But Chaney let her be whoever the hell she was. And he seemed to want her just that way. Sometimes they hung out, watching romantic comedies all night. At other times, on a whim, they’d hop in the car and take off for Big Bear. Tijuana. Joshua Tree. Life was a wild ride.
She clicked on one of the contacts on her iPhone. Lillian, Chaney’s mother. It was a crazy thing to do, calling her. She should hang up. She barely knew Lillian.
But the phone was already ringing and she kept it held to her ear.
“Hello?” the woman said, and Nell felt a jolt of joy. Chaney’s Mom.
“Lillian. Hi, it’s Nell.” She heard a silence. She thought of hanging up—she’d never have to see the woman again, anyway—but she pressed the phone to her ear.
“Nell. Why are you calling?”
Chaney’s mother once told him she thought Nell was too skinny. Had Lillian liked her? Nell didn’t know. They had only seen each other a few times in the year she and Chaney had been together. And two times since he died: at the funeral and at the apartment, when Lillian came to get Chaney’s clothes.
“I was just thinking about Chaney,” Nell said. “I was missing him.”
“I miss him all the time,” Lillian said, her voice soft.
“Had he talked about me very much?” Nell asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m trying to figure out if he loved me.”
“I’m sure he loved you.”
“I hope he did. I loved him. He’s the only guy I’ve ever loved.”
She could hear Lillian begin to cry.
“I don’t want to upset you,” Nell said.
“No,” Lillian said. “I like hearing this. These are good tears.”
“I didn’t know he was bipolar,” Nell said. “He never told me.”
“Oh,” Lillian said. “I assumed you knew.”
“You’d think I’d figure it out if my boyfriend was bipolar.”
“He took his meds. Until a month before he died.”
“You knew that?” Nell asked.
“I found out from his psychiatrist. He told the psychiatrist that he was happy. That he didn’t need medication anymore.”
“He said that? That he was happy?”
“Yes. He was very happy,” Lillian said. “You were good for him.”
“I was?”
“He called you ‘my girl,’ ” Lillian said. “My girl and I are going camping this weekend. My girl and I are auditioning for the same film. I thought it was very sweet.”
“He was very sweet.”
They were both quiet for a moment. Nell watched a small sailboat capsize as it tried to make its way to the pier. She could hear shrieks of laughter carry in the wind.
“So he went off his meds,” Nell said.
“Then he told his psychiatrist that he didn’t like himself
anymore. That he didn’t like being inside his own head. The doctor begged him to go back on the medication.”
“Why didn’t he tell me?”
“He hated his condition. He didn’t want it to rule his life.”
“I wish I had known,” Nell said.
There was a short pause, and then Lillian cleared her throat. “Would you like to come to lunch one day?”
“Yes,” Nell said quickly. “I’d love that.”
“I’d like that, too,” Lillian said. “You can tell me stories about Chaney.”
“He was wonderful. He was amazing.”
“Thank you, Nell.”
“Can I tell you one story? Now?”
“Of course,” she said.
“Chaney told me that when he was eleven or so he was poking around in your room. It was right after his Dad died—I think he was looking for stuff that would remind him of his Dad. But he found your journal.”
“Oh my.”
Nell laughed. “Don’t worry. He only read a couple of pages.”
“Still,” Lillian said. “I was a grieving widow. That wasn’t something he should have ever seen.”
“He told me that he learned that you were a woman. Not just a mom. And that it made him look at all women differently.”
Lillian made a noise and Nell stopped talking.
“I shouldn’t be telling you this,” she said after a silence.
“No, please,” Lillian said in a quiet voice. “Tell me more.”
“He said that you wrote something about love being bigger
than anything else in the world. So big that sometimes you felt as if you’d burst at the seams. He didn’t understand that. He was a kid. I think he was scared that you’d explode one day.”
Lillian laughed. Nell smiled.
“And then one day, years later, he said he finally understood what you meant.”
“Because he met you,” Lillian said.
Nell began to cry. “I feel like I lost part of myself,” she said. “I don’t feel like I’m all here anymore.”
“I know what you mean.”
