The Jetsetters Read online

  Norma turned around to make sure Charlotte was following. Charlotte was not following. She was paralyzed, seized with terror. “I don’t—” said Charlotte.

  UNDERWATER! UNDERWATER! NOTHING ON BUT PANTIES! UNDERWATER!

  “I don’t think I am ready for this,” Charlotte managed. “I don’t like being naked,” she said, or thought she said, sitting down, the revolting floor wet underneath her bottom. She was wearing panties, thank goodness, she was wearing panties. Where was she? Why was there a pool in the middle of a casino? Why were there naked people in a pool in the middle of a casino?

  Someone was cradling her head, and Charlotte could have stayed with the present. She could stay but she just didn’t want to. So much more joy lay in the past! The day she met him, the day he called for her, the way he touched her body, the one summer she was free! Paella, smelling of saffron, at a bullfight in Arles! Charlotte let herself fall into memory, so much richer than whatever on earth this wet casino was.

  She was wearing a linen robe. The slice of Provençal sun from the window was warm across her lap. He put down his pencil. Within moments, he had parted her linen garment. She was naked, she was open, like the gift she would become.

  * * *

  —

  THE SOUND OF FOOTSTEPS pierced her airy doze. Charlotte opened her eyes to find that she was lying down on a massage table, wearing her spa robe. “Ah,” said a man in a white coat. “I’m glad you’re awake. Do you have any remaining dizziness? Nausea?”

  “No,” said Charlotte.

  “Well! It seems you had a bout of seasickness,” said the man. “You might want to stay lying down for another hour or so, or we can bring you back to your cabin and settle you in with a movie and a cup of tea.” He angled his head quizzically, an obsequious bird.

  “Please call my children,” said Charlotte. “I’m here with my children. I’m not alone on this cruise! If you just call them, I’m sure they’ll come right away.”

  “Well…” said the doctor, shifting uncomfortably. “We did try to reach…”

  “Did you try all of them? All three?” said Charlotte.

  He looked around the empty room. “I’m sorry,” he said. “We left messages, but…”

  “Oh,” said Charlotte. “I see.”

  “Would you like to be escorted back to your cabin?” he asked.

  “No, thank you,” said Charlotte, a familiar ache in the pit of her stomach. “I’m fine on my own.”

  “I could call your porter? I think it would be best.”

  “Paros?” said Charlotte, thinking of kind Paros. Handsome Paros. “Oh, yes, thank you,” she said.

  * * *

  —

  PAROS OPENED THE DOOR to the massage room quietly. Charlotte was dressed and ready, her purse in her lap. “Oh, Charlotte. Are you all right?” said Paros.

  “I,” said Charlotte. “My children…” She looked down, too tired, suddenly, to put a happy face on things. “I fell,” she said, “and none of my children came to help me. I took them on this cruise, but I’m still all alone.”

  Paros looked grim, seemingly saddened by this news. He drew near, held out his arm. She hooked her own arm through his, leaned into him a bit. “Well, Charlotte,” he said, “I’m here.”

  “You’re here,” said Charlotte.

  “Forgive me for being afraid, earlier,” he said.

  “I do,” said Charlotte.

  Paros brought his face close, closed his eyes. She did not move away. And then he kissed her.

  BEFORE BREAKFAST AT SHELLS, before the Day Tour of Arles & Aix-en-Provence, Cord rose early, showered, and headed to the Friends of Bill W meeting in the Starlight Lounge. With Handy’s encouragement, he’d taken an overnight, zillion-euro taxi to Livorno, blearily boarded the Marveloso, and forced himself to attend a Sundowners AA meeting. It was a nice group of alcoholics, and for lack of any better ideas, he’d set his alarm for the morning meeting before zonking out in his cabin.

  The chair of the Sunrise meeting was a guy in a bathing suit and Cozumel T-shirt. He had long silver hair, which he ran his hand through as he spoke. “Hey. I might just go on and start,” he said. “I’m Jacob and I’m an alcoholic.”

  “Hi, Jacob,” intoned the four other drunks in the disco.

