The Jetsetters

by Amanda Eyre Ward

  Lee had actually wrapped her arms around two La Quinta pillows one night, imagining, drifting sweetly into sleep.

  * * *

  —

  CHARLOTTE GREETED LEE WITH unreserved enthusiasm, her hair freshly styled and her outfit bright and fashionable. It had been six months since Charlotte’s last visit to Los Angeles, and although Lee and her mother spoke often, it gave Lee a start to see her mother looking so, well…old.

  “I’ve been a bit down since Minnie died,” said Charlotte over their delectable dinner. She poured more awful wine.

  “You guys had been friends a long time,” said Lee. “Of course you feel down.”

  Charlotte nodded. “It’s hard to know what to look forward to,” she said, a rare sorrowful tone in her voice.

  “Well,” said Lee, scanning desperately for a way to make her mother feel better, “there’s the big prize, right? A trip to Europe?”

  “Oh, Lee,” said Charlotte, her face alight. “We’ll sail from Athens all the way to Barcelona! It’s called the ‘Become a Jetsetter’ contest. Even though you don’t actually get a private jet. You get first-class tickets. But still.”

  “It’s going to be amazing,” said Lee, reaching out to touch her mother’s hand. “So we can look forward to that. Right, Mom?”

  “Right,” said Charlotte. “You’re right, Lee!” Lee gulped another sip of wine. Charlotte gripped her hand so hard it felt as if she were hanging on for dear life. “You always make everything better,” said Charlotte, and something in her voice—fear, hope—made the words sound less like a compliment and more like a desperate plea. Lee felt nervous, and wanted to wrest herself free. But she didn’t move.

  IN THE MORNING, CHARLOTTE went to mass. When she knelt after communion, during the time she felt she had the most direct and clear line to God, she prayed, Dear God, please let me win a Mediterranean cruise.

  Charlotte felt lighter as she navigated the road home, rolling down her car window and taking in the marsh-scented air. In town, brick row houses lined historic squares, while on the Landings, giant, new homes had been made to look historic and Gone-with-the-Windy: imitation Taras with basketball hoops out front. Charlotte lived in a row of condominiums facing the ninth hole of the Deer Creek golf course. She parked her Volkswagen Rabbit and took a moment to revel in the fact that when she climbed the three brick steps to her front door, let herself inside, and called, “Helloooo!” someone would answer. Lee was home.

  The first time Charlotte held newborn Lee, her first baby, Louisa was bustling around her hospital room, arranging flowers and neatening up, nattering about how thankful Charlotte should be that Louisa had insisted the doctors induce “twilight sleep,” which was on its way out of vogue. As later exposés predicted, Charlotte would endure flashbacks of horrifying bits of memories over the years, her brain having experienced Lee’s birth no matter how much morphine and mind-erasing drugs she’d been given that night. The exposés wrote that women were tied down as they labored, left screaming and terrified, doctors blithely monitoring their progress under the assumption that the women wouldn’t remember a thing.

  A nurse handed Charlotte her daughter. She looked down blearily at the child. Lee’s eyes bored into Charlotte’s—so blue! So intense! Charlotte met Lee’s gaze and thought, Oh. At last. Here is the person meant just for me. Charlotte smiled at Lee, and Lee’s eyes fell shut. Pride made Charlotte warm and weepy.

  “Look at her,” Winston said, appearing at Charlotte’s bedside, reeking of the cigars he’d been handing out in the hospital hallways and puffing in the TV lounge. His face was kind and flushed. He seemed happy—for the moment, at least. Or maybe—the wish flickered in Charlotte’s mind like the flame from Winston’s silver lighter—the baby would cure him. They had named her Elizabeth Lear, combining Winston’s grandmother’s name with the name of Charlotte and Winston’s favorite Shakespeare play, which they had seen performed outdoors in Paris at the very start of their friendship. Her name would be shortened to Lee within days.

  “Look at our girl,” said Winston.

  Charlotte nodded, her arms tightening around the infant. She thought, She’s not our girl. She’s mine.

