Her Perfect Life Read online

  “Wonderful,” the dark-haired funeral planner said, beaming. “I’m Regina,” she said as she stood and extended her hand to shake Eileen’s as well. Her barely checked exuberance belied her excitement to be working on such a large event. As she gently clasped Eileen’s hand, her deep-set brown eyes connected and held Eileen’s with a determined sincerity. “Please, as we move through the details, I want you to feel free to ask any question, make any request.” She removed her hand from Eileen’s and placed it over her heart. “I am here to make this process as simple and pain-free as possible.”

  Simon stood up suddenly, drawing all attention to himself. For a moment he looked lost, as if he couldn’t quite remember where he was or what he was supposed to be doing. He reached out a heavy hand that landed on Eileen’s forearm like an anchor. “Can I speak to you? In private?” he whispered near her ear despite the fact that the other two women could clearly hear him.

  She nodded and allowed him to lead her away from the white couch to the corner of the room near the large plate-glass window overlooking the lawn and pool. When he stopped and turned, Simon grabbed both Eileen’s upper arms in his viselike grip. “Can you handle this?” he asked her, his voice cracking. Eileen watched as he broke. His eyes welled up, and it seemed as if the weight of all his grief was culminating in this very moment. “They asked me…on that table…there is a catalogue of coffins.” Tears streamed down his face that now looked wild and—if Eileen didn’t understand all he was trying to process—insane. “Please, I’m sorry, but I can’t do this. All I want to tell them is no, we’re not doing any of this. We’re not choosing lacquered boxes to put Clare inside. I can’t even think, never mind fucking flowers. I don’t give a shit about who is invited. The whole fucking world has ended for me.”

  “Simon.” Eileen took both his hands in hers and shifted her head until he was looking into her eyes. “Go upstairs,” she whispered before taking him in her arms. She rubbed Simon’s back, like she would to comfort any of her three kids, while he sobbed silently into her hair. When she pulled away, she placed her hands on either side of his rough and stubbly face. “Go upstairs and go to bed. I’ll make sure she has only the best of everything. Don’t worry about it. I’ll do it, okay?”

  Simon nodded his head between her hands. “Thank you,” he said, his relief at being excused from planning Clare’s goodbye from this world was palpable. He turned and left the room without so much as a glance at the other two women waiting patiently and politely for the storm to pass.

  Eileen watched Simon leave the room then turned to face the two women waiting to get on with planning the parade that would send the beloved Clare Collins from this world.

  Eileen swallowed, took a breath, and headed back to the table. Five hours. That was what it took to shore up the guest list, floral arrangements, memorial location, music, catering, route to the cemetery with police escort, press release, media campaign, and finally, the burial site and specifications for Clare’s coffin. When the other two women finally rose from their seats with promises to wrap up the final details, Eileen sat back against the down-filled couch and felt the muscles in her back release as the ache traveled up her spine and radiated out across both her shoulders.

  She looked out the window. Time had slipped away, and the sun was now setting. Her sister was dead, her body resting on a slab of cold metal in the basement of the mortuary while the mortician worked to make her appear lifelike. As least, that was what Eileen imagined. The memorial service would be an open casket. Surely someone had determined that this would be appropriate, given Clare’s wounds.

  Because where had Clare shot herself? Through the temple? Through the heart? Or had her once-vivacious and beautiful older sister wrapped her full lips around the barrel of her 9mm and blown her gifted and intelligent brains out the back of her head? Certainly, their mother never imagined the day might come when her gift meant to protect her daughter would be used in her own hand, against her.

  Maybe it was best that her mother not know that Clare was gone. Maybe she need not ever know. In her time warp of dementia, trapped somewhere between now and the 1990s, Clare would always outlive her, as she should have. Maybe, in her brief moments of clarity, she might wonder why her eldest daughter hadn’t been to see her, but she would never need to know the abhorrent details.