They were quiet again. Nell thought about last week’s audition. She hadn’t prepared. She wasn’t in character. She needed Chaney to help her. On the way home from the audition she thought about the stories she’d tell Chaney. He’d want to hear about the director’s black suit and red shoes. He’d love to watch her imitation of the guy who hammed all his lines and cried mid-monologue. By the time she got back to her house, she was almost surprised that Chaney wasn’t there, that she lived someplace different, that she had no one to tell the stories.
“I’m in France right now,” Nell said. “I’ll be home next week. I’ll give you another call then.”
“France! What are you doing there?” Lillian asked.
“My mother’s getting married.”
“How wonderful.”
Nell thought of saying: I invited a stranger I met on the plane and he ditched me this morning. My sister has gone AWOL. And I’m sitting on a rock drinking a beer.
Instead, she nodded. “Thanks for talking to me.”
“Please,” Lillian said. “You made me very happy today. Thank
you
, dear.”
G
avin led Carly through the gritty streets of Marseille, his arm around her back, pressing her hip into his own. They were the same size, she noticed. Why had she thought he was taller?
He whispered in her ear, “I want to taste you on my lips.”
Spare me, she thought. Damn her critical mind. Here she was, off on an adventure, and all she could do was snicker at the guy’s come-on. Didn’t she feel any stirring of lust or desire? She breathed him in. Stale wine. Had he been drinking this morning?
Just last night she had watched him across the table with Nell. She had imagined him naked, his penis impossibly big. Was she in the fantasy or her sister? Neither. Something about him made her think of sex, and yet nothing about him stirred her. She didn’t want to fuck him.
She wanted to want him.
Did she ever lose herself to lust? She ran through the short list of boyfriends in her mind. The one guy in high school. Two in college. One in business school. Wesley. They were all good-looking, smart, ambitious. Not the point, she argued with herself. Did any of them make you wild with desire?
No.
Maybe she didn’t know what desire was. Had she ever met a guy and pulsed with the need to seduce him? Her brain got in the way. Her body got pushed to the back of the line—think first, feel later. By the time she got to the physical response, her mind had already ticked off too many reasons not to go to bed with a guy.
And then when she did go to bed with him, she did what she was supposed to do. Foreplay, check. Blow job, check. Intercourse, check. Orgasm, check.
Did she ever lose herself in bed? Ha. She couldn’t even imagine what it would mean to be lost. Carly always knew where Carly was.
No wonder she listened to the sounds of her sister’s lovemaking last night with so much envy.
Nell knew lust. Nell’s life was driven by physical desire, by animal passion. She fell for a guy and pounced. She did hot sweaty yoga and wrapped her arms around the other yogis at the end of class. Carly had seen her feast on a whole blueberry pie until her mouth was purple, her smile enormous. She swam naked in Lake Tahoe, she slept outside in the desert at night while the rest of the family climbed into tents. She danced at a nightclub, jacked up on Ecstasy, until the sun rose.
And now, here Carly was, having run off with the object of Nell’s lust, and she could barely feel a thing.
Could she fake it? If she pretended to feel passion, would passion follow?
“Why do you lie?” Carly asked Gavin as they turned down a side street. Or was it an alleyway? The walls of the buildings were covered with graffiti, screaming graffiti in loud colors. Carly felt claustrophobic—not enough air, too much color.
“It’s a game,” Gavin said. “I like to play with people.”
“Why?”
“I always win,” he said.
“Were you playing a game with my sister?”
He led her down the center of the street, glancing from side to side, looking for something. Why was he walking so fast?
“Yes. She loved the game.”
“And when you go back to the inn? What will you tell her?”
“I’m not going back.”
Carly stopped walking. Gavin spun around to face her. There was no one else on the street, but she could hear loud music—the angry scream of a man and the wail of a guitar.
“Does Nell know?”
“By now she does,” he said.
He stared at her, daring her. To do what? To keep walking? His eyes looked watery, unfocused. Was he high? Why did she think he was sexy last night? Now he looked like a con man, a used-car salesman, a hustler.
She thought of Nell, waking up to an empty bed this morning.
“I’m leaving,” Carly said.
“You said you want to kiss me,” he said, his voice low in his throat. “You want a good time.”
She shook her head. His shirt was unbuttoned. She saw a tattoo on his chest—a black bomb, red flames sparking from the fuse. He’s about to explode, she thought.