  * * *

  —

  IN FACT, WHEN CHARLOTTE climbed the brick steps and called, “Hellloooo!” no one answered. Lee was still asleep. Charlotte changed into her one-piece bathing suit and terry-cloth cover-up, then packed her monogrammed beach bag with two towels and three romance novels. When Charlotte was halfway through The New York Times, Lee emerged in a negligee. She held her cellphone to her ear, grabbing the coffeepot, pouring herself a cup, and heading back toward the guest room, waving to Charlotte wordlessly and gesturing to her phone, as if she were transacting an important business deal in her underpants.

  “Would you like an English muffin?” Charlotte called to her daughter’s backside.

  “Sure, Mom, thanks!” said Lee over her shoulder.

  “Toasted? With lots of butter?” said Charlotte.

  “Sure! Thanks!” cried Lee, moving up the stairs and down the hall, shutting the guest room door.

  Well! Charlotte returned to the kitchen and pulled an English muffin apart, placed it in the toaster oven. Something was wrong with the toaster: it worked, but took fifteen or more minutes to make anything brown. Charlotte thought of replacing the appliance, but she wasn’t in any hurry—who cared if her muffins took a while? When Lee’s breakfast was finally ready, Charlotte carried it (on a china plate, with a folded napkin) toward the guest room. Charlotte heard Lee speaking, but couldn’t make out the words. When Charlotte knocked and delivered Lee’s breakfast, Lee was sitting on the bed with the phone still pressed to her ear, surrounded by junk mail. “What are those?” said Charlotte. “Credit card applications?”

  “What?” said Lee. “No, no. I’ll be out soon. Thanks for the muffin!”

  When Lee finally emerged, she and Charlotte went to the pool, where they read romance novels in the sun, shared lunch with margaritas, and then headed back to Charlotte’s house in the golf cart. “I’m going to Publix. Do you want anything?” said Charlotte.

  “We might need some wine?”

  “Got it.” Charlotte slowed the cart to stop at the mailbox, reached in, and placed a stack of envelopes on Lee’s lap. Moments later, Charlotte pulled into the garage. She’d hung a tennis ball from the ceiling: when the ball hit the windshield, Charlotte halted and plugged in the golf cart to recharge.

  “Well, I’d better call my agent again,” said Lee, hopping off the cart. “See what’s new.”

  “Ooooh, yes,” said Charlotte, gathering their wet towels and magazines. Lee dumped the mail on the counter and grabbed her phone. Charlotte sorted through a stack of catalogs and coupons before discovering a large white envelope with her name and address typed on the front. “Oh,” she said, hope like a hot balloon in her chest. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t be. But it was: a letter from Splendido Cruise Lines.

  “What is it?” said Lee.

  Charlotte realized she was shaking. Was this another manifestation of old age, or simply nerves? Most likely it was shock. She gripped the letter, opened it slowly. Its words swam in front of her eyes: Congratulations! Pleased to inform; Please call as soon as possible; Charlotte Perkins; first-class; Athens, Greece.

  Charlotte was suffused with joy. If only he could see me now, she thought, the “he” referring to a few men: the one she had written the essay about (those strong hands on her), the husband who had never known her (those small hands, kind of stubby and soft), the golf pro whose hands (she really did think, though perhaps she was deluded) lingered a bit too long on her hips as he adjusted her swing.

  A lover. A fighter. A winner: Charlotte Perkins.

  Of course she was too classy for cruising. She was elegant and refined, more suited to posh hotel rooms in London or Paris. But Charlotte hadn�
��t been able to go anywhere, posh or otherwise, in fifty years! She was above the sorts of vacations she could afford. And so she had stayed put. But now, her insides buzzed as if she were filled with champagne. So what if cruises were cheesy?

  Charlotte took a shaky breath. She and her children would enjoy European wonders, then sit in a row on a cruise-ship deck as the sun set over the Mediterranean, toasting one another with overfilled glasses of Chardonnay!

  Maybe she would even meet a man who wanted to kiss her, who would run his warm hands down her back to her bottom, cup her buttocks and pull her into him…Oh, here she was in broad daylight, imagining her dream lover’s erection straining at his expensive gabardine slacks. She tried to make herself stay in reality, but her brain allowed her dream lover to press himself into her private place, his mouth on her neck. She flushed, hot with desire and embarrassment.

