“It’s not me you need to apologize to,” said Regan. “That was a long time ago.”
“You’re right,” said Cord, closing his eyes and thinking of Giovanni. “Give me a sec?”
“Of course.”
Cord stepped into the hallway and scrolled through a dozen text messages. The New York Stock Exchange had opened, and today was 3rd Eyez’s IPO. The most recent text was from Wyatt: 3rd Eyez up $10 to $35 already motherfucker!!! YOU ARE RICH.
He was supposed to feel elated, but Cord felt only tired. He dialed Giovanni. Where was he at this minute? Cord could see him on their fire escape—or was it now only Cord’s fire escape?—the way Gio played with his dark hair as he read library books. Cord ached with loss. He knew Giovanni wouldn’t answer, but then he did.
“Yes?”
Cord’s stomach seized. “Giovanni. Giovanni. I’m so sorry.”
“I know,” said Giovanni. “I know you’re sorry, Cord. I do. But it’s done. Please stop calling me.”
“But I’m sorry,” said Cord. “I’m so sorry.”
“Goodbye,” said Giovanni, hanging up.
Standing in an antiseptic hallway, Cord was somehow a child again, trapped inside one of the worst days of his life. His father had forced him to “play ball” in their backyard, one of Winston’s naked attempts to make his son manlier.
Cord kept missing the ball, and Winston got more and more annoyed. In retrospect, he was probably eager to start his early evening routine of boozing till blotto, but at the time, all Cord understood was that his father wanted something from him that he could not—no matter how he tried—provide.
He couldn’t catch the ball.
Instead of giving him softies, his father threw the ball harder and harder. Cord knew his father loved him, or wanted to. It wasn’t that Winston was a bad man. And Cord didn’t understand—not yet—that he wanted to kiss men, to love men and not women. He just knew he was a failure. He missed ball after ball, each miss making him run and rummage in the azaleas.
Cord could feel it now: the heat in his face. The scratches on his hands as he tried to find the ball, his worry that his shorts would ride too low as he bent over. The last time he rose, tossed the ball back to Winston. The grim look on Winston’s face as he brought his arm back and threw the ball directly at his son.
The ball hit Cord in the face, and as it did, he split open. He could no longer remain inside the broken boy. He cracked off, and watched from above as the sad kid fell, his hands to his nose. Cord felt nothing as his father approached the boy without sympathy. Winston picked up the baseball, which lay a few inches from Cord. He whispered, “Pansy,” and walked toward the house. Cord watched as the boy lay still on the lawn.
Get up, he told the boy now. You can do this.
He began to breathe heavily, feeling the searing pain of his childhood—the terror and shame. He could withstand it. He was strong and sober and he was not alone. Slowly, trembling, the boy stood. Cord called Giovanni again, his heart pounding.
“Hello?” said Giovanni.
“You’re wrong about me,” said Cord.
“Oh, honey,” said Giovanni.
“I told her about us,” said Cord, “and I’m winning you back. This is forever, Gio. This is forever. Will you let me try?”
There was a long pause. Everything, everything waited there. Finally, Giovanni spoke, his voice kind and filled with fearful love. “Damn you,” he said. “Damn you.”
It was as if Gio was speaking directly to the lonely voice, which grew silent.
Inside Cord, a small boy lifted his fists and cheered.
AS SOON AS REGAN had seen a missed call from her sister, she knew something was wrong. And though Lee hadn’t left a message, and did not answer when Regan tried to call back, one thing being a mother had taught Regan was to trust her gut. She ran to Lee’s cabin and banged on the door. It was locked, so Regan called security, who arrived after an agonizing twenty minutes with a key.
By the time Regan entered Lee’s room, Lee was already at the edge of her balcony, sobbing, saying crazy things, preparing to jump. The hapless security guard who had responded to Regan’s call radioed for backup. A crowd had assembled on the floors below.
“Lee,” said Regan, opening the sliding doors, trying to keep her voice calm.
“Don’t touch me!” said Lee, crying out like a trapped animal. “Leave me alone! Don’t touch me!”
“It’s me,” said Regan. “I love you. Please.”
