The Jetsetters Read online

  “How about swimming?” he said. “You’re going to get fat if you just sit here every night.”

  “Dad! That’s so rude.” Lee cut a glance to the mirror above her dressing table. Was her jawline a bit rounder than usual? She wasn’t sure.

  “Stop looking at yourself,” said Winston. “I’m saying I miss you. Let’s go for a drive. Practice starts in thirty minutes.”

  “I told you I’m done with swimming,” said Lee. “I’m going to be an actress, Dad.”

  “Is that right?” said Winston.

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, then,” said Winston. He stood in front of her for a moment, and then said, “God gave you those looks. Don’t blow it.”

  When Winston killed himself, Lee knew it was her fault. He’d done it in her bathroom, after all. Why hadn’t she gone for a drive with her father? He’d needed her and she had let him down.

  She vowed to stay beautiful. She would not be abandoned again. She would become so famous that she would always be loved.

  * * *

  —

  LEE BURST OUT OF Greek waves, her face hot. From the floating dock, the man waved. He looked a bit feral under the bright sunlight—skinny as a drug addict, his crooked teeth bared. Suddenly, Lee didn’t want to swim to him. She treaded water, felt her blood thump through her body. “Yoo-hoo!” cried the man.

  “Yoo-hoo,” said Lee.

  “Come to me, you gorgeous creature!” said Pete.

  Lee didn’t know how to say no.

  LULLED BY THE SOUND of the waves and the warmth of the sun, Charlotte fell deep into a dream of lying on a beach towel as the man on the cover of her book, Taming Zeus, rubbed tanning oil all over her body. When Cord shook her awake, she was immediately embarrassed, her body still pulsing with want.

  “The first bus is leaving,” said Cord. “I didn’t want to wake you, but we’re ready to go.”

  “Hmm,” said Charlotte, pulling herself regretfully from the dream world where Zeus, holding a bottle of Bain de Soleil, remained. Lee, Cord, and a complete stranger stared down at Charlotte.

  “I’m Pete,” said the stranger in a British accent. Charlotte took in his bony physique and tattered swim trunks.

  “Pleased to meet you,” she said.

  “So, Mom, are you ready?” said Lee. “If we go now, we can take a walk through old town Rhodes.”

  “It’s actually Rhodes’s Old Town,” said Pete. “Not to be persnickety.” He chortled, and Charlotte frowned.

  “I never knew you to be interested in history, dear,” she said.

  “There’s wicked shopping,” said the stranger too eagerly. “Castle paperweights. Totes, tees, sarongs. Quite something, really. You feel like you’re back in the Ottoman Empire, wandering through passageways, getting lost in it all. Like a sultan. Like you’re Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent. And also, mugs.”

  Wandering through passageways getting lost in it all sounded downright frightening to Charlotte—she spent too much time already wondering if she was losing her mind. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said.

  “Sometimes, I wish I were a sultan, to be honest,” said the stranger.

  “Who doesn’t?” sighed Cord, who was holding a nearly empty beer bottle.

  “I don’t,” said Charlotte. “And if it’s all the same to you, I’m going to stay here and enjoy the beach.” Lee and Cord exchanged a glance that they thought Charlotte wouldn’t see, though her vision was still intact. “I’ll be fine,” said Charlotte.

  “I don’t know, Mom…” said Cord. “I feel like a jerk leaving without you.”

  “She’ll be fine,” said Lee. “Won’t you, Mom?”

  At least Lee had put her top on. Charlotte smiled sweetly and said, “Of course, darlings.”

  “Where’s Regan?” said Lee. “That’s our sister,” she explained to leering Pete.

  Charlotte scanned the beach. “I don’t see her,” she said. “Maybe she’s taking a dip?”

  “In her old-lady bathing suit?” said Lee.

  “Be kind,” said Cord.

  “Sorry,” said Lee.

  Charlotte turned away from the disturbing spectacle of Pete staring at Lee’s chest. “Toodle-oo,” she said, opening her book.

  “I think I’ll just stay with Mom,” said Cord.

  Charlotte ran the scenario through her head—Lee tottering on cobblestone streets with this skeevy fellow; Lee getting pregnant and needing to live with Charlotte forever. A squalling bastard child in her placid home. Named Pete, Jr.