  Eileen stood up and walked out of the room. She was tired. She was sad. She was in need of a full-bodied glass of wine.

  She made her way to her sister’s kitchen. Past the marble and expensive professional-grade appliances, there was a short, whitewashed, plank oak door at the very back of the room. Set in the corner, it would be easy to not notice. The entrance to the wine cellar was an oddity, designed by Clare to be that way, a personal touch that combined the old European styles with a modern flair. Eileen pulled the brushed nickel handle in the center of the door and ran her hand along the wall until she felt the switch for the light. With a flick, the small Italian chandelier reflected an array of light from its every handcrafted crystal and lit the way for Eileen to begin the descent down the tightly wound circular staircase that led to the cellar twenty feet below.

  Wines were stored by year and region, and from Eileen’s limited knowledge, Clare’s collection was impressive. Eileen knew this mostly because Clare herself had told her so. Where Eileen only saw bottle after bottle stacked wide and tall on wooden slat shelves, that Christmas three years ago, Clare had spoken of years, vineyards, grapes, seasons, weather even, as she had toured Eileen and Eric through the cellar with an air of pride. Pride that Eileen had noticed, had found interesting even. Why? Because her sister had accomplished many things. Written scores of novels that were devoured by millions, earning her millions upon millions, allowing her to build this incredible oceanfront home—and yet, the most pride Eileen saw her sister display was while showing off her enormous underground cellar filled with wines from all over the world.

  Why not her own library filled with her own books?

  Why not every room of her home that she’d carved out for herself?

  Why not the cars, the clothes, the international life?

  “The skill…” Clare had said. “You can’t imagine the work, the toil, the generational knowledge that goes into creating this.” She practically beamed while holding a dusty bottle up, like a newly delivered baby, in the dim light for Eileen and Eric to observe. “I want us to share this one, tonight. To celebrate our family being together.”

  Her sister’s gratuitous generosity—the memory made Eileen close her eyes. Eric was so impressed by her sister—starstruck, actually. Her grace, her wealth, her talent… And all of it had made Eileen feel so small.

  Now, alone in Clare’s cellar, Eileen searched the overhead labels for a region, Burgundy—Clare had declared as her personal favorite—and traced the racks downward for a year, 1975—the year Clare was born. Eileen pulled a dust-coated bottle from the rack and held it up to the light. She had no idea what it was worth. It could be ten dollars or ten thousand, not that either her sister or Simon would have cared, now or ever.

  Eileen followed the rows down many more years and pulled a bottle for their mother’s birth year as well. Ella was still with them, at least physically, but today Eileen felt her loss just as acutely as Clare’s. “For Clare and Mom,” Eileen whispered into the stony cellar. She gripped both bottles by their necks and headed back upstairs. She had no business drinking two bottles of wine alone, certainly not in her current frame of mind, but who knew, maybe Simon would venture forth and need a glass or two for himself.

  After she had climbed back out of the cellar, the kitchen felt sterile and utilitarian by comparison. Never a cook, Eileen knew for sure that her sister had spent only as much time as absolutely required in this room. After searching through several cupboards, she finally found one with row after row of delicate stemware. Eileen plucked one from the bunch and a wine opener from the utensils drawer b
efore heading upstairs to the one room that would bring her the closest to the sister she had lost.

  In Clare’s study, Eileen closed the door quietly behind herself and placed both bottles and her glass on the coffee table in front of the couch. The sun was now below the horizon, throwing its last rays of orange and red into the twilight sky. She cut the foil on the 1975 bottle and pulled the cork, leaving it on the screw while she poured herself a glass of the brick-red, aromatic wine. She stood, placed the glass to her lips, and wished like hell Clare was here with her now. She took a small sip, then another larger one as the complex combination of red cherry, hints of cinnamon, and earthy notes of leather promised to help her avoid thoughts, steeped in deep regrets, that she didn’t want to allow herself to think.

