“And what goes on in your radius, Liz? Tell me about your life. What would you be doing right now if you weren’t here?”
For a moment, my mind reels. If I weren’t here, I’d be preparing for the Olympics in Vancouver, but only if my life had gone very differently. Only if . . .
“Well, it’s winter there now, of course,” I say, plastering a smile on my face to hide my discomfort, “so lots of skiing, some snowshoeing maybe. Hot tubbing, drinking hot chocolate with peppermint schnapps. Simple stuff.”
“Sounds divine. You’re very sporty, aren’t you? You remind me of my friend Katherine, she’s always going hunting and horseback riding. Her cheeks are forever this ruddy outdoorsy shade of pink, it’s very fetching.”
I startle at the name, but it’s just a coincidence.
“Hello, ladies.”
Edward emerges from the back of the house. He looks livelier than he did earlier, but a bit off-kilter too. His eyes are shining.
“Edward, I was just bragging about your art collection.”
“Ah, so bragging about your own taste then.”
“Credit where credit is due. And we were talking about skiing! Edward is quite a good skier,” Gemma says. “We used to go to Chamonix every year—why don’t we do that anymore?”
“Because you’re a terrible skier, among other reasons.”
“I’m hopeless at all sports as a rule, but I’ll get a couple of runs in as an excuse for the après ski. Have you been to Chamonix, Liz?”
“I have. I’ve skied all over the world, actually.” Why am I saying this? The champagne has gone straight to my head. I drank the first glass quickly and Gemma stealthily refilled it. I suppose I want them to know that I’m not as boring as the fake backstory that I’ve concocted: that I work on the administrative side at the resort. The truth is, unless I’m bullshitting with a stranger in a bar for five minutes, I’m not creative enough to imagine any life but the one I’ve lost.
“Have you?” Gemma says, her interest piqued.
“One of the many benefits of being the fifth wife of the Sultan of Brunei.”
Edward guffaws just as the doorbell sounds.
“Camilla!”
Edward is beaming when he walks back into the room with his beautiful dark-haired cousin. At first, I think she looks nothing like him with her olive skin and her mountain of thick curly hair, but then there is something similar too, something in the mannerisms. She and Gemma kiss hello, but there is a strange note of discomfort that I’m left wondering about.
Edward introduces us and we kiss hello too.
“Where are you from, Liz?”
“I’m American,” I say.
“You’re North American,” she corrects, and I’m momentarily stunned. “We’re both Americans, after all.” She smiles in a way that leaves little doubt as to what she thinks of my country.
“So you’re from here then?”
“One hundred percent Porteño. And what brings you to Buenos Aires?”
“Just visiting, I suppose. Learning some Spanish, leading tours.”
“You’re leading tours?” She raises her eyebrows.
“Just the main tourist sites. I guess they like having guides who speak English.”
She looks as though she might burst out laughing.
“And tango!” Gemma attempts a rescue. “She’s taking classes with Gianluca.”
“Of course,” Camilla says with a pointed look at Edward. “G loves his extranjeros.”
“Let’s get you a drink, Camilla,” Edward says, and Camilla flashes me a look that confirms that she finds me quite hilarious.
“Well, that went well,” I say to Gemma, feeling mortified.
“Don’t worry about it, she’ll warm up.”
“Will she?” I ask.
“Surely,” Gemma says. “Any day now!”
The dance team shows up around midnight and immediately takes over the couches. They have a physical intimacy with one another that reminds me of the drama kids from my high school, who were always draped all over one another, giving each other back rubs in the hallways, holding hands, and hugging. But that group felt like a union of outcasts whereas this one feels like something else, like a group anyone would want to be a part of. Or perhaps it’s just me who wants to be one of them. And in the center of it all is Gianluca, like a sultan in the midst of his harem.
I watch out of the corner of my eye as he extricates himself from one of the girls—it’s Sandra from Shanghai—and goes to speak to Edward. The two of them go out onto the empty patio where it’s drizzling softly, and I watch their faces become strangely serious in the eerie glow of the pool lights.
