“Find Benji,” Karen says. “The two of you could probably use some alone time before all this begins.”
“But I want to stay here,” Celeste says. “With b-b-both of you.”
Bruce helps Karen in and out of the shower.
Celeste helps Karen put on a soft white waffle-knit cotton robe with a light terry-cloth lining—there are two in every guest room, Celeste tells her, laundered after each use by Elida, the Winburys’ summer housekeeper—and then Celeste rubs her mother’s arms, back, and legs with Greer Garrison’s favorite lotion, La Prairie White Caviar Illuminating and Moisturizing Cream, also in every guest room. The lotion is like none Karen has ever used before; it’s rich, luscious even. Karen’s skin drinks it in.
Bruce helps Karen get dressed. She is wearing a silk kimono over black leggings and a pair of Tory Burch ballet flats from two seasons ago that Bruce plucked off the sale rack for pennies.
“Style,” Bruce says. “And comfort.”
Karen looks in the mirror. She’s swimming in the kimono. She tugs on the belt.
“Lipstick, B-B-Betty,” Celeste says. She dabs at Karen’s lips with the nub of Karen’s old standby, Maybelline’s New York Red. It’s the only lipstick Karen has ever worn. Or ever will wear.
“I’d say you’re ready,” Bruce says. “You look stunning.”
“I just want to use the toilet real quick,” Karen says. This, at least, she can still do without help. She closes the door to the bathroom. She needs an oxycodone. Two, actually, because so much is expected of her. She’ll be introduced to dozens of people she doesn’t know and wouldn’t care about except that some of these people will remain in Celeste’s life long after Karen is gone, and Karen is determined that every single one of those people will remember her, Celeste’s mother, as a “lovely woman.”
Karen can’t find her oxy. The pill bottle was in her Vera Bradley cosmetic bag along with her lipstick and a Revlon mascara that was rendered useless when she lost her eyelashes. Where… Karen tries not to panic but those pills are the only thing keeping her going. Without them, she will curl up in bed in a fetal position and howl with pain.
Karen’s gaze sweeps the gleaming marble, glass, and mirrored surfaces of the guest bathroom. There’s Karen’s toothbrush in a silver cup. There’s the miraculous body cream. Karen pulls open the little drawers, hoping that maybe Celeste tucked her things away so that she would feel at home.
And yes—in the third drawer, there are her pills. Oh, thank you! It seems like an unusual place to put them, but maybe Celeste didn’t want the summer housekeeper to stumble across them and be tempted. Karen thinks about chastising Celeste for pawing through her things. Everyone deserves a modicum of privacy, a secret or two. But mostly, Karen feels an overwhelming relief that is nearly as powerful as the pills themselves. She taps two oxy into her palm, fills the silver cup with water, and swallows.
GREER
She checks her e-mail to review the timetable that Siobhan the caterer sent her and, unfortunately, she sees a new e-mail from Enid Collins, Greer’s editor at Livingston and Greville, with the subject line URGENT.
This makes Greer laugh. Enid is seventy-seven years old. She has eleven grandchildren and one great-grandchild and she still marks up Greer’s manuscripts with a red pencil. Never once in the twenty-two years that Enid has been editing Greer’s novels has she ever used the word urgent. Enid believes strongly in letting ideas marinate—for days or weeks or months. There’s nothing Enid despises more than a rush.
Greer checks the e-mail even though the definition of urgent is transpiring right outside the window of Greer’s sitting room: the rental people are setting up chairs, the band is doing a sound check, and sixty people are due to descend on Summerland for the rehearsal dinner, among them Featherleigh Dale.
Dearest Greer, the e-mail begins (Enid composes all of her e-mails as formal letters).
I’m sure you will understand how it pains me to tell you this, since I have long been a champion of your work, your very first champion, if you remember.
Yes, Greer does remember. She was out of her mind with boredom when she was pregnant with Thomas—Tag was at the office day and night back then—and so she’d started writing a murder mystery set in the sixth arrondissement of Paris entitled Prey in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés. She had sent it off to Livingston and Greville, the publishing house that brought out the mysteries Greer most enjoyed herself, and, lo and behold, she received a letter of interest from an established editor named Enid Collins who said she would like to publish the book and might Greer be able to meet and discuss terms of payment and editorial changes? This had launched the Dolly Hardaway murder mystery series, the most successful of which, The Killer on Khao San Road, was made into a movie that had somehow attained that elusive thing known as cult status.
But since we have been bought by Turnhaute Publishing Group, my autonomy has been greatly diminished.
Is it really the fault of the corporate Goliath of Turnhaute, fondly known as Turncoat, Greer wonders, or is Enid being pushed out because of her advanced age? Her driver’s license will be the next thing taken, Greer supposes.
My editorial director, Mr. Charles O’Brien, also read your manuscript and he has deemed it “unacceptable.” He has asked me to let you know you have a fortnight to rewrite it entirely. He suggests you use an alternate exotic locale, one you can describe with more “colorful detail” than what he calls the rather “pale” version of Santorini you present here. I’m sorry to be so blunt and to bear this dreadful news, my darling Greer. But a fortnight makes your new due date July 21, and I felt it best to be direct in light of that looming deadline.
