Her Perfect Life

by Rebecca Taylor

  Clare stopped short. Something about those thoughts filled her with regret.

  Clare laid the magazine on the table and stood up with her keys in hand, ready to head down to the corner liquor store. She grabbed her purse off the stool, where she’d absently tossed it yesterday, and opened the front door. Her feet moved rapid-fire, like a quick-step dancer, down the three stories of stairs that led to the building’s front entrance.

  Outside her building, on the sidewalk at the bottom of the concrete steps, her hand gripped the cold metal handrail. All around her people went about their own business, walking, crossing the street, getting out of a cab, carrying their dog, begging for change, running, drinking coffee, buying a sandwich, holding hands. Right in front of her, a woman rummaged through her purse looking for something. Three stoops over, a small child with a head full of black curls was crying in her father’s arm.

  They were nobody to Clare.

  She was nobody to them.

  She was nobody to anybody who bought this month’s copy of the Atlantic Monthly. But every person that read “Lost on the North Platte” by Clare Collins, those faceless people—what did she become to them after that? Her words, her life, pieces of her very being. Could she really still be nobody and still have some form of existence in their minds?

  The woman with the purse dropped her keys on the sidewalk and bent over to pick them up.

  Clare kept moving toward the liquor store. If she did end up telling Donna, Sergio, and Flynn about this latest development, she would remember to bring up these questions with them. She smiled and picked up her pace, dodging a guy with a buzz cut and ten multisized dogs radiating out from him on a fan of leashes taking up the whole sidewalk. It was exactly this sort of philosophical bullshit that would keep them up and drinking well into the night.

  At the liquor store, Clare pushed aside worries over her rent that month and pulled three bottles of wine off the second-to-bottom shelf. If she didn’t decide to tell her roommates, she wasn’t sure how she would explain the out-of-character expense. At the register, Murphy raised his eyebrows when she lifted the bottles onto the counter. “Well.” He smiled at her with tobacco-stained teeth. “Looks like someone’s moving up in the world.” He gave her a sidelong look and punched the prices from the small orange labels into the keypad on his register. “One shelf at a time, that’s what I say. Nice and steady.” He chuckled.

  “Very funny,” Clare said and nodded. “I just have a little bit of good news that I’m considering celebrating.”

  “I should say,” Murphy said as he totaled her purchase. “That’ll be thirty-two twenty-one?” he asked, clearly wanting to know if Clare was sure she wanted to spend that much considering her usual max spend was something near nine dollars.

  She nodded and added, “Can I also get a pack of Marlboro Lights.”

  “No refunds,” he clarified.

  “Jesus, Murphy. I have the money.” Clare pulled three tens and a five out of her wallet to prove it.

  He held up his wrinkled palms. “Okay. All right. I just don’t want you waking up tomorrow in an apartment where the water’s been turned off and you suddenly realize, you know, that the bottom shelf coulda sufficed.” He took her money and counted out the change.

  “Thanks for the concern. If you see me next week begging on the corner, you can tell me ‘I told you so.’”

  He winked at her. “That’s a deal,” he said as he pointed at her then handed her the cigarettes before he bagged her bottles.

  “Don’t you have some kids of your own to worry about?”

  Murphy nodded. “Six of ’em. All older than you and your friends.” He handed her the paper sack. “So how about you just indulge an old man who never learned how to mind his own business?”

  Clare gave him a dramatic sigh. “Fine, I guess. But does this mean I get to run to you every time I need—”

  “Next!” Murphy called over her shoulder.

  She stuck out her tongue at him and smiled when the old man laughed.

  By the time she had reached her building, she felt good. Buoyant. Successful even. She was ready to share this enormous feeling of accomplishment with her roommates. Because how could she hide it? Clare started to shuffle through her keys and match each one with the appropriate lock.

  When she reached the fifth and final lock, the door flew open in front of her, ripped her keys from her hand, and made her gasp. Clare stumbled back a step and suppressed a scream right as her brain processed Sergio standing in the doorway in front of her, arms flung wide, face beaming.

