by Sloane Tanen
“Don’t get touchy,” he said. “I was being serious. Anyway, Howard knows how to reach me if you change your mind. I’ve got two of his authors in deals for adaptations.”
She stopped short and squinted. “Which two?”
Marty looked at her in disbelief. “What difference does that make?”
“It makes all the difference. I’m curious if you’ve got any taste.”
He laughed hard as Howard walked over and slung an arm around Bunny’s little shoulders. “I spy two future luminaries here,” Howard said good-humoredly. He raised his Scotch glass. “Watch out for this one, Kessler,” he bellowed. “She’s all fire.”
“I’ll do that,” Marty said and turned to go. “Enjoy the party.”
Bunny and Marty were married in June. Marty was nominated for his first Academy Award that February. Bunny missed London and didn’t really enjoy living in Hollywood. She went back to working on a novel that, as far as he remembered, wasn’t very good. However much they might have liked each other, they were both too young and driven. They had different things to accomplish and they weren’t ready to sacrifice their dreams. They had amicably divorced a year later.
* * *
Directions had cost a fortune, but since Marty had put the whole thing on his credit card, there was an upside: he had racked up enough miles to fly first class without spending even more money. Bunny insisted on paying for the hotels, cars, and incidentals, but Gail had drawn the line at him flying around in her private plane. That was fine by him. Gail was, after all, very likely going to be his wife. Not that her steely-eyed realism was lost on him. Even with the promise of marriage, she hadn’t let up about “feeling very vulnerable” until she saw the e-mail from Jim Keating last week confirming that Marty was bequeathing the bulk of his assets to her, tax-free. She hadn’t seen Jim’s e-mail asking if Marty had lost his mind (this despite the fact that Jim represented Gail too). What did he care what Keating thought? He just wanted a little peace for now. Was it so much to ask?
Besides, he’d change things around later. Finessing his will had become something of a sport. In addition to the house, he’d have to leave at least one painting each to the girls and set up some sort of a fund for them, especially if he got remarried. He wasn’t sure he could count on Gail to do the right thing, and he was pretty sure his daughters couldn’t survive without his largesse, no matter Gail’s opinions on the perils of enablement. It wasn’t that his feelings about anything had really changed, but he was seeing his family (his daughters, Gail, even himself) a little more clearly now. Being sober, however briefly, had changed his perspective. The clarity wasn’t necessarily welcome, but now that he was looking at it, he had to own his part. He’d have to make some adjustments. Not right away, but eventually. The goal, as he’d learned at Directions, was to take things one day at a time.
So, yes, he nodded to the stewardess, he would have another glass of the Laurent-Perrier Grand Siècle. It wasn’t Krug, but not bad for airline champagne. Marty sank back into his leather seat. He was looking forward to Italy. He hadn’t been to Rome in years, and not once, he thought, had he ever gone there on vacation. There had always been a premiere or a meeting or some other bullshit event he’d had to attend.
He chuckled to himself at the peculiarity of his having made a new friend at his age. How ironic that that friend happened to be his first wife, a woman he’d all but forgotten until running into her at rehab. Her sudden appearance, both then and now, punctuated the speed with which those fifty years had passed. So much had happened but he hadn’t really changed. Inside, he still felt the same as he had at Howard Blum’s cocktail party, just a kid doing an impression of an adult in charge. The only real difference was that now he knew that he’d never been in charge, and that he never would be. There were too many variables. The best he could do was to try to relax a little, maybe enjoy the good things in life more. Marty took a sip of his bubbly and closed his eyes.
Janine
Janine had been to Rome exactly once before. She’d gone with her father and Amanda for a movie premiere. She was eight, maybe nine years old. The trip was an unusual treat. They’d stayed at the Parco dei Principi grand hotel. She remembered how the bellboys and concierge had fawned over her father like he was Caesar himself. At the height of his career, her dad was a king everywhere he went. And they were Renaissance princesses. On that trip, at the gift shop he’d bought her a notebook with the name of the hotel embossed on it. She kept it for years. Even then, she thought, she was hoarding good memories, worried there might not be enough.
