“Way to treat yourself.”
“Please,” said Regan. “Please, Cord, don’t be mean.”
Cord turned to her. Regan expected another cynical remark, but to her surprise, he took her in his arms. “I’m sorry, Ray Ray,” he said, using the nickname he’d once had for her. Regan remembered, in his embrace, a much earlier hug. Her father was yelling outside a door, outside Cord’s door. But Cord had locked the door and was protecting her, keeping her safe. Regan eased into her big brother, inhaling his smell. Hisreal,dirt-and-butter smell, the one underneath his fancy cologne. How she loved him. And he would be there—she would have him—no matter what. Your “family of origin” (as her online therapist called them) could be toxic and strange, but they were yours: you could not escape them, for better or worse.
LEE WOKE ON A DECK CHAIR.She wasn’t sure which deck. Her last clear memory was ordering a double Chardonnay (oh, God) at the Red Rum Bar, and then there was a flash—could have been a dream—of holding a fluorescent drink in a plastic cup toward a starry sky. For about thirty seconds, her brain tried to convince her that coming to on a deck chair was somehow glamorous—a sign of her wild and freewheeling nature—but when she sat up and saw a man in uniform carefully sweep around her with his broom, she was disabused of the notion.
There was a night world on the ship. Roving teenagers who slept all day in the interior cabins their parents had paid for broke free, their faces glittering with makeup, their blooming bodies clad in leather and spandex; passengers shed their on-land personas and came alive under the disco balls and inside the flashing casinos; musicians, comedians, and dancers who worked on the ship were transformed by moonlight into superstars. There were people kissing in storage rooms, making love in roped-off corners. Lee had roamed the ship, marveling.
But daylight seemed to bake the allure from her midnight adventures. Morning sunbathers had given Lee a wide berth—her gold lamé dress made it clear she was a clubber gone to seed and not an early bird. Her head pounded. She hadn’t had a hangover in years, and vowed she wouldn’t have another. Her liver was too old to cleanse boozy toxins. And if shewaspregnant, she was harming the baby. Was it possible? Was she pregnant? Lee thought of Jason, who sometimes ran her bubble baths, even lighting a lemongrass-scented candle and placing it in the soap dish. Once, they had made love in the tub and her hair had come too close to the candle, her ponytail briefly catching fire before Jason doused her in bathwater.
Lee’s emotions were all over the place these days: she seemed to seesaw between the depths of despair and fireworks of elation. Now, she felt her happiness ebbing away, and knew that a deep misery awaited, the fog rolling in. When it lifted, everything seemed possible. Inside the fog, though, she wanted to die. It really was that bad. She felt so low she didn’t think she could survive. She had taken too many sleeping pills once, when the fog had stayed for weeks. Jason had begged her to see a doctor, had even made her an appointment and driven her to the small office in West Hollywood.
“My father killed himself,” Lee told the psychiatrist. “He hung himself when I was fourteen. I found him.”
“How did that make you feel?” asked the doctor, a slight woman named Evelyn.
Lee tried to remember. “I don’t know,” she finally answered, truthfully.
“You don’t know?” said Evelyn.
“I have no idea. I can see the bathroom, and I can see his body, but I can’t remember how I felt.”
Evelyn nodded, scribbling something on her pad.
“My boyfriend thinks I’m manic-depressive,” said Lee.
“What do you think?” said Evelyn.
“I just feel numb,” said Lee. “Numb and really tired.”
Evelyn crossed her hands in her lap and waited. Lee squirmed. After ten minutes, she stood up. “No offense, but I just don’t really have time for this,” she said, as she opened the door to leave.
“I’ll be here if you need me,” said Evelyn. This turned out to be a lie. A year or so later, when the fog was thick and deep, when Jason had left Lee for Alexandria Fumillini and Lee was considering pills again, she summoned her strength and drove to the Spanish-style office park. She made her way to Evelyn’s door. But there was a sign that saidEASY ELECTROLYSIS. Lee tapped on the door anyway. It was locked.
So she got back into her Prius and called her mom, listened to Charlotte’s chatter until the fog dissipated enough for Lee to feel safe. She flushed all her sleep medications, just in case.
—
LEE PEELED HERSELF OFFtheMarvelosodeck chair and limped toward the center of the ship. Once you were inside, it was usually clear where the elevator was, and once you were in the elevator, you could orient yourself, at least laterally. The ship was a massive network of hallways and splendiferous event spaces. If you were okay with wandering, you could always find your way home. (It was funny that Lee thought of her cabin as “home”: it was the closest thing she’d had to one in a while.)
But seriously, thought Lee as she used the rail to hold herself up, lurching along the outer deck—what if she got a job on the ship? Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to join the Velvet Vibe dance troupe, or to be the female version of Bryson, organizing eighties Rock-N-Glow parties, tossing the foam die and yelling trivia questions. She could replace (or augment) DJ Neon!
What this cruise needed, thought Lee, was a serious actor. Didn’t these people ever get tired of the rah-rah dance routines? Lee hadn’t been to any evening entertainment outside of a bar, but from what she saw on her cabin TV, the only performances in the Teatro Fabuloso were musical revues. How about Ibsen? Lee closed her eyes, allowing herself to remember her triumph as Nora inA Doll’s Househer senior year of high school. The school paper had called her “arresting.”
Lee stopped under the SkyRide and closed her eyes, speaking the lines from memory. “We must come to a settlement, Torvald. During eight whole years…we have never exchanged one serious word about serious things.”
Lee opened her eyes, blinking. The port city (what country was it?) was surrounded by fortress walls with tiny oblong windows. It was even more magnificent than Rhodes.
“During eight whole years,” Lee repeated, the lines springing forth from her memory, “we have never exchangedoneserious word aboutseriousthings.”
What did that even mean? What, indeed, was aserious thing? A woman headed out into the night on her own, like Nora? The fog of despair that had swallowed Winston, that Lee was afraid was enveloping her again?
“Our home has been nothing but a playroom,” said Lee, the words bubbling up from the depths of her…her soul! “I have been your doll-wife, just as at home I was Papa’s doll-child.”
A middle-aged jogger passed Lee, averting his eyes.
It was time to take a break from men, Lee decided. Like Nora, Lee had been serving men for…well, for her whole life. As a kid, she didn’t know any better than to allow it; as an adult, she’d been courting it. Lee needed to figure out who she really was inside, in the place that had nothing to do with dewy skin and sculpted curves. She’d been given this trip to Europe, and she’d basically wasted it thus far, trying to seduce men, alienating her family, ignoring the cultural riches laid out before her. Here was a chance to do things differently. Lee vowed to try to open her mind to beauty. She’d been doing the same things for so long: auditioning, seducing, preening. What if she turned it around, and let the world try to winherfor a change?
