WHEN SHE WAS Alittle girl, all Lee had known were summer hours to fill, Charlotte off playing tennis or cooking something in the kitchen. Lee listened to Casey Kasem’sAmerican Top 40,prank-called friends and strangers. When Winston was home, they got out—playing Cave Family in the backyard, wandering the streets of their hometown, buying pizza and ice cream and Jolly Rancher candies. Time was elastic, evening stretching forever before fading to sparkling night. The sounds of frogs and cicadas. The smell of pine needles and marshland. Ice slamming into Winston’s cut-crystal glass. His voice a hot knife.
After Winston was gone: a smaller house, sure, but always thrumming with raucous laughter, cabinets of ramen noodles and microwave popcorn. Charlotte collapsing on the wicker couch after a day of showing houses to people who treated her like dirt. Regan brought her mother cold drinks. Cord splayed across the couch, listening to her stories. Lee flitted in and out, the telephone cord wrapped around her hand, always headed somewhere, applying lip gloss, smelling of Aqua Net.
She’d taken every one of them for granted, not known how much she needed them, running away as soon as she was able. Lee was convinced her family was her burden.
She had wanted to die. Someone—some passenger with a high-res camera phone—had filmed her on her balcony. In the end, it was the movie of her suicide attempt that had brought her stardom at last. Uploaded to YouTube, watched millions of times, the video enabled Francine to ink a reality show deal before Lee had even left Barcelona.
It was all she had dreamed of during those hot, endless childhood summers: bright fame, the flash of photographers every time she left her Hollywood home, magazine covers, eventually receivingrealroles in feature films just a few months after the debut of her reality show,One of You to Love Me.
In the video, she stands on a balcony of a megaliner, the Spanish sky wide above her, passengers freaking out below. Gorgeous Lee, unforgettable, barefoot in a gold dress. In the throes of what was later diagnosed as postpartum psychosis. Her hair whipping in the wind. Her mascara smeared. She opens her mouth and screams, “I just wanted one of you to love me!”
THE MUSEUM WAS SURROUNDEDby an ancient courtyard in Barcelona’s Gothic Quarter. “Let’s get in line,” said Paros, who had met her, as promised, dressed in his farmer clothes. No matter—Charlotte could take him on a shopping spree at the Hilton Head outlet mall if things progressed. Paros would look fabulous in loafers and those Vineyard Vines pants, patterned with tiny, pink whales.
Charlotte and her children had stayed in Barcelona for three weeks, renting an Airbnb apartment until Lee’s doctors felt she was ready to fly home. Charlotte and Paros had said goodbye when theMarvelosodeparted, and had reunited when it returned. “Are you going to be fired for fraternizing with a former passenger?” Charlotte had asked, flirtatiously.
“A large part of me would love to be fired,” said Paros.
Charlotte put her hand to her chest. She wasn’t sure if he was talking about the large part she was imagining.
Now, Paros kissed her forehead. They joined the queue snaking into the museum. Paros paid their entrance fees. So gallant! thought Charlotte. Also, she liked his silver money clip. Winston had always traded in rumpled bills from his wallet.
Once Charlotte was inside, the exposed-brick walls made her feel as if she were in a bunker of some sort. With the help of a paper map and two docents, Charlotte foundNude on a Couch. She stood in front of the work of art she had inspired. The painting itself was vibrant: purple and magenta, a young woman’s face obscured, her breasts the focal point. Charlotte did have great breasts. But the woman in the painting was open, offering herself. She existed to please, to be savored, eaten up.
“Is it really you?” asked Paros.
Charlotte turned to him, surprised.
“I heard about your essay,” said Paros. “My friend Jonas was working in the theater bar the night you told your story. He told me you were a star.”
Charlotte turned back to the painting, flushed. “It was me, I suppose,” she said. “It was me, once.” She felt sorry for the girl who had inspired the painting, and with the sorrow came a gratitude that she had come so far—raised her children, brought them to Europe, found a new lover with whom she could savor the city of Barcelona. She had not been a woman after the painter had his way with her. But she was a woman now.
They looked at art for a while, and then Paros pulled Charlotte to him. She felt the length of his body against hers. What luck to have found him, to have let herself be found.
“I don’t want to say goodbye,” said Paros, into her hair.
Charlotte didn’t speak. What could she say?Let’s get married?She wasn’t sixteen anymore, and understood that a wedding wasn’t an answer to anything.Let’s move to Greece? Savannah? Paris?This seemed rash, even considering Paros’s agile tongue. “Kiss me,” said Charlotte.
And oh, how he did.
—
THEY MET CHARLOTTE’S CHILDRENand grandchildren at Dulcería de la Colmena, a charming cake shop along Plaza del Angel, its windows lined with rows of intricate, mouthwatering treats lit like diamonds. Charlotte took in the gold, filigreed letters spellingBombonería(was there a better word in the world?) andPastelería. Inside, she peered at a display of something calledturrón.
“It’s nougat,” whispered Paros. He smelled deliciously of limes. “Some say it was eaten by athletes in ancient Rome.”
She turned to him. “Which kind should I…?” she asked.
“Ah, there is hardturrón;there is softturrón; turrónwith Marcona almonds, egg yolk, and caramel…”
As he spoke, Charlotte’s eye caught a tray of powdered pastries. She read from the tiny card nestled among them,“Buñuelo.”
“It’s a donut,” said Paros.
As Charlotte pointed, he ordered, and the next thing she knew, she was standing in the plaza, a paper box of treats in her hands. They ordered tiny, hot coffees at a nearby café.
“Happy family,” said a guy with a Polaroid camera, hoping to sell them a photo. He stood back, framed the shot. “Happy family, smile!” said the man. Charlotte could see the image already: Lee, still shaken from her ordeal, about to leave them again; Cord, giddy and hopeful; Regan, already inhabiting her new persona as a single mother, flanked by her daughters, who had spent the day playing in the magical Park Güell.
When they were young, Charlotte had been so busy with her pain, with making money and driving the carpool. She’d resented her children as they climbed into bed with her, reading beside her, touching her feet with their own. She bought frozen pizzas and boxes of macaroni and cheese and fruit and milk and Entenmann’s chocolate-covered donuts and her children ate it all, leaving Charlotte only crumbs.