  “Clare!” he tilted his head back and exclaimed before reaching for her and her paper bag at the same time. “You’ll never, ever, ever guess what has happened!” he said as he pulled her into both the apartment and his arms. “My every wish has come true today!”

  Stunned, Clare fell into Sergio’s arms and only avoided dropping the wine and herself to the floor because he was quick and had a strong grip on her. Still beaming, he helped her steady herself, then whisked the wine into the kitchen as he launched into the explanation for his radical exuberance.

  “So, you already know that I had that huge audition today…”

  Clare nodded absently, although Sergio was always going on about one audition or another. If he had decided to quiz her about exactly what he had going on today, she would have been forced to offer up nothing but vague guesses. Commercial? Off-Broadway musical? Print ad?

  “Well,” he said, then paused and grinned at her—dramatic effect. “Guess who just landed the role of Second Male Dancer?”

  Clare’s attention was pulled from Sergio already working to uncork one of her celebratory wines, to the living room. He wasn’t the only one who had come home while she was at the store. “Um…” she stalled, processing both his question and the sight of Donna standing in front of the couch. Her back was to them, and she hadn’t said anything since Clare had walked in the door. “You?” Clare answered, barely even registering exactly what she and Sergio were talking about.

  “Yes!” he yelled at the ceiling and pulled the cork in one triumphant climax.

  Even this didn’t pull Donna from whatever she was focused on, because Clare could now see she was clearly and intently focused on something in her hands.

  “Congratulations,” Clare offered up, distracted by Donna, already knowing what she was so intent on, and wondering what she would say.

  “Congratulations?” Sergio pulled his head back in mock shock, his hand flying to his chest. “Congratulations, she says.” He shook his head. “Clare, honey, this is Coke! Coca-Cola! And I…” He pointed emphatically at himself. “Am mother-fucking Second Male Dancer in the highest-budget commercial they are filming this year! They are shutting down Times Square! Times. Square.” He took a breath and shook his head. “This is it.”

  Clare stared at him, flabbergasted between the need to respond with an appropriate level of enthusiasm for Sergio and Donna’s silence in the living room. She started with a huge pasted-on smile. “That’s amazing!” she threw her hands into a wide V. “Pour the wine!”

  Finally satisfied, Sergio pointed directly at her and narrowed his eyes. “That’s right, baby. We’re pouring the wine!” He turned to grab glasses out of the dishwasher.

  In the living room, Donna turned around to face them. Clare’s Atlantic Monthly was splayed open across both her palms. “Sorry to burst your bubble, Serg, but it looks like you don’t get to solo on the celebration center stage tonight.” She was smiling, closed mouth with her eyebrows raised into two high-pointed arches. The resulting expression was confusing, something like sorrow masquerading as happiness—Donna looked like the victim of an accident who was in shock.

  Clare met Donna’s eyes and saw the fear, raw, bottomless, and framed in self-doubt. But the revelation was swept away in less time than it took Clare’s heart to beat because Donna forced h
er face into a manic wide smile, all teeth. “This. Is. Amazing!” she suddenly proclaimed, shaking the magazine with a violence. She sounded nothing at all like the deeply critical, borderline cynical Donna Mehan Clare had lived with for the past four years and everything like a crazed, super-pumped sorority sister.

  Clare stared at her, mouth slack, wondering if she should just roll with this fake congratulations or pull Donna into their shared bedroom and try to have a real conversation with her. “Donna, I—”

  “What’s this, now?” Sergio emerged from their tiny kitchen holding two mismatched tumblers of Clare’s wine. “I’m not the only one with news?” He placed one glass in Clare’s hand and held the other out to Donna, waiting for her to free one of her hands from the magazine. Donna handed the magazine to Sergio to see the evidence for himself, then took the glass and immediately raised it to her lips as she nodded to Clare.

  Sergio turned to her, his face a question mark waiting for an answer.

