Chapter 8
At noon, Phoebe wakes to a loud knock on her door.
“I knew you wouldn’t do it,” Lila says. She walks in and stands in front of the bathroom mirror. “What do you think of this hat?”
The mother of the bride was right, Phoebe thinks. The bride has little imagination. Phoebe can’t imagine being a person with so little curiosity about other people. Can’t imagine walking into someone else’s hotel room, someone who is openly suicidal, and not asking, “How are you?” She couldn’t even start her therapy session on Zoom without asking her therapist, “How are you?” which made her very annoyed because wasn’t she paying him just so she didn’t have to consider the fact that he was a human being? But when she saw his face, he was so clearly another human being, and she began to wonder what it was like to sit on Zoom for nine hours a day listening to people like her talk about how they don’t want to fuck their husbands anymore.
“Too much like a sailor’s hat?” Lila asks.
“I guess it depends,” Phoebe asks. “How much do you want to look like a sailor?”
“I don’t really know,” Lila says, like this is a big problem.
Yesterday, Lila’s lack of concern would have seemed like more evidence for her aloneness. But this morning, Lila’s indifference is a gift. Because Phoebe can’t explain last night. She doesn’t want to explain last night. It feels like a secret that she has with only the universe—and the man in the hot tub—a secret that will become a foundational memory she will carry with her everywhere she goes. Like the memory of meeting her husband, which was so life-affirming, it sustained her for a decade.
“We’re going sailing,” Lila says. “And Nat and Suz said it looked cute. But now I feel like I can’t even trust them anymore.”
Lila looks out at the ocean view, as if it is an old lover walking by.
“God, I fucking love your view,” Lila says. She walks out to the balcony, sits down. Sighs. “I swear, you’ve become the only one I can trust here.”
Phoebe joins her on the balcony, waits for Lila to speak, because Phoebe is sure any minute now, the bride will begin her monologue. But Lila doesn’t say anything.
“Why can’t you trust Nat and Suz?” Phoebe asks, like she knows them.
“They’re supposed to be my best friends, but they just let me humiliate myself yesterday, walking around with food in my teeth,” Lila says. “Then, after the reception, they were like, Such a perfect night! Such great speeches! Your mother was so so so wonderful! And I mean, just no. Did they hear my mother last night?”
“She turned it around at the end, I thought.”
“No. Like, I’m sorry I don’t speak to ducks,” Lila says. “Jesus. My entire life this woman has been expecting things from me that I just don’t think mothers should expect from their children. And she didn’t even get the story right! Gary didn’t buy the painting that first day we met at the gallery. He came again a week later to buy it. And she wasn’t even there!”
Lila takes off the hat.
“And now I don’t know what my friends mean when they tell me something is wonderful,” she says. “That’s the only word Suz and Nat have been able to use since they got here. Oh, Lila, Gary is so so so wonderful!”
“Is Gary not wonderful?”
“He’s Gary .”
“I don’t follow.”
“Christmas is wonderful. A vacation in Tuscany is wonderful. A kayak around the lake is wonderful. Those tiny soufflés that you have to order an hour in advance at restaurants are wonderful. But Garys are not wonderful. That’s just not what they are meant to be.”
Phoebe feels the professor come alive in her. The professor is always tempted to say something wise that will get the student to reflect on their own words—something like, If you don’t think he’s wonderful, maybe everybody else isn’t the problem. Because isn’t that what Lila is coming here for? The truth about her sailor hat?
“What are Garys supposed to be?” Phoebe asks.
But Lila doesn’t answer. She suddenly looks confused, like maybe she has no idea what Garys were put on this earth to do.
“Ugh,” she says, looking at her phone. “I have to go. Apparently there’s something wrong with my mother’s room.”
Lila walks to the door but is stopped by the sight of Phoebe’s unmade bed.
“If you’re depressed, you should really try making your bed in the morning,” Lila says. “It’s supposed to make you happier. I read a study.”
“Well, you should tell the researchers that you know a woman who made her bed every single day of her life for forty years and it didn’t work.”
“But maybe it did work. Maybe you would have killed yourself years earlier if you hadn’t been making the bed. See? You never know.”
“I invite you to make the bed then. This is your wedding week. You should have all the happiness that’s available.”
“No, I mean, it literally has to be your bed to get the happiness.”
“Well, this isn’t really my bed, so.”
“Oh, and don’t you love the coconut pillow? I thought they would be fun for everyone.”
“It’s very coconutty. Maybe too coconutty. Then again, I’m not sure how coconutty a pillow is supposed to be.”
“It’s the perfect ratio of coconut to pillow, I think. I simply cannot sleep without one anymore.”
Phoebe feels a tiny headache start, the kind she gets when she waits too long to drink coffee.
“I need some coffee,” Phoebe says, reaching for the pot.