  What if I had reached out to Clare, picked up the phone?

  Eileen stopped them all short. She would, eventually, allow herself to nosedive into all the things she should and could have done, all the ways she might have been a better sister; there would be self-inflicted retribution.

  But not tonight. After a day spent picking the color and fabric texture of Clare’s coffin, tonight was only for remembering and saying goodbye. And the best way she could think to remember her sister was through her own words. With her glass in hand, Eileen turned toward the bookshelves that held Clare’s journals.

  She took another long drink and considered an entry point into Clare’s past.

  Today, visiting her mother had been an absolute disaster. She would need to go back and try again. Her mother’s misunderstanding had her thinking, about their life in Casper, about the accident, about the time when Adam had died and Clare had survived.

  She reached for the journals and pulled several from the shelf and onto the floor, opening random covers and reading first pages until she found exactly what she was looking for. It was an entry from right before Clare moved out of Casper.

  My mother gave me her gun today. I’m supposed to take it with me when I move to New York tomorrow.

  Chapter 19

  Clare

  Nineteen years before her death

  Clare tapped the microphone before her, heard the audible pop, pop, and nodded her head once, satisfied the typically temperamental piece of crap was actually functioning tonight—for now. She leaned in and looked out over the small crowd of people scattered throughout the bar, sitting in clusters of two, three. There were a few loners in the group too. Many of the faces Clare recognized as regulars to the Wednesday-night open mic. At the back of the bar, sitting at a table near the door, several of the other students from Donna’s MFA program had come to hear her read. They sat huddled, sipping their bottled beers, sharing silent expressions of barely constrained contempt as they sized up the other writers in the room.

  Because practically everyone here was a writer, waiting for their own turn at the microphone to share a poem, a piece of micro fiction, or even their inner thoughts spilled in ink onto the trembling page in their hand. Whatever was brought, it needed to occupy less than six minutes of stage time—no exceptions.

  Brian, the already balding thirty-something owner of the Blue Spruce Bar and Lounge in the middle of Brooklyn, sat on the corner barstool closest to the stage. With one unsympathetic eye on the reader and one calculating eye on the stopwatch in his hand, the moment that watch read 6:05, he swiped his hand over his throat, and Liz pulled the plug on the microphone power. He didn’t care how good, or more often bad, the work or the delivery was; he was a businessman trying to earn a buck. Open-mic Wednesday got business in the door with a five-dollar cover and a two-drink minimum.

  “First up tonight,” Clare announced, “we have Donna Mehan, who will be reading a selection of new poetry this evening.”

  To the right of the stage, Clare watched as Donna carefully ascended the sagging plywood steps that had once upon a time been spray-painted black but were now rubbed bare and showed the worn, pressed-together wood particles. As she crossed the tiny stage, she gave Clare a strained smile.

  “Thanks, Clare,” she mouthed.

  Clare had been working at the Blue Spruce for almost a year now, and from almost the day she started, Donna had been showing up to the Wednesday night open mics to read. Donna was good, or at least Clare thought so, which was why she often slated her into the first spot whenever she had anything new to read.

  “Thank you,” Donna almost whispered into the microphone as she raised her rumpled pages into the light and began to read.

  Her voice was low, barely above a breath. Often people in the audience had a hard time hearing Donna. She was a good writer, but the anxiety of sharing her work like this, onstage in public, vulnerable and exposed—Clare wondered if many of the listeners actually even realized how talented Donna really was, or if all they ever noticed was her shaking hands and quavering voice. Her nervousness seemed worse tonight. Clare imagined it was because of her MFA “friends” in the back.

  When Donna read her last stanza, well before her six-minute limit, she bowed her head. “Thank you,” she finished and turned as the audience clapped politely.

  “That was great,” Clare whispered as Donna passed by on her way to the stairs.

  “It was shit,” Donna whispered back and sighed. “I’m going to get a drink.”