  Ugh!

  “No, Cord,” said Charlotte. “Please. I’m fine. Regan will turn up eventually.”

  “If you’re sure, Mom,” said Cord.

  “I am utterly sure,” said Charlotte. She added, trying to keep her tone light, “Just keep an eye on your sister!”

  “Oh my God, Mom!” said Lee.

  “I will,” said Cord, leaning down to kiss Charlotte on the cheek. Why couldn’t he find a dalliance? Maybe he’d meet some expert in Greek antiquities—a woman with tortoiseshell eyeglasses and a ponytail. Wearing a khaki jumpsuit, but in the evenings she’d change into a smart dress from Talbots and cook for Cord—lamb or whatever they ate here on Rhodes. Someone on the bus had mentioned octopus.

  Was Cord gay? It was possible he was gay. But why wouldn’t he have told her if he were gay? She did, okay, hope he was not gay. Pope Benedict XVI had said that gay marriage was “an offense against the truth of the human person, with serious harm to justice and peace.” (Charlotte had looked it up.) But now there was a new pope, Pope Francis, who seemed more open-minded.

  It would be hard to tell her church friends—and even worse, Father Thomas—if Cord was gay. The Bible said that being gay was “an abomination.” Charlotte believed that the Bible said a lot of things, and maybe some of them were more allegorical than prescriptive, but “an abomination” was hard to put a positive spin on.

  Charlotte wished Minnie were here beside her, though she knew what Minnie would say. “He’s your son! You choose your son!” Charlotte thought of Father Thomas and his kind face. He had been there for her through these years…so many years, it felt, during which her children had abandoned her.

  Father Thomas sat beside her when she needed comfort, and she loved his manly smell. If she didn’t come to morning mass, he called to see if she was okay. There were days when, after mass, Charlotte didn’t talk to anyone at all. The hours were endless, bleak, but there was the possibility that Father Thomas would stop by for coffee. People forgot Charlotte, assumed she was fine or busy or didn’t feel lonely. But Father Thomas remembered. He treated her as a person, as the woman she still felt like inside, though she seemed invisible to everyone else.

  Charlotte would not allow a gay son to cause her to be ostracized from church. How could she possibly choose between the faith that had sustained her and her own son? Charlotte loved Cord, but without Father Thomas, now that Minnie was gone, she would have nothing at all.

  THE SATURDAY VIGIL MASS was odd. The priest couldn’t use candles, so battery-powered tea lights cast a dull, dim light in the Tranquillo Conference Room. The priest pulled on plastic gloves before handling the host. A passenger wearing a zebra-striped pantsuit whispered to Charlotte, “He’s wearing gloves because of the norovirus.”

  Charlotte nodded gravely.

  The zebra-pantsuited woman leaned close enough for Charlotte to smell her perfume and body odor. She whispered, “The only reason they even have mass is for the Filipinos.” She jerked her head toward a dozen or so men and women in folding chairs. “Can’t run a ship galley without them,” said the woman. Charlotte turned toward the makeshift altar and put her shoulders back, universal language (she hoped) for please stop talking to me. When mass was over, the woman stood at the same time as Charlotte. “Well, hello,” she said, smiling. “I’m Jan
e-Ann and I’m from Oxford, Mississippi.”

  “Charlotte Perkins. I’m from Savannah.”

  “I knew you were a Southern gal,” said Jane-Ann.

  Charlotte did not ask how Jane-Ann knew. She didn’t really think of herself as a “Southern gal,” though she’d lived in Savannah for decades. Charlotte considered herself a woman of the world, a diplomat’s daughter. She wished she could convey to Jane-Ann that they were not the same.

  “Are you going to the co-cathedral?” asked Jane-Ann.

  Charlotte had no idea what Jane-Ann was talking about, but didn’t want the woman to think she was uninformed. “Hmm?” she said.

  “St. John’s Co-Cathedral? In Malta? It’s supposed to be beyond.”

  “Hmm,” repeated Charlotte, backing away. “Nice to meet you.”

  “You, too!” cried Jane-Ann. “It’s refreshing to meet a real Catholic around here, unlike all the heathens upstairs at the morning buffet.”

