by Jane Green
Her joy doesn’t last long. By the time she has reached the bedroom door, ready to check on Eve just down the hallway, it has been replaced by the sliver of fear that lodges itself in her heart at exactly this time, every day, just after she wakes up.
Sylvie bought this house three months ago, torn between staying in a house she loved, despite the memories of Mark that leaped out from every corner, and starting again.
Angie found this house. She had been driving past and saw the FOR SALE sign, screeching into the driveway and charming the owner into giving her a viewing there and then. It was the perfect house for Sylvie, she realized before picking Sylvie up and bringing her back to see for herself.
Sylvie hadn’t even been sure she would move. It was clear she needed more room for her growing business, but she could have added on to the old house, could have renovated to bring the house up to date in her current style.
The memories of Mark hadn’t lingered in the old house in the way one might have expected. Perhaps because Sylvie had decorated herself, it had always felt like hers. Even the bedroom held no trace of Mark, particularly since Sylvie instantly removed the giant television screen he had insisted upon.
But the house Angie took her to that day worked. It was just like the old one, only brighter, lighter, with more room and incredible views.
“This is the house for Figless Manor,” Angie had said as they stood on the porch outside the master bedroom, gazing toward the mountains in the distance. Sylvie turned to look at her, a question in her eyes.
“Oh, I didn’t tell you? Figless Manor’s your new line. Simon came up with the name. Isn’t it fabulous? Remember how you used to call your house Figless Manor when you first moved in? When the old owners removed the fig tree? I was telling someone the story, and Simon suddenly said it was the perfect name for a line of jellies and jams, and he’s right.”
Sylvie lights up, flinging her arms round Angie. “I love it,” she murmurs. “You’re a genius.”
“Simon’s the genius, but I’m not far behind. But imagine living here! It’s perfect. You can have your studio here, your workshop—hell, even a commercial kitchen. And you know all the interior magazines are going to go nuts for this. It’s time.”
“Let me think about it,” Sylvie said, knowing there was little to think about. She waited three days to be sure, spending her time pouring candles—for at that time, she was still doing them from home—went to the grocery store to buy food for dinner that night, and stopped at Angie’s on the way home.
Angie didn’t stop talking from the moment she opened the door. Her doctor had prescribed her Ambien—as an antidote, it seemed, to the Adderall he didn’t know she was taking, which was not only enabling her to do all the things she wanted to do in a day, but had also seen her lose twelve pounds.
“So I woke up this morning having had this weird dream that Simon and I had crazy monkey sex for hours last night.” She leaned over the table as Sylvie started to smile. “Which is totally weird in itself because I don’t have those dreams. And I certainly don’t have crazy monkey sex. If we do anything, it’s a quickie. My God! Who has the time for anything else? But this was … hot! Like, seriously hot! I’m not going to go into detail, but we did things I never would do.”
“You’re so funny.” Sylvie shakes her head, appreciating Angie’s lack of boundaries, even as she knows she would never make the same confession.
“But, wait! So this morning I’m lying in bed thinking about this dream, and I don’t remember the whole thing, just bits of it, and then Simon rolls over, and he’s all super lovey dovey and he looks at me and says, ‘Wow. What got into you last night? You were amazing!’”
Sylvie’s mouth drops open. “What? It was real?”
“I know! Except I can’t remember. Well, I can remember, but like you remember a dream. Not like it actually happened. But Simon has fallen totally in love with me all over again. So when he went to work, I googled ‘Ambien’ and ‘uninhibited,’ because let me tell you, this was seriously uninhibited.… Okay, okay … I won’t go into detail. But, Sylvie, this is a whole thing. Ambien sex. It’s like this whole thing out there where people have this crazy totally uninhibited sex, and don’t remember anything.”
When Sylvie stops laughing, she shakes her head once more. “Only you.”
“Only me what?”
“Only you could take an Ambien and have crazy sex and not remember it. Other people take Ambien and eat the contents of their fridge every night.”