  “I chose a reading today about control, because I’m still trying to control everything,” said Jacob. “I mean everything. Like should my wife order pork chops? And should we stay on the Colosseum tour there in Rome…or just stop when we’re tired? And should we have sex? Does she want to? Do I want to?” He shook his head. “I’m so tired, and it’s supposed to be my vacation. This sucks,” he said. “I want a drink, but I’m not going to have a drink. I just wish my brain would slow down. It’s…it’s just exhausting. Thanks. Thanks for being here, guys. Thanks for listening. I love you all.”

  “My name is Gerrie,” said a beautiful young woman in a red dress. “Geraldine. I’m an alcoholic.”

  “Hi, Geraldine.”

  “I’m on my honeymoon,” said Gerrie. “Yeah, and I’m terrified. I can’t stop thinking about, like, what if my husband leaves me? What if we have kids and they…I don’t know, they’re sick or something? I’m trying to stop the ‘stinking thinking,’ I try to hug myself, you know? But for one thing, I don’t want Ben to think I’m crazy. Anyway, I get it. I’m trying to give up control, too. But seriously, how beautiful are all those bottles of booze everywhere?”

  They all laughed.

  “I know what it would lead to if I had a cocktail,” she said. “I get it. I’ve been there, puking in my mom’s bathroom, blacking out…I know. But it’s hard.”

  Cord nodded. It was hard. But sitting in this room, this nightclub still littered with empty drink cups, the sun streaming through the windows, he looked at the faces of strangers who understood. And the day seemed a tiny bit easier.

  * * *

  —

  BEFORE HE WAS DUE to meet his family for their day tour, Cord called Giovanni again, but the phone just rang and rang. Cord left a message, maybe his thirtieth. He wrote another lengthy text. He was sorry, he was sorry, he was sorry.

  * * *

  —

  CHARLOTTE SEEMED INFUSED WITH happiness. She stepped across the gangway into France wearing a fuchsia silk dress with matching kitten heels. Lipstick, gold jewelry: Cord and Lee had jokingly labeled looks like this the “full Charlotte Perkins.”

  “Oh, darling,” said Charlotte, stopping to pose with Cord for the ship photographer.

  “Now put your arm around your wife,” said the young man, snapping away. His accent wasn’t quite British—maybe South African? Cord had seen him running the limbo contest in the Aqua Zone the day before.

  “Oh!” cried Charlotte. “You devil. He’s my son.”

  “I would never have guessed,” said the guy.

  “Okay,” said Cord, stepping away from the fake life preserver emblazoned with FUN IN MARSEILLES! “Let’s move on. Where are my sisters? Where’s Matt?”

  “I don’t know,” said Charlotte.

  Cord was irked. He’d figured everyone had been worried sick about him. He thought he would have been all they’d be talking about. But it seemed no one in his family had even noticed he was missing.

  * * *

  —

  IN ARLES, THEIR GUIDE, an older woman in a white hat that seemed too small for her head, made them get off the bus to stand next to a low concrete wall and a muddy river. There was a bridge in the distance. There was trash at Cord’s feet, an empty packet of French cigarettes and a squished French beer can. When the guide spoke, she paused constantly for dramatic effect.

  “Gaze at the Rhône,” commanded their guide. “Right very here—this—is the exact spot…where Vincent van Gogh painted…Starry Night over the Rhône. Marvel! Marvel!”

  Cord co
uld vaguely remember the painting, lush with a turquoise sky and silver-yellow stars. “I guess it’s more marvelous at night,” said Charlotte sotto voce, her tone jubilant. She seemed awfully cheery for a woman whose children were hurting. Or maybe she didn’t know they were hurting. Maybe she didn’t even see them.

  Inwardly, Cord began to feel sorry for himself. But he halted his thoughts. He was thirty-six years old. Maybe it was time to stop blaming his mother for his troubles. Cord remembered the Serenity Prayer. It didn’t say anything about pouting, wishing someone were different than they were. This sense that he was wronged was part of his problem, part of the way he justified drinking. Cord looked at Charlotte, who met his gaze and winked. It was what it was. He winked back.

  “He was staying,” said the guide, “at the place you know. It’s called the Yellow House…on…la Place Lamartine. He was very sad. Despairing. And…he would come here, right here, and he would…paint the night sky.”