She remembered thinking the hotel was an actual castle. There were tapestried beds with canopies, Carrara marble bathrooms and thick, heavy curtains that framed the gorgeous views of the Villa Borghese. Janine had walked awestruck beneath the baroque chandeliers in the halls. She sidled up to the fully dressed breakfast tables, careful not to knock over a glass or upset the lavish place settings. But it wasn’t the luxury she loved so much as the rigid order cushioned in excess. The seamless rotation of uniformed maids, the room-service trays that were cleared away when nobody was looking, the way the staff spoke in tones of competence and ease. All that regularity, that tidiness and propriety, illuminated everything she didn’t have at home with her mother.
When they arrived back in LA, Janine had been horrified to find Pam at the airport, sitting on the floor, dressed in tight jeans and a blouse unbuttoned down to her belly button, smoking a cigarette. Amanda ran to her, covered her in kisses, thrilled to fill her in on the highlights of their trip. Marty kissed them good-bye and said he’d see them the following weekend. Janine hated leaving Italy as much as she’d hated leaving her father that day. She saw her mother as a human needle bent on popping the bubble of her happiness.
She’d always assumed she’d go back to Rome someday, maybe with her dad, or maybe she’d study there on her junior year abroad. Or maybe she’d go there on her honeymoon. But she never did go to college and she never got married. What had she been doing all this time in New York? Who had she been hiding from? Why hadn’t she ever gone back to Italy? Why hadn’t she spent more time with her dad? It was too late now. Her father was gone.
That surreal phone call from Jim Keating—she’d almost ignored it because she hadn’t recognized the number. It must have taken her two or three minutes to grasp what he was saying. How did he know Marty was dead? She didn’t believe him at first. She’d just spoken to her father the day before. Where was Jim getting his information and who had decided that some lawyer or money manager she’d never met should be the one to give her this news?
The calls started coming in quick succession shortly afterward. First Amanda, inconsolable, followed by a solicitous Henry. Janine very much wanted to talk to Bunny, but Henry just apologized for his mother, explaining that she was still too upset to talk. She was too upset? Janine asked, incredulous. Henry stayed calm and told her that he’d booked Janine and Amanda on a flight to Rome and arranged for a car to take them to the airport that afternoon. He’d also set up a car to take Hailey and Jaycee to San Diego.
Where the hell was Gail? Janine wondered, managing to throw some clothes in her suitcase between trips to the bathroom. Wasn’t she the one they’d have expected to arrange everything? She liked being useful. That was her thing. Both Janine and Amanda had called Gail but her phone had gone straight to voice mail. Gail was nowhere to be found and Janine was both surprised and grateful that Henry was picking up the slack.
Seeing Amanda in the back of that black town car made it real for Janine. They held on to each other for what might have been the first time in thirty years. The twelve-hour flight passed in a haze. If youth is wasted on the young, first class is wasted on the bereaved. Neither of them ate, drank, or even reclined on the sheepskin-covered seats. Nothing had prepared them for the death of their father. He’d always been there. Having their North Star blown out like a candle was like having the ground give way beneath them. They were wobbly and shaken with
nothing to rely on but the surprisingly reassuring sight of each other.
The Jumeirah Grand Hotel on Via Veneto, where Bunny and Marty had been staying in separate rooms, was close to the Parco dei Principi. Amanda pointed to the Parco as they passed it in the car Bunny had ordered to collect them from Fiumicino Airport. Janine nodded. Amanda grabbed her hand. Bleary-eyed and exhausted, Janine wanted only to go to sleep and wake up to find this was all just a nightmare.
The check-in process at the hotel was a sit-down affair filled with espressos and condolences from the Italian staff. But the sisters were no longer princesses. They were orphans.
The Jumeirah was a restored nineteenth-century villa made modern. Janine disliked it immediately, with its art deco furniture and nearly bare walls peppered with contemporary installations and paintings by Dalí, Picasso, Guttuso, and Miró. Her father must have hated it. Why hadn’t he told her how disgustingly hip it all was when they’d spoken on the phone two days earlier? He’d been happy, telling her a funny story about Roman fish and chips and the orange trees in Savello Park. That sounded good but, my God, did anyone want to sleep (let alone die) in the vicinity of a Cattelan installation? She thought of Henry, knowing he would agree with her about the art.