  “Don’t talk about my children that way!” said Charlotte. “I’m joking! Though they are at the morning buffet.”

  “Have you tried the marzipan animals?” said Jane-Ann.

  Baffled again, Charlotte smiled noncommittally. She hurried back to her stateroom and ordered a turkey club sandwich, which was delivered by a female porter.

  After her supper, Charlotte went out on her balcony and stared at the churning sea. The ship’s lights were mirrored in the closest waves, but then the water became an enormous, dark blanket rolling out toward a navy sky.

  Charlotte’s essay was troubling her. The priest might be in the audience when she read it—or Jane-Ann! Charlotte balled her hands into fists. She wished she could call Minnie. She wished she could call anyone.

  THE PAINTER & ME

  By Charlotte Perkins

  I was a beautiful girl when I first went to his castle. He was gnomelike, but in an attractive way. It’s hard to explain, but I’ll try. From a distance, you’d think, Ugh. He was short, with wispy old-man hair. He wore ridiculous clothing. Horizontal striped shirts matched with dingy plaid pants. And a beret. If you saw him coming toward you on a dim street in Aix, you’d think, Oh dear, I better cross. That homeless elfin man looks drunk and I’m afraid he’ll steal my pocketbook.

  He didn’t care how he looked. This was one of the things I admired about him. It was also lucky for him, because his face…Well, his face was cragged, pinched with bovine intensity. His gaze was sort of frightening. You’d never meet his gaze and think, What a kind person. No. When he looked at you, it was as if he was consuming you. Like a tiger. He was sizing you up, deciding how to bring you down, and which piece of you to eat first.

  He was SEX PERSONIFIED. He was sex personified as a gnome who shopped at T.J.Maxx.

  He had said he wanted to draw me, so there I was, in the enormous dining room of his castle. My parents thought I was taking a day trip to see ruins. (As I told them this fabricated story, I pictured the painter’s wrinkled face and did not feel I was wholly lying.) I looked at the Provençal floor tiles as he poured wine. They were octagonal, brick red. The painter was talking about himself.

  “When I first came to this place, they asked me if it was too vast and too severe. But I said it is not too vast, because I will fill it!”

  “How interesting,” I said, though he had not paused for my response. He went on:

  “I said, ‘It is not too severe, because I am a Spaniard, and I like sadness.’ Ha ha!”

  “Ha ha!” I agreed.

  I was scared. I was a virgin, and I knew we were going to have sex. I had been taught that sex was absolutely wrong before marriage and would condemn me to Hell. Thus, I was curious. At this time, I didn’t really believe in God or Hell. I was young, and I guess I didn’t have a need to believe there was someone I could pray to, someone who was in charge of everything, even when it seemed that life was a cruel, random mystery.

  God—before I needed Him—seemed so vague, and here was the painter, pulling me to him. He smelled like turpentine and dog hair, but I didn’t see a dog.

  In his blindingly white studio, we drank more wine. The room was absolutely magnificent, lined with dramatic crown moldings—flowers! Shells! Hounds! Men and women draped in togas! In the center of the studio, an elaborate mantelpiece at least twenty feet tall soared toward the ceiling. Instead of a hearth under the glamorous mantel, there was an empty space with a dirty cowbell inside.

  This seems an apt metaphor.

  We stood by the giant windows and I said I loved the view. I did love the view: rolling, blue-green mountains. The painter stood behind me and pressed against me. “Others have painted these mountains but now I own them,” he said. I began to admit to myself that he was a bit of a braggart.

  He gave me a linen robe, which didn’t smell clean. He needed someone to do his laundry, it seemed, and I thought to myself, I could do his laundry. But I also thought I could set up an easel beside his, or do his accounting. I could hire someone to do his laundry. I changed into the robe in his bathroom and lay down on a settee.

  He was no longer wearing his shirt, but he was growing more drunk and pontificating in earnest. Where had his shirt gone? I looked around the room but didn’t see it. This bothered me.

  He stopped talking and began to draw. He was drawing me, and I savored his gaze on my body. The sun from the open window was warm on my skin. A man—a famous man—drew me, paid attention to my bones and the skin over them. I was luminous.

