Part One
It’s a cruel, cruel summer.
Leaving me, leaving me here on my own …
—BANANARAMA
I
When Shakespeare wrote “parting is such sweet sorrow,” he never had to say good-bye to a melodramatic French girl in an airport. This was what Beatrice was thinking as she stood in front of Claudine, who was barely keeping it together. Her pillowy lips quivering as she tried and failed to harness her emotions. “Are you sure you don’t want me to come to LA with you?”
“Babe, my internship starts on Monday and I’ve gotta spend the whole weekend with my Uncle Chadwick at a très boring third wedding of some B-list Hollywood actress.” This was the truth, but then Beatrice added a lie. She was so good at lying. Her lies always felt true as soon as she said them. “I tried to get a plus one to bring you, but no dice.”
“No dice?” Claudine repeated in her breathy French accent, brow furrowing.
Beatrice leaned forward and kissed Claudine softly. “It’s a gambling expression. It means we’re out of luck.”
“But you never take no for an answer.” Claudine pulled her face into a petulant pout, which Beatrice knew was a last-ditch effort to get her to change her mind. Beatrice hated to be told no and would rarely let it stand if she wanted something. But what she truly wanted, no, what she needed, was some time alone. And a summer in LA was the exact change of scenery she required. Bringing her “girlfriend” (if that was what they had to call it), no matter how exquisitely sumptuous she happened to be, wasn’t the fresh start Beatrice had in mind.
All she knew was that she needed to get away. Everything in Manhattan reminded her of Vronsky. She saw him on street corners, walking away from her before disappearing in a crowd. She heard his laugh coming up through sewer grates. She turned her head at the vroom-vroom of every motorcycle. She even listened to his voice mails when she was feeling really desperate—Yo Bea, Queen Beatrice in the house, Stop screening my calls Bea-yatch! Her beloved cousin was everywhere around her, as though her memories of him had escaped her mind and now flitted about the city like ghosts.
“Just tell your uncle how sexy I am, and he’ll let me come,” Claudine pleaded.
Beatrice was moments from bringing out her cat claws. But that was not how she wanted to bid farewell to Claudine. Beatrice knew her fuse was short lately. It was understandable in the wake of her cousin Vronsky’s death, but because she cared about Claudine, she was trying to bid farewell on a positive note, even if it was a false one. Claudine was the daughter of her aunt Geneviève’s best friend, so she also had filial piety to consider.
Beatrice gave her a deep tongue kiss, pushing her watermelon Trident gum into Claudine’s mouth as a parting gift. Claudine had once done the same thing to her, and Beatrice had found it hilarious and strangely hot. Now, she copied it symbolically as a sign of things having come full circle.
Claudine smiled and started chewing the gum. “You’ll text,” she said, not asked.
They had spent the last five weeks together, rarely if ever apart, and Beatrice knew Claudine was depressed by the idea of being away from each other. “I’ll do better than that.” Easier to string her along than get in a fight and have to make up over the phone, Bea thought. “I’ll ravish you tonight in our dreams,” she said.
Claudine giggled with delight, her cheeks reddening. Beatrice was the only person who could make Claudine blush. She hooked Claudine’s belt with her fingers and pulled her close, giving her a long slow kiss good-bye. Why did the crazy ones always taste so good?
Walking away, she could feel Claudine’s eyes on her back, willing her to turn around, but Beatrice resisted the impulse to feel anything. Love was a luxury she didn’t get to indulge in anymore. Not with Claudine. Not with anyone. Not since Vronsky … Beatrice adjusted the monogrammed LV duffel strap on her shoulder as she approached the JFK airport VIP hostess, who had been waiting to walk her through security. Normally Beatrice flew private, but her parents were using the G5 this weekend, so she had to fly commercial like one of the terminal people, as she snobbishly thought of them.
“This way, Ms. D.,” the hostess said, taking Bea’s bag. Bea put on her Chrome Hearts sunglasses, feeling safe behind the dark tint of the lenses.
Initially Beatrice’s mother had refused to pay the extra three thousand for Beatrice to be ushered through security, seated in her own private room, and waited upon until boarding. She had recently read in Oprah’s magazine that saying no to your children from time to time would better prepare them for real life, so Beatrice charged it on her own card, knowing full well her mother hadn’t looked at a credit card statement in over two decades.
“Is she still back there?” Beatrice asked the hostess, who stared at her blankly. “The hot French chick. Is she still there? Look, just don’t be obvi about, it ’kay?”
The host turned and looked at Claudine.
“I just said don’t be obvi about it!”
“Sorry, I, uh … She is. Yes. Standing there. Still.”
“She’s not crying, is she?” Bea asked.
“Hard to tell … no, yeah … she just wiped her nose. Definitely crying.”
“Probably because I didn’t let her finish when I went down on her in the limo.” She glanced at the VIP hostess over her sunglasses. “Always leave them wanting more. Remember that…” Beatrice quickly glanced at the woman’s name tag. “Dara.”
