Her Perfect Life

by Rebecca Taylor

  From deep inside her tote, she could feel her cell phone vibrating. She sighed. “Shit,” she whispered while reaching into the bag’s cluttered abyss and eyeing the ever-approaching end of the escalator that required her to dismount while remaining upright and in total possession of both her bags. Somehow, her hand closed around her phone, her left foot led her smoothly off the moving staircase, and the wheels of her bag barely hiccupped as they passed over the threatening metal teeth swallowing the stairs. A thought suddenly occurred to her as she stopped to answer her phone—maybe she could get through this day.

  “Hey!” the man behind her shouted, right before careening into her back. “Jesus Christ, lady!”

  Eileen threw both her hands wide, her cell phone flying, as she pitched violently over her own bag and tumbled onto the linoleum floor. The heavy weight of another human falling on top of her—it was chaos.

  “Who the hell stops?” a man was shouting.

  More people were yelling, shuffling, trying to get around the pileup of people at the bottom of the escalator. “Hit the emergency stop button!” a woman yelled.

  After a bit more shouting, untangling of strangers’ limbs, righting of upended bags, someone reached out a hand to Eileen. She looked up from the floor, confused. “What happened?” she asked and took the man’s outstretched hand.

  As he helped hoist her up from the floor, he looked into her eyes. “There seems to have been…uh, a bit of an accident,” he said.

  “Damn right there was a bit of an accident!” another man standing nearby began yelling at Eileen. In two steps, the man’s red and enraged face was right in front of hers. “Who the hell stops at the bottom of a busy escalator to answer their phone? What the hell is wrong with you?” The man raised his hand and shook it at the now-paralyzed stairs behind them. “You could’ve killed me! Me and at least five other people!”

  Eileen shrank back from the man’s rage. “I…I don’t know—”

  “What the hell you’re doing? You got that right, lady!”

  “Hey now,” the man who had helped Eileen up from the floor suddenly interjected, taking a step between Eileen and her angry victim. “It was an accident.”

  “A completely preventable one!” the furious man yelled. “Here’s an idea—how about you stay off your goddamn phone while you’re on an escalator and shit-faced drunk!” he crescendoed while snatching both his suitcase and computer bag off the floor.

  Eileen stood, mortified, squeezing her two hands together until the knuckles turned white. “I’m sorry,” she whispered as the man shook his head and stormed off through baggage claim and toward the sliding glass doors.

  As the rest of the crowd began to disperse, some continuing to give her sidelong looks and whispering, the man who had been kind enough to help her up off the floor began trying to collect the multitude of crap that had spilled from her tote far and wide all over the floor. Ready to die now, Eileen bent to her knees and swiped up several pens and, oh God, two tampons, and shoved them back into her bag.

  When the man returned to her, he had a handful of loose papers, her sister’s book, the envelope of photographic evidence, and her cell phone. “Um, I think there’s someone on the line.”

  Eileen took her phone from the man’s outstretched hands and saw her husband’s name and number on the screen. “Eileen? Eileen, what’s happening?” She remembered her phone ringing right before disaster struck. Obviously it had been Eric.

  She couldn’t be drunk, have her shit spread all over the San Francisco airport, and deal with her lying, cheating, son of a bitch husband right now. Eileen made the only reasonable choice open to her and hung up the phone before switching the whole thing off. “Thank you,” she managed to say as she looked up into the man’s face and took the rest of her belongings from him.

  She froze. She recognized him. From before her flight, at her table near the food court, the pictures of Eric and Lauren spread all over, and this man walking past bearing witness to the whole ugly scene. He had been on his Bluetooth headset, noticed her and the failure of her marriage on display, and had been kind enough to avert his eyes.

  Not thinking it was physically possible, Eileen slipped a whole degradation level lower. She pursed her lips and repacked her tote.

  The man stood up and looked around, as if to make sure she wouldn’t be verbally assaulted by any more of the passengers she had nearly killed trying to exit the escalator. “Are you going to be okay?” he asked her.

  Incapable of speech, Eileen closed her eyes and nodded before standing upright and taking hold of her suitcase again.

  The man nodded once, seeming uncertain of how to exit their uncomfortable social situation. “Okay,” he finally said and started to walk away.

  Eileen breathed a sigh of relief, but the man only got five steps before he turned back around.

  “I’m sorry,” he continued. “Are you sure you’re okay? It’s just, I’m pretty sure you’re having a really horrible day. I was on your flight out of Denver…across the aisle three rows up in first class.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, I know this is weird and completely none of my business, but we have met before. Your daughter is Paige, right? She plays soccer with my daughter, Kimmy.”

  Of course she did.

  “I don’t know if you remember me.” He stuck his hand out to Eileen again, this time to shake it. “I’m Samuel Cramer.”

  Eileen took his hand in hers, shook it twice, and thought about how convenient it would be to drop dead, right then and there in the middle of the San Francisco airport baggage claim. “Eileen,” she mumbled, still too afraid that any speech that required more than one or two syllables would completely expose her for the disorderly public drunk she was.

