When she’s finally ready, Harry calls for each of us to assemble. The whole crew is already waiting silently in their crisp uniforms—Jim even looks like he’s oiled his mustache. But why are we waiting for the tender on the foredeck? I notice that the lounge chairs have been cleared away to create a large open space.
“Are Arthur and Patricia arriving by parachute?” I joke quietly to Steven, but he just nods his head upwards towards the island to our right.
Before I see the elder Warrens descending towards the Vela Bianca, I hear them. A steady whir from the south draws my eye to a black dot on the horizon that’s racing towards us. You’ve got to be kidding me. Because it’s not enough to take a private jet across the world, Arthur and Patricia are aiming for the trifecta of ridiculous transportation by touching down on their yacht with a helicopter. The whir gets louder as it hovers above us, and I try to hold my hair as the chopper touches down, creating a vibration across the ship that I’m sure can be felt by even the sea cucumbers wriggling on the ocean floor.
The blades come to a stop and Jim rushes up to open the door for a white- haired fossil of a man.
“Ahoy!” Arthur Warren shouts as he steps onto the deck.
I’ve never met the patriarch of the Warren dynasty, but Mer and I have spent enough time googling Harry’s father to know exactly what he looks like. Although he’s traded in the suits I’ve seen him photographed in for a pineapple-themed Hawaiian shirt and a pair of Maui Jims, Arthur Warren is unmistakable. He has the same thick brows and sturdy jaw as both his sons, albeit with more than a few extra wrinkles. But despite his hunched soldiers and visibly knobby knees, he disembarks from the chopper so effortlessly you’d think he was Fred Astaire.
“Good to see you, Dad,” Harry shakes his father’s hand in a mechanical gesture—the kind that has me wondering if these two have ever exchanged a compliment in their lives, let alone “I love you”s.
“Harry.”
Arthur Warren looks so old he may or may not have his own exhibit in the Smithsonian. From what I can tell, he must not have had his boys until his early fifties. Immediately he strikes me as the kind of man who calls flight attendants “sweetheart,” (or would, if he ever had the misfortune of taking a commercial flight), and plasters his name on museum wings and university buildings like a six-year-old with a sharpie. But it’s not Arthur I’m worried about.
It’s his wife.
Everyone falls quiet as Patricia Warren appears in the chopper doorframe like an incognito movie star. In all the photos I’ve scrolled in morbid fascination prior to this trip, I’ve yet to see her miss an opportunity to dress in black from head to toe: Chanel, Versace, Balenciaga. I think it’s her way of reminding the world that she’s always prepared for a funeral, and if you’re not careful, it could be yours.
She shakes out her silver bob and pushes her sunglasses onto her head. As soon as she sets her Ferragamo pump on the deck, she’s swarmed by green-clad crew members.
I guess the outdoor shoes rule doesn’t apply to the owners.
“Great to see you, Mom!” Harry pushes through, planting a kiss on her cheek. Patricia waves her hands to the side as if swatting flies.
“Yes, yes—we’ve arrived, no thanks to your father. Please, Harry, try not to cut off all my air flow.”
Everyone steps back except Matthew, who never bothered to get out of his chair in the first place.
“My, my Matthew,” she says, holding out her hand for him to kiss like some HBO princess. “How tan you’ve gotten. Must have been all that time wasting your father’s money in St. Barths.”
“You’re looking well, Mom. Is that formaldehyde I smell?”
I look on in horror until both of them burst out laughing: tense, pitchy cackles that might just as easily be battle cries as signs of amusement.
I may not be an expert on mother/son dynamics, but this seems… unusual.
“Hi Patricia!” Jules summons her most excited octave. Patricia gives Jules and me both air kisses through a cloud of Chanel perfume, but I can tell she’s sizing us up beneath her dark glasses.
“Jules. You’re looking very… colorful,” she offers, taking in Jules’s tropical teal wrap dress. I watch the way Jules’s expression falls, just a little, as she hears it.
“And you must be Stella. What a lovely surprise. Jules told us you were going to be stuckworking.”
She saysworkingthe way one might saypole dancingorcommitting arson.
“She managed to get some time off,” Jules smiles. “It’s abouttime, with all that work she’s been putting in on her dissertation.”
My stomach shrivels.Please don’t ask about my disaster of a dissertation.But in my second stroke of luck today, Patricia is completely uninterested.
“It’s lovely to?—"
“God, it’s hot here,” she interrupts me as she pulls out a hand-painted fan from her pocket. “I told you we should have started in Monaco. Whose idea was it to come to the Pacific?”
“Maybe you wouldn’t be so hot if you wore anything butblack,” Arthur mutters as he joins us. She’s got to be a good fifteen years younger than her husband, but it’s hard to tell considering how little her face moves when she speaks. She glares at him, daring him to say another word. He, sensibly, abstains.
“Welcome aboard, Sir,” Caleb says, clasping Arthur’s hand in his. “How was your trip?”