  Clare smiled at her roommate and shook her head. Donna never thought anything she wrote was ever any good. When she’d first met her, she thought it was all just an elaborate attention-seeking act, fishing for the compliments that she must surely know she deserved. But after several tear-soaked, cheap wine–addled evenings, Clare revised her initial impression. Donna Mehan suffered from crippling self-doubt that bordered on loathing. She really and truly had no idea how good her stuff was and lived always in a self-inflicted shadow of judgment.

  Clare stepped back to the microphone. “Okay, and next up is David Ramsey. He’ll be treating us to the next six minutes of his completed epic fantasy novel, Ranger’s in the Black. As with every week, he would like me to mention that should there be any agents or editors in the audience, his work is currently available and he would be happy to take business cards, or even speak with interested parties over a cocktail.”

  There were never, ever, any agents or editors in the audience—but all of them dreamed of discovery anyway. David wasted no time launching back in to where he’d left off last Wednesday.

  “Okay, to remind everyone, we are midway through chapter seventy-three and Rangorflet has just escaped the Hand of the Righteous and has entered the tavern at the edge of the Weir Forest.”

  Clare watched Donna take her bottle of beer from Rachel behind the bar and head over to her friends’ table at the back. They were just finishing their drinks and gathering their things, leaving quickly now that they had already heard Donna read. Clare knew Donna would stay the full two hours, out of courtesy for those who had listened to her, all the time silently berating herself. Then she would head back to the apartment and sit on the fire escape, smoking and drinking wine with Sergio and Flynn if they weren’t working.

  “Liz,” she whispered to the spiky blue-haired girl with her hand on the microphone plug, ready to cut David off the moment he went over his time.

  Liz looked up at her, her dark-lined, bloodshot eyes already not interested in whatever Clare had to say.

  “Can you announce the next few reads? I need to talk with someone.”

  “Sorry, I’m running the mic.”

  Clare’s shoulders sagged, and she gave Liz her best are you kidding me glare.

  “Fine,” Liz said, sighing. “But you owe me a beer during intermission.”

  “Whatever. Thanks a lot,” Clare snapped and headed down the stairs toward Donna.

  “What are friends for?” Liz said, her voice dripping in sarcasm.

  “Such a bitch,” Clare whispered, careful to keep her voice too low for Liz to actually hear her. She suspected that
Liz was all tough show, but she didn’t want to take the chance of actually pissing her off and getting her ass kicked.

  By the time she made it to Donna’s table, the last of her friends were disappearing through the door. Clare pulled out the chair across from Donna and took a seat.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Donna started in right away. “I’m going to quit.”

  “Quit what?”

  “Writing,” she clarified. “This is such a waste of time. I mean, what am I even doing? Why? Why do I do it?”

  “Because you’re good at it,” Clare said.

  “I’m not good.”

  “Can we not start that again?”

  “It’s true, Clare. I’m not just saying it or blowing smoke or hoping you’ll prop me up. If I were good, really good, something would have happened by now. I keep sending pieces out, and nothing comes back but rejection after rejection after rejection. I can’t take it anymore. It hurts, physically hurts. Right here.” She pointed to the space above her stomach and below her breastbone. “What even is this?” She pressed her finger into the spot on her torso. “Where is your spleen? It seems like this feeling, this sickening sense of failure, should be leaking from my spleen.”

  “Stop it,” Clare told her and reached for Donna’s still-full beer. Taking a sip, she pushed the bottle back across the table to her friend.

  “That’s exactly what I want to do—stop all of this.”

  “But you don’t, not really. You love writing.”

  “I hate writing.”

  “No, you hate rejection.”

  Donna sighed, took a sip from her beer, then raised her eyes to Clare. “Anyway, what about you?”

  Clare sat back in her chair. Her gaze wandered to the street scene just over Donna’s shoulder through the tinted plate-glass window. People, one after another, rushed by. “What about me?”