Gemma catches me spying and leans her head on my shoulder.
“What do you suppose they’re talking about?” I ask.
“Oh, probably just discussing some studio business.”
I look at her confused.
“I thought Edward wasn’t on the team.”
Gemma smiles. “Edward’s an investor. As I said, he likes to buy art.”
“Oh.” Gianluca’s owned by a rich man, just like I once was.
As we watch them, the mood appears to lighten and Gianluca pulls Edward into a handshake that becomes a hug.
“I reckon he’s got what he wanted,” Gemma says. “He usually does.”
“How did Edward come to be a part of his studio?”
Gemma gives me a little sideways smile, as though gauging how much she should tell me. “I told you about that summer in Saint-Tropez—gosh, it must have been a decade ago now—how Gianluca ended up on the yacht with all of them?”
“Sure, the Italian countess, right?”
“Exactly! Oh, I was so blotto on New Year’s I couldn’t remember what all I’d said. But we’re friends now, so I can tell you. So Edward, his girlfriend, her aunt, and Gianluca, they spend this whole summer on the Riviera, having a grand old time. The count himself isn’t around much, has a mistress stashed elsewhere, you know the drill; lets his wife have the run of the boat. But he comes back at the end of the summer and discovers that Gianluca is perhaps not . . . inclined the way his wife led him to believe.”
“They’re having an affair?”
“Naturally. Anyway, there’s some kind of confrontation on one of the upper decks involving the three of them. No one knows for sure what happened but the count ends up plummeting over the railing to his death four flights below. Of course, Gianluca is completely innocent in the version the countess tells, he’s only protecting her, and she’s backed up by the staff, who adored her and loathed the count. I don’t think her niece, Edward’s ex, ever believed the story, but it’s so like Edward to fall for someone like G. My darling Edward, he grew up everywhere and nowhere, so he always feels a kinship for wanderers. Wouldn’t be the first time it’s gotten him into trouble.”
“And has it? Gotten him into trouble, I mean.”
“Depends on what you believe, I suppose. All I know is Edward came back here with a new ‘investment,’ a new friend, and a rather unbelievable story about Gianluca’s heroics on the high seas. In their version, Gianluca stepped in to protect the countess when her husband tried to attack her.”
I raise my eyebrows at her. “You don’t believe it?”
“I’ve been here for a few months. He’s not the only one with a conveniently heroic origin myth. Come on,” she says, taking my arm, “let’s go in.”
I squeeze in on the couch next to Cali and she kisses me hello, lets her long leg drape over mine. “Where’s Angelina tonight?” I ask.
“Oh god,” she says. “Those two are a hot mess. Don’t get G started. He’ll either be ranting or crying.”
“Crying?” I’m surprised.
“Oh, you don’t know the half.”
When Gianluca comes back in, it quickly becomes his party again. He commandeers the music and asks me to dance a tango with him.
I can’t help the hope from burbling up through the cracks of my heart. Angelina gone, a
nd I’m his first dance of the night. Tonight, I feel more perfectly in sync with him than I ever have; I’m dropped into my body in a way that’s so sharp it’s almost painful, in that it reminds me how numb I’ve otherwise become. When the song ends and Gianluca steps away, it feels like someone has shoved me out into the cold.
I’m not alone for long though. Everyone asks me to dance after that. No one is exactly like him, but his team members are created in his image. He taught them to dance, certainly, but it’s also as though he taught them how to feel and touch, as though they’ve all become his proxies. Cali’s partner, the Norwegian whose name eludes me at the moment, even teaches me some zouk.
The night becomes a blur of sensations. And late, late in the evening when most of the nondancers have left, I feel galvanized. I go to find Gianluca.
I see Sandra first: she’s facing outward, the light from the main room catching her face in the darkened hallway. She bends at the waist, dropping like a stripper and grinding her hips into the man behind her: who I now see is Gianluca. He has one hand on her hip, the tips of his fingers hidden beneath the waistband of her tight pants, his other hand is in her hair, fingers wrapped around the silky black strands.