“Take me back to the inn,” she said.
“That’s not going to happen,” he told her. His mouth edged into a crooked smile.
A door opened near them. Two teenage boys emerged, both skinny and jangly. Run, she thought.
“I’m leaving,” she told Gavin, keeping her voice calm. “I’ll get a cab back.”
“You’re coming with me,” he said, reaching for her arm.
She pulled it away.
“Don’t tell me what I’m doing,” she said, anger rising inside her. She could feel a flush of heat, a surge of energy.
He grabbed her and pressed his mouth on hers. He pinned her arms to her sides and grinded against her with his pelvis. She could feel his erection, the gnash of his teeth on hers, the crush of his hands around her upper arms. She pushed one knee up, aiming for his crotch, hitting lower. He let go for a second and she turned to run.
“You want it!” he yelled. “You know you want it.”
Above them a window slammed shut.
She ran for a long time, his words in her ear.
She reached the port somehow. The city streets dropped her there. On the side of a bus stop, Angelina Jolie smiled down at her. The poster was six feet tall. Angelina posed with a machine gun, wearing black lace-up boots and a corset that revealed
bulging breasts. Carly stood and stared at it, uncomprehending. Beauty, she thought. Violence.
She kept walking.
She wanted to call her mother. She wanted to be young enough that her mother would swoop in and save her. But she was twenty-six and she had run off with her sister’s boyfriend. She had blown off an outing that her mother’s fiancé had planned. She couldn’t call anyone.
She sat on a bench looking out at crowds of people milling past. She heard Spanish, French, German, and Japanese. An American mother, obese and sunburnt, snarled at her teenage son, “You try that again and I’ll ground you for life.” Carly pressed her fingers into her eyes.
She remembered yesterday, sitting at a café on the waterfront in Cassis. The waiter told Sébastien that she was sexy. Sébastien told her she would rule the world. She sipped champagne and watched the kayaks glide by.
Now, a dog came by, a mongrel, a beast with matted fur and pointy ears. He sniffed her legs.
“Go away,” she said, her voice a surprise in her ears. She had forgotten that she had a voice.
The dog kept sniffing.
The wind stopped. She had been listening to its roar for so long and suddenly it was gone. On the horizon she saw black clouds.
She thought of Nell. She remembered a night, years ago, sitting in Nell’s car at the side of the road, the policewoman waving a flashlight in her face. Nell stepped out of the car and the policewoman went away. She was wrecked, destroyed. Nell told her what to do, what to say, how to act.
Nell, she thought. I need you.
She pulled her phone out of her pocket and turned it on. She had missed dozens of calls—her mother, Nell, Wes, her mother, Wes, her mother again and again. Her mother’s wedding weekend. Olivia’s joy, spreading across the dinner table, wrapping its arms around everyone but her.
You know you want it
.
What do I want?
Nell. I want Nell.
She clicked on Nell’s name and held her breath while the phone began to ring.
O
livia looked out the window of her room at the inn. Brody and his mother stood near the arbor, deep in conversation. Olivia could see the back of Brody’s head, tilted to one side, his hand reaching out to his mother.
Fanny slapped his hand away.
Brody’s arm dropped to his side. Olivia couldn’t see his expression. But Fanny’s face was twisted in anger. She shook her head, turning away from Brody, her arms crossed against her chest.
Brody stepped closer and his mother shouted something—Olivia couldn’t hear the words but her window seemed to rattle with the force of Fanny’s anger.
A moment later, Fanny turned and stormed off, her body quivering with rage.
Brody dropped into a chair under the arbor.
Olivia could barely see him; wisteria draped down from the wooden trellis and obscured her view of the table.
She pushed open the window.
“Brody,” she called.
He leaned back in his chair and looked up at her.
He shook his head. “Did not go as planned.”
“Come up?” Olivia asked.
“Let’s get out of here,” Brody said. “Meet me at the gate.”
“Where we going?”
“Beats the hell out of me,” he said.
They left the inn and walked toward town, their arms intertwined. The day was hot and still; without the wind, a welcome quiet descended on the valley. They passed a field of artichokes and a farmhouse with white sheets drying on the clothesline. Children’s voices rang out over the high wall of a villa.