Family Pictures (32 page)

These pointless shows, however, allow them to have a semblance of a connection. Better to be able to bond over this, than to feel, as she has been feeling these past few months, as if they are merely ships that pass in the night.

Life has been almost overwhelmingly terrifying for months. Once a week, Eve weighs herself, with Sylvie watching. It is the only time Sylvie allows Eve to have knowledge of her fears, and each week, as Eve’s weight stays the same, Sylvie is flooded with relief.

She has only managed to retain some sanity, to put her fears for Eve aside temporarily, by throwing herself into work. She and Angie have driven throughout the state, giving candles to people to sample, getting them in stores on consignment, funded by Angie and Simon, who believed in this more than she believed in it herself.

A couple of months later, she was approached by one of the large chain retailers who had stumbled across the candle while on vacation in Malibu, and once they took her, everyone wanted her.

Simon brokered every deal, Angie coming to each meeting as her marketing manager, seducing clients with her long red hair. The candles led to accessories—a manufacturer with factories in China was able to produce her designs in what seemed like a matter of days, and within two years, Figless Manor was recognized as one of the greatest success stories in the home arena, an area that no one since Martha had been able to tackle.

As the woman behind the company, not least a woman who first found fame as an unknowing wife of famed “Boy-Next-Door Bigamist” Mark Hathaway, Sylvie found herself at the center of a media storm.

The woman who bounced back from nothing to create a home empire! When her home life collapsed, she put her energies into helping others build the perfect home!

And now she has the perfect home herself. Limestone floors and old bleached beams. Ancient vines scrambling over pergolas. French doors and bookcases, a light-filled arched gallery linking one side of the house to the other, the arches leading into the great room, greater due to its enormous stone fireplace and views of nothing but mountains and trees.

On the nightstand, the iPhone vibrates as Sylvie walks over to pick it up. A reminder that the team from the
Sunday Times
Style will be here at nine to shoot the house. Her assistant is picking up breakfast for everyone, does she want anything? And hair and makeup e-mailed last night to say you’d canceled them? Shall I get them back?

Sylvie texts back as she walks downstairs, comforted as always by the sight of Eve, piled high with comforters but sleeping peacefully, breathing, and she doesn’t want to disturb her.

She has breakfast here, and no, she doesn’t want the hair and makeup people back. When the media started becoming interested in her, they sent hair and makeup people to make her look beautiful, arriving with tool kits and bags filled with makeup.

They accentuated her eyes, contoured her cheekbones, twirled and curled her hair so she looked like a painted doll, but as she said to Angie afterwards, she looked nothing like herself. She looked, in fact, entirely fake. The whole point of Figless Manor, of the woman behind Figless Manor, is that it is about comfort, warmth, accessibility.

“How can I talk about people letting go of this concept of perfection when I’m sitting on my terrace looking like a mannequin?” she asked.

Now she insists she does it herself. She applies more makeup than she would ever usually wear, and takes a little more effort with her hair, gathering it back in a loose chignon, using the curling iron to add a couple of soft, feathery wisps to frame her face, but she still looks like Sylvie.

She checks her watch. Another half hour until her assistant will get here, closely followed by the photographer and his team of stylists. This quiet time in the morning, with no one in the house save sleeping Eve and Alfie, a large black and white cat who showed up on the doorstep one day and hasn’t left, is the time she treasures most of all, and switching her once-again vibrating phone to
OFF
, she pauses at the laundry room before sitting down with her coffee in peace.

Sylvie quickly tips the dirty clothes from the basket into the washer, sighing as coins fall out of a pocket. Damn. She always forgets to check pockets. The clothes come out, and it isn’t a coin at the bottom of a machine, but two small black disks.

Sylvie picks them up and frowns at them, feeling in Eve’s pockets for more. Three more. She moves them in her hand, feeling the smoothness, their surprising heaviness, before she suddenly realizes what they are.

Weights.

She stares at the disks in her hand. This is the reason it has been fine. Eve has been weighting her clothes.