This is how it starts. My heart is racing and I am trying to convince myself that none of it matters. Aren’t I having so much fun? But then, the loop, the loop. Of course he doesn’t want you, no one wants you, you’re nothing next to these people, you’re fat now and broken and a sorry excuse for a woman, you lost Luke, you lost Penny and Blair, you lost . . . you lost . . . you’re lost.
I make my way to a back bathroom and close the door before curling myself up on the floor. The cool marble of the immaculate floor is a comfort against my cheek, but it’s not enough. I feel my throat go cold and tight, my hummingbird heart feels as though it will explode, and my chest is a giant knot being pulled tighter and tighter. The adrenaline cancels the depressive effects of the alcohol, and time stands still. I have been here forever and I will be here forever.
I wake up the next morning in a plush, unfamiliar bed, my mind muddy and my limbs heavy. I feel a flicker of panic but I’m too exhausted for it to take hold. I glance at the bedside table to find a half-full glass of water and a prescription bottle on its side. Lorazepam 4 mg tablets. Now I remember and I’m flushed with embarrassment. Edward found me lying on my side. He was so kind, he helped me to bed and gave me the drugs. “Take one, take two,” he’d said. “The best thing now is to sleep.”
What had I said in response? Had I told him anything?
It didn’t used to be like this. I was tough once, resilient. But now it’s as though I live in the attic of a towering house where parts of the floor have rotted away. At any moment, I could make a wrong move and I’ll fall forever.
I get out of bed gingerly. I’m wearing a pair of Edward’s pajamas. I find my clothes folded neatly on a chair. I change and walk out into the kitchen.
“Good morning,” Gemma says. “Oh you poor darling, come sit. I’ll make you some toast.”
Edward is by the pool but hears us and comes in, giving me a sanguine smile.
“How are you this morning, my dear?”
“Tired,” I say, “and mortified.”
“Oh don’t be,” Gemma says. “Panic attacks are the absolute worst. Edward told me, but don’t worry, we’ve all been there.”
“Well, I’m grateful. Some party guest I am.”
“Oh, every good party ends with sedatives,” Edward says. “Trust me.” He takes his sunglasses off and it occurs to me that perhaps he hasn’t slept at all. “You’re not the only one who needs some help to make it to morning.”
“Goodness yes,” Gemma says, returning to the table with toast. “I spent most of my first week in Buenos Aires on the floor of Edward’s bathroom.”
“Really?” This comes as a surprise from the lighthearted Gemma.
“Oh yes. I didn’t leave London because things were going well.”
“What happened?”
“I had a nervous breakdown, or I suppose that’s an old-fashioned term, isn’t it?”
“Psychotic break,” Edward says.
“That’s the one. Oh, that sounds rather less romantic though. Anyway, I had one. I’d been depressed for a while before that, I realize now. Very depressed.”
Edward leans over to squeeze Gemma’s hand. I realize that her cheerful demeanor might be as much smoke screen as anything.
“How did it happen?” I ask.
“The strangest thing. It was this completely ordinary morning. I was making tea for my husband, Thomas, and I had this deep moment of”—she searches for the word—“dissociation. I had this sudden realization that all my life was making tea for my husband—dash of milk, heaping scoop of sugar like a child would want—and everything else was a mirage. I was in hell, and hell was standing forever at the counter of our Mayfair town house stirring sugar into tea. I began screaming all of these delusions at my husband.”
“Whoa. What did he do?”
“He told me to pull myself together and left for work. British men, at least the ones of Thomas’s ilk and age, don’t really ‘do’ mental health. All things can be solved by a stiff upper lip and—irony!—a cup of tea.”
“So what did you do?”
“It only got worse from there. When Thomas dismissed me, I decided he was the devil—the actual devil, remember, I thought I was in hell—and became extremely paranoid and obsessed with escaping. I didn’t sleep or eat for almost a week. I crashed my car and ended up in hospital.”
Gemma looks into her cup of tea as though to add something but thinks better of it.
“Sometimes,” Edward says when the silence becomes heavy, “there’s no way out but out.”