“Excellent advice, ma’am,” Dara replied quickly, remembering what she was told when she first started the job a few months ago: the rich weren’t as polite as celebrities. Celebrities had a fear of getting exposed as assholes, but rich people, like really rich people … well, they didn’t call it fuck-you money for nothing.
“Did you just call me ma’am?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry, I just did it again.” Dara turned her attention to Beatrice’s boarding pass. “Headed to Los Angeles, I see.”
“My uncle’s a hotshot manager slash producer out there.” Beatrice had a way of sounding flirty even when relaying basic facts. “I’ll be in LA for basically the whole summer. It’s such a relief, I can’t even tell you.… I’m so fucking sick of New York.”
II
Under normal circumstances, a summer abroad might sound glamorous, adventurous, and luxurious, but for Anna K. there was nothing normal about her current circumstances. When she boarded her father’s plane the morning after a long dark night of the soul in the bowels of Grand Central, she sat down in a chair across the aisle from her father and realized something. She had no idea where she was headed, figuratively or literally.
Anna had a hazy recollection of her father sitting on her bed yesterday morning, outlining their travel plans for the summer. He kept saying things like “new school, new start, new beginning.” But Anna was barely listening. She was still trying to figure out why she felt so altered. She looked the same, sounded the same, but she had undergone a profound change. She heard from her brother, Steven, that the therapist her parents consulted had told them it was impossible to know how she might react in the aftermath. The boy she loved had been killed by a train. In front of her no less. This wasn’t the typical teenage trouble. This was an outlier event, this was … unprecedented.
That was how she felt. Reborn into a life without precedent. Ever since Anna was a young girl everything had gone so predictably, so smoothly, so utterly planned out by her strict Korean father and chilly WASP mother. She did as she was told and didn’t question them and it never bothered her. Not until she met him. He changed everything, first for the better, and then for the worse. She had never soared so high, or fallen this low.
Most people would assume she was in mourning for her once perfect life—a good daughter from a fine family—but that was wrong. What she was mourning right now was a future with Alexia Vronsky. He had been ripped out of the present and relegated to the past so abruptly that her love for him had far outpaced the memories they had created together, which left her feeling shortchanged and grateful at the same time. Miraculously, they had found big love in their teenage years. Their time together was just beginning and then as quickly as it had started, it was over. If offered the chance to go back in time before she had met Alexia, she wouldn’t take it. She was done with that so-called charmed life forever.
But what was she supposed to do now? Was she supposed to pick up the pieces of her old life and try to put them back together, or should she start over completely and build a new life from ground zero? She didn’t know how to proceed; this was also a new feeling for her.
Before Anna left for the airport, her mother pulled her into her bedroom closet and handed Anna a box wrapped in plain brown paper. “What is it?” Anna asked quietly.
“It’s something you should have,” Greer told her. “You’ll understand when you open it. Don’t tell your father.”
“When should I open it?” Anna asked. These days decisions were hard for her to make.
Greer sighed, her expression softening for a moment. “Wait until after his memorial.”
“His name is Alexia,” Anna said with more spark than she had been able to muster in some time. “Was. His name was…” Her eye felt twitchy from the strain of trying not to cry in front of her mother.
“Yes.” Greer nodded. “May he rest in peace, and once he is, I hope you can find the strength to put all of this behind you. You have your whole life ahead of you, Anna. You need to be wiser with the choices you make. It’s the summer. A good time to figure out a way to rein your life in.”
Rein in my life? Like it’s an unruly horse who broke free and ran away? You think it’s so easy to just gather up the pieces of my heart and put them back together again? So I can be—what? An ice queen like you? Your own marriage is crumbling, your husband is taking leave, and you’re telling your daughter to buck up and pull it together? This was what Anna wanted to say, but instead she bit her tongue, took the box with a solemn nod, and tucked it gently into her nylon Prada duffel.
* * *
Her father woke her up after they landed and Steven and Lolly had already deboarded. “Anna, we’re here.”
“Where?” she asked softly.
“Bristol Airport,” he said. “We’ll spend a week here before heading to Italy for…” He didn’t finish his sentence. He didn’t have to. Anna knew what he was going to say. They were going to drop off the dogs in the Cotswolds, then fly to Italy for Vronsky’s memorial service. She nodded to show she understood. She wanted to scream, but all she did was press her lips together and say nothing at all.
“You’re going to be okay,” her father murmured.
You don’t know that, Anna thought. How can anybody know if anything’s going to be okay?
Outside on the tarmac, there were two black SUVs ready to drive them to their country estate in the rolling hills of the Cotswolds. It was a house that Anna adored, but which they hardly ever stayed in. She asked her father once why they needed such a large house in the English countryside when they never spent much time there, and he told her that one of the best ways to store wealth was in the acquisition of real estate. At least the dogs will get to enjoy it, they will romp and play, she thought.
Copyright © 2021 by Jenny Lee