  “Yes, I remember.” He smiled at her. “I used to stand on the sidelines with your husband, Eric, and—” He stopped cold. “Well.” He glanced at her tote bag and then up to the ceiling. “I shouldn’t keep you, but are you… Do you need me to get you a cab or a car?”

  She realized two things all at once. One, he had clearly seen the photos of Eric and Lauren. And two, he absolutely knew Eileen was completely wasted. She sighed, not wanting to accept help from Samuel, who just might end up telling other people, who would then tell more people.

  “Did you hear about Eileen and Eric. Oh God…and what her sister did? And, this guy I know, he was on Eileen’s flight, he said she was completely three sheets to the wind—hammered. Almost killed people when she fell off the escalator.”

  “Thank you,” Eileen said, still deciding if it was better to risk the suburban public shaming or try to navigate a major city she didn’t know while possibly needing her stomach pumped. She should probably accept his help, and was about to, when she looked up and noticed her name written across a folded white piece of paper being held by a wide-stanced driver.

  Simon, of course he would send someone for her.

  “But I have a ride.” She pointed to the evidence waiting patiently for her.

  Samuel’s gaze followed her finger and then turned back to her with a smile. “Good,” he said, seemingly genuinely relieved. “Sometimes the cab line can go on forever here.”

  Eileen nodded. “Thank you, again. It was…nice…seeing you.” It wasn’t, not at all, but this was the way to try to exit a horrifically embarrassing situation when there was a very high likelihood of seeing the witness of your bad behavior again. She raised her hand in a lame goodbye gesture and started toward her name on the paper.

  “Eileen,” Samuel said.

  Jesus, please, please, please, she thought. When she turned, she could see that he was holding a business card out to her. He walked toward her, and she took the card from him. What the hell?

  “I’m in town for the month. I don’t know…” He shrugged, as if he also could plainly see how awkward this all was. “If you need anything…when you’re away from home
, it’s always good to know some people, you know?”

  She didn’t know—but seriously, what-the-fuck-ever right now. All she wanted was to escape this never-ending nightmare. “Sure.” She nodded. “Thanks.” She dropped the card into her black-hole bag, most likely to never be seen again, and headed for her driver.

  “Ms. Eileen Greyden?” the driver asked her when she approached him.

  “Yes,” she answered.

  The man nodded, and an unmistakable sadness pulled at his features. “Hello, I’m your sister’s driver, Henry. I’m so sorry for your…” His voice broke. He cleared his throat. “For your family’s loss,” he managed to finish as he stepped in and hugged her.

  Surprised, overwhelmed, still a drunken mess, Eileen let this Henry person wrap her in his arms before leading her out the tinted double doors.

  Chapter 11

  Eileen

  Henry led Eileen to the back seat of a champagne-colored four-door Bentley he had parked nearby in the short-term lot. As he loaded her bags into the trunk, Eileen crawled onto the two-tone beige-and-white leather back seat. When Henry finished with the bags, he returned, shut her door softly, then climbed into the driver’s seat.

  The car smelled like money. Rich, full-bodied luxury. Eileen hated that she thought it, but her sister was so ridiculously rich.

  Was. Eileen thought. Clare was so ridiculously rich… She started to cry again, quieter, tears that originated in her belly, seized at her heart. Tears that rose up from some deep, dark well at the core of her—tears that would weep out of her forever.

  Her sister was dead.

  Her sister had killed herself.

  Why, Clare?

  Eileen lay down across the dewy, soft leather and closed her eyes.

  “Ms. Greyden?” Henry asked. “I’m sorry to disturb you. But if you could please buckle your belt?”

  Eileen pushed herself up, grabbed the middle seat belt, and wrapped it around her waist while leaving the shoulder strap up against the seat, then lay back down and closed her eyes. She was exhausted, sick, drunk, and sadder than she could ever remember being in her whole life. Clare and Simon’s house was at least a forty-minute drive from the airport. She wanted to spend it passed out.

  “Thank you, Ms. Greyden,” Henry said, then left her alone until they pulled into Clare’s garage in Muir Beach.

  When Henry opened the back door, it woke her up, and Eileen’s brain felt like it was going to explode all over the inside of her skull. He handed her a large glass of ice water and two brown pills. “I thought you might want these,” he said. “I’ll get your things and take them up to your room, third door on the right after the stairs. Mr. Reamer is in his study on the first floor…whenever you’re ready. He told me to tell you there’s no rush, so take your time.”

  Eileen threw both pills—they looked like ibuprofen—into her mouth without question and chased them down with four large swallows of the water. Oh God, had water ever tasted this good? She continued to chug the entire glass down, then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. She took a deep breath that filled her lungs till they felt like they might burst, then let it out in a loud rush through her mouth.

  Henry had pulled the Bentley right into the garage. The large door was closed behind her, and she could see he’d left the door to the house cracked a few inches. There were three other cars also parked inside the garage, with plenty of room for more should Clare and Simon decide they needed more than four cars between them.

  Should Simon decide, she reminded herself. For half a second, she had forgotten again. It just didn’t really seem possible that her beautiful, talented, simply awe-inspiring older sister wasn’t inside that house waiting for her to come in.