Penny Is in Love for Real
HOW COULD we not have known? I look back now and it’s a question I can circle and examine from every angle and still not find an answer to. One answer is that we did know that something was wrong, but we had no context for it. We were reassured that young women struggled, did strange things, went through rough patches. And it was so much easier to find ways to blame Jon. Jon—with his shifty friends and his perpetual snarl—had been a bad influence. And Penny had always been susceptible to influence, her heart so big and soft and porous.
In retrospect, I can see the mental gymnastics my parents and I went through to explain it to ourselves. A woman lies about how she lost a pregnancy because she is ashamed that her fiancé has left her, abandoned her in a precarious state. And she’s so humiliated by this and so mad with grief when she loses her babies that she invents another narrative where he is coming to her rescue: he’s on his way and will get there as soon as his uncooperative truck will allow him. She convinces herself that he too is grieving and is desperate to be by her side just as soon as he can. Or, there is the version Emily hears, that Jon has made it back in time to be by her side, to squeeze her hand and cry with her through the devastation, to say goodbye to the two little girls, tiny and blue and gone from this world. Not one lie, but two separate lies, perhaps more. Perhaps one in which my parents were there, I was there. It was around this time, we’d later find out, that Penny’s virtual online life began to grow tentacles. There were hidden Facebook groups and secret pages that no one who knew Penny in real life would see until much later. In these dark corners of Penny’s invented identity, she would live out alternate realities: that the twins had lived but were in the NICU, balanced between life and death; that one had died but the other had survived, leaving her with one beautiful living baby and one set of tiny footprints in plaster to remember the other; that both babies had lived but her fiancé had died trying to get home to them. For now, all of this remained in the shadows.
When my parents and I pressed her to explain after my call with Emily, Penny cried, collapsed, shut down. How could we do this to her when she was in so much pain? And we didn’t want to grill her any more than she wanted to explain herself. No, it was Jon’s fault, we decided,
Jon who was not on his way back from anywhere but gone for good. It’s the oldest story in the book: man knocks woman up, panics, flees the scene. Tragically, the woman is so distraught she loses the pregnancy. The simplest explanation is usually the truth, so why wouldn’t that be it?
Because Penny had been pregnant. Hadn’t she? She’d looked pregnant, shown us ultrasound pictures, and I had felt the baby kick. I’d felt its tiny living foot collide with my hand from inside of my sister, it’s not something you imagine. It had to have been real.
Much later, when it was clear that this incident was not the ending of a sad chapter but the beginning of a much more harrowing one, my parents would confess that they suspected something more disturbing, even though I would not let myself. Pseudocyesis. False pregnancy, a condition in which all the symptoms of the pregnancy are there—weight gain, nausea, swelling, even the sensation that a baby is moving inside of you—but the fetus is not. But even this left more questions than answers. Hysteria might make a woman believe she felt a baby kicking inside of her, but could it make her sister believe the same? And had Penny known the ultrasound picture wasn’t hers? Which parts of the lie were real to her and which did she knowingly manufacture?
This is where my parents’ experience of Penny and mine began to truly diverge. I finished my season third in the World Cup standings after I podiumed in Innsbruck and won in Lillehammer, mollifying my sponsors after I’d missed my big race in St. Moritz. Luke and I were now a bona fide power couple. Two top skiers from the same birth year. It was a rare phenomenon to have two top skiers from the same birth year, and the fact that we were a couple made us a favorite among the small cadre of American journalists and fans who cared about the sport.
It wasn’t so much that my parents hid from me what was going on back home. It was more that they were selective, hoping that none of it would ever be anything I needed to know about. Several months after the incident with the babies, Penny was evicted from the house she’d shared with Jon after not paying the rent for months. My mom went to help her clean the place and pack and discovered a horrifying scene. My sister’s house had become the house of a crazy person: the electricity had been shut off weeks before and food had rotted in the fridge, there were baby clothes and toys everywhere, and—worst of all—there was no sign of Noodles.
We Came Here to Forget Page 15
