After a few, Lee could pretend she was back in golden California. She could return to the time when her bank accounts were flush and her family wasn’t scattered across the world, each one rapidly disappearing into their own private catastrophes.
As Lee strolled toward the snack bar, retirees pretended not to stare at Charlotte Perkins’s “troubled” daughter, the reality TV star and mental patient about whom they said, not so sotto voce,Lee Perkins is a complete disaster but wow, isn’t she gorgeous?
Lee felt as if she were disappearing, her career stalled and her manic depression muffled—but not eradicated—by medications that narrowed her range of emotions and made her hands shake.
Honestly, thought Lee, everyone in her family seemed to be adrift. Charlotte rarely drove her car outside Palmetto Shores, her gated community. Lee’s brother, Cord, was drowning in booze and work. Regan, Lee’s baby sister, had moved all the way to Greece where she lived with her teenaged daughters, Isabelle and Flora, on the glittering Mediterranean Sea. Lee had once underlined sentences in a novel that described her family:When you are small, if you reach out, and nobody takes your hand, you stop reaching out, and reach inside, instead. That’s just the way it was.
Lee and her siblings had been raised in the late 1980s, a time of big hair and enough Aqua Net to hold it in place. A time (especially in the American South) of preppy vibes and straight teeth; cold smiles that betrayed nothing, L.L.Bean totes, and living by the credo—later cemented in the movieThe Wolf of Wall Street—“Act as if!”
What happened to adults who knew only how toact as ifthey were a family? Over the next few weeks, in New York and Savannah and Athens, Greece, the furiously flailing Perkins family wouldsink, one by one. And in their last breaths, could they, could Lee—lovely, sad Lee—see that what would save them was quiet, unsexy, and hidden in plain sight? A simple truth, yet hard to understand: If you didn’t reach out, you would never know you weren’t alone in the water.
3
Flora
On their second night alone,Flora and her sister, Isabelle, made noodles with butter for dinner—the weird, squareχυλοπ?τεςnoodles, the butter tangier than American Land O’Lakes. “I know you think I’m paranoid,” said Flora, wiping her lips with a paper napkin, “but I just have a bad feeling about Mom and this craft workshop. When I checked her location, I couldn’t find her on my list. She disabled Find My!”
“You’re tracking Mom now?” Isabelle raised an eyebrow. She had twisted her long hair into a topknot and wore very expensive sweatpants, a shirt with an illustration of a vintage red Ford Bronco and the swirled lettersAmerican Classic, and Nike Air Force 1s. She was a stunning and volatile eighteen-year-old, unpredictable and sometimes mean, but Flora adored her and clung to her in a way Flora knew made her sister angry.
“And I sent her a text and it didn’t show delivered or read, Isabelle. Something’s wrong.”
“I’m sure it’s fine,” said Isabelle, scrolling. “Just let her have her weirdo artist retreat, Jesus.”
“I think we should call Grammy Charlotte.”
“Oh my God, I miss Palmetto Shores! I miss the club and thegolf cart and even the creepy dog painting in Grammy’s guest room.”
Flora smiled. “Where did she even get that painting?” she said.
“Why would bulldogs be sailing a boat?”
“They have little sailor hats!” exclaimed Flora.
“And Grammy always has food for us. The whole closet pantry full.”
“I was just thinking about that—Mallomars!”
“And those mini ice cream sandwiches in her freezer,” said Isabelle, stretching her arms on the table and putting her head down in dramatic anguish. “Whyyyyy did we move here?”
“Do you really think Mom’s OK?”
“Nobody’s OK, Flor. But I’m sure she’ll text you back. Don’t call the police just yet.”
“I’m just worried.”
“You’re always worried,” said Isabelle.
She said it kindly.
For once, Isabelle was being kind.
4
Lee
On the sunlight-yellow couch inCharlotte’s living room, Charlotte and Lee ate Triscuits and a wedge of cheddar for dinner while they watchedTrafficked with Mariana van Zeller. The night grew lavender outside the sliding glass doors, sprinklers misting the golf course with a hushing sound. Above the fireplace, there was a portrait of Charlotte with her children. They looked young, beautiful, and scared.
Lee texted her agent, Francine:any news?
