They climbed down from the vehicle—it was a magnificent spring day, with high, puffy clouds and temperatures in the low seventies—and strode across the parking lot to the main entrance. As they did, Anna saw Dee tear out of the front door to greet them.
“Hey, you guys!” Dee chirped in her high and breathy little voice. “I'm so glad you came! I've missed you sooo much!”
“I was here last week,” Sam reminded her with a broad smile.
“Well, sure,” Dee acknowledged. “I mean, since then.” She embraced each of them in turn, including Anna, as they stood together under the canopy of the entrance. It was redolent with the scent of fresh roses, courtesy of dozens of well-kept bushes to either side of the glass front doors.
“You look great,” Anna told her, and it really was true. Dee's shaggy, straight yellow-blond hair had been styled since the last time Anna had seen her, shaped into a pixie cut that that offset her huge, doll-like blue eyes. Her cheeks were flushed, eyes clear, smile bright. She wore white cotton twill shorts and a pale blue cotton ABS tank. In fact, Dee looked totally healthy. No stranger would have been able to guess which of the four of them was the patient.
Dee smiled serenely. “Thanks.”
“So, how are you feeling?” Anna edged to the left to allow a middle-aged couple step out through the front door. Her jaw almost dropped as she recognized the Countess of Beaune and her husband, Count Guillemet. She'd met them on a ski trip she, her mother, and her sister had made to Les Deux Alpes several years earlier. She did the discreet thing, however, and pretended she didn't know them at all.
Dee had no such hesitation. “Hey, Count,” she greeted the distinguished-looking gentleman in the black corduroy pants and white cotton dress shirt. “Pretty awful lunch today, huh?”
“Pretty
degoulasse
indeed,” the count responded with a tender smile. “Not quite Bernard Morillon in Beaune. Perhaps our dinner will be better. We're off for a walk.”
“See ya.” Dee turned back to Anna as if bantering with the Count and Countess of Beaune at the inpatient psychiatric facility in California were the most normal thing in the world. “So, want to see the place?” she offered. “Sam's seen a lot of it, but not Cammie or Anna.”
“What is there to see, Dee?” Cammie queried.
“If you don't want to come, you can wait for us here or in the lobby.” Dee's tone was even. “I don't really care one way or the other.”
Cammie's face actually reddened, and Sam whooped with laughter. “She
so
got you!”
“Bitch moment,” Cammie admitted. “Sorry.”
Dee led them all into the lobby that had been decorated by the world-famous designer John Saladino in cool blues, with ultramodern furniture.
“I'm feeling so good,” Dee chirped as they passed a white grand piano, on which perched an eggshell-blue vase of gardenias. “It took them a while to figure out my whole bipolar thing.”
“I
hate
it when that happens,” Cammie quipped.
Dee's eyes grew even wider. “It's not a joke to me, Cammie. It's my life.”
She said this with such honesty and lack of flakiness that Anna could hardly believe it was the same girl. Evidently Cammie couldn't either, because she had no comeback and actually appeared chastised.
“Anyway, it turns out my brain chemicals aren't steady,” Dee continued as they strolled along. “Lithium didn't work for me, so then they wanted to use valproate, but my mom freaked because she said I'd grow a beard or something. They finally settled on something else so new I don't even remember what it's called, and that's why I'm doing so great. I can't wait to go home.”
Cammie hugged her. “This is like a whole new you.”
“This is the real me,” Dee explained. She opened a door to their right and led them into a giant dayroom that had nearly every video game known to man, three Xbox 360s, two billiards tables, and a high-definition big-screen television.
Then it was on to Dee's room in one of the three out-buildings. Each was connected to the main building by a canopied redbrick path. Dee's room was large, with a single bed covered in a blue-and-white Mark James silk quilt. A Swedish Modern wooden desk held Dee's silver HP laptop. There were several big potted plants, a mini-refrigerator, a large poster of Piet Mondrian's
Broadway Boogie Woogie,
and a colossal picture window that faced a huge lush garden, and, beyond that, the Pacific.
“It's really nice, Dee,” Anna commented.
“It's hot in here.” Cammie lifted her hair and fanned her neck. “It's just a
room.”
Sam gave Cammie a sly look. “You're being pissy because our little Dee is not quaking in your shadow.”
Anna waited for Cammie's comeback, but there wasn't one. How refreshing. Sam had spoken the truth, and they all knew it.
