Her Perfect Life

by Rebecca Taylor

  “Okay, so,” she started. Their middle child, one of the most sullen, uncooperative children she had ever worked with, refused to do anything but scowl. “I’m wondering if we can get a few with everyone smiling.”

  Middle boy narrowed his eyes and deepened the already dark, furrowed creases in his forehead. The father smiled while also looking completely annoyed, while the mother’s eyes gave away her stress. The youngest child, a four-year-old girl in a florescent pink dress that would completely counterbalance every other person in her family wearing jeans and a white shirt, despite Eileen’s explicit instructions to avoid white shirts, wandered away from the shot to inspect a black beetle on a flat, smooth stone nearby.

  Only their oldest child, a boy of maybe eight, had enthusiastically smiled for every single shot they had taken so far.

  Eileen sighed to herself, careful to do her best to hide her frustration from the clients. “Okay, so far so good. I’m thinking maybe now is a good time for a quick five-, ten-minute break.”

  “Sounds good to me,” the father said as he pulled his cell phone from the back pocket of his jeans. The mother nodded and headed for her large purse, which she’d left on a nearby bench.

  Eileen turned away from them. It’s money, Eileen. Family portraits helped pay the mortgage—the same way weddings, graduations, promotional and publicity events, and the occasional bar mitzvah did. Landscapes, stills, and every artistic photo she’d ever taken did not.

  “You’re lucky to get to do it at all,” Eric had snapped when she had once complained to him about a difficult family. “Would you rather be sitting in a cubicle? Would you rather be chained to a desk working on a spreadsheet, writing reports, watching the clock, and praying for five o’clock?” he had continued.

  Because that was exactly what she used to do. And she had hated every minute of it.

  Eileen closed her eyes, but she kind of hated this too. Not as much, that was true. At least she got to spend her days with her camera in her hands. And certainly it was miles away from the confinement of the cubicle. But spending her days directing and constructing sullen families into image-worthy poses—it didn’t do much to alleviate that sense of abysmal failure that had begun a slow creep into her own life image lately.

  Eileen grabbed a new lens and attached it to the front of her camera as she turned back to her client family. The dad was still on his phone, and the mom was waiting for the youngest to finish drinking from her spill-proof cup. That was when Eileen saw it, the top third barely peeking out from the mom’s purse—Clare Collins, in a large gold font.

  She had seen it in the grocery store just yesterday, her sister’s latest hardcover release, A Perfect Life, filling the endcaps in the checkout line. She hadn’t touched it. She had willfully ignored it, and she certainly hadn’t bought it—but here it was, following her, haunting her, reminding her that complete strangers continued to finance and support Clare’s art.

  “Do you think we can wrap this up soon?” the dad asked, slipping his phone back into his pocket.

  “Yes,” Eileen agreed. “We’ve lost the light,” she said, despite the fact that they had never had the light to begin with. “In fact…I probably already have something I can use.”

  Every single one of them looked relieved. Even the middle boy finally smiled, and Eileen, quick with the camera, snapped his picture several times before he could remember to be miserable again.

  From the depths of her tote bag, her phone rang. The shrill, old-fashioned ringtone made her put her camera down and race to begin the frantic dig. Her tote was too big, filled with too much crap, and the phone was never, ever in the convenient phone-sized side pocket. By the time she managed to get her hands on it, the ringing had stopped—as usual—and she was left staring at a surprising notification.

  Missed call, Simon Reamer

  Why was Clare’s husband calling her? When was the last time she had even spoken with him?

  Christmas—three years ago? They had invited Eileen, Eric, and the kids to spend Christmas with them, in their huge cliffside mansion, and against Eileen’s better judgment, they had gone. That was the last time Eileen had spoken with Simon Reamer, thanking him for having them and saying goodbye at the grand entrance to his and Clare’s ridiculous house.