  He put down the pencil and approached. Inside his hideous pants, I saw his desire growing. He pulled the drawstring and stepped free, exposing very hairy thighs. They write in romance novels that “man members” are “throbbing” and you think, Oh, honestly, but his was. Seriously, it was.

  It was throbbing for me.

  He untied the sash on my robe. I didn’t have to do anything. He parted the cloth and ran his rough and stubby fingers across my rib cage, to my breasts, my waist. He straddled me, guided his throbbing member into my most secret place. He pumped away, and I tried to feel something more than a vague concern that someone could see in through the window. The pain was sharp, somehow important. When he finished, I was a woman.

  THE END

  Addendum: Nude on a Couch, on permanent display in Barcelona, Spain, was painted shortly after our assignation. I am quite sure the nude on a couch is, in fact, moi.

  THE MARVELOSO had four “regular” restaurants and six “specialty” ones. All passengers were assigned to a table for breakfast and dinner that was theirs alone. The Perkins family had Table 233 in Shells, an uneasy combo of Denny’s diner and a Parisian whorehouse. It reminded Cord of a banquet hall where he’d once gone for a work seminar in New Jersey, back during his early days at the firm. The gold sconces, maroon wallpaper, great swaths of cream-colored cloth on the tables and windows—it all screamed, Check me out, I’m luxurious!

  It occurred to Cord that Giovanni’s mother, Rose, might love a cruise like this—maybe they could take her on one. Cord had to admit that he adored cruising, too. As much as he ridiculed the ship in his head, he loved being on it. Just wandering around taking in the bright lights, thumping music, and tasty snacks made him feel euphoric.

  He had even indulged fantasies of surprising Gio with a balcony cabin on the Splendido Around the World cruise he’d seen advertised on the giant screen above the pool in the Aqua Zone. For a full year, passengers would travel from Europe to the Suez Canal; stopping in Egypt and Dubai; then heading to India; over to Singapore; and up to Hong Kong; then to Australia and New Zealand, stopping in Samoa and Hawaii on the way to Los Angeles; then sailing south through Mexico and the Panama Canal; hitting Colombia’s Cartagena; then Curaçao, Fort Lauderdale, and Bermuda; before sailing back across the Atlantic to Funchal. What even was Funchal? Could he wear a thick Splendido robe for a year? Cord imagined riding camels in Petra w
ith Gio, dancing cheek to cheek in the Starlight Lounge. The daydream made him swoon with pleasure.

  When it was dimly lit at evening time, Shells Restaurant seemed almost festive. But in the morning, Shells was revealed as the hungover party girl she was: a bit tattered, her napkins rumpled, her lavishments too much, too bright, too early. Even at the crack of dawn, the waitstaff were dressed in tuxedos.

  “I’ll have the…hmm…Maltese breakfast sampler. Why not?” said Charlotte. She handed her laminated menu to the waiter. “How do you even pronounce this?” she asked Cord, pointing to her Magical Malta Day Tour ticket.

  Cord ordered an egg-white omelet, then scrutinized the word on his mother’s ticket: Marsaxlokk. “Marshmallow-lox,” he said. He lifted the carafe in the middle of the table and poured his mother a coffee, then filled his own cup.

  “Where is everyone?” said Charlotte. “I need to talk to you all about my essay. There are some things you need to know.”

  “I haven’t seen anyone since last night,” said Cord. “I fell asleep right after dinner.” In truth, he’d watched a movie and had WhatsApp sex with Giovanni, which had been surprisingly hot. Giovanni had been on his lunch break, and had brought his phone into the teachers’ bathroom. The event had been sordid, blurry, and very exciting. Afterward, Cord had fallen asleep without drinking anything from the minibar.

  “Hmm,” said Charlotte, vexed.

  “What is it, Mom?” said Cord.

  “I think I should tell you all together.”

  “Mom!” said Cord, teasing. “Do you have a secret?”

  She looked flustered. “What?” she said. “No! Of course not!”

  “Who’s talking about secrets?” said Regan, approaching. Matt followed a few feet behind her, wearing a button-down shirt, pale pink shorts, and loafers. Cord felt a seething anger toward his brother-in-law, toward all the straight Southern men he’d known who thought the world was their oyster. Sometimes, he wondered what it would be like to be one of these men. On the outside, he looked like them, but under the skin, he knew he couldn’t be more different.