“And Gail Engler?” Amanda asked the hotel clerk. “Does she have a reservation?”
“Ms. Engler is already here,” the clerk said.
“Oh, Gail is already here,” Amanda repeated loudly, as if Janine hadn’t heard for herself. Amanda had quickly decided directing her rage at Gail was easier than dealing with the reality of their father’s death. “So that explains why we couldn’t reach her. She was already in the air, burying her grief by flying private. She must have flown private, right? We were on the first commercial flight. So who paid for that and why didn’t she invite us?” Amanda, unhinged, hands in the air, asked Janine. “She didn’t even have the courtesy to call us! Dad dies and we don’t hear from his fucking fiancée? Who does that, Janine? Who?”
As it turned out, Gail’s head start was for naught. Bunny had refused to see her without Janine and Amanda. She had left them a message at the desk explaining that she would see “the family” together in her suite.
Once Amanda and Janine were in their room, Amanda reluctantly called Gail to announce their arrival. Gail was at the door within minutes, the image of the perfect widow, heavily perfumed and dressed in black. She sobbed extravagantly upon seeing them, smothering them both in a long hug. “I knew this trip was a bad idea,” she said. “I had a terrible feeling all along.” She apologized for leaving so abruptly, for not calling. Her assistant had gotten her on an empty-leg charter flight, she explained, and she’d had to run to the airport with just minutes to pack. There was only one free seat anyway, she said. The ticket was cheap but she’d been forced to endure the long flight with a group of Chinese businessmen. Janine could barely look at Gail, let alone listen to her. She believed the woman was genuinely upset, but her hysteria felt calculated, her inexcusable behavior too well reasoned. And she couldn’t help wondering if Gail’s grief was fueled by the fact that she was never going to be their father’s wife.
They took the elevator to Bunny’s suite together in silence. A Do Not Disturb sign—NON DISTURBARE—hung on the door handle. Gail knocked. Bunny answered the door and just stood there silently before asking them in. She was disheveled and puffy-eyed and seemed surprised to see them, though she obviously knew they were coming. After giving each of them a hug and mumbling something unintelligible about how sorry she was, she directed them all to the seating area. She looked ten years older than she had when Janine last saw her at Directions.
Tissues and papers were scattered all over the spacious room decorated in gold and black. Bunny apologized for the mess and started off immediately explaining that she’d arranged everything so that there would be no complications with the remains at the airport or the embassy. “Just try getting a Jew cremated in Rome,” Bunny said with a nervous laugh as she fumbled to light a cigarette with her shaking hand. “You’d think they were hoping for a last-minute conversion. I had to pull every string in town, including calling Matteo.”
“Matteo?” Gail asked.
“She means Matteo Renzi,” a stocky older man with a British accent said as he came out of the bedroom. He smiled sympathetically, shook their hands, and introduced himself as Bunny’s agent, Ian. He had on an expensive-looking suit, and his dyed dark hair was slicked back with pomade, as if he’d spent some time getting ready for them. He pulled a platinum lighter out of his pocket and held it up to Bunny’s cigarette. “Matteo is the former prime minister.”
“Of Italy?” Gail asked.
Bunny nodded and pushed her hair off her forehead. “Ian’s been helping me.” She exhaled as two tears ran down her face. She wiped them away quickly. Ian touched Bunny’s shoulder.
“Matteo came right away,” Bunny went on. “He’s been so dear. My God, that was a shocking thing. Really,” she said, dissolving into tears. “I feel somehow responsible.”
Ian shook his head.
“You’re not,” Amanda said. “Obviously. But if you don’t mind, I’d like to know what happened,” she said, her voice breaking on the last word.
Bunny looked at Ian. He sat on the armrest of the sofa and started talking, directing his words to Amanda. “Bunny and your father had planned to meet in the lobby at nine a.m. yesterday. A car was taking them to Pompeii for the day.”