Sylvie picks up the phone and speed-dials Dr. Lawson. He isn’t in yet, but she leaves a message explaining what’s been happening, and as she talks, she feels her anger rising. She shouldn’t be angry—she knows this is the worst thing in the world—but she’s so tired of this, of these tricks, of Eve just refusing to get better.

Sylvie marches into Eve’s room and shakes her awake.

“What?” Eve stirs, bleary-eyed, propping herself up. “What’s the matter? Is something wrong?”

“Yes, something’s wrong,” Sylvie says, opening her hand. Showing her the weights. “I know your little secret. I know you’ve been weighting your clothes. I’m sick of this, Eve, do you hear me? I’m sick of this stupid illness and you not eating. When are you going to get over this? When are you going to just grow up and take responsibility and get better?”

“It’s not my fault,” Eve says. “I want to get better. I’m trying. I hate what’s happened to me.”

“So why don’t you just eat?” Sylvie shrieks, now at the breaking point. “Why don’t you just sit down at the table and eat a goddamned meal?” and she takes the weights and throws them over the comforter before walking out of the bedroom, shaking, and slamming the door.

48

Maggie

“Are you here for the evening? Shall I make dinner?” I have no idea if there even
is
anything for dinner. I’m pretty sure the fridge is empty, but maybe I can cobble something together from leftovers and rice. My teenage boy doesn’t much care how it tastes, as long as there’s enough of it.

“Why don’t we go out?” Buck says. “I thought maybe we could go to River Tavern?”

Oh my sweet, naive boy. There is nothing I’d love more than to go to my favorite restaurant in the area with my grown-up boy, but it isn’t in my budget, and he knows that. Birthdays only. I look at him, so earnest, so lovely, and I wonder if I could make it work—just this once—if I should just throw caution to the wind and go.

“My treat,” he says, impatiently pulling a wad of cash out of his back pocket. “I didn’t want to tell you until I finished my trial and got offered the job properly, but I’m helping down at the boatyard. And this is my first pay! So I want to take my mom out for dinner because you need a break.”

“Oh, Buck.” My eyes fill with tears as Buck puts an arm round me. “That’s … so lovely. But you can’t spend your money on me. You have to save it.”

“I plan to. But I also planned to do this with the first payment. Go get showered and dressed and we’ll go. I made a reservation for seven thirty.”

I gaze at my son, so handsome and proud—at sixteen, so mature. How did he become so grown up? So responsible? I beam at him before suddenly looking down at my hands, now hardened from the metalworking. My nails are unpolished, my fingers a dark gray from the sanding. How can I possibly go to the best restaurant in the area looking like this?

“You’ll scrub up fine,” Buck says, seeing what I’m looking at, knowing what I’m thinking. “Think of this as your practice run, because I know you’re going to have to start dressing up soon for your girls’ nights out with your friends at work. And yes, I know you’re happy in jeans, but c’mon, Mom. I know you still have nice clothes. You have an hour.”

I shake my head with a smile. I can’t argue with him, but as I’m halfway up the stairs I stop, turning to him. “Buck? Isn’t this job going to interfere with sports? How are you going to manage schoolwork and—?”

“Mom!” He stops me, so much like a man, I almost want to cry. “I’m handling it. Remember, you’re not going to interfere anymore?”

“Right. Right,” I mutter. “Sorry,” and I go upstairs to shower, still not knowing whether to laugh or cry.

49

Maggie

I used to feel beautiful, but only when I’d had my hair blown out, my makeup expertly applied, when my clothes were the best of the best. These days, I’m far more inclined to feel weary and middle-aged. I put hardly any thought into my appearance these days. If it’s comfortable, I’ll wear it.

Fleeces for warmth, jeans, worn-in clogs that were supposed to be just for work but have become so comfortable, they’re the shoes I wear all the time. My hair is strawberry blond streaked with gray, natural wisps of curls escaping the ponytail, none of which I mind.

But tonight, for perhaps the first time since I moved here, I make an effort—how could I not? I can’t afford the keratin treatments that used to give me silky straight glossy locks, but as I stare at the frizz in the bathroom mirror, I impulsively grab Buck’s gel and scrunch it into my hair, watching as lovely loose curls replace the frizz.