“You don’t understand,” said Lee. “Ray Ray, I’m just like him. I can’t do it. I can’t do it anymore.”
“Just like who?” said Regan, trying to listen to her sister, trying to see the Lee she’d once known inside the desperate woman moments from plunging into the sea. (Or worse, onto one of the decks below.)
“Dad. I’m just like Dad. I can’t do it. It’s too hard.”
“Dad?” said Regan. “You’re nothing like him, Lee.”
“He killed himself,” said Lee. “I wasn’t supposed to tell you.”
Regan drew a stunned breath. But it made sense—all the darkness around Winston, the way Charlotte wouldn’t allow them to talk about him. Lee’s flight to California.
“It’s okay,” said Regan. “You’re not Dad, Lee. Come back.”
Lee turned around. Her beautiful face was pale and anguished.
“I’ve got you,” said Regan. She held out her hand.
WHEN SHE WAS A little girl, all Lee had known were summer hours to fill, Charlotte off playing tennis or cooking something in the kitchen. Lee listened to Casey Kasem’s American Top 40, prank-called friends and strangers. When Winston was home, they got out—playing Cave Family in the backyard, wandering the streets of their hometown, buying pizza and ice cream and Jolly Rancher candies. Time was elastic, evening stretching forever before fading to sparkling night. The sounds of frogs and cicadas. The smell of pine needles and marshland. Ice slamming into Winston’s cut-crystal glass. His voice a hot knife.
After Winston was gone: a smaller house, sure, but always thrumming with raucous laughter, cabinets of ramen noodles and microwave popcorn. Charlotte collapsing on the wicker couch after a day of showing houses to people who treated her like dirt. Regan brought her mother cold drinks. Cord splayed across the couch, listening to her stories. Lee flitted in and out, the telephone cord wrapped around her hand, always headed somewhere, applying lip gloss, smelling of Aqua Net.
She’d taken every one of them for granted, not known how much she needed them, running away as soon as she was able. Lee was convinced her family was her burden.
She had wanted to die. Someone—some passenger with a high-res camera phone—had filmed her on her balcony. In the end, it was the movie of her suicide attempt that had brought her stardom at last. Uploaded to YouTube, watched millions of times, the video enabled Francine to ink a reality show deal before Lee had even left Barcelona.
It was all she had dreamed of during those hot, endless childhood summers: bright fame, the flash of photographers every time she left her Hollywood home, magazine covers, eventually receiving real roles in feature films just a few months after the debut of her reality show, One of You to Love Me.
In the video, she stands on a balcony of a megaliner, the Spanish sky wide above her, passengers freaking out below. Gorgeous Lee, unforgettable, barefoot in a gold dress. In the throes of what was later diagnosed as postpartum psychosis. Her hair whipping in the wind. Her mascara smeared. She opens her mouth and screams, “I just wanted one of you to love me!”
THE MUSEUM WAS SURROUNDED by an ancient courtyard in Barcelona’s Gothic Quarter. “Let’s get in line,” said Paros, who had met her, as promised, dressed in his farmer clothes. No matter—Charlotte could take him on a shopping spree at the Hilton Head outlet mall if things progressed. Paros would look fabulous in loafers and those Vineyard Vines
pants, patterned with tiny, pink whales.
Charlotte and her children had stayed in Barcelona for three weeks, renting an Airbnb apartment until Lee’s doctors felt she was ready to fly home. Charlotte and Paros had said goodbye when the Marveloso departed, and had reunited when it returned. “Are you going to be fired for fraternizing with a former passenger?” Charlotte had asked, flirtatiously.
“A large part of me would love to be fired,” said Paros.
Charlotte put her hand to her chest. She wasn’t sure if he was talking about the large part she was imagining.
Now, Paros kissed her forehead. They joined the queue snaking into the museum. Paros paid their entrance fees. So gallant! thought Charlotte. Also, she liked his silver money clip. Winston had always traded in rumpled bills from his wallet.
