Cleo had friends who would pay top dollar for a handsome man’s sperm alone, and Cleo got the sperm and the attentive licking. Dannyalwaysmade sure she had an orgasm,always.It was a point of pride for him. Their chemistry had once been powerful, but had dulled, which was normal. Wasn’t it normal?
Outside customs, a man wearing a top hat held a placard that readCleo Peacock. “Where’s my name?” said Danny.
3
Emma
-$35,510.12
“Will you look at this marquetry paneling?” said Rich, touching the wall of the Pullman train carriage where an artist had fitted mahogany veneers together to create glossy images of ocean waves and clouds above. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Where is Sylvie?” said Emma, feeling apprehensive.
Rich shrugged, stretching out in a plush chair upholstered in a vibrant art deco pattern. A man in a white tuxedo jacket hurried to fill a tiny teacup. Rich sipped, then said, “Whoa! This is not tea, Em!”
“It’s strawberry wine,” clarified the steward. “Would you prefer champagne? We serve Veuve Clicquot, as is served on the Orient Express.”
“No, thank you,” said Emma at the same time as her husband said, “Yes, please.” Emma couldn’t possibly enjoy herself. She hadn’t been together with her sisters inten years. They’d only known Guinness as a toddler, and had never even met Jameson in person—only in FaceTime calls.
The boys began picking up and commenting on every silver utensil, china salt and pepper shaker (lavender colored and emblazoned with the train’s insignia), and napkin. The stewardreturned with a tray of canapés. Jameson popped caviar canapés in his mouth as if they were his favorite food, Tater Tots.
“This is Albert Dunn,” said Rich, gesturing to the paneling. “He did the walls of theTitanic.Unbelievable. It looks new. Nowthisis what I want to do.” Rich traced the edge of a delicate wave with his fingertip. “Four more years and I’ll have enough money to do this,” he said.
Emma’s stomach clenched. How was she going to tell Rich that she had spent all the money he had saved to make his wonderful dream come true?
“Maybe one of you will want to work with me,” said Rich. “What do you think, guys? Catalfamo and Sons custom woodwork and cabinetry?”
Jameson pursed his lips and nodded amiably, chomping the last canapé. “How do they make different pieces of wood look like they’re one piece of wood?” said Guinness.
“It’s incredibly thin layers cut perfectly and fit together,” said Rich. “They use fish bones in the glue.”
“That’s sick,” said Guinness admiringly.
A jazz band began playing on the platform in front of their train car. “Things are happening,” said Rich, smiling at his wife.
“I’m so nervous,” said Emma.
“It’s going to be OK,” said Rich, taking her hand in his. “No matter what happens, I’m going to be right here next to you. OK?”
“I don’t deserve you,” said Emma.
“You certainly do,” said Rich.
Emma’s awful secret was hot inside her.
“Look, Em,” said Rich, touching the wooden wall. “If you look closely at the sky here, you can see tiny, tiny stars.”
“There she is!” cried Emma. “There’s my sister!”
4
Sylvie
Sylvie stood in Victoria Station and gazed at the British Pullman, a glamorous train like the ones Sylvie and her sisters had imagined on the nights they packed what they could find in the refrigerator and took what they called “night picnics” into the backyard to imagine ways of escaping Donna: jets to Paris, hitchhiking to the Plaza; trains across Europe.
Donna’s parenting had run the gamut from screaming to disappearing for days. The hours Seamus, their father, was home were the only hours the girls weren’t wary and scared. When Donna was “in a mood,” as she called it, they night-picnicked in the backyard until the light in her bedroom went off and the house wasn’t dangerous anymore.
Seamus worked the night shift until he died, when Sylvie was fourteen. Soon after his death, Sylvie opened the book he’d always read to her,The Bed Book,by Sylvia Plath. (“Sylvia wasn’t all doom and gloom,” Seamus told Sylvie, trying—in his way—to undo damage Donna had already done.) Why had their father agreed to naming his daughters after doomed women? He was gone, and Sylvie would never know. Once, Cleo had asked Donna what shehad been thinking and Donna had said, “They’re beautiful names! Why do you have to be so dramatic?”