  Some loudmouth in a University of Texas cap asked the exact year.

  “Eighteen eighty-eight,” the guide responded. “Marvel. Marvel!”

  It was hard to marvel, as Cord breathed bus exhaust and squinted, but he dutifully tried. Van Gogh! It was pretty amazing. Cord liked the French lilt of their guide’s voice, too. She paused and then hit English words with high notes. Maybe he should find a Frenchman, thought Cord, since Gio was never coming back to him.

  Martyrdom was a hard habit to break.

  As they toured Arles, peering at ivy-covered buildings with pastel wooden shutters, Cord felt like he was wandering through a movie set. He half expected Audrey Tautou to peek out one of the windows wearing a kerchief and a flimsy blouse. Something about the cobblestone streets, the window boxes filled with flowers, the metal tables and chalkboard signs with specials written in script—Plat du Jour Courgettes!—well, it made him want to smoke.

  Next to a carousel filled with actual French children, Cord slipped into a shop and bought some French cigarettes and French gum. He rejoined the group on the steps of a deserted, dusty arena. His mother was gazing up at the building, transfixed. Built in A.D. 90 of Mesozoic limestone, their guide said, the Arles Amphitheater could seat twenty thousand. The two-tiered structure had 120 arches. The guide talked about chariot races, bullfights, blood, and famous artists.

  “He took me here the afternoon I met him,” said Charlotte, leaning in and touching the sleeve of Cord’s shirt.

  “What?”

  “He brought me here. They served us paella. Nobody could believe I was with him. Nobody else got lunch! Only we got paella.”

  Cord looked at his mother. She seemed upbeat and sane. She spoke with clarity. “I’m sorry, Mom,” he said. “What are you talking about?”

  He felt apprehensive, waiting for her answer. Was this how dementia worked? Your mother was seemingly fine and then, boom, she was telling you she’d gone to a bullfight in Arles?

  Charlotte shook her head. “I just wanted to tell someone,” she said. “I didn’t figure you’d understand. And honestly, I don’t care.”

  Cord barked—sort of a laugh, sort of a gasp—as Charlotte walked away from him into the amphitheater, stepping swiftly down the stairs to the first row of seats. She moved elegantly in her hot-pink dress. Cord felt a rush of affection for his crazy mom. Her life hadn’t been easy: her snootiness was hard-won and (Cord knew) illusory. And now it seemed she was losing her mind.

  “Picasso and his friends, all the painters, when they come here,” said the guide. “They serve them…paella!”

  His mother must have read it somewhere.

  Cord entered the hot amphitheater and located Charlotte. “How would you feel about a little excursion?” she said. Her eyes were actually shining; she raised her eyebrows coquettishly. “Come on, let’s go,” she said.

  Cord smiled. He wanted to be connected to her—he always had. But why? Why did he feel so responsible for her? (“Because you’re codependent,” he heard Handy say in his mind. “Accept the things you cannot change, brother.”) But it wasn’t fucking fair. He wanted to mute his exhausting need to protect Charlotte, not accept it!

  He let himself be tugged outside the amphitheater and toward a taxicab. Was this acceptance or weakness? He’d have to ask Handy. Could they possibly be the same thing?

  When they climbed in the taxi, the driver put down his copy of Le Figaro and started the engine. Cord felt disoriented. His mother spoke in French to the driver. He’d forgotten she spoke French.

  The taxi drove out of Arles, into grassy hills. Cord saw hedges of rosemary, towering almond trees, scrub oak. The air was clean and dry, the light diffused and lemony. Tangles of lavender and thyme grew wild. “Where are we going?” he asked.

  “There are some things I’ve been meaning to tell you,” said Charlotte. Her tone was grave. The whole situation—the French taxi, the Provençal landscape so lovely it was almost surreal—struck Cord as suddenly terrifying, the folded mountains in the distance forbidding. Could Charlotte be ill? “What, Mom?” he said. “What’s going on?”

  Her face was not the same face he’d known, or maybe he hadn’t looked at her in a while. There were deep lines, and her powdered skin—she didn’t wear foundation—was so fragile-looking. Her blue eyes, unadorned; her face, untouched by Botox or plastic surgery; her stare absolutely direct, gazing at him—gazing into him. When was the last time he had locked eyes with Charlotte?