  “Are you okay, Mom?” said Lee.

  “Oh, honey,” said Charlotte, meeting the eyes of her firstborn. Lee’s gaze was as direct and penetrating as when she was a baby. Charlotte grabbed her girl, wrapped her tight. This cruise would fix whatever was broken in Lee, would repair and renew them all. “Oh, honey,” said Charlotte. “I won!”

  IT WAS A RUNNING joke between Cord and Giovanni: Cord’s mother always called when they were having sex. It was as if she had a sixth sense. Cord had begun leaving his phone and his dog in the kitchen with the door shut when things got going. “I’ll be back soon,” he told Franklin on Thursday evening.

  The dog looked at him knowingly.

  “Okay,” said Cord. “You’re right. It might be a little while. You understand, right?”

  Franklin sank into his Hermès dog bed and sighed.

  When he’d finally gotten sober (for the last time—really!), Cord had bought an aromatic diffuser and noise machine to protect his fragile nervous system. If he did say so himself, his bedroom was an oasis of calm. “Lavender or ylang-ylang?” he said, entering the room and brandishing two tiny blue bottles.

  “Who cares?” said Giovanni. “Come here.”

  Cord shook his head, loving Giovanni, his innate happiness. Had Cord ever been whole, even when he was twenty-one, a newly minted Princeton graduate with a fancy job in venture capital and a secret midnight life in Alphabet City, drinking and drugging and sleeping with every boy in sight? God, those had been good days. But fake days, impossible to sustain. He looked at Giovanni, impatient, erect. “I said,” repeated Giovanni, “come here.”

  Cord hurriedly dumped lavender oil in the diffuser, pressed Mist, breathed deeply, and launched himself across the room toward his fiancé.

  Fiancé!

  Midway through the proceedings, Franklin escaped from the kitchen and entered the bedroom, trying to make his way stealthily onto the mattress. “Your…damn…dog,” said Giovanni.

  “Our dog,” said Cord. “Yes, yes, he’s OUR DOG, GIOVANNI!”

  Franklin watched them both with disdain.

  Afterward, Giovanni lit a cigarette. “What’s the plan with the dog, anyway?” he said.

  “The plan?” said Cord, watching Giovanni’s face. The lonely voice in Cord’s brain said, He’s going to tell you to get rid of Franklin. He’s going to tell you it’s him or the dog.

  “The wedding plan,” said Giovanni. “I mean, does he walk with us down the aisle, with, like, rings around his neck? Or is he going to be a flower girl, with your sister’s kids and my many, many adorable nieces?”

  Cord’s stomach—always seconds from chaos—eased. “Ring bearer,” he said.

  “Yeah, I like that,” said Giovanni.

  Cord watched Giovanni’s smoke trail toward the ceiling. He closed his eyes, so happy it overwhelmed him. This was one of the pleasures of recovery: you opened the door to the pain and gnawing tedium, but joy came in as well. All of it, all of it, brilliant and clean and true.

  Giovanni continued to speak, but Cord tuned it out, took long inhales of the lavender-and-cigarette-scented air.

  “I know you can hear me,” said Giovanni.

  “Sorry, what?” said Cord.

  “I said,” said Giovanni, “we’ve been together for over a year. We’re engaged. When am I meeting your mom and sisters?”

  “I’ll keep you posted,” said Cord. He sat up. “I’ve got to go in.”

  Giovanni looked pensive, clearly deciding whether he was going to drop the subject. He sighed, then said, “Are you having a meeting about the super-duper secret company that’s going to make us rich?”

  “I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”

  “Yeesh. When can I retire?” said Giovanni, who was twenty-five, and had been teaching middle school art and Italian at Dalton for three years.

  “Soon,” said Cord. The IPO for 3rd Eyez was fast approaching, and with his firm’s stake in the company, Cord was going to be very rich. If the 3rd Eyez virtual reality product was as amazing as Cord was pretty sure it was. He’d allegedly “experienced” the product 535 days ago, during his last booze blackout.

  Giovanni put out his cigarette in an ashtray Cord had stolen from the Plaza in his youth. “Are you just with me for my money?” said Cord, his tone joking, but the lonely voice answering, Yes.