  Clare looked from him to Donna, then back to him as his eyes dropped to the pages in his hands. “My story got published,” she whispered.

  Sergio’s eyes scanned the page, then he flipped to the magazine’s cover.

  “The Atlantic Monthly,” Donna helped him. “Very, very impressive.”

  “Clare!” Sergio said, looking up and smiling. “That’s fantastic!”

  Despite the fact that she knew Donna was struggling to digest all this, Clare couldn’t help the smile that cracked open across her face. She nodded. “Thank you,” she managed to say.

  He threw his head back and let out a howl as he threw his arms wide. “We are the luckiest bitches in the whole world today!”

  Behind him, Donna raised her glass and nodded, her eyes connecting with Clare’s. “To the luckiest bitches on the planet.”

  Chapter 23

  Eileen

  It was the sound of the ocean crashing. Eileen knew it before she opened her eyes. Despite the raw throb of the hangover she was waking up to, this time there was no mistaking her sister’s guest bedroom for her own. She remembered where she was right away.

  Her phone buzzed against the dresser on the other side of the room; that was what had pulled her from the depths of her booze-induced coma. Her swimming head reminding her that she, and Simon, drank way too much last night.

  She also remembered…

  A slick swell of guilt rose up inside her. “Oh my God,” she whispered as she forced her bloodshot eyes to open to the blinding glare of fresh morning light streaming through the open sliding glass door.

  Her phone buzzed again. She knew it was someone from home. One of her kids, or Eric, and this knowing turned the sound into an accusation. The vibration erupting from her phone seemed both louder and harder against the wood.

  Eileen turned her head, already knowing what she would see—or rather, who. There he was, still deep and far away in his own alcohol-soaked stupor. Simon, with his mouth slightly open and the faint rasp of his breath moving past the back of his throat, was still asleep on the pillow inches from her face. This close to him, in the intimacy of her sister’s guest bed, she stared at the smattering of dark brown hair on his naked chest. The breeze from the open door behind him picked up the scent of him, woodsy and unfamiliar—not Eric’s scent, not her own husband.

  Eileen covered her mouth with her hand and turned her gaze back to the bright white ceiling above them. What had happened last night? What had they done? Eileen pulled her hand from her mouth and placed it between her legs to see if there was some horrifying and irrefutable clue as to what happened and why she ended up in bed with her sister’s husband. There was nothing so obvious as a used condom down there. She was wearing underwear, not her pajama pants, and had on the same T-shirt from last night—no bra. She forced her brain to focus on anything she could remember—the beach, wine, Clare’s study, sitting on the couch and talking about when Simon first met Clare. A slick swell of shame rolled in and settled in Eileen’s gut.

  Sometime later in the night, after they had finished the second bottle and maybe there had even been a third, she had a memory of Simon holding her. They were both crying, both drunk; Simon opened his arms and she had fallen into them.

  He kissed her. On the top of her head at first, and then she had lifted her face to his—shit, shit, shit. What the hell was wrong with her?

  Eileen shifted the white sheet and duvet off her and slid her legs over the edge of the mattress, willing the bed to not move or make a sound. Please, God, do not let him wake up. She simply could not deal with looking her sister’s husband in the eye while they were both still half naked in the same bed. Thankfully, this was not her bed at home, the eighteen-year-old, sagging sack of squeaking springs on a rickety metal bed frame that shifted and shimmied any time she or Eric took a deep breath or rolled over. No, her sister had only the best. Eileen’s bare feet met the rug, and she transitioned out of the bed without a single tremor to announce her departure. She collected the pants she’d worn yesterday and her bra from the floor and clutched them to her stomach as she dared to turn and face Simon’s still-sleeping and slack expression. God, what had they done?

  Eileen backed toward the door, trying not to imagine Simon’s eyes flying open at any moment and catching her awkward, shame-riddled escape, but stopped dead.

