“You know, I don’t actually know what all the themes are!” Pauline says. “I’m new. They seem kind of random to me. But that’s a great question.”
She opens the drawer, searches for the right key.
“It’s our penthouse suite,” she says. “The only one with a proper view of the ocean.”
It feels practiced, as if Pauline whispers something to each guest to make them feel special. It’s our only room with a desk from the Vanderbilts’ family home. It’s our only room with an infinite supply of toilet paper.
“Wonderful,” Phoebe says.
“So what brings you to the Cornwall Inn?”
Even though she knew this question was coming, Phoebe is startled by it. When she imagined herself here, she didn’t imagine herself having to speak to anybody. She is, simply, out of practice.
“This is my happy place,” Phoebe blurts out. It’s not the entire truth, but it’s not a lie.
“Oh, so you’ve stayed with us before?” Pauline asks.
“No,” Phoebe says.
Two years ago, Phoebe saw the hotel advertised in some magazine, the kind she only ever read while waiting in the fertility clinic. She looked at the pictures of the Victorian canopy bed, overlooking the ocean, and she thought, Who actually plans their vacations by looking through a travel magazine? She felt angry at these people, not that she knew anybody who did things like that. Yet days later, when her therapist asked her to close her eyes and describe her happy place, she pictured herself on that canopy bed because she could only imagine herself happy in a place she had never been, a bed she had never slept in.
“Well, this is a happy place, indeed,” Pauline says.
Phoebe picks up the key. It’s already been too much conversation. Too much pretending to be normal, and she is not paying eight hundred dollars just to stay here and pretend to be normal. She could have easily done that at home. She feels herself grow weary, but Pauline has so many more questions. Would she like to add a spa package? Would she like to book a visit with their in-house tarot reader? Would she like a normal pillow or a coconut pillow?
“What’s a coconut pillow?” Phoebe asks.
“A pillow,” Pauline says, “with coconut in it.”
“Are pillows better that way?” she asks. “With coconut inside them?”
That’s what her husband would have asked. A bad habit of hers, a product of being married for a decade—always imagining what her husband might say. Even when he’s not around. Especially when he’s not around. Phoebe didn’t think she’d end up being a woman like this. But if the last few years have taught her anything, it’s that you really can’t ever know who you are going to become.
“Pillows are much better that way,” Pauline says. “Trust me. We’ll have one sent right up.”
Phoebe walks into the elevator and feels relief when the doors start to close. Finally, to be getting away from the wedding people. To be doing something for a change. To have a key to a place that is not her house.
“Hold the elevator!” a woman calls out.
Phoebe knows it’s the bride before she sees her. She yells like she deserves this elevator. But nobody deserves anything. Not even the bride. Phoebe presses the button to close the doors, but the bride slides a hand between them. They don’t bounce open like they’re supposed to, maybe because the Cornwall was built in 1864. An old hotel has no mercy, not even for the bride.
“Fuck!” the bride shouts.
“Oh, God!” Phoebe says. She pries the doors back open, then stares at the bride’s hand in disbelief. “You’re bleeding.”
The bride holds up the gash across the back of her knuckles like a child and takes the tissue Phoebe offers without saying thank you. Phoebe presses the button, and the doors close again. The women don’t say anything as the bride politely bleeds into the tissue and they begin to ascend. Phoebe hears the bride try to steady her breath, watches the tissue darken.
“I’m really sorry,” Phoebe says. “I didn’t realize that would happen.”
“Oh, I’m sure it’ll be fine,” the bride struggles to say. She clears her throat. “So, are you in Gary’s family?”
“No,” Phoebe says.
“Are you in my family?”
“You don’t know who’s in your own family?” Phoebe asks. The question makes Phoebe want to laugh, and it’s a strange feeling. The first time she has wanted to laugh in months. Years maybe. Because how does the bride not know her own family? Phoebe knew everybody in her family. She had no choice. It was so small. Just Phoebe and her father, tiny enough to fit inside his old fishing cabin.
“I have a very large family,” the bride says, like it’s a big problem.
“Well, I’m not in your family,” Phoebe clarifies.
“But you have to be in one of our families.”
“No,” Phoebe says. “I’m not in any family.”
It had been a crushing realization, one that started slowly after the divorce, and got stronger with each passing holiday, until she woke up this morning to such a quiet house, she finally understood what it meant to have no family. She understood it would always be like this—just her, in bed, alone. No longer even the sound of her cat, Harry, meowing at the door.
“But everybody is here for the wedding. I made sure of it.” The bride eyes the gift bag in Phoebe’s hands, confused. “This has to be some kind of mistake.”
The bride says it as if Phoebe is the big nightmare she has always been dreading. Phoebe is something going wrong at a time when nothing is supposed to go wrong. Because every little thing during a wedding has the power to feel like an omen—like the high winds through the park that flipped over the paper plates and sent a chill down Phoebe’s spine on her own wedding day. We should have gotten real plates, she thought, something with weight and substance.
“There’s no mistake,” Phoebe says.
This is Phoebe’s happy place. The place Phoebe has chosen out of all the possible places. How dare the bride make Phoebe feel like she’s not supposed to be here.
“But if you’re not here for the wedding, then what are you here for?” the bride asks in a much lower pitch, as if her real voice has finally emerged. Because now in this private space with a person not attending the wedding, the bride doesn’t have to be the bride. She can speak however she wants. And so can Phoebe. Phoebe is not High Bun or Neck Pillow. She is nobody, and the only good thing about being nobody is that she can now say whatever the fuck she wants. Even to the bride.
“I’m here to kill myself,” Phoebe says.