“I’d kill myself,” Angie announces seriously. “Or Simon would divorce me. But I was always terrified of Ambien because I thought I’d be the eater. And turns out I’m the crazy nymphomaniac! Who knew! I’m telling you, if ever you thought there was a problem in your marriage, just take an Amb— Oh, shit! Oh, Sylvie. I’m such an ass. Forget I ever said that, okay? I can’t believe I just said that.”
“No, it’s okay,” Sylvie said. “Really. This is me. And you’re you. I forgive you.”
“So.” Angie sat forward, her face now serious. “Simon spoke to you about the financials, right? You know you can totally afford it, plus you get to write off a ton of stuff. You’re doing it, right?”
Sylvie nodded. “How could I say no?” laughing as Angie squealed and threw her arms around her.
* * *
Sylvie pauses by the mahogany table in the hallway. Taking center stage, commanding in a large silver frame, is a black-and-white photograph of Eve, taken before she got ill, when she was so beautiful, it was almost heartbreaking to compare it to how she is now.
She had hoped a new home might mean a fresh start, might give Eve the ability to move on, to start a different kind of life, start eating again, but Eve was declining fast, and Sylvie was still struggling to accept her inability to help, her powerlessness over Eve’s decisions not to get better.
She still made meals for her, despite the knowledge that Eve would only drink a clear chicken broth, if anything at all. She was, she said, still going to Overeaters Anonymous meetings, still talking to her sponsor, but Sylvie could see it wasn’t helping.
Watching her daughter disappear before her eyes was, without question, finally, the hardest thing Sylvie had ever been through. Harder than the grief of Jonathan, the betrayal of Mark, Eve was her flesh and blood; Eve was all she had; if Eve didn’t … if anything happened to Eve, if she made herself disappear permanently, Sylvie knew she wouldn’t be able to go on.
She wouldn’t want to go on.
Eve spends much of her time at home in her bedroom. She comes downstairs to make tea—drinking copious amounts to try to stay warm, even in midsummer—or curl up in front of a movie. She is always swathed in layers of clothes, has withdrawn so completely from life, each time she leaves the house, Sylvie considers it a small miracle.
Sylvie had hoped this summer would see her get better, but although she is still in therapy, it is not so intensive, and Sylvie is terrified Eve has regressed. She booked a trip to Mexico, just the two of them, but Eve, who has no energy anymore, refused to go.
She sleeps, reads, watches reality television shows. Eve glides around the house like a tiny ghoul-like bird, her eyes once again sunken, her hair lifeless and dull, her teeth almost too big for her face.
Sylvie joins Eve to watch the reality shows, in a bid to regain some kind of a connection with her disappearing daughter. It has worked, to a point. They are able to find common ground, a meeting point, in their shared disgust at some of the antics, their amazement at what women will do for, if not fortune, fame at least.
The connection is more shallow than any connection Sylvie has had with her daughter, ever. She is so terrified of upsetting Eve, of causing a fight, of Eve losing even more weight, she treads lightly, no longer talks about the great elephant in the room, tiptoes as carefully as if she is walking on glass.
These pointless shows, however, allow them to have a semblance of a connection. Better to be able to bond over this, than to feel, as she h
as been feeling these past few months, as if they are merely ships that pass in the night.
Life has been almost overwhelmingly terrifying for months. Once a week, Eve weighs herself, with Sylvie watching. It is the only time Sylvie allows Eve to have knowledge of her fears, and each week, as Eve’s weight stays the same, Sylvie is flooded with relief.
She has only managed to retain some sanity, to put her fears for Eve aside temporarily, by throwing herself into work. She and Angie have driven throughout the state, giving candles to people to sample, getting them in stores on consignment, funded by Angie and Simon, who believed in this more than she believed in it herself.
A couple of months later, she was approached by one of the large chain retailers who had stumbled across the candle while on vacation in Malibu, and once they took her, everyone wanted her.