“Oh, no. Don’t,” Lila says. “Even in a five-star hotel, the room coffee is shit. It’s simply a rule of hotels. Let’s order some. It’s going to be a long day.”
It is. Phoebe’s first day back to life. Because if she is not going to die, she is going to have to live. She is going to have to book a plane ticket. Email Bob. Think of something wise and life-changing to say to Adam. Return to St. Louis. Bury Harry, which is already more than she can think about right now.
“Do you take your coffee black?” Lila picks up the phone.
“Cream,” Phoebe says. “And sugar.”
“Thank God. People who take their coffee black are always so smug about it, you know? Marla this morning was like, Oh no, no, I don’t need things in my coffee. I like it just black, thanks. And it’s like, Well, I’m sorry, excuse me, but I happen to be a human being and I like sugar.”
Then she dials room service.
“Yes, I’d like to order coffee with cream and sugar,” Lila says into the telephone. “Two eggs. And the Patriotic French Toast.”
“Patriotic French Toast?” Phoebe asks when Lila hangs up. “What war did it serve in?”
“Maybe it’s shaped like a flag or something,” Lila says.
“Maybe it votes.”
Lila gives a half laugh, like a horse caught by surprise. “For a suicidal person, you’re kind of funny.”
“Thanks.”
Lila walks to the door but looks at Phoebe as though she’s leaving behind a sad couch at Goodwill.
“So this is what is going to happen,” Lila says. “You’re going to eat your patriotic breakfast, and then join us in the lobby to sail at two.”
“Why would I come sailing with you?”
“Because I want you to.”
“Why would you want a random depressed woman on your sailboat?”
“You honestly don’t seem that depressed,” she says. “And the captain said we need a certain number of bodies in the boat to keep it balanced. And most of the people here are apparently too hungover to be on a boat right now. And if you don’t come, I’ll have to ask my mother to come. So don’t even bother telling me you have plans, because I know you were planning on being dead right now.”
Yes, Phoebe is supposed to be dead. She is supposed to be a cold slab at the morgue right now, but instead she is going to eat Patriotic French Toast and go sailing. Because isn’t that why she had chosen the Cornwall with Matt? To go sailing on an America’s Cup winner? To feel the ocean breeze in her hair? To be the people who ordered ridiculous breakfasts to their rooms?
“But I have to check out at eleven,” Phoebe says.
“No need,” Lila says. “I already told you I would book the room for the week.”
“And I told you not to.”
“Well, I don’t want any more randos coming in here. You’re the only acceptable rando.”
“I’ll be sure to put that on my tombstone. Phoebe Stone: the only acceptable rando.”
But Lila doesn’t laugh. Instead, she lifts her eyebrows in alarm.
“I’m kidding,” Phoebe says. “And besides, I don’t have anything to wear sailing. All I have is that… dress.”
They both look at the green dress that Phoebe left crumpled on the floor. The dress looks like a corpse, fallen where it was shot dead. Phoebe wonders if she’ll ever be able to touch it again.
“I’ll have this laundered,” Lila says, picking up the dress. “For now, buy something in the gift shop. The stuff there isn’t too awful.”
“But I don’t even have anything that will get me to the gift shop, other than this robe.”
“I see.”
They scan each other’s bodies to have that moment that women often have with each other—will my clothes fit you? Do we have the same body? And the obvious answer is no. Lila has the spindle legs of a Shaker table. Meanwhile, Phoebe has the body of a woman who has been drinking gin and tonics in bed for a year.
“I’ll get something from my mother’s,” Lila says.
Phoebe objects, but Lila cuts her off.
“It’s fine. It makes her feel like a better woman every time she donates,” Lila says. “This is actually a service you’re doing for her.”
“Well, in that case,” Phoebe says, “okay.”
This is exactly what Phoebe has always hated and loved about life—how unpredictable it is, how things can change in an instant. One moment she could be wondering what to make her husband for dinner and the next moment he could walk into the room and tell her he is in love with someone else. But it is also true that one day she can be alone in a room preparing to die, and the next, she can be preparing to be on a boat with beautiful strangers.
“I’ll see you in the lobby at two.”
T HE P ATRIOTIC F RENCH T OAST is not shaped like a flag. There is nothing at all patriotic about it. Phoebe is disappointed by this.
But she eats it anyway. She is very hungry, she realizes. She washes her face in the sink, then brushes her hair, and what a goddamned beautiful brush. Carved out of a solid piece of wood like a boat.
She takes a long shower, using all the products, so elegantly packaged she wants to eat them, too. She rubs what smells like a wooded forest all over her body. She hears another knock on the door but opens it to find only a bag of clothes that Lila left. She peers in. She sees something shiny.
“Jesus,” Phoebe says.
But it feels exciting, actually, to put on some other woman’s sequins for the day.