Once Charlotte was inside, the exposed-brick walls made her feel as if she were in a bunker of some sort. With the help of a paper map and two docents, Charlotte found Nude on a Couch. She stood in front of the work of art she had inspired. The painting itself was vibrant: purple and magenta, a young woman’s face obscured, her breasts the focal point. Charlotte did have great breasts. But the woman in the painting was open, offering herself. She existed to please, to be savored, eaten up.
“Is it really you?” asked Paros.
Charlotte turned to him, surprised.
“I heard about your essay,” said Paros. “My friend Jonas was working in the theater bar the night you told your story. He told me you were a star.”
Charlotte turned back to the painting, flushed. “It was me, I suppose,” she said. “It was me, once.” She felt sorry for the girl who had inspired the painting, and with the sorrow came a gratitude that she had come so far—raised her children, brought them to Europe, found a new lover with whom she could savor the city of Barcelona. She had not been a woman after the painter had his way with her. But she was a woman now.
They looked at art for a while, and then Paros pulled Charlotte to him. She felt the length of his body against hers. What luck to have found him, to have let herself be found.
“I don’t want to say goodbye,” said Paros, into her hair.
Charlotte didn’t speak. What could she say? Let’s get married? She wasn’t sixteen anymore, and understood that a wedding wasn’t an answer to anything. Let’s move to Greece? Savannah? Paris? This seemed rash, even considering Paros’s agile tongue. “Kiss me,” said Charlotte.
And oh, how he did.
* * *
—
THEY MET CHARLOTTE’S CHILDREN and grandchildren at Dulcería de la Colmena, a charming cake shop along Plaza del Angel, its windows lined with rows of intricate, mouthwatering treats lit like diamonds. Charlotte took in the gold, filigreed letters spelling Bombonería (was there a better word in the world?) and Pastelería. Inside, she peered at a display of something called turrón.
“It’s nougat,” whispered Paros. He smelled deliciously of limes. “Some say it was eaten by athletes in ancient Rome.”
She turned to him. “Which kind should I…?” she asked.
“Ah, there is hard turrón; there is soft turrón; turrón with Marcona almonds, egg yolk, and caramel…”
As he spoke, Charlotte’s eye caught a tray of powdered pastries. She read from the tiny card nestled among them, “Buñuelo.”
“It’s a donut,” said Paros.
As Charlotte pointed, he ordered, and the next thing she knew, she was standing in the plaza, a paper box of treats in her hands. They ordered tiny, hot coffees at a nearby café.
“Happy family,” said a guy with a Polaroid camera, hoping to sell them a photo. He stood back, framed the shot. “Happy family, smile!” said the man. Charlotte could see the image already: Lee, still shaken from her ordeal, about to leave them again; Cord, giddy and hopeful; Regan, already inhabiting her new persona as a single mother, flanked by her daughters, who had spent the day playing in the magical Park Güell.
When they were young, Charlotte had been so busy with her pain, with making money and driving the carpool. She’d resented her children as they climbed into bed with her, reading beside her, touching her feet with their own. She bought frozen pizzas and boxes of macaroni and cheese and fruit and milk and Entenmann’s chocolate-covered donuts and her children ate it all, leaving Charlotte only crumbs.
They would leave her again—they would—and she would end up back in Savannah alone with her Chardonnay and her cat. But as the camera flashed, they crowded around Charlotte, her family: bedraggled, imperfect, ready to go home. They were enough, more than enough, as perhaps they had been all along.
Charlotte opened the paper box. The low Barcelona light cast shadows on the plaza. The smell of the Pastelería, rich caramelized sugar, mixed with the mineral tang of a fountain lined with hopeful pennies. Her children reached toward her.
When one hot, sweet donut remained, Charlotte took a bite.
HOLDING A CHAMPAGNE FLUTE of sparkling water, Lee took a moment to herself in her mother’s living room, considering the oil portrait that hung above the fireplace. There Lee was, just six years old, her smile brilliant with fear. She could almost sense her father nearby, fiddling with his camera; she could hear Charlotte’s high, nervous laughter. The salty Hilton Head Island air, thick with humidity. Regan’s baby fingers, gripping tight. The feel of her brother’s warm back through his polo shirt.
Perhaps Lee and her father were the same: both troubled, both sad, both needing chemicals in their brains that nature had not provided. But only one action separated father from daughter. One second in a lifetime of seconds.
