Cord looked at Lee. “Thank you,” he said.
“I’ve got you,” she said. He ran to Lee and she embraced him. “We’re in this together,” she whispered. “I’m here.” Cord realized later that maybe this was what she’d wished someone would say to her. That Lee, as the eldest, had never felt she had anyone to watch out for her, so she became what she most needed.
But after Winston died of a sudden heart attack, Lee changed. She stopped coming home except to sleep. When Cord tried to enter her room to talk, she told him she was tired or busy. She bought a lock at the True Value hardware store and installed it on her bedroom door. Cord knew she was embarrassed by their cramped rental house. It dawned on him slowly that she wanted to flee her family, Cord included. She thought she was better than they were, above their paltry circumstances. It was as if talking to her low-rent siblings depleted her. This knowledge was crushing to Cord. By the time she left for California, she was a stranger. Even now, with Lee standing next to him, he missed her.
“What should we do?” said Cord.
“It isn’t really any of our business,” said Lee. Cord felt surprised—he thought Lee would figure everything out, save Regan.Our business? Were you allowed to not give a shit about your family like that? Cord didn’t think so. He followed Lee onto the bus and sat next to Charlotte.
“Cord,” said his mother, “what’s going on?”
“Nothing, nothing,” said Cord. He wanted everyone to be happy so much it hurt.
Charlotte pursed her lips. “You don’t have to tell me twice,” she said. And then she added, with cold jubilance, “I’m ready for some fun, fun fun.”
“Three funs, Mom?”
Charlotte shrugged. “I deserve three funs,” she said.
As they settled into their seats, Cord considered this proclamation. He was a person who felt he deserved no funs, and he wondered if it was because his mother felt she deserved three funs.
You get no funs,said the lonely voice.You are the trampoline, not the gleeful jumper.
“I don’t want to be the trampoline,” Cord whispered. “I want to be the gleeful jumper.”
“What’s that, dear?” said Charlotte.
“I’m very tired,” said Cord.
“Oh, please,” said Charlotte. “You think you’re tired? At least you’re not seventy-one years old andalone.”
Cord bit his tongue so forcefully he drew blood.
—
THEY PASSED THROUGH Aforty-foot-thick fortress wall and emerged in a medieval world: narrow streets lined with sandy-colored castles, minarets rising high. Tourists in sun hats marched like ants, pointing at towers and gazing in shop windows. Though he was the one in a bus, Cord felt superior as they veered out of Rhodes’s Old Town, merging onto a highway.
The bus lumbered up a hill, and Cord took in the panorama of terra-cotta rooftops, bright green copses of trees, and faraway, scrubby hills. They turned a corner and the ocean appeared below. Cord could see two enormous cruise ships in the cobalt Mediterranean: an elegant Cunard and the cheesySplendido Marvelosowith its crimson snake of a waterslide.
Why weren’t they going inside the castles? Who had chosen to go to a beach rather than contemplate an honest-to-God moat? Cord had the panicked feeling that he should be doing something differently, better…but then again, he could use a day in a beach chair. Work had been so stressful lately, as they watched their earnings dribble away and it became clear that the firm was utterly dependent on the 3rd Eyez investment.
Giovanni won’t want you when the money’s gone,said the lonely voice.
“Shut up,” said Cord. He needed a few more drinks to silence the lonely voice.
“What?” said Lee.
“Sorry,” said Cord. “I wasn’t talking to…” He stopped himself. Lee wouldn’t understand the lonely voice. He’d thought, growing up, that his family was just better at ignoring the critics in their heads. But he had come to believe that Lee just didn’t hear a lonely voice at all. Nor did Charlotte or solid Regan, the only one who’d made a family of her own. It was a strange reckoning to accept that his brain came with the lonely voice and others’ didn’t. Giovanni told Cord it made him deeper, more able to feel things, more incredible. He tried to believe Giovanni, whose low, rational words were taking the place of the lonely voice on good days. Handy told Cord he needed inner child work, EMDR, trauma therapy. Handy was probably right. But it was so much easier just to drink.
Outside the bus window, rows of bedraggled olive trees spilled down to the dazzling sea. They turned a corner and fruit groves came into view: bright yellow lemons among iridescent leaves. Cord gazed at the low stone houses and thought,I should move to Greece and harvest olives.
“I should move to Greece and make honey,” said Charlotte.
“You mean olives,” said Cord.
“No, Cord, I mean honey. Have you eventriedGreek honey?RealGreek honey?”
“I’m not sure,” said Cord.