  “I was sixteen,” she said. Her voice was matter-of-fact. “I met him in a café, Le Zinc. He invited me to a bullfight. His brother picked me up in a convertible. And afterward, we came here. He wanted to draw me, he said.”

  “Are you talking about…” said Cord.

  The taxi stopped, but remained idling. The driver spoke, and Charlotte answered. “He says we can’t go any closer,” she told Cord.

  They climbed from the taxi. “There,” Charlotte said, pointing in the distance. “See that castle?” Cord could see a magnificent fortress with faded yellow walls and reddish shutters, rising against the north slope of the mountain.

  “I thought it was love,” said Charlotte.

  “Mom, are you saying…?”

  “He told me I was beautiful enough to stop his heart,” said Charlotte.

  Cord felt an eerie calm steal over him, the feeling he remembered from having exactly three gin and tonics. (The fourth led to a downhill slide.) Maybe Charlotte was mad and maybe she’d slept with a famous painter. What did it matter, really? Cord’s father had been a difficult, tortured man, and if this excursion brought his mother joy, who was he to mess around with it? “I never loved your father,” said Charlotte. “Or, I guess, he never loved me. It never occurred to me to wonder what I thought about it all.”

  Cord grimaced. He didn’t want to get into it, his awful childhood. He didn’t want to admit the thud of recognition her words created inside him.

  It never occurred to me to wonder what I thought about it all.

  He looked around at the slim green cypress trees, the lush hills, the dense sky. He looked at the gorgeous structure—the butter-colored walls protecting the castle from…what? Charlotte and Cord?

  “Others had painted these hills, but now he owned them. That’s what he said,” said Charlotte. It was like she was in a lucid dream. “I was a virgin, before,” she added, after a while. “It was painful. But I thought…”

  Cord had seen pictures of his mother at sixteen. He remembered a shot of her in a schoolgirl kilt with knee socks, her look innocent but game. He’d never seen that expression in real life.

  “What I remember the most is feeling as if it was all beginning. Everything was ahead of me when I came here. And you get to a point in your life, Cord, when you wonder if there’s anything big left to happen to you.”

  “Mom,” said Cord. “There’s plenty ahead for you.”

  “What do yo
u want?” asked Charlotte. “What do you really want, honey? Life doesn’t go on forever, you know.”

  “I want to be happy,” said Cord. And here—here—was the moment he could tell his mother who he was. After all, she was baring her own heart. “Mom?” said Cord.

  “I want to be happy, too,” said Charlotte.

  Cord cleared his throat. “Mom?” he said again. But Charlotte hiked up the skirt of her dress, gathered breath, and started to run toward the château.

  “Mom!” cried Cord.

  The driver jumped out of the taxi, yelling at her to stop. Cord watched her, stunned. “Mom!” he cried. Charlotte did not turn around.

  “She will be jailed!” said the taxi driver. “It is not for the public. Arête! Arête, madame!”

  Cord took off, but Charlotte, kicking off her kitten heels, was fast. She ran until she reached the castle, then began banging on the door. “I’m here!” she yelled. “C’est moi!”

  Finally, Cord caught up, breathing heavily. The driver was a few paces behind them. Cord pinned Charlotte’s arms to her sides. The door was solid, enormous, shut tight. After a while, Charlotte wriggled free and began running back toward the taxi. She had lost her mind.

  “What do I care?” screamed Charlotte. She spun in a slow circle on the vast lawn, arms open wide, cragged peaks rising above her. Sunlight bathed Cord’s mother, making her glow. “He’s dead!” she cried. “And I’m alive!”

  Cord couldn’t help but grin. Maybe she had been a famous painter’s lover. Anything was possible. Even telling Charlotte his truth. “Mom,” he said.

  She turned to him.

  “I’m gay,” said Cord. “Giovanni is my love. I love him.” Charlotte was still. She nodded—not shocked, but not pleased, either. “I love you, too,” said Cord. He moved toward his mother and encircled her gently in his arms.

  “Ah,” said Charlotte, easing into his embrace, “lucky me.”