  Eileen racked her brains. Clare’s birthday was tomorrow, her fortieth. Given that Simon had rented out a ballroom at one of the most expensive hotels in San Francisco to celebrate Clare’s thirty-fifth birthday with five hundred of her closest admirers, and fans, it wasn’t hard to believe that he would be conspiring something completely over the top for her fortieth. Except, her birthday was tomorrow. If Simon were planning something, wouldn’t she have received the ornate invitation by mail months ago? It wasn’t like Simon to try to get away with a last-minute phone-call invite.

  “So,” the father interrupted her thinking. “We’re good? What happens next?”

  “Um…” Eileen tore her eyes away from the phone and stopped the thoughts that were forming about her mother and her deteriorating health in their tracks. “So I’ll go through everything we were able to get today and send a selection of proofs for you to review. Once you’ve made some choices, I’ll put the order together for you.”

  “Sounds good,” the dad said.

  “Thank you again,” the mother added, unable to hide the strain in her voice. She shook Eileen’s hand. “We hope there’ll be some good ones.”

  Eileen smiled at her and the kids while the dad headed off to his car, presumably to get back to work. “I’m sure there are—you’re such a photogenic family.” There wasn’t a single good photo of them on her camera; Eileen was almost sure of it.

  As the mom shuffled her kids away from the lake and toward her own car, Eileen’s phone beeped another notification.

  Voicemail, Simon Reamer

  Her mother. Was Simon calling because Clare couldn’t? Had something happened to their mom? Clare had moved Ella into that retirement home right before Eileen and her family had gone out there for Christmas. The Regency in San Francisco, the best care facility to treat Alzheimer’s patients Clare’s money would buy, and close so Clare could visit her regularly.

  Had her mother died? Is that why Simon, who never called her, was calling her now? She finished packing up her equipment, dreading every second that passed, knowing in only a few more moments she would need to stand here and listen to exactly what was going on. She tried to reassure herself that it was likely nothing—but she felt almost certain something was wrong.

  She twisted the last of her collapsible light reflectors down into a smaller circle and pushed it into its black zipper case. The sound of her phone ringing again ripped the silence and sent an alarm out across her central nervous system. She lunged for her tote and grabbed her phone.

  Simon Reamer

  Eileen stared at it while it rang twice more, finally swiping to answer right before it could roll over to voicemail again. “Hello?”

  Silence. Did they have a bad connection?

  “Hello? Simon?”

  “Eileen…Eileen,” Simon said, his voice strained. Was he crying?

  She tried to picture Simon crying… She couldn’t. “Simon, is something wrong?” she asked. Her limbs suddenly weak, she sat down in the grass next to her bags.

  A loud sob, unmistakable, erupted from Simon on the other end of the line. Eileen could hear his breathing, erratic and broken. Guttural sounds, like a wounded animal, kept him from speaking. “She… Oh my God. Oh, my God, Eileen. I’m sorry I can’t say it.”

  Eileen’s heart stopped. Dead in her chest. Frozen, her phone clutched in her hand, she waited for disaster.

  “Clare!” he shouted, his sobbing wild with obvious grief. “She…she…”

  “Simon,” Eileen whispered into the phone, tears now streaming down her own face even though she had no idea what had happened. “Si
mon, please. Please tell me what’s happened.”

  “She, oh…no, no, no. She’s… I can’t say it. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

  “Simon!” Eileen shouted. “What? What is it?”

  A long silence stretched across the connection between them. Had she lost him? Had he hung up? A second later, she heard him gasp, then clear his throat. “She’s dead,” he blurted. His next inhale was deep. He held it for a long time. “I’m sorry, but she’s dead. I needed to tell you myself…before you heard it…somewhere else.”

  “Clare?” Eileen whispered. “Clare?”

  Another sob from Simon. “Clare,” he said.

  A feather, long and bright white, lay in a tangle of brown grass and small stones a few feet away. Eileen stared at it. Cameron would want that. She should collect it and bring it home for him.

  “Eileen? Are you there?”

  “Yes, I’m here.”

  “Can you…can you come? I need, um…I need help.”

