And Regan hadn’t even seen the worst thing!
The truth was that Charlotte envied her own daughter. Dismissing Regan allowed Charlotte not to examine her own shame, guilt, and jealousy.
Charlotte had not appreciated the sudden addition of Matt to her vacation. But he had paid his way, so how could she argue without causing a scene? It was kind of sweet, Charlotte supposed, but still, she was annoyed. Matt was a surgeon—maybe he would be called home for some orthopedic emergency. Charlotte could only hope (and send a quick prayer skyward). Hadn’t Matt ruined enough already?
Or maybe her family’s dissolution was Charlotte’s fault—this was possible. She couldn’t pinpoint any one thing she’d done wrong, but somehow her later years had become a mirror of her lonely childhood. How to remedy this—what actions to take or wounds to bandage—she wasn’t sure. She hoped this trip would fill something, bring them together around her again. But on the flight to Athens, all she felt was dislocated.
Charlotte wished she were a pill popper. She closed her eyes, courting sleep but instead seeing her mother’s face: that pinch in the middle of Louisa’s forehead, the way her lipstick bled into the crevices around her mouth. Her Parliament cigarettes ringed with ruby.
When her father was transferred to France, eight-year-old Charlotte was left behind in Washington, D.C., with her nanny. At ten, she was sent to boarding school. This was not seen as a punishment: it was the way things worked in their diplomatic circles. Her father, Richard, was twenty-eight years older than her mother. He was like a distant grandfather, and more than anything else, Charlotte ached for him to notice her.
Charlotte’s mother had been the belle of the ball. Even when Charlotte was home on school holiday, Louisa (who had her own bedroom separate from her husband and breakfasted alone in bed every morning) was at her desk by 8:30A.M. She worked on her correspondence until it was time to meet with the housekeeper, who supervised a staff of seventeen. The chef met with Louisa for fifteen minutes, and most days there was a luncheon. Louisa shopped and visited the hairdresser in the afternoons, then made absolutely sure to see Charlotte from 5:00 to 6:00P.M.(Charlotte was usually in the bathtub. Her mother perched on the toilet and drank a sherry, gazing past Charlotte’s pink shoulders and toward the window that opened onto the 8th arrondissement below.)
In the evenings, Charlotte’s mother and father attended receptions, exhibitions, banquets, and long dinner parties. In her spare time, Louisa brushed up on her seven foreign languages (French, Italian, German, Swedish, Hungarian, Japanese, Chinese) or worked on her historical novel.
Charlotte tried to sleep alone. Often, when it was so late she wassureher nanny, Aimeé, was asleep, Charlotte would steal down the stairs to Aimeé’s room, where she would curl up near enough to feel her nanny’s warmth. Aimeé, a heavyset woman from a rural village, likely felt more out of place in Paris than Charlotte did. When Charlotte woke, she was tucked in tight, the sheets still smelling of Aimeé.
In 1960, when Charlotte was sixteen, she flew to Paris for summer holiday to find Aimeé missing. She was not in any of the three kitchens or the manicured gardens. In Charlotte’s room, where her suitcases had been unpacked and her clothes put away, there was a note from her mother informing her that this summer she would be on her own.
Dearest Charlotte,
I didn’t want to tell you via post, but Aimeé has not been well and passed on last winter. She loved you very much, as you well know, and would want you to remember her with fondness and make her proud in your every thought and action. Daddy and I have a dinner we cannot miss this evening, but we are so very happy to have you home and I will see you tomorrow afternoon!
With affection,
Mother
As usual, there was no discussion, no room for despair, no hope for comfort. In Charlotte’s home, emotions were unsavory and unacknowledged. Strength, she had been taught, was found by relying on yourself, your steely ability to ignore complications. Louisa’s favorite expression was “and furthermore.” It meant: it is what it is. Move on. Don’t speak of this again.
The view from Charlotte’s childhood bedroom encompassed the wide Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré—pale, stately buildings with square windows and awnings like politely smoothed skirts. Cars moved slowly past expensive stores. Charlotte was too old to cry, so she stood motionless, watching. Waiting for something to happen. The shops closed and the night went quiet, light from window displays casting geometric shapes on the street. The sky turned scarlet, then black.
She unlatched her window quietly, pushed it open, and let the hot night touch her skin. Charlotte stepped from her room, moved across the roof to where it almost touched a tree, and leapt.
Could she have crashed, breaking her legs? Certainly. But she did not. Instead, she grabbed on to the tree and uneasily made her way down, maneuvering with effort from one branch to another until she reached the ground. There was a guard at the front gate, so she used the back. Within moments, she was on the street, and could go anywhere.
Charlotte strode along the Rue de Rivoli. She had no real plan, and ended up walking for almost an hour along the Seine, past the Pont Neuf—lit up and glowing, making the river sparkle—all the way to le Marais.
By this time, she was hungry and tired. She followed the sounds of laughter to Le Zinc, a café on the Avenue Ledru-Rollin. Through the window, she saw a table of people a few years older than she. Some of the men had beards; all of the women had long, messy hair. Everyone was smoking cigarettes, mouths stained with red wine. This was the moment. Would she run back home, climb into her bed, and wait for morning? Or did Charlotte have the courage to enter the café and approach a table?
She touched the door. A handsome man looked up and saw her. Had she ever been seen before? The man (theboy,really—he was so young then!) made his way toward Charlotte. His longish brown hair touched his collar. He had a wispy mustache.
Charlotte could still turn and run.
Through the glass, Charlotte watched Winston. He came closer. When he opened the door, she could smell cigarette smoke and a musky sour-booze fragrance—the scent (Charlotte thought) of a grown-up.
His lips were thin and chapped. He leaned so near that she thought he was going to kiss her. She felt stirred up almost to the point of hysteria. Terror rose in her chest, a sense that now,finally,her life was going to begin. Her face filled with blood. Winston opened his mouth, and was about to speak into the twinkling night when someone began shaking Charlotte, bringing her across time to the present.
“Mom,” said Regan, her voice childlike with excitement. “Mom! We’re here.”
“What?” said Charlotte.
“We’re in Athens!” said Regan. “We’re here, Mom! In Athens, Greece!”
AS CHARLOTTE’S GRECIAN TAXIrounded a corner, theSplendido Marvelosocame into view. The ship was massive: thirteen stories high, over a thousand feet long, bone-white, wearing a waterslide like a gaudy hat. Charlotte squinted: it seemed that people wearing harnesses were bicycling around the perimeter of the ship. On a lower level, orange lifeboats awaited disaster.
“Wow,” said Lee, who was sharing Charlotte’s taxi to the Port of Piraeus while Matt took a nap in the hotel “day room” his travel agent had booked for him, and Regan and Cord went to find some food.
“It’s jaw-dropping,” said Charlotte.