With best wishes,
Enid Collins
Hell and damnation, Greer thinks. Her twenty-first manuscript has been… rejected, then? Who is this Charles O’Brien and what does he know? Charlie, old Chuck, an Irishman. Greer can’t bring to mind an Irish writer she has ever admired. She has always despised Joyce, pretentious sod, writing in code and asking his readers to follow the twists and turns of his demented mind. She finds Wilde predictable, Swift histrionic, Beckett inscrutable, Stoker overrated, and Yeats dull.
Her cell phone pings. It’s Benji. Roger has questions about the seating chart. Where are you?
In my sitting room. Witnessing the end of my career.
What had old Chuck O’Brien said about the book? Pale. He had called Greer’s description of Santorini pale and suggested Greer use a different exotic locale.
It has been over thirty years since Greer set foot on Santorini. She chose it only because back in August when Benji proposed to Celeste, he mentioned he would like to honeymoon there. Greer’s own memories of the place were brilliant. She recalled stark limestone cliffs and a red beach, colored by iron deposits; robust, bushy-haired Greek men selling freshly caught fish in woven baskets; she remembered the deep aquamarine of the Aegean Sea, whitewashed churches with cobalt-blue domes, the winding streets of Oia, the seafood restaurants where the water practically lapped onto one’s feet and everyone was offered the same wine, a lovely, crisp white that was made on the east side of the island. Greer and Tag had chartered a catamaran, and Tag had sailed them around while Greer sat under a canopy wearing a floppy straw hat and Jackie O. sunglasses. They had swum into the beaches from the boat and paid the cabana boys two drachmas for chaises and an umbrella. Greer had left the island with recipes for garlicky tzatziki, grilled chicken with lemon and fresh oregano, and of course her famous lamb souvlaki.
She had been dismayed to find, upon researching Santorini 2018 via the internet, that Oia is now home to a Jimmy Choo boutique and that the donkey ride from the port up to Fira has been given a one-star rating on TripAdvisor. Greer had adored the donkey ride.
If she is very honest with herself, she will admit that the novel did feel a bit thin on plot, a bit slapdash, a bit “phoned in,” as it were. The key to a good whodunit is a murderer who is hiding in plain sight. Her character with the newly acquired stutter is, perhaps, underdeveloped. She remembers thinking when she handed the novel in, Well, that wasn’t so bad. She had delivered a seventy-five-thousand-word manuscript on time, despite planning a wedding to rival Prince Harry’s, and she hadn’t pulled her hair out or been committed to an insane asylum.
Things that seem too good to be true usually are.
Can she rewrite the novel in a fortnight? (No one but the British—scratch that—no one but Enid Collins still uses the term fortnight.)
She isn’t sure. She’ll have to wait and see how the weekend goes.
She clicks out of Enid, clicks out of e-mail entirely. Thinking about the unpleasant reality of her work life has provided a distraction, at least, from the even more unpleasant reality of the present moment. Featherleigh Dale will be arriving in less than an hour. Featherleigh is the rare party guest who sees fit to show up exactly on time. She does this, Greer suspects, so that she can have some private moments with Tag. Tag is ready for every occasion half an hour early and Greer is always half an hour late. It is a cunning and perceptive woman indeed who notes this habit and takes advantage of it, as Featherleigh does.
Greer changes into her party outfit—a sleek ivory silk jumpsuit by Halston, vintage, that looks like something Bianca Jagger might have worn to Studio 54. It’s one of the most fabulous pieces Greer owns. She had the trousers temporarily shortened so that she might wear the jumpsuit barefoot in the sand, showing off her toenails, which have been painted pale blue. Her mother-of-the-groom dress for tomorrow is proper—which is to say, matronly—and so tonight, Greer is going to emphasize her youthful, fun, carefree side. (Tag might say she abandoned this side of herself in the nineties and he might be partially correct, but she is reasserting it tonight.) For the first time since primary school, she is going out in public with her hair down, all the way down, straight and loose on both sides of her face. She always wears her hair up or back, normally in a chignon, sometimes in a tight ballerina bun, occasionally braided for casual occasions. When she exercises, which is infrequently, she wears her hair in a ponytail. She never allows herself to wear it like this—like a hippie, or something worse.
But it’s sexy. She looks younger.
When she goes into the kitchen, Tag whistles. “You’d better get out of here before my wife sees you. She’s quite formidable, with her hairpins and her diamonds.”
Greer grins at him. She doesn’t do this enough, she realizes. Tag always gets the worst of her: her laser focus, her inflexibility, her condescension, her acerbic tongue. She used to love that she could be herself in front of him, but now it feels like all he gets is the negative, unpleasant, unflattering aspects of Greer Garrison; the sweet, gentle, caring parts of her she saves for others—her sons, certainly, but also virtual strangers, such as her fans, waiters at restaurants, and retail girls in shops. Greer is nicer to Tita at the Nantucket post office than she is to her own husband.