  “I’m with you for your body,” said Giovanni.

  Cord smiled. He did try to make the most of his appointments with his personal trainer, Thatcher.

  “You’ll keep me posted?” said Giovanni. “About meeting Charlotte Perkins?”

  “Please stop calling her that.”

  “What should I call her?”

  “I don’t know,” said Cord, climbing from bed. “I just don’t know.”

  “I’m not the type to wait around,” said Giovanni. Though his tone was light, the words felt like a slap. (The lonely voice would repeat them all day.)

  Giovanni had come out to his Italian American family when he was thirteen. He’d been president of his high school LGBTQ club. Savannah Country Day had not had an LGBTQ club. Officially, in 1980s Savannah, there was no such thing as being L, G, or B, and certainly not T or Q. Cord had kept his worlds separate for so long that he’d become two people: the Cord who existed in Manhattan, and the Cord he became when he visited Savannah.

  Holiday Cord: a straight man, just picky, a person who glossed over real questions and flew back to New York when he couldn’t take another minute of subterfuge. By ignoring the pain he was causing his mother, he hadn’t been Holiday Cord in seven years. But he couldn’t stay away from his family forever…or could he?

  He could certainly try.

  His relationships with his sisters were limited to emailing and texting. They’d send photos, chain-letter jokes, bons mots. (Never copying each other—Cord’s sisters’ Shakespearean feud was a brick wall between them.) Regan texted animated GIFs of women in various stages of disarray—pulling their hair out with acronyms such as “OMG” or “WTF” superimposed above them, hoisting giant glasses of wine (“TGIF!!!”). Lee and Cord exchanged photos of unfashionable strangers every few days, adding snide commentary—amateur Joan Riverses on the red carpet of life. Were these even relationships, or just data trails, vestiges of the love between people who had once been family?

  Did all siblings revert to their childhood selves when they were together, or was there a way to transition to functional adulthood even while being in one another’s lives? Was estrangement normal, healthy even? And if so, why did it feel as if he were missing a limb sometimes? Missing two limbs—two appendages that wouldn’t speak to each other because of a surgeon named Matt.

  Matt! Most of the time, Cord just felt sorry for the guy, caught up in the Perkins girls’ web of drama. But Cord would be lying if he didn’t admit that once in a while he wished Matt dead. What a joyful reunion they might have, at Matt’s funeral!

  Cord tried not to mind that no one in his family asked a
bout his personal life, and didn’t want to examine his own motives in keeping his orientation under wraps. It was probable that his sisters knew he was gay and just didn’t care. The dysfunction almost certainly lay inside Cord, a snake of self-loathing and childish fear. It was something he should “unpack,” in the words of his AA sponsor, a former child actor called Handy. But Cord was just fine with his emotional suitcase remaining zipped tight and locked.

  “Did you hear me?” said Giovanni, following Cord into the kitchen, where (of course) his phone showed three missed calls from his mother. “I said, I’m not just going to wait around. This is sick, honey!”

  “I hear you,” said Cord. He hoped that Giovanni would drop the issue eventually, because Cord’s feelings about a meeting between his mother and his lover were hell no, never ever, not happening.

  That evening, Cord bought a bouquet of pink roses in Grand Central as he waited for the 5:54 train to Rye. He was nervous, even though he’d met Giovanni’s enormous family before and they’d always been kind to him. Giovanni’s father, Cosimus, spent his free time on his La-Z-Boy couch, watching football and accepting the food and drink set before him by Giovanni’s mother, Rose. Their small house was always filled with relatives, friends, and the smell of baked ziti. Still, Cord wasn’t sure how the Lombardis would take the news of their gay son being engaged.

  Oh, how he wanted a beer, or seven beers. It was still hard for Cord to “feel his feelings.” He ate a Twix as the Stamford local rumbled out of Grand Central. If he waited, he knew, the edginess would fade on its own. And Giovanni, his salve, would be picking him up at the station.

  “I told them,” said Giovanni, as soon as they were strapped in his mother’s Toyota, heading for the house on Mead Place.

  “Please,” said Cord. “Tell me you didn’t.”

  “I did,” said Giovanni. “Don’t worry.”