  Strewn across the floor at the end of the bed, there were the large photos of her husband and Lauren Andrews and the note from Dave threatening Eric. Eileen held her breath—why were these out? She glanced again at Simon, still sound asleep, before kneeling down and raking together the pictures as quickly and quietly as she could, scooping them up into her pants and bra bundle. She grabbed her phone off the dresser and backed out of the bedroom, careful to close the door so the latch wouldn’t click.

  In the hallway, hoping there wasn’t a housekeeper anywhere near to witness her quick steps into the next nearest bathroom, Eileen tried to piece together what had happened after she and Simon had kissed on the couch. With the door shut behind her, she wiggled into her black capri pants, and sand from the night before spilled from the wide cuff and onto the gray tiled floor. She turned on the faucet and gazed at her reflection in the silver-framed mirror, scanning her bloodshot eyes for some memory that would send her running from this house in embarrassment.

  There was nothing, a black hole where the end of last night should be stored. “You have to stop drinking so much.”

  Downstairs in the expansive kitchen, ready to kill for a cup of coffee, Eileen stared down the complicated espresso machine. She reached out and pressed a random button, but the hulking box of stainless steel didn’t blink.

  “Goddammit, you piece of shit,” she whispered. “I would throw you off the balcony for a fifteen-dollar Mr. Coffee and a package of Folgers right now.”

  “Do you want some help with that?”

  Eileen gasped and turned around; Simon, looking haggard and hungover, held up his hand in apology.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “Christ,” Eileen exhaled as her shoulders sagged.

  She shook her head and closed her eyes. The rush of adrenaline drove a headache like an ice pick through her temples. Eileen pressed the soft spots on either side of her head and nodded at her brother-in-law. “Yes, please,” she said and stepped out of the way so he could bring life to the complicated machine holding the caffeine hostage.

  Simon nodded. “But first,” he said as he opened one of the drawers on the far side of the enormous island. He pulled out a small bottle and shook it. The pills it contained rattled with the promise of pain relief. He popped the lid and shook out several brown pills into his palm. He walked over to her, pinched two between his fingers and thumb, and held them out for her.

  “Thank you,” she whispered, scanning his eyes for any hints of guilt, regret, soul-crushing levels of mortification—but there w
as only his same dark-ringed grief. She took the pills and popped them in her mouth, swallowing hard and wishing she’d waited for the glass of water he was now getting them both from the fridge.

  “I suppose it’s safe to say we both had way too much to drink last night,” Simon said as he handed her the icy cold glass and took a long swig from his own. “I’m sorry, by the way.”

  She tried to decipher what his apology might be for. For getting drunk? For crying on her shoulder? For having sex with his dead wife’s sister?

  Feeling the two pills stubbornly lodged halfway down her throat, Eileen coughed twice and took several large swallows of water. She placed the glass on the counter in front of her and gathered the nerve she needed to actually talk out loud about her potential shame. “Sorry?” she asked, forcing herself to look up, if not exactly into Simon’s eyes then at least at his chin. “I don’t remember what happened last night,” she admitted.

  “No, I imagine not,” he said as he began pushing buttons and twisting handles on the espresso machine. “Just coffee? Or I could make you a cappuccino, if you like. Or anything really, espresso, macchiato, latte. We even have some flavored syrups,” he offered as he opened the cupboard above the machine. He turned and looked at her, waiting for her order.

  Eileen tried to figure out how bad this was. Was Simon really feeling this casual because nothing had happened? Or was this his way of sidestepping the avalanche of personal disgust and shame they both should feel because they had crossed the worst line ever last night?

  “Just coffee, please.”

  He gave her a quick closed-mouth smile and then turned to begin the task. She watched him, the way the fabric of the same short sleeved T-shirt he’d worn yesterday stretched and pulled across his muscled back, his bare arms, the hands that had no trouble getting the espresso machine to grind coffee beans and begin percolating her a perfect cup of aromatic caffeine. His hands had touched that back. His hands had held her face. Their lips had—