Simon brokered every deal, Angie coming to each meeting as her marketing manager, seducing clients with her long red hair. The candles led to accessories—a manufacturer with factories in China was able to produce her designs in what seemed like a matter of days, and within two years, Figless Manor was recognized as one of the greatest success stories in the home arena, an area that no one since Martha had been able to tackle.
As the woman behind the company, not least a woman who first found fame as an unknowing wife of famed “Boy-Next-Door Bigamist” Mark Hathaway, Sylvie found herself at the center of a media storm.
The woman who bounced back from nothing to create a home empire! When her home life collapsed, she put her energies into helping others build the perfect home!
And now she has the perfect home herself. Limestone floors and old bleached beams. Ancient vines scrambling over pergolas. French doors and bookcases, a light-filled arched gallery linking one side of the house to the other, the arches leading into the great room, greater due to its enormous stone fireplace and views of nothing but mountains and trees.
On the nightstand, the iPhone vibrates as Sylvie walks over to pick it up. A reminder that the team from the Sunday Times Style will be here at nine to shoot the house. Her assistant is picking up breakfast for everyone, does she want anything? And hair and makeup e-mailed last night to say you’d canceled them? Shall I get them back?
Sylvie texts back as she walks downstairs, comforted as always by the sight of Eve, piled high with comforters but sleeping peacefully, breathing, and she doesn’t want to disturb her.
She has breakfast here, and no, she doesn’t want the hair and makeup people back. When the media started becoming interested in her, they sent hair and makeup people to make her look beautiful, arriving with tool kits and bags filled with makeup.
They accentuated her eyes, contoured her cheekbones, twirled and curled her hair so she looked like a painted doll, but as she said to Angie afterwards, she looked nothing like herself. She looked, in fact, entirely fake. The whole point of Figless Manor, of the woman behind Figless Manor, is that it is about comfort, warmth, accessibility.
“How can I talk about people letting go of this concept of perfection when I’m sitting on my terrace looking like a mannequin?” she asked.
Now she insists she does it herself. She applies more makeup than she would ever usually wear, and takes a little more effort with her hair, gathering it back in a loose chignon, using the curling iron to add a couple of soft, feathery wisps to frame her face, but she still looks like Sylvie.
She checks her watch. Another half hour until her assistant will get here, closely followed by the photographer and his team of stylists. This quiet time in the morning, with no one in the house save sleeping Eve and Alfie, a large black and white cat who showed up on the doorstep one day and hasn’t left, is the time she treasures most of all, and switching her once-again vibrating phone to OFF, she pauses at the laundry room before sitting down with her coffee in peace.
Sylvie quickly tips the dirty clothes from the basket into the washer, sighing as coins fall out of a pocket. Damn. She always forgets to check pockets. The clothes come out, and it isn’t a coin at the bottom of a machine, but two small black disks.
Sylvie picks them up and frowns at them, feeling in Eve’s pockets for more. Three more. She moves them in her hand, feeling the smoothness, their surprising heaviness, before she suddenly realizes what they are.
Weights.
She stares at the disks in her hand. This is the reason it has been fine. Eve has been weighting her clothes.
Sylvie picks up the phone and speed-dials Dr. Lawson. He isn’t in yet, but she leaves a message explaining what’s been happening, and as she talks, she feels her anger rising. She shouldn’t be angry—she knows this is the worst thing in the world—but she’s so tired of this, of these tricks, of Eve just refusing to get better.
Sylvie marches into Eve’s room and shakes her awake.
“What?” Eve stirs, bleary-eyed, propping herself up. “What’s the matter? Is something wrong?”
“Yes, something’s wrong,” Sylvie says, opening her hand. Showing her the weights. “I know your little secret. I know you’ve been weighting your clothes. I’m sick of this, Eve, do you hear me? I’m sick of this stupid illness and you not eating. When are you going to get over this? When are you going to just grow up and take responsibility and get better?”
“It’s not my fault,” Eve says. “I want to get better. I’m trying. I hate what’s happened to me.”