“It wouldn't be such a shock to you if you had come to visit me more often.”
“I came.”
“Twice,” Dee pointed out.
“You know hospitals get me all weird.” Cammie pushed her spiraling curls off her face. “What is it, Beat Up on Cammie Day? First Adam and now you?”
Anna was surprised to see actual tears in the corners of Cammie's eyes.
Tears.
Something must be upsetting her deeply that had nothing to do with their trip to visit Dee. It had to be the fight with Adam.
“It's okay to
feel
, Cammie.” Dee's voice was soothing; she put her arm around her friend. “Let it out. Just breathe. Why don't we go to the juice bar? Everything's free.”
A few minutes later, they were sitting on comfortable upholstered chairs around a round wooden table in the clinic's juice bar, which had been decorated like a 1950s beatnik coffeehouse, filled with mismatched furniture, posters of Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper, and stacks of board games to play and books to read. Except for the four of them, and the prim barista who'd mixed their Jamba Juice-style raspberry-and-mango concoctions, the place was deserted.
“Dee, there's something I wanted to talk to you about.” Sam stirred her juice with a pin-striped straw that bent in the middle. “It's … prom. It's Friday night.”
“It was fun last year,” Dee recalled wistfully. “What was that charity thingie we raised money for? MS?”
“I think it was AIDS,” Cammie mused, apparently over her pique.
Dee nibbled on a fingernail. “No. Was it global warming? Or maybe the African drought?”
“The point is,” Sam interrupted, “we're going this year, Dee. All of us.”
“Yeah, but what charity?” Dee asked.
“None,” Cammie replied. “That's what's great about it.”
Dee pointed at Anna. “You and Ben?”
Anna nodded.
“There was a time when I was jealous of the two of you,” Dee admitted. “Wow, I was such a toxic bitch.”
“It's okay,” Anna assured her.
Dee pointed at Cammie. “And you're going with Adam. And … Sam?”
Sam grinned. “Eduardo called. He's flying in from Paris.”
“How fun.” Dee's tiny shoulders sagged. “I'll still be stuck here.” She polished off the last of her juice. “Unless …”
Anna could almost see the wheels turn in Dee's head. She excused herself and dashed out the door to parts unknown.
Five minutes later, Dee was back.
“I'm sprung!” she sang out.
“You're shitting me,” Cammie marveled. “Just like that?”
“Not sprung-for-good sprung. I mean I asked Dr. Verheiden if I could get a day pass for prom—actually, a night pass—and he said yes!”
Anna grinned, remembering how out of it Dee had been in that Vegas hospital room, how she'd claimed to hear voices in her head. Anyone who had seen this girl then would have had a hard time imagining that she would ever recover. Yet here Dee was, more normal than Anna had ever seen her. Not only was it an incredibly inspiring story, but she could
like
this girl, she decided.
Suddenly, Dee's face clouded.
“What is it—are you okay?” Sam asked, instinctively moving toward her friend.
“I'm fine,” Dee answered. “But … what am I going to do? I don't have a date.”
No date. Of course not. Why hadn't they thought of that before?
“Well, we'll all just kind of go as a group then,” Anna suggested brightly.
Cammie shot Anna a withering look. “Are we acting out scenes from
Saved by the Bell?
This is
Beverly Hills,
Anna. Ignore the boring, tight-ass, beige girl to my right,” she suggested to Dee. “I'm not only going to find you a date, I'm going to find you the hottest date in southern California.”
B
en sat on his bed, sorting through a plastic box of CDs he'd brought home from Princeton. Jack had burned them for him—assorted bootlegged concerts, songs by some of the alt bands he loved that he'd downloaded from the Internet.
Being home was weird, because in some ways, Princeton now felt more like home. He could be completely himself there, not the dutiful son of the “Plastic Surgeon to the Stars.” Whatever or whoever he was had no complicated psychological tethering to who he'd been as a kid, the mistakes he'd made, his mother's depression, or his father's gambling addiction. He was his own man.