  “Yes. I’ll come,” she said, pulling her eyes from the feather. “How? What happened?” And when? Hadn’t she just this morning read about Clare attending the premiere of her movie last night? Was this even possible?

  Simon sobbed uncontrollably into the phone.

  “Simon.” She kept her voice steady, her mom voice, the one she’d used when Ryan broke his arm. “I’m coming. I’ll get a flight today. Tonight,” she corrected. She’d need to make so many arrangements before walking out of her house with a suitcase. “But please, try to tell me what happened.” Because Simon was right, the news would be reporting on Clare’s death soon. They might already have more details than Eileen did. She didn’t want to hear about it from the internet.

  “Eileen…she shot herself.” His voice was barely audible over the cell connection, but Eileen heard enough to understand perfectly.

  She just couldn’t believe it.

  “No,” Eileen said, her voice more matter-of-fact than she had intended. “Clare wouldn’t…” Would she?

  “People are here… I have to go. There’s some other problem. Please let me know what flight you’re on,” Simon said, and hung up.

  She sat, her phone pressed to her ear for a long time after the call had ended. Clare Collins was beautiful, talented, successful, internationally adored—but that wasn’t what made it impossible for Eileen to believe her sister had committed suicide.

  Long before Clare had become Clare Collins, she had been a force in the world. Audacious, fearless even. It didn’t add up. It didn’t make sense.

  Why?

  Why?

  “Why would you do it, Clare?” she breathed.

  She looked for the feather to take home for Cameron, but it was gone.

  Chapter 3

  Simon

  Two years before Clare’s death

  “Simon!” Clare called. Her bare feet raced one after the other down the west side of the split marble staircase. “Simon! The internet is down!”

  Simon Reamer, Clare Collins’s husband and literary agent, sat at their kitchen table listening to his wife’s voice echo through the hallways of their massive home. Think, think, think, he pleaded with his brain to come up with an acceptable excuse that she would believe. Because if she knew he had unplugged their modem to keep her from reading the New York Times Book Review—she would kill him.

  “Simon!”

  “In here!” he called back, his eyes closed, dreading the whole rest of this Sunday.

  He couldn’t keep it from her forever. He had slipped from their bed while it was still dark out, long before her alarm was set to go off, careful to take Charlie from his dog bed with him so the six-month-old Maltese wouldn’t wake her. He had a bad feeling about this book. He needed to see for himself before Clare did.

  With the puppy curled on his lap, Simon had pulled up the review section prepared to scan for the write-up of Clare’s latest release, If You Knew Her. He didn’t need to hunt for it; If You Knew Her was this week’s lead title.

  With one hand resting on Charlie’s soft head, he scrolled down the page as his eyes raced over the recent National Book Award-winner, Donna Mehan’s, scathing takedown of Clare’s book. He finally reached its painful final conclusion, “Collins seems to have lost her footing, or perhaps worse, taken on characters and subjects beyond her ability to effectively convey.” Simon sat back in his leather office chair and tilted his head back, eyes focused on the ceiling above him where his wife, and client, still slept, blissfully unaware of this public fallout.

  She would hide it, even from him—but this was going to devastate her.

  Without thinking, Simon stood up with Charlie cradled in his arms, opened the cabinet on the wall, and pulled the plug on the modem. “Come on, Charlie, let’s get you outside.”

  “Simon,” Clare said again, arriving at the entrance to the kitchen still in her midnight-blue satin pajama set with the matching robe cinched tight around her waist. Her hair, not yet brushed, hung over her shoulders just past her breasts.

  Before they had gotten married, he had wondered if his amazement about this woman would eventually fade—if waking up to her every day for a lifetime might become commonplace. From his place at the kitchen table, his coffee still steaming, his toast now cold, he looked up into her frustrated expression. It had been fourteen years since he met her and six since their wedding day—she still devastated him. His chest tight with fear, he looked into her dark brown eyes.

  “Yes? What’s up?”

