Regan was, and had been since childhood, a fixer. She was the mom you called when you needed someone to do car pool last minute. She could (and had) put together a kindergarten rodeo when the mother who was supposed to call Pony Rides of Coastal Georgia had run off with a Norwegian pilot she’d met online.
Regan could remember being woken by her father and mother fighting. She’d crept downstairs in her nightgown and made a platter of cheese and crackers. When she delivered it to the den, they turned to her with mottled, teary faces.
“Cheese and crackers!” she’d said. My God: she must have been seven years old.
Cheese and fucking crackers. But they had stopped fighting.
—
REGAN GAZED OUT THEwindow as they passed the massive Acropolis. As the myth went, Athena and Poseidon were battling for control of Athens when Poseidon struck the ground next to the Acropolis with his trident and created a salty spring. Athena knelt and planted an olive tree. King Cecrops declared Athena the winner, as her gift would provide food and oil for Athenians.
Regan, she decided, was an olive tree, rooted in the soil, flourishing despite the ravages of time and marital disappointment. She would rise above the fracas, protecting her girls from pain. She was strong enough to bear whatever attacks might come at her! She was like the goddamn giving tree!
One night, when Regan had broughtThe Giving Treefrom the bookshelf, Flora had said she didn’t want to hear that one anymore.
“Why not?” Regan asked.
“Because, Mommy,” said Flora. “It’s the saddest story in the world.”
LEE FOLLOWED THE SIGNSto herMarvelosocabin, her footsteps silent on the blue and green, wave-patterned carpet. As she walked along the hallway, which was lit with pleasant sconces, a popcorn smell faded and was replaced with a floral scent, though there were no actual flowers to be seen.
At last, she reached her room and dipped her card in the door lock, which flashed green and opened. Her cabin was the cutest 185 square feet in the world: there was a couch along one side opposite a sweet little desk, and a double bed by the window. The curtains were shut.
Across the bed was a large plastic cloth reading:
LUGGAGE MAT IS MY NAME
PROTECTING THE COMFY
BED IS MY GAME
Lee had her very own balcony, with two metal chairs and a view of the water and the Port of Piraeus. She felt sticky from the Athenian heat and decided to take a shower in the miniature bathroom.
With the water on her body, she tried to focus on her breathing, the way she’d once done as a competitive swimmer. Lee had hated swim team at first, the chlorine in her eyes, the boring laps and strict coach, the overheated chemical air of the indoor pool. But as she grew stronger, she started to look forward to her nightly exercise.
Lee and her father would leave the house earlier than they needed to for weekend swim meets, stop for egg sandwiches, and eat them on a bench in Forsyth Park. Winston would buy theSavannah Morning News,and during the interminable competitions, he’d read in the bleachers, peering over his newspaper periodically to wink at Lee, sitting in her bathing suit and sweatpants below.
Lee’s brain shut off as she concentrated on propulsion. When she began to study Transcendental Meditation in L.A. because a lot of big directors studied TM and she figured it couldn’t hurt, Lee realized that swimming had already taught her how to meditate.
Focusing on her breath rather than her brain’s messy and subjective thoughts seemed to be the key. Lee learned to pretend she was swimming even when she was on land. She’d slow her brain down, look around, stop time. This bled into feeling thankful, and gratitude helped ease the sadness she’d been born with—or maybe she’d been born blank, but for as long as she could remember, she’d been singed by a hopeless feeling. After Winston hung himself, Lee understood that she’d inherited his despair. She clung desperately to the belief that if she became famous, her glory would somehow fix what was broken inside her. She would rise above the blackness that had swallowed her father.
When she stepped out of the shower, Lee forgot to avert her eyes from the mirror. There she was: thirty-eight years old. Her calm disappeared. It wasn’t the lines around her eyes—those could be addressed—and it wasn’t the crepey texture of her neck.
No, it was the expression on her face. She looked grim, hunted. As if something was after her and she was losing ground. Wrapping a towel around herself, Lee sat down on her bed. She thought of Jason, who had made it, who was getting everything they’d talked about, all of it and more. Why hadn’t she been able to say yes to a life with him—stability, a family?
Before he had dumped her, Jason had taken online quizzes on her behalf, telling Lee her racing brain and sense of hopelessness were symptoms of depression, probably manic depression. But who wouldn’t be depressed in her position? Jason bought her books, told her about podcasts, and ordered nutritional supplements to treat her brain. But magnesium drinks weren’t going to get her a job. Saint-John’s-wort pills weren’t going to change her dawning knowledge that nothing—not even fame—would bring her peace.
Without that hope, life seemed unbearable. And yet holding on to that hope was beginning to be unbearable as well. Lee sank down on her bed, and felt the sad fog envelop her. She needed to make herself get up. She closed her eyes.
ALONE IN HER STATEROOM,Charlotte opened her suitcase, took out her erotic essay, found a safe in her closet, and locked the printout, her traveler’s checks, and her passport inside. (Code 1960: the year she met the painter.)
She’d been shapeless that summer, a ghost to herself, but after the first night in Le Zinc, she understood what she wanted. It wasn’t Winston, not by a long shot, but the cheap-red-wine world he was a part of: angry, attractive people who stayed up late and seemed to disdain her parents’ bourgeois lifestyle. What a thrill it was to trade her desperation for disdain!
Within days, Charlotte felt as if the crew at the café were her family: Winston; his brother, Paul; three girls who’d hitchhiked from London for the summer; and assorted burgeoning writers, artists, and bohemian types. Charlotte was the youngest by a few years, but it hardly seemed to matter. She had money to pay their tabs, which was appreciated.
Paul (who died in a drunk-driving accident soon after Winston and Charlotte’s wedding) was a poet. He wore a black flat-brimmed hat and smoked cigarillos, invited Charlotte to come along on a picnic where they shared baguettes and wine and Paul wrote as the London girls strippednakedand danced. Even three sheets to the wind, Charlotte was shocked. (Winston brought her home early, walking her to the front door of the embassy like the buttoned-up man he was.)
It was a summer of burned dinners in cramped apartments, endless cigarettes, long hair parted in the middle and fastened at the nape of her neck, ballet flats, black dresses. Winston told her what to read and she read it: Sartre, Hemingway, Paul and Jane Bowles. Charlotte knew Winston was in love with her and didn’t mind. She perfected the art of changing the subject.