  It wasn’t possible.

  Eileen heaved herself from the back seat of the car and went inside to find her brother-in-law.

  The door from the garage led into a slate-tiled mudroom with an upholstered bench seat and custom shelving and cabinets. A woman’s black trench coat hung from a nickel-plated hook, and a large gray leather handbag sat slouched open on the bench beneath it. From the mudroom, Clare and Simon’s large, airy family room opened up before her. The soft white walls and ceiling reflected the light from the setting sun that radiated through the glass walls on the far side of the room, turning the whole space into a warm, luminous cocoon of soft couches and silky upholstered chairs.

  She had only been here once before, for Christmas with Eric and the kids three years ago, but she thought she remembered where Simon’s office was. She turned right, passed several closed doors, and saw the large mahogany entrance table with an enormous arrangement of birds-of-paradise, wide palm fronds, and artfully added red and peach roses. One pointy orange beak with its arched stem of a neck seemed to leer down at her as she passed.

  The kitchen, lights out and desolated, was on her right; Simon’s double office doors were to the left. A numbness spread out from her belly through her limbs, and she placed one hand on the table for support. The heat from her hand created a moisture vapor on the shiny wood surface. Worried about the fingerprints, she snatched her offensive hand away and cradled it between her breasts.

  Simon’s door was half open. He knew she’d be coming. She took a deep breath of the rose-heavy air and pushed his door with one hand, more than a little terrified of how she might find him. “Simon?” she whispered, glancing around the darkened room. “It’s me, Eileen,” she continued, thankful for the improved clarity of her speech. She wasn’t sober by any stretch, but at least the outward signs of her drunken stupor were shoring up.

  Movement in the far corner of the room caught her attention. It was Simon looking disheveled in a wrinkled shirt, his hair standing out from his head in a riot of angles. He sat in a brown leather wingback placed in the corner where the wall met a bookshelf that stretched from the floor to the ceiling. He had a book spread open in his lap, but his eyes stared blankly out into the room.

  She moved closer on quiet steps, bending her head to try to intercept his frozen stare. “Simon?” she whispered. “It’s me…Eileen.”

  His eyes shifted and met hers. “Hi, Eileen,” he whispered back, his voice hardly more than a breath. His eyes, still glassy and unfocused, welled up fast before tears spilled down his cheeks and disappeared into the gruff of his unshaven face. He shook his head once and spread his hands out over the pages of the open book in his lap before his fingers curled around the edges and gripped it so hard she heard pages tear.

  “This isn’t happening,” he whispered. It reminded Eileen of something Ryan or Cameron might say in response to tragedy. Simon looked up at her, pleading, as if she somehow had the power to set everything right, turn back time, bring his wife back. “I can’t… I can’t do this,” he said like it was a matter of fact. “It’s too hard.”

  She stood watching him, frozen herself in disbelief. She couldn’t do this either. After several ragged breaths, Eileen managed to make her body move. She walked toward him, took the book from Simon’s lap, closed it, and placed it on the bare, clean surface of his wide desk. The familiar dust jacket with its bold gold font and her sister’s name caught her eye, A Perfect Life, Clare Collins.

  She rested her hand on the cover, blotting out the center. Simon would have read this book many, many times already—long before it was ever published. Was he, like Eileen had done earlier, simply trying to hang on to one of the last tangible pieces of herself that Clare had left behind?

  “Why would she do it?” Simon’s voice suddenly broke the silence. “I can’t understand it.”

  Eileen turned to face him with no answers to help.

  “I didn’t even know she owned a gun,” he whispered to her like a confession. “How could I not know that?”

  Eileen’s heart beat hard against her chest, and a sickening realization took shape in her head.

  “A gun,” Simon mumble
d to himself, trying to configure the Clare as he knew her with this secret weapon that he hadn’t even known was in their house.

  “Our mother gave it to her,” she said. “She gave us each one, when we moved out. To protect ourselves.”

  Simon stared at the floor in front of him for a long time; it was impossible to guess what he was thinking. “I’m so sorry, Simon.”

  He nodded in a series of quick up-and-down movements that looked more like a mild seizure than agreement. He placed his hand over his mouth, rubbed his lips and chin, then started shaking his head with the same spastic force, as if trying to counter his earlier thinking. “For her protection?” he asked, his voice breaking on the last word.

  “It was over twenty years ago,” Eileen tried to explain, as if somehow the age of the gun, or their mother’s good intentions, could help Simon understand the destruction of his life today. She regretted the words. “Our mother…” What? What pearl of wisdom about their mom could possibly make any of this better? “She was a Wyoming cop, Simon.”

  His lips flattened into an angry line. He needed someone to blame, and he couldn’t possibly blame Clare right now. Eileen braced herself for some displaced fury, prepared herself to not defend the twenty-year-old actions and intentions of a mother who had loved both her and her sister fiercely—but she didn’t have to.

  Simon took a breath and stood up. “I’m not in a good place,” he said as he grabbed A Perfect Life from the desk where Eileen had placed it and walked to the door. With his hand on the handle, he stopped before leaving. “Can you find your room?”