Amanda nodded.
“Pompeii?” Gail asked. “Isn’t that a long way?”
“He wanted to go,” Bunny said, defensive. “Said he’d never been. So I had someone arrange it. But he wasn’t downstairs, so I finally had the concierge call his room. No answer. I thought maybe he’d gone out for a walk but he didn’t answer his mobile either. They finally sent someone up,” she said, taking a deep breath. “A bellboy, I believe.”
Janine couldn’t think straight. Her father was dead and she was pregnant! Gail was crying now. Amanda was crying too.
“He was just lying there in the bed,” Bunny finally said with a haunted expression. “His heart must have just given out. It was an awful, awful thing.”
She straightened up and reached for Ian’s hand. “Ian’s really been a godsend. He dealt with the death certificate and the cremation authorization at the embassy. It might have taken weeks without Martin’s next of kin here. Even if you’d been here, well, you’ve no idea how impossible the Italians are.”
“We were on the first commercial flight,” Amanda said, glaring at Gail.
“Oh, I’m not blaming you,” Bunny said. “Of course not. There’s nothing you could have done anyway. I’m having a bloody religious debate about your father’s wishes for cremation and they’re arguing with me, despite the fact that it has to be done immediately, before the authorities get involved and insist on an autopsy, which, according to your father’s attorneys, he absolutely did not want.”
“No, he didn’t,” Gail said, shaking her head. “Absolutely not.”
Ian looked askance at Gail and poured himself a glass of water. Janine could see that he was protective of Bunny and that he expected the worst from the three of them. What did he think they were going to do, blame Bunny? Janine was thirsty and sick to her stomach. She watched Ian take a sip of water and put his glass down on a long table.
“It’s nearly impossible to avoid an autopsy when an American dies in a foreign country,” Ian continued. “Officials have to rule out foul play and such. So this had to be done quickly, before the authorities got involved.”
“Perhaps a little too quickly,” Gail said. “Not that we don’t appreciate all you’ve done, but I can’t help but—”
Ian narrowed his eyes at Gail. “The possibility of foul play was quickly dismissed. Nobody in Italy had anything to gain by Martin Kessler’s death.” He left the question as to who might benefit from it floating in the air.
Bunny grabbed another tissue. “Thank God Ian came. The paperwork a
lone. There was so much back-and-forth with Martin’s attorneys in Los Angeles. As if the shock of the thing weren’t bad enough.”
“I don’t understand why you didn’t call me first thing,” Gail said. She moved over to Bunny as if to impart how useful she might have been, how useful she still might be. “I’m very close with Jim Keating.”
“Naturally his daughters were called first,” Ian said, his mouth tight. “And of course we called you as well. But you’re not his wife, and you’ve got to understand, once the body was removed, there was no time to waste if we wanted to respect his wishes. Which I assume we all did?”
“Yes.” Amanda nodded.
“Of course,” Gail said stiffly.
Janine turned the word body over in her head. Was the body so divorced from the person already? Her father? The knowledge that his body was already ash, that it was a fait accompli, sent a fierce chill up her spine. She felt as though someone was pulling her organs out of her via her throat. She would never hear her father’s voice or follow him, limping slightly, as he worked his way through the yard. She would never see his balding head, hold his freckled hand, or curl up in his arms for one of his hugs. A world in which he wasn’t present didn’t feel like a world Janine could fully occupy. There would be more space but so much less room. Unlike with the death of her mother, Janine didn’t feel at all liberated. She felt like part of her had been amputated. What if she hadn’t gone to LA, if she hadn’t had those last few weeks with him? She tried desperately to reassemble that last day together in San Diego with Hailey. That was a great fucking day. But what had they talked about? She couldn’t remember anything.
“I’m just so sorry,” Bunny said. “Poor Martin. Poor girls.”
“Anyway,” Ian said as he rubbed Bunny’s shoulders, “I think everything’s been done as your father would have liked. I hope so, anyway. We did our best.”