I pull what little makeup I own out of the drawer and gently dab concealer under my eyes to hide the shadows, around my nose to hide the tiny spider veins that have recently appeared.

A pink blush swept lightly across the apples of my cheeks, a golden shimmery powder illuminating my cheekbones, a dab of mascara, and Blistex to soften my lips.

I should make an effort more often. Even with the barest amount of makeup and my hair still wet, my face is transformed. I like what I see.

In the corner of my room is a coatrack, hidden behind a folding screen, with most of my clothes on it. At the back, hidden behind the sweatshirts, the fleeces, the heavy sweaters, are a handful of clothes in plastic suit covers that I had all but forgotten about.

The clothes from my former life, the ones that were too good to give to Goodwill but not good enough to be accepted by the consignment clothes store a couple of towns over.

“Not quite designer enough,” said the snooty girl as she idly flicked through them, looking not at the blouses but at the labels, a sneer almost visible on her face as she handed them back to me. She didn’t thank me for coming in, or say good-bye, merely turned her head and grew busy doing something else in a way that was altogether too superior, I thought, for a twenty-something working in a consignment dress store, snapping gum in a decidedly irritating way.

I meant to take them to another, less judgmental consignment store, but life had been so busy back then, all my energies going into trying to support my kids, trying to find a new place to live, I never got round to it.

So here they are! These blouses I tried to get rid of, which were not good enough for the girl in the consignment store, but which are more than good enough, probably in fact
too
good, for my new life.

The olive green chiffon top with the long sash that wrapped around and tied in a large bow. Bought at a small boutique on Nantucket one summer, it was beautiful, if not by anyone I had ever heard of. I hold it up, remembering how much it suited me. What was I thinking in trying to get rid of it?

A baby blue silk tunic, embroidered with silver thread and tiny silver sequins. I remember wearing this all summer one year, in our rented house on the Vineyard. It is still as lovely as I had thought back then.

An ivory silk tee, long chiffon sleeves, cut on the bias with an asymmetrical hem, that I had always loved, but had never worn. It was far too edgy for the conservative girls of New Salem.

There are a few more. A black evening vest that was Armani, but the label had fallen off, hence the consignment girl’s disdain; a navy-and-cream-patterned blouse with large floaty sleeves; a hot pink caftan that, again, I never wore but always loved.

I feel a surge of happiness that I kept these beautiful clothes I had forgotten about. I will wear them all, but not in the way I once did, teamed with strappy Manolo Blahnik sandals and large, glittering diamonds.

I’ll wear them to suit who I am now. With jeans and boots. Maybe even clogs.

I pick up the ivory silk tee, returning to the bathroom to tip my head upside down as I blow-dry the curls, crunching the stiff dried gel until it is soft, tipping my head back with a shake as soft curls flow in a waterfall down my back.

I am ashamed to admit it is a few seconds before I can tear myself away from the mirror. I look nothing like the glossy, overly made-up, highlighted, straight-haired, bejeweled, and intimidating trophy wife.

Nor do I look anything like the Maggie of the last two years: dowdy, weary, colorless. A woman who doesn’t care what she looks like, has gone through something so painful, it is clear for all to see. A woman who has lost all joie de vivre, who puts her energies into getting through each day.

A woman who recognizes her life has stopped, and does not care whether it starts again or not.

The woman looking back at me in the mirror is fresh, natural, approachable. She is soft and pretty. She is a woman you would want to talk to. You would want to be friends with her.

I would want to be friends with her.

Not because she wields power, but because she is real.

50

Maggie

Buck holds the door of the River Tavern open for me to go first, and I pause for a second as a swell of pride washes over me at my handsome, grown-up boy. He has dressed up, in a button-down shirt and chinos, his hair swept off his face in the way he knows I like it rather than the Bieber-esque sweep that he, and all his friends, have been doing of late.

The restaurant is warm and bright. It is like walking into sunshine, every table filled, delicious smells, a handful of people at the bar in the front room, the buzz of happy conversation filling both rooms. We’re greeted by a smiling girl who seems particularly enthralled by Buck before being led to a table in the back, against the wall of windows.