“So why don’t you just eat?” Sylvie shrieks, now at the breaking point. “Why don’t you just sit down at the table and eat a goddamned meal?” and she takes the weights and throws them over the comforter before walking out of the bedroom, shaking, and slamming the door.
48
Maggie
“Are you here for the evening? Shall I make dinner?” I have no idea if there even is anything for dinner. I’m pretty sure the fridge is empty, but maybe I can cobble something together from leftovers and rice. My teenage boy doesn’t much care how it tastes, as long as there’s enough of it.
“Why don’t we go out?” Buck says. “I thought maybe we could go to River Tavern?”
Oh my sweet, naive boy. There is nothing I’d love more than to go to my favorite restaurant in the area with my grown-up boy, but it isn’t in my budget, and he knows that. Birthdays only. I look at him, so earnest, so lovely, and I wonder if I could make it work—just this once—if I should just throw caution to the wind and go.
“My treat,” he says, impatiently pulling a wad of cash out of his back pocket. “I didn’t want to tell you until I finished my trial and got offered the job properly, but I’m helping down at the boatyard. And this is my first pay! So I want to take my mom out for dinner because you need a break.”
“Oh, Buck.” My eyes fill with tears as Buck puts an arm round me. “That’s … so lovely. But you can’t spend your money on me. You have to save it.”
“I plan to. But I also planned to do this with the first payment. Go get showered and dressed and we’ll go. I made a reservation for seven thirty.”
I gaze at my son, so handsome and proud—at sixteen, so mature. How did he become so grown up? So responsible? I beam at him before suddenly looking down at my hands, now hardened from the metalworking. My nails are unpolished, my fingers a dark gray from the sanding. How can I possibly go to the best restaurant in the area looking like this?
“You’ll scrub up fine,” Buck says, seeing what I’m looking at, knowing what I’m thinking. “Think of this as your practice run, because I know you’re going to have to start dressing up soon for your girls’ nights out with your friends at work. And yes, I know you’re happy in jeans, but c’mon, Mom. I know you still have nice clothes. You have an hour.”
I shake my head with a smile. I can’t argue with him, but as I’m halfway up the stairs I stop, turning to him. “Buck? Isn’t this job going to interfere with sports? How are you going to manage schoolwork and—?”
“Mom!” He stops me, so much like a man, I almost want to cry. “I’m handling it. Remember, you’re no
t going to interfere anymore?”
“Right. Right,” I mutter. “Sorry,” and I go upstairs to shower, still not knowing whether to laugh or cry.
49
Maggie
I used to feel beautiful, but only when I’d had my hair blown out, my makeup expertly applied, when my clothes were the best of the best. These days, I’m far more inclined to feel weary and middle-aged. I put hardly any thought into my appearance these days. If it’s comfortable, I’ll wear it.
Fleeces for warmth, jeans, worn-in clogs that were supposed to be just for work but have become so comfortable, they’re the shoes I wear all the time. My hair is strawberry blond streaked with gray, natural wisps of curls escaping the ponytail, none of which I mind.
But tonight, for perhaps the first time since I moved here, I make an effort—how could I not? I can’t afford the keratin treatments that used to give me silky straight glossy locks, but as I stare at the frizz in the bathroom mirror, I impulsively grab Buck’s gel and scrunch it into my hair, watching as lovely loose curls replace the frizz.
I pull what little makeup I own out of the drawer and gently dab concealer under my eyes to hide the shadows, around my nose to hide the tiny spider veins that have recently appeared.
A pink blush swept lightly across the apples of my cheeks, a golden shimmery powder illuminating my cheekbones, a dab of mascara, and Blistex to soften my lips.
I should make an effort more often. Even with the barest amount of makeup and my hair still wet, my face is transformed. I like what I see.
In the corner of my room is a coatrack, hidden behind a folding screen, with most of my clothes on it. At the back, hidden behind the sweatshirts, the fleeces, the heavy sweaters, are a handful of clothes in plastic suit covers that I had all but forgotten about.
