From across the vast space, Charlotte saw her son. He spotted her, raised his arm, waved. His face was open. “Mom!” he called, loping toward her. “Mom!”
What a disappointment.
Charlotte knew she should go to her son, embrace him. But his need was too like her own—naked, endless, weak.
Charlotte pretended she hadn’t seen him. She turned away, heading back into the labyrinthine hallways. She walked quickly, the packed earth hard under her ballet flats. She went left and then right, becoming lost in the Colosseum, wanting only to find a way out.
IN CHARLOTTE’S DREAMS, SHEwas young again. Someone had given her a surprise gift—a silver package—but she had misplaced it in an enormous castle. She was chilly, wearing a pink flannel bathrobe she’d thrown away a decade before. She searched the kitchen, the basement, the attic, and many dusty bedrooms. She wanted to unwrap the present.
Charlotte opened her eyes. It took her a moment to realize that there was no wrapped box. It was 2:00A.M. Charlotte had taken the bus from Rome back to the ship with Regan. Had Lee and Cord returned to theMarveloso,or were they still in Italy? Charlotte had lain down for a nap, and must have slept straight through dinner.
Alone in the middle of the night, Charlotte began to worry. She was due to read “The Painter & Me” aloud in the Teatro Fabuloso the following evening. Her children still had no idea what the essay was about. Not one had asked. Maybe they assumed it was about Winston, or them.
Part of Charlotte was terrified at the thought of standing in a spotlight and exposing herself, but another part was ready for her children to hear her secrets. Or, okay, her one secret, sordid as it was. Maybe they wouldseeher, just for a moment.
Charlotte had, to be fair, worked hard to keep her children from knowing her. It was perhaps the signature accomplishment of her life, how airtight the construction of her false self had been. She’d known neighborhood mothers who’d gone off the rails: leaving husbands for handymen or other people’s husbands; spending ruinous amounts of money; and (in one case) absconding to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Charlotte had clung to her pious persona like a lifeboat. Perhaps she’d even come to believe it was real.
But Charlotte could imagine a shadow self. A woman who would move toward a kiss. A Charlotte who invited lovers in, who opened her body to them without fear, abandoned herself to pleasure. A woman who believed herself worthy of love.
Lying in her nest of Splendido blankets, Charlotte remembered her wedding day. It had been six months since her father’s death had exposed the bad investments that left them paupers. Winston waited beside the priest, crisply dressed, looking at her expectantly. She didn’t feel much of a connection to him. Yet there she was, wearing an ivory dress.
Why did Winston marry Charlotte? She annoyed him on a daily basis; many of her habits seemed to grate on him like sandpaper. Charlotte knew their relationship was based on people they’d once seen in each other. To Winston, Charlotte was a trophy, a prize that even a famous artist had desired. Winning her made him believe that a thrilling life was possible even as he soldiered on at his father’s law firm. Charlotte watched Winston’s hopes dim as the years passed. She wasn’t magic, couldn’t deliver him from the alcoholism and depression that had been in him all along.
Charlotte had been badly burned when the painter and then her mother spurned her. She had wanted to feel safe, and giving up on romance seemed like the price for safety. Winston had money, of course, though not very much. Marrying him had given Charlotte and Louisa a path forward.
On her wedding day, Charlotte wore new shoes that chafed at her right ankle. It hurt as she walked down the aisle. She’d had an angry blister for weeks, and a new husband who told her to stop complaining.
Charlotte tossed and turned. There was so much space in the bed. Was this her fate—to be alone at night, and invisible during the day?
The boat rocked slowly, almost imperceptibly, and Charlotte realized that she had never really known what it felt like to be someone’s true love. She tried to fall asleep again, to go back inside her dream. She wanted to find the silver gift, tear the paper off, and see what lay inside.
CORD MISSED HIS MOTHER.He missed his tight little tucked-in bed in his musty, fusty cabin on the cheesy monstrosity that was theSplendido Marveloso. For a moment, gazing at the Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi, the fountain’s noise rushing in his ears, his head and heart aching, Cord realized that he’d probably miss the megaliner for the rest of his life. Once you’d known the comfort of cruising, life on land was jagged and difficult indeed. There was no Paros, no breakfast tray, no carb-o-licious buffet on the lido deck with a bottomless carafe of coffee. Cord had exiled himself from the Promised Land.
He stretched. Cord had walked around the Eternal City for hours searching for Giovanni. Each time he rounded a corner, stumbling upon another historic treasure, he’d imagined their reunion: Cord’s tearful apology, Gio’s forgiving embrace. It would be a sweeping black-and-white film of a reunion!
Except Cord never found Giovanni. Maybe he’d gone back to New York. He wasn’t answering his phone or posting anything anywhere. Giovanni’s face, when he’d confronted Cord next to the golf cart, was filled with rage and pain. “You have serious problems,” Giovanni had said.
“Help me,” Cord had said.
Giovanni crossed his arms over his chest. “I thought this thing with your mom was something you had to do,” he said. “But now I get it. It’s who you are.”
“It’s not what I want,” Cord managed. “It’s not who I want to be.”
“Goodbye, Cord,” said Giovanni, before walking away, then picking up his pace, turning a corner, and disappearing.
“Don’t leave me!” cried Cord.
But Gio was gone.
Cord couldn’t leave Rome, not like this. Countless glittering bars beckoned. He could get drunk. He could meet up with the ship at its next destination (Florence, wasn’t it?) or even go home and deal with the 3rd Eyez mess he’d created. Across from him, lights played upon the majestic fountain, illuminating a young couple madly making out.
Cord pulled out his phone and stared at it. God, he wanted to jam it back in his pocket, resume his fruitless search. But he’d already gone down every avenue he could imagine to make things right. And none had worked. He was, as they said in the rooms, his own worst enemy. He needed help. Beaten down and unable to think of any other option, Cord dialed Handy.
“Ah,” said Handy, answering on the first ring. “It’s you, man.”
“Yeah,” said Cord. “It’s me.”
“Are you drinking?”