  Her eyes flew wide with irritation. “Didn’t you hear me? The internet! It’s down!”

  “Is it? That’s weird. I’m sure it’s the service provider. They’ll have it up soon enough.” He took a sip of his coffee. “Want some?”

  Clare stood at the kitchen door, one hand on her hip, staring him down. She narrowed her eyes, then turned on a dime and headed across the marble entrance.

  “Clare!” he called, sloshing his coffee down his T-shirt. “Shit. Clare, wait!” he shouted after her.

  She was already past the mahogany circular table with this week’s large floral display featuring five dozen white roses and light-blue hydrangeas, shoots of spiky green somethings that Simon couldn’t identify reaching tall with the purple hollyhock. Her robe fluttered out behind her, her bare feet silent but determined and headed right for his office door.

  “Please,” he begged her.

  She turned the handles on the double doors to his office and flung them both wide before her. In two steps, Clare had her hands on the cabinet hiding the modem and other various wires and receivers from view. By the time he reached her, she had the modem in her hands and was inspecting the backside.

  “The provider is down?” she asked, her tone clearly accusing. She grabbed the exact right cable and plugged it into the exact right port. Shit, he didn’t even think she knew what a modem was. “How bad is it?” she asked, closing the cabinet and turning back to him. “I mean, for you to do this and imagine for even half a second you’d get away with it. It must be bad, right?”

  Simon, his shoulders limp with defeat, stared at his wife. “It’s bad, yes.”

  Clare’s chin jutted forward, her nostrils flared slightly as she sucked in air and filled her chest. “Okay,” she said, exhaling long and hard. She closed her eyes, shook her head once, and shrugged. “What can you do?” She was talking to herself. “A bad review from Donna Mehan…in the Times.” She paced toward his desk, then back. “How bad? Be honest, because I’m going to go upstairs and read it anyway as soon as I calm down.”

  Simon hesitated for a moment. There was no way to even soft-sell it. The review was brutal. “Scathing,” he said.

  Clare sucked another lungful of air through her nose, chest full, shoulders wide, her hair a tangled halo around her face. “That bitch,” she hissed. “That pompous, full-of-herself…overrated, bitch!” Clare spun
away from him and headed for the office doors.

  “Clare.” He trailed after her. “Don’t—”

  “Don’t what?” she snapped, already climbing back up the stairs.

  “Don’t do anything you’ll regret.” He raced after her and Charlie, the dog’s long white hair bouncing as he chased his mom up the stairs. The puppy clearly thought this whole morning was fantastic fun.

  “Like what? Shoving Donna Mehan’s National Book Award right up her tight ass?”

  “Yes, obviously don’t do that. But moreover…” On the landing halfway up, where the single staircase split into two, he caught up to her and managed to grab hold of her wrist. Clare stopped and faced him. “I need you to make me a promise.”

  “What?” she snapped.

  “No social media. Not today, not tomorrow…not for the whole week, in fact.”

  “That’s barbaric.”

  “Can you honestly tell me you’re capable of not biting right now?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Exactly my point, and you haven’t even read the review yourself yet. When that happens, your head is going to explode right off your shoulders. In that frame of mind, well, I don’t like to even imagine the flame war you’re likely to start.” He tried smiling at her.

  Clare pursed her lips and turned her head, softening…barely.

  Simon took a step closer, then another, daring to pull his seething wife to him. He wrapped his arms around her. Charlie, feeling left out, pawed at their legs. Simon lowered his lips to her ear, “Besides, you’re setting a bad example for Charlie.”

  They both looked down at the fluffy Maltese, wagging his tail, tongue hanging from his mouth. Clare’s shoulders sank a few inches.

  “Oh, you damn dog,” she whispered, and bent down to pick up his squirming, happy body. “How’s a woman supposed to stay enraged at her mortal enemy with you and that stupid cute face always ruining the moment?” She nuzzled the dog’s ear and took a deep breath. “Fine,” she said to Simon. “I promise, no social media for the day.”