces of salt and pepper shakers, napkins, and toothpicks. Cord did not see a restaurant-type structure or any waiters, but he chose a table in a shady corner and they sat down. A butcher (he did appear to be the butcher—not only did he look like a butcher out of central casting, with the big belly and curly gray hair, but his apron was stained with blood) approached.

  The man said something brusque in Greek. When Cord shook his head and tried to look amiably puzzled, the butcher said, “Lamb chops?” At least it sure sounded like “lamb chops.”