The fact that his mother had gone on a redecorating spree in honor of his father's Gamblers Anonymous sobriety contributed to the weirdness of being back home. Without even mentioning it to him, his mother had changed everything, including his bedroom. Gone were his childhood dark maple furniture and his bulletin board covered with high school paraphernalia. In their place was a resort motif inspired by his parents' recent second honeymoon, at Round Hill in Jamaica. The new furniture was pale, sun-bleached wood; his new high-top bed boasted a white cotton quilt and various down pillows in white, eggshell, beige, putty, and cinnamon. Gone was the wall-to-wall carpeting. The natural wood floors had been stripped and sanded; atop them were various white cotton throw rugs. Bamboo baskets of various sizes held all the things that used to be on his bulletin board. The bulletin board itself resided someplace in a South Bay landfill. That his mother had done all this without asking him, or even telling him, made Ben quite pissed. Evidently you really
couldn't
go home again.
But okay, it was good that his dad wasn't gambling away the family fortune anymore; even better that his mother appeared to be coming out of her depression with the help of a great therapist and some well-chosen pharmaceuticals. Being around them this summer would be a hell of a lot easier than it had been during the nightmare of a summer that followed his high school graduation. Plus, his bud Jack was in town. Jack made Ben laugh. He was a dog with the ladies, but a charming dog. Ben knew more girls who referred to Jack as “the asshole” than girls who knew his last name, but most of them smiled when they said it. He had, however, also been known upon occasion to be quite the heartbreaker; Ben knew, because more than one girl had called to cry on his shoulder.
The best part of being home, of course, was Anna.
Ben tossed his green Princeton T-shirt into the wicker basket that held his laundry, then lay back on his bed recalling everything he and Anna had done on his father's new yacht. That such heat came from a girl who seemed so pristine was just so damn sexy. When he'd gone away to school, he hadn't been looking for a heavy relationship; he had actually run away from them at Princeton. There were so many girls who were hot in so many different ways—why would he tie himself down to one at this point in his life? Freshman year, running around with Jack, sampling different girls who were up for a good time, had been a blast. There was no way he'd planned to give that up.
Then he'd met Anna on the plane on New Year's Eve. Everything had changed. Sure, he still had his issues with the whole monogamy thing, because that seemed a short step away from the we're-together-forever thing, and he
definitely
didn't want to go there at this point in his life.
Anna, though, had been irresistible; and the more he got to know her, the more irresistible she became. She was this fascinating combination of innocence and experience, and for all her wealth, she was totally unpretentious. Most of the girls he knew were so jaded. But Anna had no artifice, no faux cool to hide behind.
The idea of hooking up with other girls lost all appeal for him. The times he and Anna had fought had sucked; they were a black cloud hanging over his head. When they'd gotten back together, he'd been so afraid of screwing it up again that he'd held on too tight; he knew that now.
There was a soft knock on his door. Before he could ask who it was, it cracked open. Maddy stuck her head in.
Ben sat up. “Hey, what's up?”
“Oh gosh, I'm bothering you, you don't have a shirt on, you were getting undressed, I should have asked—”
“Maddy—take a breath.” He motioned her in. “It's just a chest.”
“A nice chest,” she said, and padded in. She wore that silk robe she seemed to have on half the time, and, as far as Ben could see, nothing else. From the neck up, she still looked like dorky Maddy.
Ben carefully kept his gaze on her face as she sat in the new wicker chair at his new antique bleached wood desk. “Do you have to shave your chest to get it all hair-less like that? Do lots of guys shave? Or do you wax?”
That was just such classic Maddy—clueless, but sweet, which made it a lot easier to have this girl with that body in that robe in this bedroom.
“You came in to ask me about hair removal, Mad?”
“Oh no. Actually, I came in to tell you about Jack.”
“What about him?”
“Well, last night, after we met you guys at the marina, we took a drive.”
Oh, shit. I should have seen this coming.
“Go on,” Ben prompted.
“He's really nice and funny and everything,” Maddy continued. “We went for ice cream at Bethanee. I couldn't get any but I had a lick of his: chocolate, with pecans and peanuts and little, tiny marshmallows—”
“What about the drive, Maddy?”
“Oh sure, right, sorry.” She patted her stomach. “I love being thin—well,
thinner
—but I kind of miss eating. So anyway, we ran into these girls I know from school; they were total bitches to me at the beginning of the year because I was so fat. And they still call me fat even though I'm so much smaller. I guess compared to them I still am fat, because they all wear size zero or something. Plus, you know my hair was, like, all frizzy from being near the ocean and everything? And I wish I knew how to do makeup, but I never wore any because I didn't want people to notice me. Which is stupid, because at three hundred pounds
everyone
noticed me. So, anyway, they walk by and one of them goes, ‘Nice 'do, Porky.’”