Three years before, on her balcony high above the sea, Lee knew that she could no longer stand. She had no choice: she was going to fall. Before her, waves churned, promising an end to her pain. She inhaled, lifted her arms.
But then, behind her, Regan’s voice. Lee turned and saw, as if inside a dream, her baby sister, silk dressing gown billowing, face sure and kind and open. Regan’s arm outstretched.
Winston, on his last day, had succumbed to the fog. Lee understood, and gazed at the ocean with longing.
“I’ve got you,” said Regan.
Against the allure of the fall. Despite the desire to be free. The memory of her father’s blue face. The smell of ocean and strawberry shampoo. Regan’s voice, whispering that she was beloved. Her sister’s hand in her hair.
For my first reader, my best friend,
Claiborne Smith
SPENDING MOST DAYS TYPING away in a closet wearing pajamas can feel lonely, even for a happy introvert. I am so thankful for my community of mothers, writers, and friends, including Beth Howells, Roz Gillespie, Terra Lynch, Susan Chopra, Jamie Perkins, Amelia Canally, Debby Wolfinsohn, Stacey Gardner, Biz Ramberg, Genny Mounce, Tina Donahoo, Caroline and Adam Wilson, Moyara and Stefan Pharis, Liz and Andy Gershoff, Doug Dorst, Owen Egerton, Mary Helen Specht, Dalia Azim, the LLL, the BFB, my Wednesday noon crew, Masha Hamilton, Andrew Sean Greer, Christina Baker Kline, Jane Green, Vendela Vida, Tomas Rivera, Leah Stewart, Jardine Libaire, Allison Lynn, Laurie and Drew Duncan, Paula Disbrowe, Emily Hovland, Erin and Tim Kinard, Jenny and Sean Hart, and Ben and Francie Tisdel.
Important note: Charlotte Perkins is wholly fictional and not based on my glamorous, beautiful, golf-cart-driving, Savannah-dwelling mother, Mary-Anne Westley. (Nor is Paros in any way based on her young, handsome husband, Peter Westley.) Thank you to my family, the Westleys, McKays, Bennigsons, Meckels, Shabers, Wards, and Toans, for the gift of embracing whatever springs from my imagination.
Heather and Russell Courts, the ultimate jetsetters (and the only couple I know who spent a first date riding Egyptian camels…I was there!), hosted my family in Athens and we cannot wait to return.
Michelle Tessler is a brilliant agent and treasured friend. Thank you for eighteen years—and counting!—of support, guidance, wild adventure
s, big dreams, steak frites, and invitations to Kauai. I can’t wait to see what we’ll get up to next.
I thought The Jetsetters was going to be an easy novel to write. I was wrong. I don’t know what I would have done without Kara Cesare by my side for every page and every moment of the journey. Kara, you have taught me so much about character, plot, and bringing my whole heart to the work. I am very thankful for your editorial guidance, for our Plaza teas, and for your friendship. I am honored and thrilled to be surrounded by the best in the business: Gina Centrello, Kim Hovey, Kara Welsh, Benjamin Dreyer, Jennifer Hershey, and Jesse Shuman.
How lucky I am to be married to a man who, when I ask, “Should I drain our savings and take the boys on a Mediterranean cruise, for novel research?” says, “Do it.” I love you, Tip Meckel, and though you say you’d rather be shot than go on a cruise, I’ll continue to try to convince you otherwise. I am awestruck by our shining WAM, our brilliant THM, our wild SJM, and the sweet and fierce NRM.
BY AMANDA EYRE WARD
The Jetsetters
The Nearness of You
The Same Sky
Close Your Eyes
Love Stories in This Town
Forgive Me
How to Be Lost
Sleep Toward Heaven
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
AMANDA EYRE WARD IS the critically acclaimed author of seven novels, including How to Be Lost, Close Your Eyes, The Same Sky, and The Nearness of You. She lives in Austin, Texas, with her family.
amandaward.com
Twitter: @amandaeyreward
Instagram: @amandaeyreward
Find Amanda Eyre Ward on Facebook
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